Buckle Up Ladies And Gents

I boarded a flight at Beijing International Airport looking forward to a smooth flight home. Half an hour later the pilot's voice came over the PA system, apologising for an "unknown error" which would take at most 30 minutes to repair. Cathay Pacific thanked you for your patience.

An hour later, the pilot finally announced we were ready to take off!  So all strapped into our seats and the plane taxied on the runway.

And we waited.

Ten minutes later, the pilot's voice came on again and told us the same error has mysteriously recurred, and takeoff will be delayed whilst engineers fix the problem. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so, he said.

And we waited.

And we waited some more.

Sounds all too familiar right?  Nothing much you can do when your life has been chucked to those engineers. 

Take the claims about flying being the safest form of transport.  This is what the airline isn't telling you...

• Deaths per 100 million passenger journeys are, on average, 55 for airliners compared with 4.5 for cars, and 2.7 for trains!

• Only motorbikes, at 100 deaths per 100 million passenger journeys, are more risky than aircraft on this basis!

Scary huh? 

I have hence stopped complaining about delays due to technical problems, after reading the above from an excerpt of New Scientist magazine.

Remember to buckle up during take-offs and landings - where 70% of air-traffic accidents took place.