Flight 2039 Rhetorical Analysis

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Testing, testing. One, two, three. Testing, testing. One, two, three.
Maybe this is working. I don’t know. If you can even hear me, I don’t know.
But if you can hear me, listen. And if you’re listening, then what you’ve found is the story of everything that went wrong. This is what you’d call the flight recorder of Flight 2039. The black box, people call it, even though it’s orange, and on the inside is a loop of wire that’s the permanent record of all that’s left. What you’ve found is the story of what happened.

And go ahead.
You can heat this wire to white-hot, and it will still tell you the exact same story.
Testing, testing. One, two, three.
And if you’re listening, you should know right off the bat the passengers are at home, safe. …show more content…

Flame out, the pilot calls it. One engine at a time, each engine will flame out, he said. He wanted me to know just what to expect. Then he went on to bore me with a lot of details about jet engines, the venturi effect, increasing lift by increasing camber with the flaps, and how after all four engines flame out the plane will turn into a 450,000-pound glider. Then since the autopilot will have it trimmed out to fly in a straight line, the glider will begin what the pilot calls a controlled descent.
That kind of a descent, I tell him, would be nice for a change. You just don’t know what I’ve been through this past year.
Under his parachute, the pilot still had on his nothing special blah-colored uniform that looked designed by an engineer. Except for this, he was really helpful. More helpful than I’d be with someone holding a pistol to my head and asking about how much fuel was left and how far would it get us. He told me how I could get the plane back up to cruising altitude after he’d parachuted out over the ocean. And he told me all about the flight …show more content…

This he calls the terminal phase of the descent, where you’re going thirty-two feet per second straight at the ground. This he calls terminal velocity, the speed where objects of equal mass all travel at the same speed. Then he slows everything down with a lot of details about Newtonian physics and the Tower of Pisa.
He says, “Don’t quote me on any of this. It’s been a long time since I’ve been tested.”
He says the APU, the Auxiliary Power Unit, will keep generating electricity right up to the moment the plane hits the ground.
You’ll have air-conditioning and stereo music, he says, for as long as you can feel anything.
The last time I felt anything, I tell him, was a ways back. About a year ago. Top priority for me is getting him off this plane so I can finally set down my gun.
I’ve clenched this gun so long I’ve lost all feeling.
What you forget when you’re planning a hijack by yourself is somewhere along the line, you might need to neglect your hostages just long enough so you can use the bathroom.
Before we touched down in Port Vila, I was running all over the cabin with my gun, trying to get the passengers and crew fed. Did they need a fresh drink? Who needed a pillow? Which did they prefer, I was asking everybody, the chicken or the beef? Was that decaf or

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