Linguist's Lair

Every September 11, I get reminded of that-it's not terrorists I'm afraid of, but my very own September 11-in 1999.

Read all of it here!


If anyone wants to do some plane spotting, the little bugger is still around and causes happiness. It's registration is G-UKFC, and you can even buy it as a MODEL PLANE (Herpa does these detailed tiny model planes that are based on a real plane complete with registration, and the Air UK Fokker 100 is MINE. I have two of them. I keep thinking I should do something bad to one of them...)



I can offer that from a report I found years later:
"DATE: 11.09.1999 LOCALTIME: afternoon LOCATION: Frankfurt Int´l AP/Germany AIRLINE: KLM uk TYPE: Fokker F-100 REGISTRATION: G-UKFC C/N: 11263 AGE: 7 years OPERATION: ISP FLIGHT: Frankfurt - London (UK2291) OCCUPANTS: 88 occupants FATALITIES: 0 INJURIES: 0 DAMAGE TO AIRCRAFT: minor While on climb out, smoke was reported in the cockpit and the cabin. The aircraft turned back to FRA and made an emergency landing at rwy 18. Reportedly, nobody was hurt."

Runway 18 is Startbahn West-I'm still very much into planes and airports and stuff, which doesn't help.I'm almost okay with flights to the UK, because they're fairly short (yes, I know, that doesn't make them less dangerous as take off and landing are the most crucial parts), but flying to Egypt every year is downright terrifying. I take medication. It sucks. I still read the forum of the PPRuNe (google it!) and I have even, on occasion, said something. My title there is scaredy-cat. I paid for it. Talk about some weird kind of love-hate-relationship I have to planes.

Here you can see the little bugger about four months before it annoyed the hell out of me, also taking off from Frankfurt. That looks like runway 18 to me, too. It already had the KLM livery, just as I got to know it-my model plane still has what I had originally booked-Air UK.

Click Here to view the photo

(Due to copyright reasons, I can just give the link).

I called the little Fokker (yes, please DO pronounce that with an American accent!) "new" in my story, as in, it looked and smelled new. But in fact, it was already 10 years old when I boarded it...so someone must have given it a make-over a short time before, as some of the other pics I've seen make it look extremely dirty and shabby. I know it says seven years in the snippet I quoted, but it was in fact first registered in 1989. And it wasn't quite afternoon either-well, I was STUCK at the airport until late afternoon, yes, but the flight itself was in the morning.

Oh, and I got two flight vouchers for it.
As compensation. Gee thanks. After 911, every little turbulence gets a whole truckload of psychologists to help you, and possibly lawyers (WTF???) too.