A plane leaving Belgium landed safely in New Jersey earlier this morning after its 60 year old pilot died of natural causes. The passengers remained blissfully unaware of the proceedings as the flight’s two co-pilots took over, following directions to land without incident.
At first, my reaction to reading this story was a curious feeling of disappointment. I’m used to the news focusing on negativity and horrific events, so when nothing more catastrophic happened to this flight or its passengers, I almost felt cheated. And that’s not right. I used to complain that we don’t get as many good news articles as we do the bad, so I should be happy about this, right?
But I do feel like there was something missing, editorially. If the focus was on the fact that the plane landed safely, then it should have been written with that slant: “Here’s why you don’t need to worry about your pilot dying during the flight.” As a dry recitation of the facts, it left me a little cold. This kind of thing doubtless happens more often than we suspect, but what’s the point of the article? How does this affect the average person? I mean, condolences to the pilot’s family and everything, but … it didn’t have the feel of a “Whew, disaster averted” kind of story. Without more of that extra element of danger to things, this could have been relegated to an obituary piece.
Call me callous and uncaring, but with so much else going on in the world that doesn’t receive good coverage, it just doesn’t seem like we should be giving space to “Everything’s fine”.
Comments
No comments.