Not so long ago I was a passenger in a twin-prop 16-seater plane when it got lost in bad weather and could not find the airport. For 40 minutes we flew around in a perplexed manner, occasionally dropping through the low clouds which I could not help noticing we shared with many mountain tops. It became evident our pilot could not see, putting his nose to the glass, looking for the tiniest bit of visibility. I could not understand why he did not put on the windscreen wiper and then I looked more closely. There was no wiper.

Down on land someone returned to the airport to put the runway lights on and the pilot put us on the runway with a descent so steep that I sometimes still sit upright in bed at 3am thinking about it.

I vowed then that I would never go on another light air-craft.