Brian Williams reported Wednesday in his blog that he had some scary moments in his flight after leaving Cleveland following his Monday Night broadcast here:
We're just back from the classic American business trip: two cities in two days, late flights, bad weather, grumpy travellers wearing wrinkled suits. The best moment? When the flight attendant on our commuter jet flight from Cleveland to Detroit said she'd soon be "coming around the cabin to collect any remaining service items..." How could we have service items? There was no service on the flight. Not a drop to drink -- nothing. As I pondered that question with my seatmate, I looked down and saw the sequential runway strobe lights -- on the runway where we were supposed to be at that very moment. Just as I realized something was wrong, I felt the extra .5 G-force pull of the acceleration of the jet, which pointed skyward again. A few minutes later, our First Officer came on the PA to sheepishly explain that we had performed a "go-around" -- and said something about air traffic control -- and how it would take "about five minutes" to bank around and re-join the pattern and actually land. And I thought to myself, in the wake of the "service items" announcement, and in the wake of the missed approach: that in the space of 30 seconds we'd been treated to both the absolute inanity...and the deathly seriousness...of air travel in this era.
