The Lockerbie bombing is of particular interest to me in that I was flying back from Frankfort to L.A. on that same day. I had been visiting Opel in Rüsselsheim (they're owned by GM) with a co-worker for a series of meetings.
The original plan was for three days of meetings but we finished up early and since it was close to Christmas, rather than spending an extra day playing tourist (we had arrived on Saturday so we had all day Sunday to walk around Wiesbaden, which was where our hotel was, to see the Christmas decorations and even visited the PX at the US Army base). So when our meetings finished up around noon on Tuesday, we decided to try and get an early flight home. Now we had flown from LAX on American Airlines and we had tickets to fly home on Thursday, December 22nd.
We had the people in the local EDS office change our tickets (we were still part of MDC back then, but technically, EDS was our customer as they handled all the software needs for GM, worldwide, and besides, they had helped arrange this trip in the first place). Now we lucked out as they were able to just change our original tickets from Thursday to Wednesday, flying on the same American Airlines flight, Frankfort to LAX. However, if we couldn't have gotten that flight and they had offered instead to book us on a Pan Am flight out of Frankfort with us changing planes in Detroit, we probably would have taken it.
Now on Wednesday, when we were waiting at the Frankfort airport for our AA flight I commented that I had never seen security so loose (remember that the Pan Am flight originated in Frankfort as well). I had flown out of or through that airport at least a dozen or more times and security there was always very strict with personal with guns always very visible and never more than five minutes or so without seeing at least a pair walking around in uniform with automatic weapons. Now there weren't nearly as many security people as normal and when we went through the security line, it felt like they were just pushing people through as it was very busy that day with lost of people carrying packages and extra carry-on. In fact, I mentioned this to my co-worker, who didn't fly as often as I did and certainly not to Germany all that much.
Anyway, we got on our flight and made it back to LAX with no problems, and I got a Super-Shuttle to take me to my house (I didn't call and tell my wife I was coming home early as I wanted to surprise her as we had a houseful of company that year). Note that we never heard anything about the Lockerbie incident while on the plane nor at LAX nor during the shuttle ride. In those days, the LAST place that you would ever hear bad news about an air accident was at an airport (this was before everyone had smartphones with news feeds and the internet). When I walked in our front door that was the first time I knew there was something wrong because my wife virtually yelled at me as to WHY did I pick THAT day to fly home considering WHAT had just happened, as if I had any control over events.
So, to this day, whenever I hear someone mention the Lockerbie crash, I shudder thinking of how things might have turned out if we had NOT been able to get our tickets on that American Airlines flight changed.
OCU
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