China in recall 7 - A joke on the runway

The flight from Shanghai landed on the tarmac at Heathrow in the evening of August 11th. The flight had been a long one, maybe about 9 hours but I had made good friends with a couple, Courtney and Pete, who I'm still in touch with now. On landing an announcement came over the tannoy that there were a few delays and that the plane would be held on the tarmac for 15 minutes.

After an hour of waiting, me and Courtney, with our miniscule attention spans were starting to go a little stir crazy and having pillow fights with those miniature in-flight pillows.

I looked out the window of the plane one and half hours after that announcement and saw a British Airways plane being brought into the terminal and said loudly,

"I can't believe it, Courtney! Would you look at that! The British Airways plane gets to park up but they leave the Air China plane stranded! It's RACISM that's what it is!"

to which I was greeted with a chorus of disapproving "tut"s. Little did I realise, as I had been in the mountains around Sichuan for the last month, that just a few days earlier there were some serious terrorist threats on transatlantic flights! Is that a foot in your mouth sir...?