Interesting that a 23 year old woman has died on a United Airlines flight from London to Newark.   No cause of death as of yet although the coroner’s office says she had a pre-existing condition.

So do we all.  It’s called flying in coach.

It’s surprising there aren’t more deaths on the airlines, what with all those people with their legs jammed up nearly to their chins following takeoff when the seats all tilt back forcing more seats to tilt back like dominoes until the entire cabin is reclining in pain.   Forgive me, did I say “seats?”   What passes for coach “seating” in airliners was surely designed by some mad genius reincarnated from the height of the Spanish Inquisition.   It doesn’t deserve to be considered “seating” which implies it’s fit for human use.   To any reasonable person it more closely resembles a devious form of torture designed to look comfortable until you sit down and are belted into your own personal device from hell.

On a flight of ten hours or longer it can take a day or two for the unsuspecting passenger to recover to a point where he or she regains mobility without feeling pain that was not there before getting on the plane and being subjected to the acceptable risk factor of commercial flight following the demeaning and demoralizing process of being regarded as a terrorist suspect by someone whose greatest fear is letting your 85 year-old Aunt Fannie from Boise get on the plane because she might blow it up with a shoe bomb made from Chinese products readily available at her local Wal Mart.   Damn devious Chinese Government.

And yet we put up with it.   What choice do we have?   Who can afford first class other than movie stars, dope dealers,  the millionaires in Congress and Administrators of the FAA?   Oh wait, the FAA has its own fleet of planes.   Not sure how many they currently have but a few years ago the Baltimore Sun reported that they had a fleet of 54.  God forbid they should have to fly commercially with the rest of us.   They might clot up from remaining motionless in a position the human form was never meant to take and die in mid-air.