What could possibly go wrong?

I've done too many long-haul flights recently, and thought I'd experienced all the pain that airlines like Qantas, BA, BMI and others had to offer. This includes multi-hour delays, missed connections, and a large German man deciding to go into cardiac arrest by collapsing at my feet.

Today's flight from San Francisco capped them all though, and for once it wasn't the airline at fault. Flying into Sydney, we were delayed. The captain's soothing voice sounded out from the PA "We've had to abort our landing due to police action at the airport - nothing to do with us, but we'll be in a holding pattern until they open landings again".

A short time later, our charming captain added the all important causal information to his previous message. "Hi folks. News just in from the real world suggests it's not a problem with the airport itself. Rather, the police helicopter is being shot at from some nutter on the ground, and this just so happens to be right in the middle of our approach vector. We'll let them finish playing their games before we go anywhere near that."

I couldn't agree more. 15 minutes later, someone was obviously out of bullets, as we got the all-clear to make our approach, and landed only an hour late. Of all the things I could have predicted going wrong on the flight, dodging a shoot-out wasn't at the top of the list :-)