And the plane landed safely.

The first thing I saw this morning when I turned on the TV during my morning ritual of espresso was the image of an aeroplane bouncing around my screen under the high magnification of a telephoto lens. "This aughta be good," I thought, "obviously some fundamentalist group of exploding-shoe wearing maniacs have threatened to do a Kruschev."

Sadly this wasn't the case. Turns out the Airbus A320 merely had a skew nose wheel.

CNN obviously shared my bloodlust however, because to hear them tell it, it was a disaster of humanity-threatening proportions. They had rounded up the usual crew of experts from fire chiefs to ageing stewardesses who survived the Hindenburg disaster. None of them was playing ball, however. Whenever Larry King would refer to the disasterously dangerous attitude of the undercarriage, the panel pilot would correct him - "It's a little cockeyed, Larry."

Anyway, despite the media's attempt to will the thing to a fiery end, the plane landed as smoothely as if all systems were go. No mess, no fuss.

Still, it made the morning coffee more interesting than usual.