What: United Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Munich to Washington
Where: Logan International Airport 1:46 p.m.-
When: 3:45 p.m
Who: 245 passengers and 14 crew members
Why: When a woman aboard this flight started to feel the flu, 244 passengers and 14 crew members had to go out of their way (at a cost of how many thousands?) and land en route so she be taken by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital.

George’s Point of View

The US was founded by stalwart pilgrims. Most of our ancestors came to these shores with pennies to their name. We’re formed of hardy peasant stock born of strong roots with nothing but our bodies and brains to make us what we are. We are the survivors of freezing winters, summers spent barefoot on farms, yellow fever, wars, drought, and more war and more drama. We are the spawn of mixed melting pots, and all the harsh trials that weed out the weak. We are sturdy stock.

We are the survivors of parents or grandparents who told us stories of trudging to and from school in shoulder-high snow walking uphill both ways.

(And they didn’t have antibiotics.)

So what would our stalwart predecessors say about this current terror of the flu?

I think they’d be a little embarrassed.

Maybe I’m a little concerned about our oldest, sickest and most vulnerable, but I won’t go into the swine flu brouhaha. I’m not a doctor. I would not wish to be any of those millions of swine flu victims in rural Mexico, with access only to rudimentary medical facilities. Because the oldest, the youngest, the sickest, the weakest are the most vulnerable.

But.

Let’s face it. The air in a plane is a closed system. It has always been a closed system. That air recirculates. Maybe planes will install uv light machines in their air systems to sterilize the air. In the meantime, we’re all breathing shared air in planes.

I’m proud that even in these tough economic times, United Airlines is so solvent that it can afford to spend thousands to divert planes when a solitary patient has the sniffles. But…maybe next time, they could spend the equivalent cost of the next “sneeze-diversion” on a couple warehouses full of surgical masks. So that next time we’re in a United Airlines plane, we can rest assured that-if our neighbor sneezes-next to that airsick bag and airplane weekly magazine, we can find a “swine flu” mask, some kleenex and maybe some anti-bacterial hand cleaner.

D’ya think?