Gratuitous Llama Travel Notes - II

I see that in my absence, the LMC has been jerking my chain about my abject fear of flying.

Ahem. Let me just illustrate here why just because you're phobic, that doesn't mean you don't have anything to be afraid of:

Regular readers will recall that for the last couple weeks I've been ranting about a particularly nasty landing I had at National Airport recently. In my last post about it, I blamed a Continental pilot named Max, a Frenchman.

Well, we've been back and forth on our particular route so often lately that we've taken to recognizing some of the stewardesses on the flight. As it happens, this week we had the same one who was on that bad flight and my colleague got the low-down on what really happened.

As it turns out, Frenchman Max was not at the helm when the plane landed. Instead, it was his co-pilot, a kid just out of training. As I reported back then, the Kid made a complete cock-up of the landing, hitting hard on one wheel and almost scraping the runway with his wingtip. Our stewardess friend recalled the flight vividly, stating quite candidly that she thought we were gonners herself.

Apparently as a result of this little mishap, Max got in trouble for improper supervision and the Kid got sent back to remedial training.

So, there. You see? I'm a-gonna go right on clutching the armrests with claws of death and muttering repeated "Hail, Mary"'s under my breath.