Some of the best urban legends began as stories that circulated among members of a particular trade or social group. Actors, for instance, first told the now-classic story of the leading man in a play who was surprised when the prop telephone on stage rang at the wrong time. The actor, nonplussed, picked up the phone, turned to his co-star and said, “It’s for you!”
If a story about a particular group of people is especially funny, suspenseful, or profound, insiders are bound to share it with the rest of the world. Here are two horror stories that have slipped out of their usual orbits. Both involve danger and airplanes.
The first was told to me by a friend of mine, who heard it from a friend of his. His friend is a scuba diver and said the story is “popular lore among divers.”
It is the day after a forest fire, and a ranger is examining the fire and water damage caused by the blaze when he notices a human body tangled in the branches of a blackened tree. A rescue team retrieves the corpse and shows it to the ranger, who is shocked by what he sees. It is the body of a scuba diver wearing a wet suit, a mask, flippers, and an oxygen tank.
Yes, a scuba diver found dead in a tree. Incredible.
The puzzled ranger finally comes up with an explanation. To put out the fire, firefighting planes scooped water from a nearby lake and then dumped it on the blaze. The diver, the ranger figured, accidentally became part of the plane’s cargo.
But the details of the story give it away. Could a firefighting plane swoop close enough to the water to scoop up a diver swimming beneath the surface? Does such a
plane discharge water through an opening large enough for a man to pass through? And would any pilot both pick up and drop a diver without being aware of it?
My initial suspicion of the story was confirmed by a letter I received recently from England. The writer had heard that the scuba-diver accident had happened in Australia, where water was scooped from the sea to extinguish a raging bushfire. He said that although the accident was reported by the British press, it was later debunked by Diver
magazine.
Among scuba divers, the story probably reflects the anxiety that naturally results from swimming in dark, silent waters, unaware of the world above. But in telling the story to outsiders, scuba divers share a wacky and suspenseful urban legend and convey an idea of the possible (or impossible) dangers.
The second airplane story was sent to me by a pilot for United Airlines, who was told that it happened on a plane owned by another airline.
This plane is a DC-9, a two-pilot aircraft. Midway through the flight, the copilot leaves the cockpit to use the lavatory. A long time passes, and the captain grows concerned. He calls the flight attendants on the intercom and asks them to check on the copilot.
But both attendants are at the rear of the cabin, and a beverage cart is blocking the aisle, making it impossible for them to go to the forward lavatory.
Since it is the middle of the flight, the captain decides to check on the copilot himself. He activates the automatic pilot, steps out of the cockpit, and closes the door behind him.
Just then the copilot emerges from the lavatory. Both of them realize with dismay that neither has the key to the cockpit door. The two pilots have to smash the door with a fire ax in front of the horrified passengers
.
The United pilot first heard the story in 1978 and thought it was an unlikely scenario. No pilot would leave the cockpit unattended, he said, and flight attendants can always get to the front of the cabin, even if it means climbing over a seat.
I have heard similar lockout stories from other pilots, all of whom tell their tale as happening to “another airline.” In some versions, the captain leaves the cockpit to greet the passengers or to get sugar for his coffee. In others, turbulence causes the door to shut on its own.
I have also heard the story from air travelers, who tell it with a different emphasis. They lead in with the supposed ineptitude of a particular airline, tell the locked-out-pilot story, and conclude, “I’ll never fly with them again!”
Another typical way that such legends are circulated is via newspaper columnists, who sometimes repeat entertaining stories they have heard without establishing their truth. Readers of the Seattle Times
on December 30, 1987, for example, found “The Locked-out Pilot” story in Rick Anderson’s triweekly column under the headline “Next Time You Fly, Make Sure the Pilot Has an Ax.”
Anderson’s version concerned a Boeing commercial jet operated by a Far East carrier. (Notice how subtle criticism of foreigners creeps into this one.) Anderson credited the story to “a Boeing representative, based on a first-hand account from one of Boeing’s Far East agents.” That, my friends, is a FOAF
*
if I ever met one.
And it’s a familiar variation of the legend as well: two pilots stroll down the aisle to greet passengers, the cockpit door gets stuck, and “they used an ax on the door.”
I wonder if it ever occurred to the
Boeing rep either to double-check the story or—as a matter of general interest—to have someone at the assembly plant experiment in order to see just how long it takes to use a fire ax to break down a well-designed security door on a jumbo jet.
And what is an airplane-company rep doing telling such stories to a journalist anyway? The whole thing smells of urban legend to yours truly.