Unlucky Friday the Thirteenth

The river cruise boat American Heritage lies partially submerged, left, after the tanker Atlantic Asphalt struck it while it was docked on the Mississippi River in New Orleans on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. STAFF PHOTO BY ENAN CHEDIAK. NOLA.com  https://shorturl.at/qQ89l

What a terrible day yesterday was between the riverboat capsizing and the unexpected ground stop, but it could have been so much worse.

First, a tanker somehow sliced right into a riverboat which was docked in New Orleans.  Miraculously, none of the mostly elderly passengers on board was killed.  If this incident had happened out at sea, the outcome would have been tragic.

While I was looking at that astounding sight on TV, word came of a sudden ground stop due to reasons of safety caused by communication failures. Fortunately, all the planes landed safely,  This ground stop also could have been much worse, as even some passengers admitted. When they -- and I -- heard that phrase "ground stop", we immediately thought of September 11 and assumed there had been another terrorist attack involving planes. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. The reason seems to be ancient, outdated equipment.

Yesterday, the thoughtful and kind Hakeem Jeffries issued a statement on the aftermath of the ground stop:

"Today’s unprecedented breakdown is the latest in a series of unacceptable air travel incidents under the Trump Administration's failed leadership. From day one, instead of taking responsibility, MAGA extremists have fired and scapegoated hardworking federal employees whose job it is to keep our skies safe, particularly women and people of color." 

Many people think this was a cyberattack and was related to what happened with the Microsoft 365 outages, with the attacks on European freezers, and with the National Weather Service radar outages, which turned out to be regional and not national. Some social media enthusiasts are conspiracy theorists, and you know how fast rumors can spread.

Today Transportation Secretary Duffy and the FAA Administrator held a press conference and said that the cause was probably a piece of outdated equipment rather than a cyberattack.  Of course, many in the public chose not to believe them, but I don't see why, if it was a cyberattack, they wouldn't just say so; and why it's not unlikely that a piece of equipment could cause this sort of crisis.  I thought of the Challlenger disaster and how it turned out that the 1/4" thick O-Ring was responsible for bringing down a  mighty rocket and space shuttle and killing the astronauts. The engineers had warned of the dangers, but NASA didn't listen.

Thankfully, luckily, nobody died yesterday from these two potential disasters.