The World's Luckiest Cyclist

RichN95.

This is Maarten De Jonge. He's a Dutch journeyman low level pro. His only pro win was a stage of the Tour of Thailand. The best known team he has ridden for is probably Endura for a year. He currently rides for Terengganuin in Malaysia. He is the luckiest cyclist in the world.



Why is he so lucky you ask?

Last March he was booked on a flight from Kuala Lumpar to Amsterdam via Beijing. But he changed his mind and swapped the flight for a direct one. The first leg of his original flight was MH370 which disappeared in the Indian Ocean.

Last week he was in Amsterdam and needed to fly back to Malaysia to race. He booked onto flight MH17, but later swapped it when a cheaper flight from Frankfurt became available. MH17 was shot down/crashed over Ukraine.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/dutch ... 17243.html

(Of course he may not be that lucky. Most people book flights with no incidents)

RideOnTime

I wonder if Malaysian Airlines will survive. Even if they have disassociated any direct blame for this later loss I think people will naturally feel reluctant to fly with them.

They only had 13 Boeing 777's in their fleet and now of course they only have 11. Its not a safety record to shout about!!!

bikes`n`guns

Having a plan shot out the sky doesn't really affect their "safety" record though does it ?

neal1984

Whilst this may seem like a nice good luck story I think it shows very little respect to those that have lost their lives for him to go to the paper smilling saying 'look how lucky I am'.

RideOnTime

Bikes`n`guns wrote:

Having a plan shot out the sky doesn't really affect their "safety" record though does it ?

Arguably not. But it seems that they were flying lower than was official advice and many of the other major operators had stopped flying over the Ukraine months ago. Malaysian Airlines had not changed its routes to avoid increasing fuel costs.

Coriander

RideOnTime wrote:

Bikes`n`guns wrote:

Having a plan shot out the sky doesn't really affect their "safety" record though does it ?

Arguably not. But it seems that they were flying lower than was official advice and many of the other major operators had stopped flying over the Ukraine months ago. Malaysian Airlines had not changed its routes to avoid increasing fuel costs.

I was talking to a friend in the airline industry about this at the weekend. He said that while a few of the major airlines have moved their route the majority had not. The choice is to go north over Russia which adds a lot of time to the flight and so completely b*ggers your airport slots and schedule, as well as costing a lot in extra airspace fees and fuel. The other alternative route takes planes over Afghanistan and Iraq. But as IATA had not recommended a change it was very much a call by each airline whether to change or not. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. He also said that 10km is the height the plane was and should have been at. He may be wrong, of course.

Dorset_Boy

I think Malaysian were getting into financial difficulties before MH17 was shot down., and have been sailing close to the wind for a while. There are a few rumours in the airline pilot circles about them I believe.

oscarbudgie

Guess he's never seen Final Destination

RichN95.

Neal1984 wrote:

Whilst this may seem like a nice good luck story I think it shows very little respect to those that have lost their lives for him to go to the paper smilling saying 'look how lucky I am'.

I don't think he has gone to the papers with it, they just picked up on it somehow. And that photo is an old one from his twitter feed.

Daz555

Looks like the story was overstated somewhat in the media.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... _took.html

FransJacques

Daz555 wrote:

Looks like the story was overstated somewhat in the media.

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_an ... _took.html

That's the media for you. Why so many people believe Sky, BCC, or Fox news is beyond me. I think Sandi Toksvig's News Quiz comedy show is probably more balanced.

Similar to the above, during the last pre-9/11 media blitz (i.e. when channels show a bunch of documentaries or movies about 9/11) there was a 30 min channel 4 show on 9/11 fakes. Lots of people claimed 100s of thousands of dollars in bogus life insurance frauds. There are also people who were deep in debt (or other troubles) who tried to fall off the radar - missing presumed dead kind of thing.

People's morality never reaches the depths of their desperation. It was an interesting show.

apreading

FransJacques wrote:

There are also people who were deep in debt (or other troubles) who tried to fall off the radar - missing presumed dead kind of thing.

there are always people doing this with mass tragedy events - UK FCO spent a fortune tracking some down after the Tsuniami. And not always because of debt etc, sometimes to get away from family & relationships...