The Scene Replayed

Consuming the news today about the Air France crash brought back some scary deja vu. My 3 1/2 years in Brazil were marked by disastrous crashes and air traffic meltdowns, and this flight was traveling from Rio to Paris when it plunged into the Atlantic. During my time in Brazil, there were two major airplane crashes, a mid-air collision involving a plane flying from Manaus to Brasilia and then on to Rio and another plane that crashed while landing in Sao Paulo.

I remember driving to and from the airport in Rio countless times and admiring the big white Air France planes sitting on the tarmac, admiring how unadorned they looked, just a big white fuselage and the blue and red stripes on the tail, free from all the curlicues and adornments other airlines' planes wore. It's likely I saw the very plane that plunged yesterday at the airport several times in Rio.

Then there was the plane that crashed in Sao Paulo. Soon after that happened, through some sleuthing, I figured out I had been on that very plane just two days before, flying from Foz de Iguacu to Rio.

When I moved to South America, I had no feelings one way or another about flying. But living there while planes were plunging and the air traffic system was melting down instilled in me a certain uneasiness with planes. I had no problems with takeoffs or landings, but the mid-air bouncing would bring out the flop sweat.

So today, as I read about the Air France crash, and imagined the very plane I saw at Rio's airport tossed around in that electric storm and then diving, well, it brought back that old feeling. How many times had I seen the same pictures of weeping relatives awaiting the sad news about their relatives at Galeao? And how many times had I studied the map of Brazil with the X where the plane went down?