A friend and I went to the airport. I had a ticket to fly to another city, but had decided not to use it. I wanted to get the frequent flier miles without flying, so I tried to check in without boarding the aircraft. I was told that the flight was overbooked and that I wouldn’t be able to take it.
Somehow I ended up boarding the aircraft, despite not having wanted to do so. My friend was going to be irritated because I had driven to the airport, so he would have to find his own ride home. Also this was going to cause trouble for me because I needed to be at work the next day.
The plane was a small jet. There were only three rows of seats, with four seats in each row. The flight attendant was very surprised to see me because I was not on her list, and she said that I shouldn’t be there, but there wasn’t anything that could be done about it so she told me to take a seat. The third row was empty.
A little later the flight attendant sat in the same row. Apparently the flight was only supposed to be for people that had made a big donation to some charity event. Those people were given a fancy watch, and she asked where mine was. I mumbled something about having left it at home.
Later another passenger and I tried to figure out why the video monitors at our particular seats weren’t working. We traced out the wiring and found the problem. We fixed it, and got the video working, but this apparently caused a catastrophic failure in the aircraft’s control systems, and the plane went into a steep dive. We hastily undid our changes, but it didn’t help.
Postscript: after waking this morning, I happened to look at some online news, and read stories about Thursday’s Boeing 777 crash landing at Heathrow airport. Both engines lost power, but amazingly there were no fatalities. The cause has not been determined, but there has been much speculation, including theories that it might be due to an electronics failure, fuel contamination, or police using cell-phone jamming equipment.