Write Off

The car is damaged beyond economic repair, which means will now be auctioned for recycling. If it were an airplane they'd tow it into a hangar, and it would be flying again in a few weeks.

This is the first vehicle of any kind that has been destroyed while I was in it, but some of the airplanes I have flown have been later destroyed under the command of other pilots. It's an odd feeling. I know it doesn't go away. I once helped an 84-year-old pilot look up what had happened to the airplanes he had commanded in the 1940s and he had the same disappointment to discover that once faithful ship was now probably pop cans or siding. You have proof of your connection to the airplane, inked in your logbook, but the airplane no longer exists.

I can think of three aircraft from my logbooks that have been destroyed, one due to loss of situational awareness during an approach on a rainy night, one that had been loaded beyond its centre of gravity limits with marijuana, and one that was involved in a midair collision. They, like my car, were mostly just metal and plastic. The human beings inside were flesh and bone, but I didn't know them, hadn't become familiar with their workings, had never written their names in my logbook. This post isn't about them.