I probably wouldn't go if I didn't have to. The chances of another accident involving Delta two days after that awful crash at Dallas-Fort Worth are slim, indeed, but if you read the gory details of Friday's mishap you can understand why I'm nervous about the flight. 

We've all been there before. The plane is landing in rain and thunder and lightning and it is bouncing all over the skies, but we remind ourselves if flying wasn't safe, the people in the cockpit wouldn't do it as a full-time job. But something can go wrong and something does go wrong occasionally and when an airplane crashes, when there are explosions and fire, when there are charred bodies and dismembered bodies, the horror is magnified a thousandfold. 

I will always remember a picture I saw on a private pilot's wall once. It was a picture of an airplane in a tree. The airplane had crashed headlong into the tree. 

FAA needs new rule 

Under the picture were these words: 

"Aviation itself is inherently safe, but in many ways it can be less forgiving of human error than the sea." 

Human error did cause the crash in Dallas-Fort Worth. It was human error that somebody hasn't determined how to detect wind shear around an airport. 

My God, we can put a man on the moon, but we can't find a way to detect wind shear, which has caused countless air tragedies? 

It was human error that the plane was landing in the violent thunderstorms in the first place. I know we have all that sophisticated radar and that computers do most of the flying these days anyway, but why doesn't the FAA make a rule that says, thou shalt not try to land or take off in weather that has the potential to cause a plane to crash. 

So my plane takes off late. So my plane is diverted to another airport to land. I can handle it. I can handle it. The usual reference to the "charred bodies" after an air disaster allows me to accept the aforementioned inconveniences. 

Not safe enough 

I don't believe in that "if it's your time to go, there's nothing you can do about it" nonsense. 

You can buckle your seat belt when you ride in a car. That's controlling your destiny. You can refrain from driving when you are drunk or riding with a drunk who is driving. 

You can put fire alarms in your house. You can get checkups for cancer. You can go to the hospital and doctors will insert a catheter into your heart to find out whether or not you are a likely candidate for a heart attack. 

And you can say to the government and to the airlines you are well aware of the brilliant safety record of American passenger carriers, but that won't comfort the friends and relatives of those who died in the Air Florida plunge into the icy Potomac because of snow on the wings, who died in the Pan Am crash in New Orleans because of wind shear, and those who perished in Friday's Delta crash again because of wind shear. 

Air travel is safe, but I want it safer. 

Now if you will excuse me, I have a plane to catch.