It was so terrifying, the plane was all over the place. Once a year, for a week, all this dust blows over from the Sahara Desert, you could not see a thing, I couldn't see the ground and as it turns out, nor could the pilot. I found out we were about 200 metres up. The plane dropped off violently to the right then way over to the left, it was lurching all over. But somehow the pilot pulled it off and landed. I don't know how he did it, I was convinced he wasn't going to. Did the pilot know Chris Martin was on board? I don't think he gave a flying f**k. My mind was racing and I thought, 'My daughter will have to get a stepdad.' I also thought, "I've written a will. The band have finished the album but they know how I want to finish certain songs."

Which Brian had done. They had taken off and that was the last of the conversation. There had been the initial excitement, of course. He had never flown in a single-engine plane before and to be sitting in the copilot’s seat with all the controls right there in front of him, all the instruments in his face as the plane clawed for altitude, jerking and sliding on the wind currents as the pilot took off, had been interesting and exciting. But in five minutes they had leveled off at six thousand feet and headed northwest and from then on the pilot had been silent, staring out the front, and the drone of the engine had been all that was left. The drone and the sea of green trees that lay before the plane’s nose and flowed to the horizon, spread with lakes, swamps, and wandering streams and rivers.

I took the red-eye out of San Francisco to Baltimore/Washington International Airport on Thursday, July 23, 1970. As we made our final approach early on Friday morning, we flew straight into a thunderstorm. Wind buffeted the plane, lightning flashed, and just as we reached the runway I watched the right wing outside my window dip sickeningly toward the ground. "Great," I thought, "Ive survived two tours in Vietnam and I'm gonna crash here in front of my wife."

This was mid-October 2001. I’d gone to Pakistan for New York magazine to cover the Taliban. I was flying from Islamabad to Peshawar, on the Afghan border, to Dubai. It was right after 9/11, so everyone was paranoid about air travel. I was sitting in first class on a big Airbus, and everyone was chain-smoking Marlboros. There were clouds of cigarette smoke, but no alcohol was allowed. We stop in Peshawar, and all these randoms file in and sit on the floor of the cockpit and smoke cigarettes. It made me nervous. This was not a First World thing to do. So we took off again, and because of the bombings in Afghanistan, we had to fly the long way around, over Iran. It ended up being a four-hour flight. Around two in the morning, we’re starting to descend. All of a sudden, bam, the plane just stops . . . And then the plane starts to drop. The engines rev and the plane turns sideways. It’s clear we’re crashing, no doubt about it. People are screaming. We finally touch down and bounce right off the runway. The right wing snaps off and all these sparks are coming up. Everyone knows we’re going to die . . . You’d think in the face of imminent death you’d be like, This is happening, it’s inevitable, and I’m peaceful about it. I was not peaceful at all. So the plane goes into a sand dune and ends up on its side. I was the first person off. I kicked open the door, the slide came down, I ran into the darkness and immediately got picked up by guards. I was brought to a room, locked in there and then put on a British Airways flight eight hours later.

I seen you actin’ up with your plane. Real fancy. And when I landed I asked: ‘Who’s that young duck with his pinfeathers showin’?’ and they told me it was you tryin’ out a plane you’d just bought.” He stared at LeRoy and wagged his finger: “You’re clever, but you ain’t clever enough to break the rules.” “What rules?” “Not many. Five, six? Stay away from whirlin’ propellers, they chop you into mincemeat. Never, never climb into your plane without checkin’ the gas. An empty tank is remorseless. You’ll be flyin’ into strange areas without strips, so never, never land straight in. Circle to see whether the ice is frozen or the sand strip along the river is solid. On the way out, check every visible point, you’ll need ’em comin’ back. Don’t hesitate to sleep beside your plane, because tryin’ to find your way home at night in a fog ain’t really productive. And for Christ’s own sweet sake, tie down your cargo. Keep plenty of light rope in your plane and lash down them floatin’ objects, or sure as hell they’re goin’ to smash right into the back of your head at sixty miles an hour.” As LeRoy tried to visualize the situations in which these instructions would apply, the old-timer added a special one for Alaska: “And, LeRoy, maybe you wouldn’t think of this, but in winter always keep an armful of spruce branches in the rear of your plane, tied down, of course.

Some people say accident; it may be an accident. It may be something else. The [helicopter] was very well equipped, this was my [helicopter] the one I am flying all the time, I am not ruling anything out. Either the pilot panicked... [E]ither there was some side wind or the instruments failed or there was an external factor.

I recently flew more than twelve thousand miles in a little over a month, through rain, fog, wind and snow, over mountains, cities and deserts, in a three-year-old, second-hand airplane that had already traveled some five hundred thousand miles. During that time I never was very late for an appointment or put a single scratch on myself. And considering that I am hardly an expert pilot at nineteen years of age, I knew that these statements must prove something about modern commercial aviation.

You ever see that sign that says 'speed limit enforced by aircraft'? Wow. Man, you get pulled over by a plane, you're going to have a hard time talking your way out of that ticket. 'You know how fast you were going son?' Uh, 70? 'You were going 300 m.p.h. buddy, what the hell are you doing?' Sorry sir, I had that large coffee back at the truck stop — I'm fuckin' flyin'. HUGE coffee. I bought some dirt thought that would slow me down. Biggest motherfuckin' coffee you ever seen. He pumped it right up my nose. I'm just skin coverin' coffee right now.

Think about taking a trip on an airplane. Before taking off, the pilot has a very clear destination in mind, which hopefully coincides with yours, and a flight plan to get there. The plane takes off at the appointed hour toward that predetermined destination. But in fact, the plane is off course at least 90 percent of the time. Weather conditions, turbulence, and other factors cause it to get off track. However, feedback is given to the pilot constantly, who then makes course corrections and keeps coming back to the exact flight plan, bringing the plane back on course. And often, the plane arrives at the destination on time. It’s amazing. Think of it. Leaving on time, arriving on time, but off course 90 percent of the time. If you can create this image of an airplane, a destination, and a flight plan in your mind, then

The only thing we could do was fly until we ran out of gas and then bail out. It was dark, and we didn’t know anything about the terrain except that it was mountainous, but that was the only alternative, unless you wanted to commit suicide. We bailed out at around 9,000 feet.

The world isn't ending. You are just experiencing turbulence. The plane is safe. The pilot is good. You're in the right seat of life. You just hit a patch of bumpy air. Wait. It will pass.

Unable to make radio contact with this second plane I felt my chances were fading fast. Dropping the radio mic, I sprinted up to the deck . . . and saw a huge ship bearing down on me!

Twenty minutes later the third flight started. This one was steadier than the first one an hour before. I was proceeding along pretty well when a sudden gust from the right lifted the machine up twelve to fifteen feet and turned it up sidewise in an alarming manner. It began sliding off to the left. I warped the wings to try to recover the lateral balance and at the same time pointed the machine down to reach the ground as quickly as possible. The lateral control was more effective than I had imagined and before I reached the ground the right wing was lower than the left and struck first. The time of this flight was fifteen seconds and the distance over the ground a little over 200 feet.

I'm on the plane, we left late, and the pilot says, "We're going to be making up some time in the air." I thought, "Isn't that interesting. They just make up time." That's why you have to reset your watch when you land. Of course, when they say they're making up time, obviously they're increasing the speed of the aircraft. Now my question is, if you can go faster, why don't you just go as fast as you can all the time? "Come on, there're no cops up here! Nail it! Give it some gas!"