I witnessed a peculiar thing happen in the wake of the Ramstein air show disaster.
I’ve already written about my friend Hoss. How we thought he’d died when the Italian planes collided in mid-air and something like a hundred people were killed by raining fire and debris.
Well. Turns out that wouldn’t be Hoss’s first brush with near-death via airplane.
A couple months later, he was due to ship back stateside for some R and R. My buddy and I drove Hoss to the airport to catch his flight, which we nearly missed.
I remember that Hoss was in such a hurry, he bolted out of the car and left his itinerary lying on the seat.
We didn’t think anything of it … until the news broke a couple hours later.
Pan Am Flight 103 from Frankfurt to Detroit had exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland.
My friends and I were still together after driving Hoss to the airport. We looked at each other. “Wait. Wasn’t Hoss on a Pan Am flight?”
The guy who’d driven us to the airport went out to his car and came back in, weeping. He was holding Hoss’s itinerary. “Look,” he said.
Sure enough, the itinerary said Pan Am Flight 103.
Everyone at our Air Force base assumed that Hoss had died. The brass put together a huge memorial service for him and another man who’d been on that flight. They had flyers printed up. Plans were made. Everything was ready to go.
Except that, a week after the Lockerbie disaster, my phone rang. It was Hoss.
I forget why he said he never got on the plane. Long term, I guess it’s irrelevant.
The fact is, he didn’t die.
The fact is, he’d spent that whole week so freaked about that he hadn’t died that he sort of disappeared. Didn’t report in to anyone. Not even his family.
The fact is, he’d narrowly avoided death by an airplane. Twice.
He’d been presumed dead via an airplane. Twice.
I mean, honestly … what are the chances of that?