An Air France flight skidded off the end of a runway during a thunder storm at Toronto's Pearson International Airport this week, pushing terrorism and celebrities off the front pages briefly. The language used to describe the situation has been under scrutiny, in the same way media outlets' use of the word "terrorist" has been up for debate.
Crash - There was a lot of attention paid to whether or not to call it a plane crash, since the plane actually landed, but somehow couldn't stay on the runway. You can bet if a boat sank, it would be called a sinking, whether it happened in mid-ocean, or while docked.
Ravine - Initial reports described the plane sliding to a stop in a ravine, with some criticisms about Pearson having a runway with a ravine at the end of it. The next day, the ravine had been downgraded to a gully, and looking at the photos you can see why. "Ravine" creates in your mind the image of steep banks or cliffs, leading some distance down to the bottom. The Gully Formerly Known as a Ravine barely qualifies, and the use of the more dramatic word tends to mislead the audience.
Miracle - The fact that all 309 people aboard the Airbus A340 were able to get out of the plane even while flames were starting to surround and fill the plane was called "a miracle" by the Canadian Minister of Transport. He was criticized by the flight attendants' union, which said it was no miracle. The high ratio of flight attendants to passengers was a key factor in getting everyone out of the plane within about two minutes, says the union, which is battling to keep Canada's regulations at one attendant per 40 passengers, rather than one per 50 passengers in many countries. The Air France flight had a higher ratio than required by regulations, and to hear from the news reports, the attendants were the ones who made the evacuation happen so quickly.
Minor Injuries - Spokespersons and the media have been using the term "minor injuries" to describe the condition of the 42 people who, though alive, suffered injuries during the crash/accident. Now it turns out that several of those people, including the pilot, actually have cracked vertebrae, which in my book means they have broken their backs. Maybe not in a lifetime paralyzing way, but it's certainly more painful and damaging than the broken bones and cut bruises suggested by initial reports. I defy anyone to undergo a cracked vertebra and refer to is as minor.
Inadequate Disaster Preparations - Many of the passengers who scrambled out of the plane were quick to criticize their treatment once they were out of danger. The coverage has shown an interesting difference from the coverage of crashes where there are no survivors. In this case, the passengers were quick to complain that the airport didn't know what to do with them, that all they received was ice water when they finally arrived, shivering and cold, at the terminal, and that Air France officials were either absent or ineffective at getting them through customs quickly and into hotel rooms or transportation to their destination in Toronto. Yes, there was praise for the pilots, the flight attendants, and the fire crew that arrived less than a minute after the plane stopped moving. Yes, there was praise for those people who helped them out by stopping their daily commute on the 401 highway, and driving survivors to the terminal building. But after surviving the trauma of almost being killed in a plane crash, they expected someone to act on their behalf and make the experience less tiresome.
The experience reminds me a bit of what directors say about the hassles of working with living playwrights. The directors like the prestige of working on a new play, but they complain that the dead playwrights never argue about the director's interpretation. In the same way, the survivors are much harder to control simply because they lived. Instead of being photos on home-made memorial posters, they emerged from the burning plane full of first-person accounts, opinions, criticisms and questions.
A miracle, I would call it. Warts and all.
Tags: plane, crash, survivors, semantics, airbus
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