Through The Mist Darkly

Passengers on board an Aer Lingus flight from Dublin to Paris certainly received mixed messages.  A flight attendant made an announcement in English asking that seat belts be fastened due to turbulence.  They then played a recorded announcement in French that warned that the plane, which was over the Irish Sea, was about to ditch.

Quoting from an article in the online version of the Telegraph.UK;

Terrified French passengers, who made up most of the 70 travellers on board, were said to have “freaked out” with many crying out and bursting into tears.

A spokesman for the airline said:

The was a malfunction of the public address system and we apologise to our passengers. This sort of thing happens very rarely.

I would say that’s probably a good thing.  The event occurred on August 4th.

The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is launched during the Space Shuttle mission STS-48 carrying the Canadian designed Wind Imaging Interferometer (WINDII) which measures wind, temperature and emission rate from the aurora.  The satellite was decommissioned in 2005 but continues to orbit.