Sachi and I came in from China to Narita Airport this morning. We woke up early, at 5:00 am, and got ready to go. At 6:00 am, we went to the lobby and checked out. We caught a taxi to the airport, and arrived earlier than most passengers, securing nice opposing aisle seats in row 18. We left Shanghai Pudong Airport at about 9:00 am, and arrived at Narita just past noon. The pilot warned of turbulence coming in for landing–in fact, I recalled pretty clearly that there were more warnings than usual about that, but simply accepted it as a special circumstance. As we landed, we watched the approach on the cameras below and at the front of the plane, giving us a runway view of the landing. Coming in, as advertised, the plane was buffeted by winds and felt less stable than most planes on landing, but once on the runway, the landing was smooth and clean. De-boarding was uneventful, nothing seemed untoward, and we just went home, happy to be back.

Just now Sachi and I watched the news and saw something they (naturally) did not mention to us: there was a plane crash that morning at Narita, a plane that had left China just like ours had, buffeted by winds just like ours had. The pilots died, but since it was a FedEx flight, they were the only casualties.

But Sachi and I felt kind of spooked when we heard that, remembering the turbulence on landing, and that the flight was, like ours, a large jet from China to Narita. It must have crashed just before we checked out of the hotel. There but for…