The Miracle of Flight

To truly appreciate the miracle of flight you need to fly a distance that you travel regularly by other means. Flying to the United Kingdom or the United States from Kenya, well, that’s the only way to get there so we can be excused in getting complacent! But flying from Nairobi to Kisumu, now that is an eye opening experience.

I have ranted before about driving to western Kenya. The roads are terrible, car breaking, and dangerous to drive on and that’s just the tarmac. The parts that are not tarmaced are not just car breaking but body breaking too. After that 8 hour drive you step out of the car and your spine feels like it is going to snap. (Spare a thought for the commercial vehicle and public transport drivers who do that route several times a week some even twice a day.)

And then there is flying. You get into your seat, you take off, and half an hour later you land in Kisumu! It still boggles my mind to this day at how simple and easy that trip is compared to the alternatives! Once when we called my brother who had dropped us at JKIA to tell them him we had landed in Kisumu safely we found that even had not even reached the Nyayo Stadium round about!

As soon as the plane touched down in Kisumu on Thursday I heard something I have not heard in a plane since the late 1980s. Applause. The whole cabin broke out in applause. KQ507 has re-awoken the appreciation, constantly taken for granted, for a safe trip.

A big thank you to everyone who has left a tribute, linked to, and help spread the word about the KQ507 tribute site. A big thank you to Fareed, Vincent and all guys and gals at the Capital FM Breakfast Crew for responding. Thanks to Ndesanjo and Global Voices for spreading the word. An extra big thank you to the family members and friends of the passengers and the crew who have left tributes, man, they are moving.

One thing this tragedy has brought home to me is just how connected we all are. I have had emails from Nigerian, Ethiopian, American, British and Indian friends all telling me how they have been personally affected by the flight. We live in a global village.

As a kid it really used to irritate me that the call signal for Kenya Airways was KQ and not KA as Dragon Air had got to it first. I used to feel we were dissed being sent all the way down to KQ what happened to KB KC KD etc I would ask. But now in my old age, KQ has a regal almost mystical tone to it. Kaaaay Kyooou. Nice!