[Twitter showed a video clip of a plane trying to land at Heathrow in a high wind, and not succeeding.]

This reminds me of the worst flight I ever had.

I was flying to JFK from Heathrow, then to change to fly to Las Vegas for a conference.

At one point, the pilot (I think, possibly a cabin crew member) started making a long announcement about 'honoured guests'.

I wasn't really listening carefully, as I assumed it was probably the CEO of the airline, but then they started talking about 'legends of aviation' so I listened a bit closer.

It turned out that I was sharing a flight with Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Gene Cernan.

Yes, that's two men who walked on the moon, plus the captain of Apollo 13. On my flight. Along with other test pilots whose names I didn't know.

I wasn't brave enough to try to get into First Class to meet them. For one thing, they were old men who probably just wanted to relax.

I think a lot of people on that flight were scared.

I was not. I felt pretty calm about it.

Because there's no way that God is going to crash an airliner carrying three Apollo astronauts.

In the end, we rerouted to Boston, and had to take a bus back to JFK, which was mostly closed by then, then wait until the check in desks opened up next morning, and hope they could get me on a different flight. (They did.)

As a bonus, during the long, long wait for my new flight, I happened to meet one of the other people who was travelling with Armstrong et al, and he told me about their tour, and we had a nice chat. And I did spot the astronauts at the luggage check.

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Jim Lynn

26.02.24 Front Page

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