In all honesty, a blog I should have written weeks ago.

Taking off above us, is the largest commercial airliner in the world, the monstrous (and ugly) Airbus A-380.

Unless you live near a major international hub, you've never seen one. No domestic airline owns one, and the bulk of them are used on very long-haul international routes between world financial hubs.

While it is certified for a whopping 853 passengers, most of the fleet is arranged to carry 525 persons.

So let's think about Coronavirus.

Here in this Commonwealth, this morning's figure is 5,862 deaths. It would be as if TEN A-380s had crashed with no survivors since March 23 (when our numbers took off.)

That was just 8 weeks ago. If we had a major airline crash each and every week in 'normal times', how quickly do you think the entire aviation industry would shut down?

But let's scale that up nationally - The Washington Post reports this morning that at least 89,000 people have died from coronavirus thus far. We'll actually revert our airliner downwards, to something more people are familiar with.



This is the refined and elegant Boeing 747-800, currently the largest passenger aircraft made in the USA. She can carry 467 passengers in the typical three-class configuration we're mostly familiar with. (First, Business, Cattle).

With 90,000 dead, that's the same as 192 of these plummeting out of the sky and killing everyone on-board. Back to our dates; March 23 to today is just 57 days. Are we ready to deal with the repercussions of 3 wide-body jets 'piling it in' EVERY DAY for two months?

If you need a comparison for such carnage - look up the Tenerife disaster of 1977. TWO fully-loaded Boeing 747 managed to hit each other, while on the ground readying for takeoff. It remains the highest casualty count of any airplane crash to this day - 583 people were killed. But even that is a mere 10% of the Massachusetts deaths so far, to say nothing of your state.

But back to our visuals.

May 16 is the last day data is available, and "just" 39 persons died of Coronavirus here in Massachusetts. That's the lowest one-day total since April 4, if the numbers are to be believed.

But that's still the same as if one of these crashed at Hanscom on that date, and everybody died:



Finally - you'll be seeing this blog lurking around a bit. I intend on updating it as we go along.