Arab Airbus Crash

A little over a year ago an Airbus airliner was damaged (destroyed?) during a delivery checkout. A friend forwarded an email to me today that contained a story and some pictures. The story blamed the stupidity and arrogance of the Arab crew for the disaster. As much as I would like to believe that story, I thought I would try to verify it. The best explanation I found was on snopes.com, and the most damaging piece of evidence is that the person in the left hand seat (the captain's seat) was a member of the Arab flight crew. That's enough for me, safe here in suburbia. Another nut-job Arab screwing things up.

I remember hearing another story, a long time ago, about involving a jet fighter being sold to Saudia Arabia. Some inconsequential warning light came on in the cockpit during flight, and the Arab pilot panicked and bailed out and the $16 million jet aircraft went into the sea. I imagine if I dig around enough I could probably find the story, and possibly some basis for the story. But the truth or falsity of the story does not really matter.

I suspect that most Moslems and most Arabs are reasonable people. But it only takes one nut-case to paint an entire nation/class/race of people as incompetent/stupid/irrational.

While we are on the subject of race, you might want to read the following paragraph. I found it in my son's homework assignment.

Although the wonderful developments of human history teach that the grosser physical differences of color, hair and bone go but a short way toward explaining the different roles which groups of men have played in Human Progress, yet there are differences–subtle, delicate and elusive, though they may be– which have silently but definitely separated men into groups. While these subtle forces have generally followed the natural cleavage of common blood, descent and physical peculiarities, they have at other times swept across and ignored these. At all times, however, they have divided human beings into races, which, while they perhaps transcend scientific definition, nevertheless, are clearly defined to the eye of the Historian and Sociologist.
If this be true, then the history of the world is the history, not of individuals, but of groups, not of nations, but of races, and he who ignores or seeks to override the race idea in human history ignores and overrides the central thought of all history. What, then, is a race? It is a vast family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life. (W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Conservation of Race” 1897)

So much for hi-brow meditations. Here's some pictures of the wreck. The first one is from airliners.net.

Arab Airbus Crash
Click the link to see the album.

Update April 2019 replaced dead Picasa album with link to Google Drive.

Update April 2019 replaced missing picture. Stupid, selfish Google won't share.

Update June 2019 replaced missing picture AGAIN. I dunno what the problem is.