Now add to that the strange performance, or non-performance, of the collision alarm units on the two big planes as they approached each other. Early-bird German investigators report that the Boeing's collision-warner had "barked out" instructions a mere l4 seconds before the midair crash, to descend from present course.
If, on a collision course, Plane A is supposed to nose down, is Plane B then supposed to nose up? Or is it like oceangoing vessels, where collision procedures call on both parties to turn sharply to the right? Granted, boats don't have the resources to nose up into the air, or nose down into the sea, except for the submariners. What will come of an investigation of Swiss-German-Russian confusion? Surviving instruments may help to explain the mystery, nothing useful being there to be had from the 71 corpses slowly being identified.
And then, rounding up the air news, we learn that two pilots were yanked from the cockpit of an America West airliner, charged with being drunk. The good news is that they were not only drunk, but drunk and disorderly enough to arouse the suspicions of the Miami airport personnel, who arrested the flight, as also its pilots.
Whew!
One thinks of the tens of thousands of people every hour of every day watching out for security in the air by subversives. That security apparatus succeeded in stopping further damage by one wild gunman, shooting off his handgun 15 feet from the El Al air counter in Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, one-half of the relevant air security manning the control tower in Zurich -- a single person -- left his post, contributing to two airliners crashing into each other at a closure speed of l,000 miles per hour seven miles up from the Italian Lake Constance. How many more people, mandated to investigate the airworthiness of the Cessna in Los Angeles, or the Boeing in the Congo, were needed to prevent those two crashes? Might the pilot of the Prestige flight have been drunk? Perhaps heady with exhilaration from his remove from the vigilance of Miami air controllers?
The air-minded people of the world have a lot to worry about besides lost luggage. But there is no apprehension quite like wondering, when cruising in fog high up in space, whether another plane, serenely unconcerned, is heading right at you. But the statistics are reassuring. Aren't they? Still, there's a certain bite in air travel.