Aeroflot is the national commercial airline of Mother Russia. It doesn't have a very good track record in terms of flight accidents. One of the most egregious accidents occurred in the '90s when a pilot let his teenaged son take the controls, just for fun, a rather cavalier decision that led to the plane plummeting from the sky and killing everyone on board when it slammed into Siberia. At the very end of this song, you can hear a cockpit voice recording of the Sioux City plane crash in 1989, the actual recording with the pilots struggling to control a plane by alternating engine power because they have lost all hydraulics (meaning no flaps, spoilers, elevators, etc.). Miraculously, many people survived the accident, even though the plane literally cartwheeled into a corn field before bursting into flames. Some might object to the inclusion of this recording. Fair enough. No offense meant. I'd like to say that I included it as a testimony to the heroic struggle of the pilots to control a landing without hydraulics, but that would be disingenuous. I'm just a little obsessed with cockpit voice recordings.
-gg
lyrics
Rippled up steps form depths
Never guessed at and less than
A crippled blind chess set
Sunk in a living room floor.
Children on the headset,
Daddy, can I fly the jet?
Am I old enough to test it
With defective hands,
Young and soft and crabbed.
The spoilers smack the air and drag.
The constellations dip and sag.
We didn't want to land...
Communists!
Off the roof,
Off the roof.
We can fly in the right state of mind.
Strap on wings,
Let her go,
Let her go.
We can fly, we can fly, we can fly...
Shattered knees,
Broken head,
Left for dead.
Cannot read DFDR, CVR.
Her tongue won't move,
All is lost,
AEROFLOT.
We can fly, we can fly, we can fly...
On the right, left, follow left, fall left,
Follow left, follow...
credits
from 20 Minute Loop,
released August 21, 1999
Music: Greg Giles
Lyrics: Greg Giles, Kelly Atkins
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