Re: Heathrow
Posted: 22 Jan 2008, 19:41
Roald Dahl wrote a brilliant short story about this many years ago. If I remember right it was narrated by an ex-ww2 bomber pilot who was opening up his heart after having a few drinks. The main story was his confession of 'jinking' which was his name for a game he played on a bombing run. When the bomb aimer called the target, he would sometimes kick the aircraft to left or right a bit so that the original people who would have been killed were saved. Consequently another set of people who would have survived were killed instead. It was like playing god. I think he also spoke of, when driving the car, he would put it in gear and then wait five seconds before moving off, thereby avoiding the accident that he may have otherwise had. But of course, he may now encounter one that he would have avoided if he had driven off normally deda deda deda ...Garry Russell wrote:Yet every time, or nearly every time you drive you see something that if you were a few seconds earlier of if you had gone there instead of here........it goes on all the time
Of course, thinking like this leads to madness. Which was the whole point of the story. It was superb but I can't remember what it was called. Now I'm going to wait 30 seconds before posting this so that somebody who might have read it will now read something completely different instead :doho:
Ian :roll:
SInce the airframe moved to engineering, AAIB have been requesting various bits for analysis/inspection and this, I suppose, will continue until they've drawn their conclusions. It's probably safe to say that the AAIB knew exactly what had happened within a few hours as will RR and Boeing.. it's the 'why' that's taking the time. Lot's of hours in the sim trying to duplicate it for someone! 
Bad news is they're missing the use of the airframe. Typical as it had sat idle for a fair time prior to it's ground cycle done a few days before the accident :o