Crash Mystery

My turn on the other side of the story

I recently got a call from a CNN reporter looking for some quotes for an airplane crash story. Usually I'm the one doing the interviews, so it was a little wiggy to go through the process from the other side. As we talked, I tried to do all the things I love in a source. I tried to keep my answers on tangent. I took time to frame my responses, thinking of how they'd look in print. I tried really hard not to say "uh" too much. And the whole time, I knew that my half-hour conversation would, if I was lucky, be boiled down to a single sentence or maybe a wee fragment.

But hey, apparently all the other crash experts were busy that day. I got several really long quotes in the final story. And not an "uh" to be found.

"Pilot and author Phaedra Hise of Richmond, Virginia, said a love of mysteries multiplied by the fact that air travel still captivates the public keeps fascination high.... 'Aviation for a lot of people is still pretty magical,' said Hise, author of "Anatomy of a Plane Crash."" --CNN.com