Toronto's Miracle of Runway 24L

It has been over 2 weeks since the incident of the Air France Flight 447 that departed from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. I am sure that many of us are either following the case or at least aware that it happened.

whenever I travel, I tend to mute those 10 minutes where the flight attendant wastes her breath in describing to us about the safety procedures in case of accidents. I find it pointless to listen because if the planes gets into an accident, my chances of survival are minimal. As it was the case with the in most of Air Flight Accidents, like the recent Flight 447 incident , all of the passengers end up dead.

I said "most" coz there are few exceptions.

I still remember how 4 years ago we were sitting in our home and discussing with my dad on what date should we book our flight to Canada. I wanted to relocate 1 month prior my postgraduate school so that I can manage to settle in Canada and get used to it. My family were thinking that they might as well spend part of their vacation there as well since the weather in August tends to be amazingly interesting.

Our flight was initially booked on 2nd of August 2005. I can't recall the events that happened but for some reason, my dad decided to change the booking by one day and make it on 1st of August.

We departed early morning from jeddah. After spending a transit period of 4 hours in paris, we took the Air France flight and arrived to mississauga 1st of August afternoon Toronto time. For many of us, it was the first time that we experience a long 16 hour flight. So it would be normal that all of us would be suffering from the jetlag. I remember briefly walking around the town before I realized that all shops were closed. Apparently, it was the Civic Holiday. With nothing else to do, I went home and slept.

I remember waking up around dawn and seeing dad sitting on the tv and watching the live news of the incident of Flight 358 (ironically Air France as well). Briefly, the plane crashed at Pearson Airport the next day as it was landing under severe weather conditions. As it was landing on the runaway, it didn't reach a complete stop and evenutally hit a small ravine. A post fire started later that destroyed the plane. Luckily no one was killed. the thanks goes to the alert flight attendants that managed to get more than 309 passengers within 90 seconds only. What's more interesting is the emergency responses arrived to the crash site in less than 52 seconds.

you can always click on the link above to know more about what happened. What this incident shows is 2 things:

1- the myth behind surviving an air crash does not only exist in fictional tv series like "LOST".

2-If Air France was one of the options available to me, I'd definitely take it. At least they have a track record of one successful evacuation while the others have either none or were lucky not to experience such an accident.

in an attempt to teach me a lesson about destiny and life, my superstituous father says:

"see, i7med rabbak. We were supposed to be on this flight. Imagine what we could have gone through. But Allah protected us from this and inspired me to change the booking"

I said: "Hell no. I'd take my chances of being there. I'd experience the thrill and action of it. I'd have a cool story to tell my friends and I get to be a millionaire when I sue Air France, Airbus, and Pearson Airport for the so claimed psychological damage they would have caused me."