The plane crash in San Francisco yesterday morning was an awful tragedy.  From the photos, it seems as though it could have been much worse in terms of loss of life.  It will also naturally aggravate the anxiety for those of us who have a fear of flying.

I am a better flyer than I was years ago.  Takeoff was the worst of it.  I didn't mind the descent, though it was always the last few minutes of landing that made me sweat the most.  Especially coming into LaGuardia where I have been certain many times that we would come in short and end up in the water, or at other airports on a highway.

I calm myself with the certainty that the aircraft's advanced computers have to tell the pilot exactly what speed and altitude the plane should be at any given distance to the runway on approach.  I watched  YouTube video of a landing - in San Francisco as it turns out - taken from the cockpit.  At about 5,000 feet or so the automatic pilot is turned off, and shortly thereafter the tower stops giving commands to the cockpit.  Are the pilots on their own at that point?

The crash yesterday has to be pilot error, some mechanical problem, or I have read possibly wind shear.  Whichever it is, I will be sweating more on landing for a while.