Saturday Strip

I Was on the Exact Same Airplane In Which the Door Panel Ripped Off Mid Flight Three Weeks Ago

I am forever in gratitude for my Substack readers and their ability to evolve conversations to places that I wouldn’t have thought to go at first. Earlier today I saw the news of Portland flight AS1282, where a panel on the aircraft sheered off mid flight. Miraculously no one was seriously hurt in the incident. I wrote about it and held off on posting my Saturday Strip:

I hadn’t given too much thought to the flights I was personally on just three short weeks ago, but this comment by SAMO jogged my memory:

SAMO

5 hrs agoLiked by Amy Sukwan

Whoa! I wonder if the people assigning seats on this flight and on this aircraft knew of this problem and those seats were EMPTY on purpose.

Wow. What a risk flying is now.

Amy Sukwan

3 hrs agoAuthor

I did have a similar thought regarding the seats closest to this being empty. This reminds me of an odd thing which happened on my most recent Max flight just three weeks ago (San Fran-Las Vegas). I was given a window seat and a woman with a lap infant and a three year old were seated next to me. The entire row of three seats directly behind me were unoccupied. The mother sensibly requested the three seats behind us for herself and her two children. The flight attendant told her that she could not move until after the flight was at cruising altitude and the seat belt sign had been turned off. It was a short flight and the three year old girl in the middle seat seemed to like me, so mom never moved to the empty row behind me. I've travelled with my kids when they were very young and as lap infants and I understand the stress of just trying to keep them from crying, so I was probably a more sympathetic passenger than most to be stuck next to two babies. But the seating assignment of the four of us being put in three seats while the entire row behind us was empty was odd, to say the least. It was also an Alaska Airlines flight. Now I'm super curious about checking the ticket to see the seat assignment and map of the plane. It could have been the SAME ONE!

After I wrote this comment I decided to sort through some of the things on my desk. I have a habit of keeping old airline tickets. It came in handy this time:

I signed up for FlightAware, as curiousity had gotten the better of me. The 737 Max which I was on on the night of December 16 was listed as B39M. Flight AS1282 in which the door seal blew off was also B39M. I have some combination of Twilight Zone music and “It’s a Small World After All” going through my head right now. I was on that same airplane three weeks ago.

A secondary question now comes up for me, going back to that row of empty seats behind me and the mother with her two young children seated next to me on my flight on that airplane. What row of seats were conveniently all or partially empty for this AS1282 Portland flight? Could the panel blowout have been at 13A? Could there have been someone who suspected a problem with that particular row of seats? If so, why was this covered up?

I’m only speculating. I’ve been following the Boeing Max saga since before the pandemic. I understand the concerns of businesspeople regarding the bottom line. I mean it’s not like big corporations would lie about the safety of a product in order to make a buck or something. Yet getting to your desitination in one piece even if it takes six months carries a greater importance. To me it is a miracle that planes aren’t falling out of the sky already with that safe and effective mandated shot.

Can we finally get to the year of Accountability? I think we all know this will only get worse the longer we ignore it…

Now for some memes:

A 29 year old Dad of two died of testicular cancer? I’m thinking she got turbo cancered from the jabs…

Ohio Art!

It’s funny but I can’t tell if this is an actual post by realDonaldTrump or not…

We’re back in Las Vegas. My tiny home from a storage shed project is going well. I got the door frame up and found a door knob in the garage. Because so many materials were picked up in advance by Oh from various discarded items found in the neighborhood, I haven’t had to buy much other than some extra 2 by 4s. My total spent thus far on this project is around $50. The total amount spent will almost certainly stay below $100, as I have most of the materials already. Other than Jasmine helping me take the roof off temporarily I have been doing it all myself.

Here’s the before from say two weeks ago:

Here’s where it is right now:

It’s coming along I’m hoping to be finished within maybe 10 days, but I’m too busy with the girls to do much with it right now.

Maybe it’s time to settle in somewhere. If any of you know the seat number of the seats next to the door panel that blew out, I’m very curious for personal reasons…

Buy me a ko-fi