Wing to Wing, Tip to Tip

There I am, 2030 hrs at Dusseldorf airport on Sunday (as you do of course). Not too late, an hour or so further to travel but I have found my taxi driver. All is well. Then the taxi driver apologises. We have to pick someone else up. Their flight was delayed but has just landed so shouldn’t be long. OK, no worries. Listen to my iPod, try and relax. Wait. And wait. And wait. After an hour and a half I ask just how long we are going to wait. Taxi driver rings his head office and we decide to go.

Fast forward to the next day. I meet the person we were waiting for. I am prepared to complain. Rather disarmed by the fact it is a woman rather than a man, and pregnant at that (not sure if that makes me a male chauvinist or chivalrous, hard to tell these days). Anyway I start with the opening gambit “ah, it was you that I was waiting for at the airport”. She replies with “sorry, my plane crashed”. Now, as far as excuses go, that seems a fairly good one to me. In fact I am rather speechless. Images of her plane plummeting from the air and her being the only one to walk away, unscathed, are quickly dispelled as she explains that the wings of two planes collided while manoeuvring on the ground. Even so, I can’t imagine flying an hour after that had happened. It would certainly concentrate the mind. And I would certainly ask for a new pilot.