Name: Harrison Ford.
Age: 74.
Appearance: Still got it.
There’s not another Star Wars film coming out is there? Give us a chance to catch up, George! No, it’s another plane crash.
What? Ford has crashed his plane again.
Oh no! Is he OK? He hasn’t damaged his face, has he? No, all is well. It wasn’t actually a crash, it was a crisis averted.
Explain yourself while my hot flush dies down.
It looks as if he mistook a taxiway at the John Wayne airport in California for a runway and nearly landed on a Boeing 737 full of passengers who were waiting to take off for Dallas.
Yikes! “Was that airliner meant to be underneath me?” he said, according to air traffic recordings.
He is too cool. As Han Solo would say: I know.
Still, he does do this quite a lot, doesn’t he? Depends what you mean by quite a lot.
Well, two years ago, he crash landed on that golf course and ended up with a broken arm and head injuries. True.
And in 2000, he made an emergency landing in a six-seater plane at Nebraska’s Lincoln municipal airport. Yes, but ...
And there was the hard landing in a helicopter in 1999. Yes, BUT – he flies a lot. So he’s going to crash a lot.
I don’t think that’s the rule. I know, but the helicopter one was during a training session and was totally to be expected. The Nebraska thing was caused by wind shear, and the incident two years ago ...
Yes? ... was lauded by the authorities as an exemplary landing after his engine failed. He remained completely calm and guided the plane to the least populated place that ground control could find, before plummeting the last 3,000ft, and injured only himself.
That does sound pretty Indiana-Jones-meets-Air-Force-One, doesn’t it? Y’know, he began his career in America Graffiti. Everyone forgets that.
They do, don’t they? Anyway, the important thing is that the 110 passengers in the Boeing 737 are fine – probably quite thrilled to have been flown over by Harrison Ford himself. And Ford’s fine, future franchise instalments are fine, everything’s fine. Hurrah!
Do say: “All in all, he seems like a pretty good goddamn pilot.”
Don’t say: “The force must have been with him.”
