Question

What made the woman in the Control Centre look at the narrator strangely ?

Answer 1

Hint: The question is taken from the story ‘The Black Aeroplane’. The narrator had ignored the storm clouds and drove the aeroplane inside them, when things started going out of control. A strange incident happened at that time which led to the narrator’s following experiences.

Complete answer:
The narrator in the story is a pilot, who is flying his aeroplane ‘Dakota’ from Paris to England. He was eager about reaching the destination soon as he was looking forward to a vacation with his family. It was post midnight and everyone in the French countryside was asleep.

The pilot contacted the Paris Control Room and asked for directions. As he continued to fly, at some distance from Paris, he saw some dark clouds which signalled a storm. The wise decision at that point of time would be to turn around and return to Paris due to bad weather conditions. However, since the narrator was so eager to reach England, he takes the risk of diving the plane into the storm clouds.

However, when he enters the dense cloud, he completely loses vision of his surroundings. The compass was continuously moving in a circular fashion and even the radio connecting him to the control room had stopped working. The narrator felt extremely lost and hopeless.

In this situation, a different aeroplane surfaced from the clouds manned by another pilot. The aeroplane had no light on its wings. The other pilot waved his hand and asked the narrator to follow him. This way he showed the narrator the way out of the storm clouds and helped him land safely on an airport.

When the narrator got out of his Dakota and reached the control centre of the airport, he asked the lady present there for the pilot of the aeroplane which had guided him safely. He wanted to express his gratitude to the pilot. The woman, however, looked strangely at the narrator and laughed, as in the bad weather there was no other aeroplane out there in the sky other than the Dakota. Therefore, the weird statement made by the narrator made the woman at the control centre look at him strangely.

Note: The story ‘The Black Aeroplane’ is an open-ended story. Open-ended stories are usually done to leave the readers with a feeling of suspense and are open to different interpretations of how the story ended.