In an Equestria where Commercial Aeroplanes are common, a blown-out window at 17,000 ft has sucked the Pilot, Rainbow Dash out of the cockpit. Now the lives of 96 Passengers depend on her young co-pilot, First Officer Fluttershy being able to safely land the plane back on the ground.
Based on the True Story of British Airways Flight 5390 http://youtu.be/F2hSg-kvkYw
PS: Can you name all the Pony Puns and what they're a pun of?
Warning: As a bit of an aviation geek, I used a fair bit of terminology
Chapters (1)
Oh yes.
As an aviation geek myself, I understood it
Aces High - Iron Maiden
Wow, I went to go look at the true story video and I'm amazed by it, I'll probably be even amazed by this fic then
Yaaay pony true stories.
the trusty BAC 1-11, the British DC9. I would love to hear Fluttershy's soft voice talking to ATC. Woulda been pretty cool if they were flyin a 717 or even a 757-200!
I miss Mayday. Was a good show for a while.
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What do you mean, "missed it?" It's still on, and been renewed for another season. You can find it all over Youtube as well, sometimes under the name of "Air Crash Investigation," as it's known in other parts of the world
541895
Oh well.
Well, the reason they didn't let go of the captain on the original BA flight was that he would have been sucked into the engines, but still pretty good.
542417
I did say that
"It wasn’t just a case of compassion, and that Rainbow Dash deserved a proper funeral, but Rainbow’s body could also be easily sucked into the engine, damaging it and causing all of them to die."
542454 Hmm... I for some reason never saw that.
Amazing. I understood a decent amount of it. I first heard about this disaster from James R. Chiles's book Inviting Disaster.
And it's kinda bizarre but in a good way. One problem, you mixed up hands with hooves and arms with forelegs a few times.
Still, more aviator ponies please!
546674
Ooops!
Gotta use the "find and replace" function next time 
I was thinking of writing another one, but this one would have fatalities. I'd be of the Tenerife Disaster, and there'd be a very high body count
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Go for it. The Tenerife Disaster was when two fully loaded planes collided on the runway at the Canary Islands due to misinterpretation of control tower commands, right?
547618
Yup, that's the one. Can you think of a Pony Pun for Tenerife, or Pan Am?
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Tenerife - Teneighrife
Pan Am - keep it but "America" could be rendered as "Amareica".
On a side note, I want to try this genre of "pony disaster stories" but I can't think of anything.
55116
Teneighrife...how did I not think of that?
Just watch "Seconds From Disaster" on Nat Geo for a bit, then write away! Here's a few ideas
Fukushima Nuclear Disaster
Piper Alpha Explosion
Eschede Derailment
Guadalajara Explosion(s)
Sampoong Collapse
Hindenburg Disaster (although a 30-second story isn't gonna make much writing)
The Premiere of Jersey Shore
There's quite a few
This story was unique enough to warrant a review. Here's the deal:
The stuff below the box is commentary.
Here we a-go!
The use of "natural/naturally" twice in such quick succession inhibits the flow.
Perhaps you meant to say "moved".
Never heard of that before. "Winding down" is the correct idiom, I believe.
You really, really would have been fine with just "innocuous".
This is just an odd word choice that I'd like to draw your attention to.
I think you underestimate the intelligence of your readers - we can figure out that this is foreshadowing, trust me.
A jarring and unnecessary reference to the real world. Equestria is not Earth - there is no England there.
That last bit is a little redundant. You've already told us that they're taking off one after another, and that there's a queue.
This is worded pretty awkwardly. I can't say for certain if it's technically incorrect, but it should be revised either way. My suggestion would be something along the lines of: "For Applejack, the career switch into commercial aviation came..."
Firstly, don't capitalise the beginning of a clause after a colon. Secondly, it's fragmented. "she wanted to see the world" would stand on its own as a sentence, and thus can be safely inserted after a colon.
It's generally thought that all numbers under one hundred should be spelled out (the number changes depending on who you ask, but one hundred is a safe bet), and using a symbol when the symbol actually represents a word is a bad habit. Using the % sign is essentially the same as this: "Lions & tigers & bears, oh my!" (when you could simply use "and" instead of ampersands).
Uh, maybe it's just me, but that doesn't sound too friendly to me. You could probably think of something that sounds a lot less sinister.
Additionally, this is at least touching the fourth wall, if it's not breaking it. You're using the narrative voice to provide an opinion, which doesn't match the formatting of the rest of the story. It would be better to just say "Fluttershy called softly" or "Fluttershy attempted to call" or the like.
Weird wording. Note also the comma that is missing from the end of the line.
Doesn't quite sound right to me - Fluttershy should show more reluctance to just move along IMO.
Okay... This is obviously a total interpretation thing, but I have to speak my mind here. Why are they all gay? This whole tangent gives the impression that in your Equestria, homosexuality is the default. I don't have a problem with anypony being gay, but logically they should still be a minority, and you've just made all three of the male characters present in your story gay. Considering that Happy is an OC, I'm confused as to why you didn't just make him a female. You could squeeze some light awkward humour out of Caramel's embarrassment at being asked out by a girl, and it would just make more sense to me.
Anyways. End of my hypocritical discourse.
I am thrilled to report that hereafter there are no technical errors besides the one's I've already mentioned. To review:
1. Always make sure you have punctuation at the end of a piece of dialogue, but it should NOT be a period unless it's the end of the entire sentence.
2. Capitalisation. Don't capitalise colours or adjectives of any type, generic descriptors like "egghead", or random nouns like Fire Engines.
3. Whenever possible, spell out numbers below one hundred. Numbers that are involved in a model no. are probably a reasonable exception, like in Speedpony 248.
Now, let's talk story.
For starters, it was great. Secondly, it was especially great during the mayday. Thirdly it should have been either longer or shorter.
Wait, what?
What I mean is that you've broken Chekhov's law - you've included information that could be used later, but then forgotten it. The biggest item is Caramel's relationship. You could have had a lot of build-up and terror by having the characters truly believe that they're going to die, and have them reflect on the loved ones they're going to lose. As it stands, you basically fire and forget when it comes to the Caramac. Same with Happy's attraction to Caramel. If you're going to throw it in there during the exposition, then DO something with it in the climax. If you don't want to do that, then you can just leave out the bit about Happy asking Caramel out.
I was really on the edge of my seat when Dash was nearly dead and we didn't know what was going to happen - you should have tried to extend that. Climaxes work best when they have a peak within themselves - yours is very exciting at first, but then it slowly slows down the pace until we're all safe. We want to be running headlong at a cliff, jump off, and THEN discover there's water beneath us. That moment when we really think that all is lost is crucial to traditional storytelling.
The use of aviation jargon is a dandy flavour element that you used nicely. I was never confused by it, but was interested and engaged. Well done on that front.
And the epilogue has a pleasant conclusion too. Everyone loves to go home smiling. Well, almost everyone. Anyways, this part too would have been made more rewarding by bringing our characters a little closer to complete obliteration, but still, nice work.
During the first half of the story, I was a little worried about the quality of your prose. An editor or proofreader would be beneficial for you, so that odd word choices like the ones I highlighted in purple can be fixed before the story is released. Just something to consider moving forward.
Your final score in my books is 7.6/10 (I don't actually have any scorebooks). I'm hoping to see more, even better work from you in the future, so keep writing!
Your friendly neighbourhood reviewer/author,
ReasonandRhyme.
1459763
Wow....
Thank you very, very much for the feedback. I really well and truly appreciate it
I'll take these points into account for my next story. Thank you for also pointing out the Grammar and word choice errors. I haven't written for awhile but I now have 3 stories in the works, and one halfway done. However, I'll attempt to justify a few of the points you addressed.
Well, my image of Equestria in this universe is that the real world's countries are the equivalent of Equestria's Provinces. Being based on a real-world story I can drop references to the actual Air Disaster that happened over the skies of Southern England this way
As for the whole coltcuddling scene, I'll admit, that was pure author appeal and I wrote that mostly for my own benefit
I'm a coltcuddler, and a big CaraMac shipper
. I wanted a cute coltcuddling scene and I thought playing off the stereotype of Gay Flight Attendants would be a perfect place to squeeze it. Also, I plan on writing a Rule 63 RariShy Shipping Fic in the future so this was good practise. However, in hindsight I realise it was rather unnecessary. As you said, I could have tied this into the story somehow, or played it off for awkward humour but it just ends up looking like a Big Lipped Alligator Moment (sorry, I hope you read Tv Tropes and understand all the Tropes I'm referring to)
Yeah, I probably should have done that. The second half of the story seems to just gradually coast to safety. I could've added more drama by either the Approach lights not working and Fluttershy has to basically land blind, one of the Landing Gear lights not turning green and thus uncertainty if the gear is locked, or the plane making a missed approach and fluttershy have to attempt the landing again. However I based this off the real-life story of British Airways 5390, and I wanted it to be as faithful to the real-world event as possible (Even though I had them landing at London Heathrow instead of Southampton, just for the sake of Drama). I guess I can take more artistic license next time.
Thanks for that. I wanted to include as much Aviation Jargon as I knew, to make it really feel like a Pilot's story. However, I was worried if people would become confused by it, I'm glad I got the balance right.
Again. Thank you, thank you very much ReasonandRhyme
I truly appreciate the positive feedback and the constructive criticism
1578246 Hey, no problem. I hope you take it seriously. About remaining faithful to real events - don't let that hold back a story. It's all good and well to base a story on something that happened IRL, but it doesn't make sense to copy it completely. The reason you're writing the story is to make it interesting, so make it as interesting as you possibly can!
Also, we have an odd number of things in common... I'm a Troper too, and I've also written two CaraMac stories. <shamelessplug> If you're interested, maybe you can check them out? </shamelessplug>
Anyways yeah, just glad I could help.
1578425
*Checks you're page....and gasps*
You wrote "What I failed to recognise"?! Oh man, I love that story
Please tell me it's continuing, and you haven't left it off there
Speedpony --> Speedbird
Nice BA reference... I can always appreciate a good pun on a call sign
This was a really exciting story with a lot of suspense. I really loved all of the terminology, actually. Especially the numbers made me feel absorbed in the tale. It was a good read, and now I learned something new today. Yay!
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Yay for learning! I like to think using terminology makes it feel more natural. Like, it makes you feel more immersed into the story, because it would be really weird not to hear it. It would break the immersion illusion for say, a story at a nuclear power station to say "start the reactor...all look's good, we have power" rather than "raise control rods, core temperature rising, primary circuit pressure nominal, we have criticality"
I genuinely enjoyed this.
Awesome work Vectored!
551574
don't forget the titanic disaster on that very same series
Great story - Fluttershy can fly indeed!
One video about the real-life incident:
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Thank you