There was a scary, but thankfully short, moment before our plane headed west to California on Sunday. We were waiting in line for takeoff when the pilot announced that all westbound flights had been grounded and he would let us know when he found out more. He never did tell us if he found out why, and our plane took off soon afterwards. The possibly related news items I have seen are the “super-heightened” alert for the Golden Gate Bridge over the weekend, the charter plane crash that killed Galen & Barbara Rowell (sad), and the emergency landing of a Boeing 777 at San Francisco. I could imagine that any of these would cause air traffic control to pause for a few minutes to take stock of the situation and decide whether to proceed with caution. I know that the worst crossed my mind and many others’ when we heard the pilot’s words and the relief felt when we took off didn’t stem merely from the knowledge that we would arrive on time.