The video: Delta Flight 4951 is being hailed as the sequel to last year's "miracle on the Hudson." A small plane headed from Atlanta to Westchester, NY, had to make an emergency landing at JFK Saturday night after part of its landing gear became stuck in the up position. Two passengers, 26-year-old Chase Benzenberg and his friend Alessandro Albero, whipped out an iPhone to document the crash landing in a 55-second video, ignoring a flight attendant's repeated urgings to "[keep] heads down, stay down."
The reaction: The role of the flight attendant in the video, and reactions to her, have some crying foul. Commenters have called her "nerve-wracking" and annoying. How unfair, says Matt Mendelsohn at AOL News. While the "dashing" pilots who executed the landing are being treated as heroes, a "woman whose training and expertise might have saved the lives of scores of passengers" is turned into a "bitchy and annoying" joke. It's the defiant, sadly compulsive filmmakers who deserve criticism, says Mary Elizabeth Williams in Salon. In their position, wouldn't you "send up a silent prayer, hold another passenger's hand... call your wife to tell her you love her?" But, then again, Benzenberg and Albero "belong to a generation accustomed to regular self-documentation." Watch the clip:
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