When my grandmother heard a tale of woe, she sometimes used to say, “There but for the grace of God, go I.”
Speaking of which, a United Airlines flight heading from Washington to Rome had to turn around recently. The cause? A passenger’s laptop somehow fell down the sidewall of the Boeing 767 and into the cargo area.
“We don’t know the status of it, we can’t access it, we can’t see it,” the United Airlines captain told air traffic control, in a recording that has been saved and uploaded to YouTube. “So our decision is to return to Dulles and find this laptop before we can continue over the ocean.”
This is one of those odd stories for which there are few details, and yet I crave more. I’ve asked United Airlines for comment beyond what has been reported elsewhere, but have yet to hear back.
Because words like “lost,” “laptop,” and “airport” in the same sentence rekindle a heck of a memory for me.
Thank you, whoever you are
A few years ago, I lost my laptop on the sidewalk outside Logan Airport in Boston.
We were loading our car at the arrivals area I somehow left it behind. When I realized an hour later what had happened, I can hardly describe the feelings of anxiety and panic.
There was a happy ending: A good Samaritan found my bag and turned it in. But, the logistics meant I had to make a seven-hour round trip drive to recover it. However, I did get it back.
Heck, I even got a good story out of the whole thing. I also got something else—yet another life experience that helps me try to see the world through other people’s eyes.
Cases in point …
The captain
First, the United Airlines captain. I can’t imagine he enjoyed having to make this decision. That’s why he gets four stripes on his shoulders.
I say “he” because it’s a man’s voice on the ATC recording. Speaking of which:
This is just out of an abundance of caution and just precautionary, you know, due to the lithium battery in the cargo area where it’s not even near the suppression system that we have for fires down there. So this is just a safety precaution.
Honestly, who can complain when the captain of an airliner makes a decision and justifies it like that?
The laptop passenger
There’s not much information about this person, and so I don’t know if he or she handled the whole thing well or not.
However, I imagine someone like me and maybe you, trying to get last-minute work done on the eve of an Italian vacation—only to have your laptop slip out of your hands and somehow get swallowed by the plane itself.
If this person is anything like me, I imagine two competing sources of anxiety:
Embarrassment at the idea of being the source of an entire airliner having to turn around, thus delaying the plans of likely hundreds of people to get to Rome.
Panic, thinking about whether the laptop and its contents are now going to be lost forever—along with whatever digital memories they contained.
Without looking, when was the last time your computer was backed up?
The rest of passengers
Of course, it’s important to consider everyone else on the plane. A United Airlines Boeing 767 can hold between 167 and 231 passengers.
That means at least scores or even hundreds of other people who were inconvenienced by the fact that the flight took off, turned around, landed, and had to regroup. Then, apparently it took off again at 3:24 a.m.— three hours after its original departure.
I feel for them as well.
Everyone else’s battles
Sitting crammed together in a metal tube at 30,000 feet, simultaneously anonymously and yet oddly intimately, is something everyone can relate to.
And this whole episode reminds me of a quote that I’ve seen paraphrased and attributed to people ranging from Plato to Tim Ferriss:
“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
In the end, whether you’re the captain making a tough call, the mortified passenger, or one of the hundreds inconveniently delayed, everyone is just trying to get where they’re going safely.
There but for the grace of God go any of us.
7 other things
President Trump pardoned a woman convicted of threatening to shoot FBI agents, and also issued a second pardon for a Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson of Kentucky, who had remained behind bars because of a separate conviction possessing firearms, something he was prohibited from doing because of his earlier felony convictions. Wilson, who had been scheduled to remain in prison until 2028, was released Friday evening. (Associated Press)
A group of victims of Jeffrey Epstein in a new ad calls for Congress to pass a measure to force the Department of Justice to release investigative files about the notorious sex offender, following months of resistance to that by the Trump administration. On Sunday night, in a major reversal, President Trump urged House Republicans to vote in favor of the measure. Trump last week pressured congressional Republicans not to support a petition that forced the vote. (CNBC)
An AI podcasting machine is churning out 3,000 episodes a week -- and people are listening. With its small eight-person team, it takes a day to go from an idea to a complete episode. With each episode only needing 20 listeners to turn a profit, it’s no wonder Inception Point prioritizes quantity. (The Wrap)
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s wealthiest people, is throwing his money and time into an artificial intelligence start-up that he will help manage as its co-chief executive. The company, called Project Prometheus, is coming out of the gates with $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Mr. Bezos, making it one of the most well-financed early-stage start-ups in the world. (NYT)
Bangladesh’s former prime minister has been sentenced to death after being convicted of crimes against humanity over her crackdown on student-led protests which led to her ousting.
Sheikh Hasina was found guilty of allowing lethal force to be used against protesters, 1,400 of whom died during the unrest last year. Hasina, 78, was tried in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh, having been exiled in India since she was forced from power in July 2024. (BBC)
Thanksgiving 2025 is shaping up to be one of the priciest yet for American families. New survey data reports that the average person celebrating the holiday will spend close to $1,000 when all expenses are tallied, yet more than a third of Americans are slashing their budgets compared to previous years as they navigate financial pressures during what’s become an entire season of celebrations. (Study Finds)
With lasagna and burritos, neighbors feed one another as food prices soar. (Business Insider)
Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!
No one should ever receive more than one pardon . DA
I was flying from DC’s National Airport in the early 2000s when the choice of a mobile device was a BlackBerry and a Treo. I had the latter since it provided better phone service. Treos were somewhat bulky and I hated the holster so I often traveled with it in the open section of my briefcase.
Well, I dropped my briefcase while taking it off my rolling suitcase right at the gap between the jetway and the plane. Of course, it fell in the gap. The flight attended summoned the pilot who went down and recovered the intact phone. When I mentioned my embarrassment at the pilot having to recover my device he reminded me that he was the Captain.
The folks flying planes take their jobs seriously, especially when someone does something stupid. Many thanks to that Delta Captain all these years later!
Oh, and the Treo was none the worse for the experience.