Monday

Today's thing will be interesting news items having to do with airplanes. Somewhere in the sky between Hong Kong and Los Angeles on Friday, a Vietnamese woman died on United Airlines flight 862.¹ The plane made an emergency stop in Honolulu, but the lady was pronounced dead on arrival. Hawaiian officials are reticent about the cause of death. It would be in terrible taste for me to hint that it might have been the food or the service that killed her, so instead I'll say my thoughts are with her family in this time of loss. But I've been on that flight three times already, and my own life has certainly been shortened. Next: Hà Nội airport authorities are baffled that a Boeing 727 has been abandoned on the Nội Bài tarmac since late last year.² The plane flew in from Siem Reap, Cambodia, and was left for routine maintenance. All very normal, until the crew never returned. The airplane has a Cambodian flag on its fuselage and is branded "Air Dream," a company no one really remembers. If this is your plane, call Hà Nội soon; they're planning to sell it for scrap. Next: speaking of scrap, Phú Quốc islanders, who live off the southern coast of Vietnam near the Cambodian border, heard an overhead explosion the morning of May twenty-seventh. Pieces of scorched gray metal began falling from the sky. Emergency workers responded, expecting to find some sort of crash, but there was nothing beyond this unidentifiable debris. Nearby nations haven't reported any missing planes. Vietnam is unselfconsciously using the term "UFO" in the literal sense, making for some cute headlines.³ But now there’s been nary a follow-up in over a month, lending just that dash of X-Files sense, too. India Daily knows what I mean. [Cavin]