Long, long ago, before security became a national obsession as emblematic as apple pie, I would venture to sit on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial in my hometown of Washington, D.C. In summer I would go for the gloaming, which cast a bevy of vaguely ominous shadows over the Tidal Basin, ringed in part by cherry trees.
There I would light a cigarette or two or three and ponder the remains of the day. Invariably, in the near distance I would see jetliners on final approach to then–Washington National Airport. They banked in toward a landing like a child’s hand spread wide in the traditional airplane gesture. Crisscrossing this same airspace would on occasion be helicopters, some headed for the White House lawn, others to nearby governmental helipads. Many headed in the opposite direction, to nearby Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.
On many occasions the planes and the military helicopters were in the sky at the same time, slow planes above and swift choppers below. Cursed as I was with a macabre vision of ships and planes, of sorts a small student of disasters, I wondered to my lonesome self and to my cigarette, what might happen if one too-low jet struck a too-high helicopter. I knew the answers. The mangled bits of both would make a fire on the otherwise benign Potomac River. And afterward, fingers would be pointed in heated abundance. After leaving Washington, and after 9/11 made the Jefferson Memorial off-limits to all but strictly regimented tour groups, I thought no more of my conjured apocalypse.
And yet, behold, though now I am an old man, it has come to pass. The accident-waiting-to-happen has turned painfully real.
I do not for a moment pretend myself into the role of aviation expert. Nor would I wish to be one of the many talking heads who will now occupy media both formal and social.
I am, as always, no more or less than a rememberer.
I am, as always, no more or less than a rememberer.
As such, even now, I cannot get that twilight vision of helicopters and commercial jets out of my mind‘s eye.
The planes I now recall seeing did in fact seem too close to the helicopters that moments before left their same space. The helicopters whirred in a place too close for comfort, as if daring fate. Their shared corridor appeared cramped and narrow. As it was, in fact.
Only the wise men controlling the traffic could keep them always at arm’s length, and they succeeded brilliantly for decades. No one dared imagine they could fail, or that an incoming jet and ever-present chopper could depart from a planned flight path. And, for many years, such tragic accidents in American skies were nearly unthinkable by all, save the media (who, I contended in a previous essay, salivate at the prospect of civilian air crashes).
Now it is clear that not only could helicopters or jetliners veer from the designated path, but fingers are ready for the pointing.
I instead can fall back only on my days on the steps, watching both sides, and my many landings in Washington, when I saw choppers not far from the left wing or right. Once, sitting by the window, a distinguished-looking man said, “See how close he is,” spoken as a helicopter grazed our nearby airspace. He was John Chancellor, then a NBC News anchorman, and one I much admired. I was proud to be seated beside him and forgot about our neighbor to port. Like much associated with flying, all happens in an instant and much of it is forgotten.
Yet an instant is fickle, and at times it seeks its pound of flesh.
So it was this time, when jet and chopper finally met each other first-hand, neither side profiting from the encounter.
I again place myself back on the steps, this time long enough to look up and in mourning whisper, “Amen . . .”
