by Thursday brought aviation news, which is never good. Today’s stories prove that flying has become a psychological experiment in how much absurdity humans can tolerate at 35,000 feet.
First: a plane that landed itself, which sounds futuristic until you realize it happened because the pilot had a mental breakdown mid-flight. The autopilot took over, landed the aircraft perfectly, and everyone survived. But let’s focus on the real story: a commercial airline pilot had such a severe existential crisis during work that he just… stopped piloting. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating, but I think we all know what they’ll find: late-stage capitalism has broken even the people responsible for not crashing planes.
I interviewed an aviation psychologist who explained that pilot mental health has been declining for years. Long hours, low pay (for regional pilots), constant stress, and the knowledge that one mistake could kill hundreds of people. “It’s amazing more pilots don’t have breakdowns,” she said. Great! That’s exactly what I want to hear about the people flying me across the country.
This connects to my piece about people faking heart attacks to escape work. We’ve created a society where the escape options are pretending to die or actually having a mental breakdown. There’s no middle ground. You either perform productivity until you collapse or you collapse on purpose to stop performing. Either way, capitalism wins.
The second aviation story: a waiter who sparked an existential crisis during a flight. Apparently, a flight attendant asked a passenger “Are you living your best life?” while serving drinks, and the passenger had a complete meltdown about his choices, his career, his marriageeverything. The flight was diverted because the man couldn’t stop crying and questioning the meaning of existence. The flight attendant was just trying to be friendly. Now there’s an incident report.
I found and interviewed the flight attendant, who wishes to remain anonymous. “I just asked a normal question,” she explained. “How was I supposed to know he was one positive affirmation away from a breakdown?” This is America now: we’re all so close to the edge that basic pleasantries can trigger total psychological collapse. We’re one “how are you?” away from societal implosion.
Between aviation disasters, I revisited my coverage of people who clap when planes land. In light of today’s news about pilots having breakdowns and planes landing themselves, maybe the applause is justified? Maybe we should be celebrating every time a plane doesn’t fall out of the sky, considering the current state of everything?
I also worked on updates to the furloughed worker vacation memo. New information suggests the HR director who wrote that memo has never taken an actual vacation. She’s been working seventy-hour weeks for twelve years straight. So she literally doesn’t know what a vacation is. She thinks unemployment and vacation are the same thing because she’s never experienced either. It’s tragic and hilarious simultaneously.
The throughline in today’s coverage is clear: American work culture has destroyed people so thoroughly that pilots are having breakdowns mid-flight, passengers are having existential crises over drink service, and HR directors don’t understand what vacation means. We’ve built a system that breaks humans and then acts surprised when humans break.
Tonight I’m thinking about how I’m documenting societal collapse from inside the collapse. My editor called it “meta.” I called it “depressing.” We’re both right. Tomorrow: more chaos, probably involving technology or government or both, because why would anything improve?
# 779
