Confession
I’m watching a lot of airplane crash videos these days on YouTube.
I adore flying but am also afraid of it at the same time.
Watching these videos somehow satisfies something morbid in me. That’s for sure.
My Favorite Crash Channel
But not any crash videos.
I’m especially addicted to the ones on the Mentour Pilot channel (with the “u”).
The reason is, this channel not only documents the crash but also the reason why.
The detailed explanation of how airplanes work and why these accidents happen is a crash-course (pun unintended) in aviation for me.
8 Out of 10 of These Cases
After watching so many of these disaster videos, something started to attract my attention.
In 8 out of 10 of these cases, airplanes do not crash due to pilot error or something wrong with the plane.
No.
They happen because of what takes place before the aircraft takes off from the runway.
It’s usually because the ground crew screwed up something during the maintenance.
Examples of Maintenance Screwup
The fuel truck fills fuel contaminated with seawater. The salt crystals in the fuel gum up the engines and stall them.
The maintenance technician who replaces the cockpit windshield on the ground uses the wrong screws, as a result of which the windshield is blown away and the pilot is sucked out of the cockpit at 33,000 ft.
The maintenance crew that replaces the flap, spoiler, and aileron cables connect them in the wrong direction. So in mid-flight, the airplane becomes uncontrollable.
In all these and similar cases, the hapless pilots don’t know what hit them.
Some manage to use their experience and ingenuity to land their planes and save lives. Others don’t.
But the point is, most of these planes in a sense have already crashed even when they are lined up on the runway for a takeoff because of the sloppy job performed by the ground maintenance. They are already doomed but the pilots don’t know it yet.
Our Lives
Aren’t our lives similar to that?
Don’t we all depend on our support and maintenance systems to fly straight and safe in life?
When things go wrong, aren’t we all at a loss to understand what is it that we did to create that situation?
Our spouses, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, teachers, mentors, clients… our “maintenance team”…
Even before we take that first step out of our house every morning, aren’t we all blessed or doomed depending on the kind of mental, psychological, and spiritual support we received earlier from our significant ones?
Something a loved one says becomes our contaminated fuel a week later, in the midst of a conversation or presentation. And we forget the next word we were going to say. Or we end up saying the wrong word, losing altitude precipitously.
The way we are criticized harshly by a parent or a child becomes our cockpit windshield fastened by the wrong screws. We lose self-control in the midst of yet another argument, our temper is shattered like cheap glass and we are sucked away from our best self. We fly off into the freezing space of guilt and regret.
Empty promises and cheap talk wire our expectations the wrong way, just like misconnected wing parts that we need for a lift in life. We go right while trying to turn left, and vice-versa. We go down as we are trying to go up, and we have no idea why.
We Are Each Other’s Maintenance Crew
Does this mean that everything that goes wrong in our lives is the fault of somebody else?
Not really because we are also on somebody else’s maintenance team.
This is not a “victimization lecture” since we are each other’s maintenance crew.
Today we might be at the receiving end of the “contaminated fuel” but tomorrow we might be delivering the same kind of poison to someone else, without even knowing it.
Life is a miracle just like an airplane is a miracle of technology.
To fly straight both in life and in the air we need to be careful in our words and deeds, be diligent about the future effects of our present actions, check, re-check, and make sure not to quit until we get IT right.
A life without accidents takes a village.
(Image courtesy of Pixabay)