The airline business has always had a rich sense of humour, and one
purportedly true story doing the rounds at the moment upholds the
tradition. It concerns a stormy flight aboard a Boeing aircraft; an
off-duty airline stewardess is sitting next to a man in the grip of
serious white-knuckle fever as he watches, through his porthole, the
aircraft's wing bending and bouncing in the tempest.
The stewardess tries to reassure him; she works in the industry and
flies all the time, she tells him. There is nothing to worry about;
the pilots have everything under control. "Madam," he replies, "I am a
Boeing engineer and we did not design this aircraft to do what it is
doing."
