Plane crash

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understandinguncertainty.org was produced by the Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. The aim was to help improve the way that uncertainty and risk are discussed in society, and show how probability and statistics can be both useful and entertaining.

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I grew up near Biggin Hill and developed a strong feeling that I one day I would see a plane crash – NB not a fear of being in a plane crash. As I got older even though I had moved away from Biggin Hill, the feeling got stronger and stronger until by my early 40s every time I saw or heard a plane doing anything unusual I would think ‘is this the one?’. I knew exactly what it would feel like watching in horror as a plane fell out of the sky. One evening in January in the late 1990s I was driving my teenage son to friends in the next village when suddenly a military plane appeared, skimming over a copse of trees, so low my son and I could see the pilot - and we both instinctively ducked.. I slammed on the brakes thinking it was about to crash onto the road in front of us. My son was screaming. At this point a huge amount of black smoke came out of the back of the plane and it gained just enough height to clear the trees on the opposite side of the road and disappeared. My son and I were extremely shaken . I had the very strong feeling that it was the plane I was ‘destined’ to see crash and I kept saying that an RAF plane was ‘ meant ‘ to crash in our village. Four days later an RAF fighter jet hit a Cessna over the village we had been driving to. All four people in the planes were killed outright. The Cessna broke up immediately- the fighter carried on and crashed into a field in the village where I lived passing a few feet over my car a couple of seconds before hitting the ground.
Total votes: 374
Date submitted:Wed, 04 Apr 2018 12:29:16 +0000Coincidence ID:9967