I predicted that this Mercury retrograde period would be fairly quiet until the first week in September. I guess I spoke too soon.

As I was cruising the headlines this morning, I found this article:

Scary gaffe adds to week of airline mishaps
By Liz Goodwin.

In the middle of an otherwise-peaceful British Airways flight from London to Hong Kong on Tuesday, a terrifying announcement blasted over the speakers. The automated message warned the 275 passengers to brace themselves, because the plane was about to crash into the sea.

“We all thought we were going to die,” one passenger said.

Flight attendants quickly reassured the traumatized passengers that the message was a mistake, and British Airways say they are investigating how the incident could have happened. (A similar incident happened in 1999, when a “mischievous passenger” pushed the automated crash message as a joke on a flight from San Francisco to London.)

This is just the latest mishap to come to light in a wild week for airlines.

(Read the rest here.)

Of course, I wanted to know whether the 1999 incident occurred during Mercury retrograde. It didn’t. In that case, however, the error wasn’t an accident, but intentional mischief. During Mercury retrograde, events are more on the order of, “Oops, hit the wrong button.” Big “oops,” in this case. The airline is investigating whether the cause was a computer glitch or human error. Either way, it sounds like retrograde Mercury mischief to me.

We had our own bit of Mercury retrograde drama here on Vashon, which normally is so peaceful that a drunken bar patron swinging at a cop is front-page news. On Wednesday, our all-volunteer substitute for a city council (since we’re in an unincorporated part of the county), all resigned at once after King County communicated a legal opinion that it had to comply with open government rules, like any other political body. Council members said they couldn’t afford the amount of time it would take to meet all document requests, since they’re unpaid volunteers and already sacrifice a lot of their free time.

I have a feeling this decision will be revisited … say, right around the time Mercury returns direct, or shortly after.

Let’s hope this is the worst we get this time around. Goddess knows we’ve had a rough summer and could use some time to slow down, catch up on unfinished tasks, and attempt to put our lives back together.

Pat