Apparently, my former colleague at the Post, Robert George, isn’t a big fan of flying:

A few years ago, I went on a reporting trip to Sudan with Al Sharpton. The particular details matter little. However, at one point, the traveling party had to take a small one-propeller plane from Nairobi, Kenya into Sudan.

This is when the “& others” Postulate came to mind: You don’t want to be flying around Africa with some famous person given that your epitaph could just be part of a lede that included “and others.” As in: “A plane went down carrying [take your pick] Al Sharpton/Angelina Jolie/Bono AND OTHERS.”

On his most recent flight? Boy Scouts and a group of kids with cancer… This airline was just tempting fate.