On depressed pilots

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard this CheapAir flight from Worriesville to Fretchester. If I might have your attention for a few minutes, my name is Angry Exile and I’m the purser aboard your flight today. Your captain and first officer are both in good moods and without marital or financial difficulties, and are off their tits on the MDMA I put in their coffee anyway. We’d like to draw your attention at this time to some of the safety features of this Blowing dumbo-jet aircraft. In the event of composure loss smiley face masks will drop down from the compartment above you. If you’re travelling with children please ensure your own mask is fitted properly before fitting theirs…

People are fucking hilarious. Seriously. After nearly fifteen years of crapping ourselves over the insignificantly tiny chance a man with a terrible beard is going to destroy the aircraft we’re on because he thinks it’ll please his sky-fairy we’re waking up to the real menace of the skies: the insignificantly tiny chance one of the people who are paid to fly the bloody thing is having a sufficiently bad day to say “Fuck everyone aboard, I’m going to crash us all into the ground.”

Yeah, I don’t know about you but that microscopic possibility is certainly what’s keeping me away from airports. Never mind that out of the hundreds and hundreds of crashes in the era of modern aviation only a single digit handful have been put down to an unhinged pilot killing all their passengers along with themselves. Never mind that that this is a tinier proportion of the already extremely tiny proportion of flights that crash at all. Never mind the near 100% chance of shitty traffic getting into the airport, the 100% chance of being robbed blind for parking, the 100% chance of similarly extortionate food and refreshments as the only alternative to McbloodyDonalds, the 100% chance of experiencing soul destroying and charmless airport terminals*, the 100% chance of at least one infuriating queue, the 100% chance of tedious and possibly pointless security theatre, the probably much less than 100% chance (though it always seems to happen to me) of the bloody flight being delayed, the 100% chance of feeling like I’m in a particularly shit shopping centre with an occasionally used runway outside,  and the 100% chance of an economy class seat manufactured by someone who’s never even seen a picture of a six foot human being giving me backache no more than sixty seconds into the whole miserable fucking experience.

Yep, stuff all that – what’s really going to stop me flying is the not the purgatory like excruciating experience that it’s become in the last decade or so but the thought that one of the pilots is feeling a bit sad about life and no longer cares about anyone else’s.

* Has anyone even looked into this possibility? Pilots have to go to airports everyday. If I spent all my working time in airports I’d be fucking depressed.