[Talisker]

“Here we all are packed into an aluminium tube carrying several tons of highly explosive kerosene and the bloke at the front is going to send it hurtling down this concrete runway as fast as he can until he can get it to lift off into the air. Then when he has done that he is going to fly through the clouds, for long periods in the middle of the night for thousands of miles until he finds a speck of light from way up in the air and then he will slow the plane down so that it drops to the earth and he can land it on a concrete strip and hurtle along the ground again until he can bring it to a stop. Hey what could possibly go wrong?”

I don't worry about any of that, because the bloke at the front is in the aircraft with you and wants to get home safely.

You want to worry about something, worry about the happiness levels of the maintenance mechanics, and where they got their replacement parts.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The general odds are awfully good in an airplane. Better than a car or boat or train. But they are not bulletproof. They shouldn’t have even been flying in this horrible weather. Stuff like this would have grounded flights in the USA.

[PotatoHeadMick]

“I don’t worry about any of that, because the bloke at the front is in the aircraft with you and wants to get home safely.

You want to worry about something, worry about the happiness levels of the maintenance mechanics, and where they got their replacement parts.”

Yes, that is the key isn’t it, I seem to recall a documentary about a British Airways flight where the cockpit window popped out of place and the pilot was sucked out, remarkably he was able to hold on to the plane (or his belt caught him) and although unconscious and half frozen he survived after his copilot successfully landed the plane.

The air transport investigation reported that the wrong screw was used to hold the window in place, apparently the evening before it had been replaced and the screw went missing and the maintenance guy rifled through a box of screws and nuts till he found one that might just do the job and stuck it in before going off no doubt for a well deserved cup of tea.

It ain’t just third world airlines one has to worry about.