Flight-related stories seem to occupy an unusually large portion of our consciousness. Perhaps because I have flown 250,000 miles in the past decade, mostly for business, and my office mate Ian does about the same.

Anyway, I somehow got into a conversation with my boss about what would happen if a 747 suddenly lost all engine power at cruise altitude (I think it all started with my assertion that one of the factors that goes into choosing a cruise altitude centers upon how far the plane would have to glide to make an emergency landing at a suitable airfield, and he repudiated it).

So, after a couple of go-rounds on this topic, he finally decided he was going to trawl the Web and see whether he could find any evidence to support my position.

He did. There's an amazing story that accompanies that description, too.

And then, once you're done with that story, read this even more amazing one.

Finally, to bring the story back full circle to where it started, the guy who presented the (true) story above is a flying instructor at John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, California, which is the airport Ian & I fly into when we visit our company HQ.