Finally thought of something.
I've seen two plane crashes, a year apart. One close up and one at a distance. First one had no fatalities, but was spectacularly fiery. Second one did have a fatality and luckily it was at a distance.
They were both Voodoo's from the Canadian Armed Forces. Had pilot and copilot aboard. The first one, the copilot landed in the water a few feet from me on the beach and the pilot landed in a tree (both parachuted out safely, albeit not prettily). The second one, the copilot made it out, but the pilot didn't. All I saw was the plane dive into the water. I was out fishing that time.
The first one was so close to where I was on the beach, my parents freaked out because they thought I got hit by the plane. Of course, I was so fascinated by what had happened and by the prospect of annoying the poor guy hanging in the tree with questions, that it didn't even occur to me to find my parents and tell them I was ok.
It seems fairly common (at least in airport chat) that people think it'd be a cool thing to see a plane crash as long as nobody was hurt. And it certainly was for the first one. What's odd is since that time, I've dropped a cousin off at an airport who had a near miss and a turnaround where he had to do the emergency slide, I've been on a commercial flight that suddenly dived because of a near miss, and I was on a private plane where I was worried about the pilot's antics. The next week, he died doing the same acrobatics he was doing when I was a passenger. Maybe planes and me are not a good combination. I don't even fly often enough for that to be statistically normal.
Dennis
