Not even a month after celebrating the incredible landing of Flight 1549 on the Hudson River, the optimism has been washed away by tears shed for another plane wreck. Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed in its descent into Buffalo, New York, killing all 49 passengers and one resident of the home where the plane struck.
The polar outcomes have called into question people’s notion of miracles, since one incident has been hailed “The Miracle on the Hudson,” while the other is apparently devoid of such divine intervention.
Miracles require a divine being that intervenes in a supernatural order — coincidence not included. The flights couldn’t just have a remarkable recovery themselves; they would need God to directly step in.
Besides the obvious questions of why God would choose to intervene in one case and not the other, or why not avoid the issue altogether by moving the birds out of the way of the engines or thawing the ice before it caused damage, one must first observe the evidence and determine whether anything supernatural actually occurred.
So far, the investigations into the two crashes have yet to conclude that there is any evidence that either event was determined by the hand of God. Flying birds and ice are natural phenomena, occurring inside the realm of reality, just as the actions taken by each pilot were also completely human.
In response to Katie Couric’s query about whether he had said a prayer during the three-minute ordeal, Chesley Sullenberger, pilot of Flight 1549, sensibly stated that, “My focus at that point was so intensely on the landing, I thought of nothing else.”?He left the prayers to the passengers. Indubitably, a plane full of prayerful passengers and crewmen completely leaving the situation in God’s hands would be nonsensical.
If prayer does play a role, the question that should be asked is, “Did one flight have more prayer power?” Or were their fates God’s will, thus confounding the reason for his intervention in the first place? For those brazen enough to respond, the challenge will be to find a miracle worth sharing with the families of the victims.
Still, the media is quick to point out miracles even amid the horror of the tragic events. On Friday’s ABC World News, reporter David Muir declared the survival of the mother and daughter in Buffalo, whose home was struck by the plane, a “tiny miracle.”
However, the fact remains that the circumstances of these two residents prohibited them from dying. They were in a position that inevitably sheltered them from the violence and had the ability to escape before the danger killed them. If they had been struck directly by the plane and still managed to survive, then maybe the situation would be worthy of this elusive term.
The odds of a powerless plane landing safely on the Hudson River or surviving a plane crash into one’s home are slim. The odds, on the other hand, that those fateful flights resulted the way they did — because of the innumerable factors involved during those moments — are 100 percent.
Extraordinary events happen. By settling with a simple explanation such as “miracle,” the public curtails constructive progress into the matter.
Andrew is a construction major. He can be reached at andrew.rowen@asu.edu.
