UPDATED WITH MALTESE INPUT: The perils of travelling in a plane containing a poison dwarf
The BBC is currently running an online feature on Coping With Panic at 30,000 Feet. This is an excerpt.
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Marjorie Kelly, Downe, Kent: It was probably 35 years ago. I was on a plane coming back from Malta with my husband. It turned out that the then-prime minister of Malta, Dom Mintoff, was on board.
We’d just got our food trays when the cabin crew told us to practise doing up and taking off our seatbelts. We then had to adopt the brace position and the plane went into a nosedive.
The pilot said it was a technical fault but we knew it was more than that the way we were descending. We had to make an emergency landing in Corsica.
I was by the window and it was pretty scary. It looked like we were going to land in the sea. Our two daughters – aged five and one – weren’t with us. I said to my husband: “I hope the godparents fulfil their obligations.”
It was a short runway in Corsica and we must have landed on the outer perimeter of the airfield. It was an unbelievable, awful, screeching noise.
Eventually we stopped and the emergency chutes came down. We discovered that the captain had been told there was a bomb on the plane. Because Dom Mintoff was on the plane someone wanted to blow it up.
Captain was told that there was a bomb on the plane and it was going to blow up. The plane was too large for the runway so there was a lot of room for error and it was a very scary landing. And the pilot hadn’t had time to jettison much fuel at sea.
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UPDATE
This morning I received the following email from a friend.
I read your post about the emergency landing in Corsica. It sounds like the same incident in which my parents were also on board that plane, unless of course there was more than one bomb scare in which Mintoff’s plane landed in Corsica. The timing also seems right.
It was a BEA flight, the precursor to British Airways, and Mintoff was accompanied by his standard entourage of notable sidekicks. Despite the usual exhortation by the captain when the chutes came down of “women and children first” and “do not take any luggage with you”, Mintoff and his clan of men were the first to push their way out, luggage and all.
The plane was checked for bombs and cleared but Mintoff refused to get back on board to leave again for the UK, and BEA had to send a replacement plane. All the passengers had to wait at the airport for many hours, except for Mintoff et al who were driven off somewhere to wait, presumably in comfort.
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”Victor Laiviera
5 hours ago
.
…. the sublime moment when you fire a shot and get almost instant confirmation that it hit the target …”
[Daphne – Oh dear heavens, speaking in public about the delayed conception of his only son in late middle age now, is he? I hate it when men go dotty like that. It’s so embarrassing.]
Rumour has it that the strong masochistic and paranoid streak in his character hails back to the days of the Socialist Golden Era , when he was appointed as the official playmate of Kim Il Sung’s offspring during the summer months spent holidaying in the Salvatur’s luxurious Gharix.
Min jaf kif pixxa tahtu l-kbir redentur ta’ Malta.
A megalomaniac clown leading a gaggle of clowns. Makes a perfect set for a Charlie Chaplin movie.
A query for those who knew the man.
Was Mintoff’s constant fear of being assassinated justified? Is it known if there been such attempts, especially from other nations?
When Mintoff went to university to speak in his old age he was already a few sandwiches short of a picnic, but 35 years ago he must have been a sane man.
[Daphne – Like many oppressors of the people, he was paranoid. He never accepted invitations to meals or ate at restaurants, unless the food was served from a buffet and everybody helped themselves from the same dishes. And the reason he always carried a vacuum flask with him into the office, with his coffee or tea or whatever it was he drank, was because he even feared being poisoned by his own office staff if he asked for coffee from the Auberge de Castille kitchen.]
According to a gentle (only at first blush) article appearing in the Financial Times (http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/b08c4d7c-eb6b-11e1-b8b7-00144feab49a.html#axzz39nAPDXul) in 2010:
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“Mintoff, who reportedly died peacefully at his home with his children nearby, will be remembered mainly as the leader of a very small country who too often felt obliged to assert himself by rude and quarrelsome behaviour. This made him many enemies.”
Clearly the only culprit was the one who perpetrated the hoax.
Who would’ve thought self-entitlement would cause so much paranoia?
I’m sure this event repeats itself with the present fatman too.
M’hemmx paragun. L-attrocitajiet li ghamel Mintoff kienu tal-wahx. Kellu hafna ghal xiex jibza.
Tinkwetax. Dan għadu fil-bidu imma diġà qed juri li jrid jimxi fuq il-passi tas-suppost Salvatur.
Minkejja dawn l-attroċitajiet, il-laburisti ħorox Mintuffjani għadhom jgħidu ġid fih u dawn l-attroċitajiet jgħażlu li jinsewhom, jinjorawhom, għax forsi lilhom ma qarashomx fil-laħam il-ħaj.Min għadda mit-terrur u l-passjoni ta’ Kristu jaf x’kien Mintoff. Le, le mhux ta’ b’xejn kien jibża’ . Ma kien jafda lil ħadd, lanqas lil ta’ madwaru. In-nies kienet terrorizzata imma hu mhux b’inqas, jaħseb li se joqtluh minn ħin għall-ieħor.