Fear of Flying

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Twenty–one years ago today, Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a Boeing 737, sustained considerable damage after an explosive decompression in flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii.

The flight was able to make a safe emergency landing on Maui. Sixty–five people were injured and only one — flight attendant C.B. Lansing — was killed when she was blown out of the plane. Her body was never found.

In general, 1988 was not as bad for commercial flight as other years that came before or after. In 1987, for example, there were nine airplane crashes, compared with seven in 1988 (Flight 243, as I have noted, did not crash) — including the midair disintegration of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in December 1988.

Nearly a year after the Aloha Airlines incident, on Feb. 24, 1989, it seemed that lightning struck again when United Airlines Flight 811, a Boeing 747, suffered an explosive decompression shortly after takeoff from Honolulu. Nine passengers were sucked out of the plane, but the plane landed safely in Honolulu.

Nine airplanes crashed — or were blown up in midair — in 1989.

A couple of years after the Aloha Airlines disaster, a TV movie based on the event, "Miracle Landing," was shown on CBS. The film itself was terrible, and the acting was dreadful — probably doing little, if anything, to alleviate anyone's fear of flying.