Who gets on a plane and listens to a book about all the sky jackings that have happened in the history of the U.S.? I do.

I finally finished reading Winter of the World, which I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms for (that may be my masochistic side since I learned a lot of horrible details about World War II that I certainly did not learn in my U.S. history courses throughout school. Boy, is our U.S. education system crappy and too pro-American), and I just started listening to Brendan Koerner’s The Skies Belong to Us: Love and Terror in the Golden Age of Hijacking. The book discusses the history of hijacking planes in the U.S. and in other parts of the world, the stupidity of the U.S. government in their reactions (or lack thereof) in trying to regulate this, and the even deeper stupidity of the airlines in not wanting to deal with it even after people had gotten murdered. One example: most of these hijackers just wanted the pilot to transport them to some other city (the favorite example is Havana, Cuba). All of them were carrying bombs, firearms, or both. The airlines didn’t believe these people would actually kill anyone. Really? Then, people start dying, and it suddenly dawns on them that people dying is a possibility from the sky jacking.

After the Malaysia Airlines plane went missing (and today, we still have no clue where it really is), a slight paranoia went through my head about a potential plane hijacking that could have happened here. Then, I started reading hypotheses from former pilots about possible disasters and how the pilot would’ve most likely reacted, and it started to make more sense to me.

However, I’m not sure what I should be more paranoid about – a potential hijacking on a plane a loved one or I may be on, or a freak accident like this one seems to be with the plane going on fire, and then the plane going into cruise control and crashing into the South Indian Ocean.