Air France Flight 4590 A Real 1979 William Shatner Twilight Zone
I’m sure most of us remember the classic 1963 pre Star Trek William Shatner Twilight Zone Episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” in which Shatner’s character, Bob Wilson, spots a Gremlin in the wing of a commercial plane he’s travelling on and no one believes him. Well a somewhat real life version of this happened in 1979 minus the gremlin on Air France Flight 4590 a Concorde Flight for Paris. Only instead of William Shatner’s Bob Wilson we had Bill Lightfoot an Aviation Consultant who had flown on the Concorde before, as the real life passenger. I saw all this on Dateline by the way and after hearing what Mr. Lightfoot had to say, it just adds to why I Think a Person is Totally Sane Not to Fly, read my blog post on that by clicking here
Mr. Lightfoot saw an object vertically fly by his window on the Concorde as Flight 4590 was going 200 mph down the runway on take off. He then saw a big, jagged hole in the Concorde’s wing about the size of a coffee table, three by three feet and then fluid was sprouting out. Lightfoot notified the cabin attendant. Lightfoot told her what happen and she said “Everyone– everyone thinks something’s wrong ’cause it’s the flaps.” And Lightfoot told her it wasn’t the flaps and she just walked away like nothing had happened and didn’t look out the window. He got her attention again, informed her he was an aviation expert and that someone needed to look at this and this time she went into the cockpit to talk to the pilot. This time the cabin attendant came back (I don’t think she had looked out the window) and stated that the pilot had said this a tire problem that has happened in the past that wasn’t a big problem and that they were continuing on to Paris. A crew member eventually came out and Lightfoot grabbed his head to the the window so he could see it and the crew member shouted “Mon dieu”. The pilot flew the plane back over Dulles airport for visual inspection from the Control Tower who informed the crew that two main rear tires had disintegrated (they learned later about the piece of the wing the tire had taken out). Incredibly the flight crew still wanted to continue on to Paris. Only after another warning from the tower that the Concorde was the plane was trailing a vapor stream did the crew decide to abandon the flight and return to Dulles. Incredible! As far as I know and I may be wrong on this, Mr. Lightfoot was never recognized as a hero who probably saved everyones lives. I never heard of him till I watched this episode of Dateline.
So what is the lesson here? Namely that most people are idiots and next time if someone tells you there’s a Gremlin on your plane tearing it apart you better listen! Please check out our large Online Discount Gift Store Click Here and our other Online Discount Stores below which helps support this politically incorrect blog. Thank you.
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