On July 19, 1989, United Airlines flight 232 was flying from Denver to Chicago. It was a DC-10 with 296 passengers and crew on board. The captain was Al Haynes; his co-pilot was William Records. The flight engineer was Dudley Dvorak.
As the jet flew over Iowa, the fan disk of the tail-mounted #2 engine shattered due to a tiny metallurgical flaw that had caused a microscopic crack to develop and grow over time. The pieces of titanium shrapnel ripped through the engine housing and cut all three hydraulic lines, causing every drop of hydraulic fluid to drain away, leaving the pilots with no way to steer the plane.
Riding along as a passenger was Dennis Fitch, a DC-10 instructor, who had actually been doing simulator flights regarding steering with throttles alone. He offered to assist when he realized the plane was in trouble, and Capt. Haynes gladly accepted. The four pilots, principally Haynes and Fitch, managed to use careful control of the throttles to recover a modicum of control, and spiraled the plane down toward Sioux City, the nearest airport. Since they had to maintain a pretty high speed in order to steer with throttles, they came in to land at a much higher speed than was normally safe, and as they reduced speed just before touching down, the plane tilted to the right, and the wing hit the ground. The plane smacked into the runway and broke apart, a wing tumbling away, the rear and the cockpit tearing off, the main part of the fuselage coming to a stop upside down. There was, of course, fire. Anyone seeing footage of the crash would assume that everyone had been killed.
112 people were killed, but 184 survived, many walking away relatively uninjured. None of them would have had a chance without the brave, intelligent and calm pilots. They kept that plane from falling out of the sky like a rock.
184 people survived an impossible situation, and a violent crash, because those pilots gave them a chance to survive. But in interviews through years afterward, those pilots felt as though they had not done enough, because they couldn’t save everyone. Dennis Fitch, especially, suffered from terrible guilt because 112 people had not walked away.
Contrast these pilots to the thing in the Oval Office now, and the parasitic band of sycophants he has around him. Compare this country to that stricken airliner. The pandemic has shattered the engine and destroyed the ability to steer. Is there a steady hand on the throttles, an intelligent mind assessing the situation and devising a plan to try to save us, a calming voice on the radio? Of course there is not. Trump is congratulating himself that “only” 70,000 American citizens have died, and he’ll still feel pleased with himself if “only” that many more dead are added to the list.
Dennis Fitch openly wept because he couldn’t save everyone. He wasn’t even supposed to be flying the plane that day, and he took that burden of guilt upon himself because he was a good man.
Trump thinks the pandemic, and the mass graves, and the packed hospitals, and screamingly high unemployment numbers, are all a plot to insult him. “I take no responsibility,” he says.
I wish we had people like those pilots leading us now.