For the third time in eight months, to be precise. His funeral had been buried earlier that day of Tuesday, 25th July 2000. Arriving at Heathrow one hour later, I was confronted by the news of the Air France Concorde crash. The accident everyone had hoped would never happen. The unthinkable, but true.
Smoke still acrid at the crash site.
And there I was, strangely, appropriately, already dressed in black. Late last year, we put a Korean air crew in a London Stanstead Hilton- a one hour drive from Heathrow to tragedy. Two days later, all four men had entered eternity, their Boeing 747 Frieghter a smoldering wreckage. Within weeks, a Kenya Airways Airbus A310 had crashed into the sea, minutes after take-off in West Africa. For this was one of 4 aircraft that services the daily Heathrow flight, both the aircraft and more importantly, the aircrew known to us.