Task 2. Night flight.
This is Captain Cook speaking.
Our estimated time of arrival in Brisbane will be 1:00 am, so we've got a long flight ahead of us.
I hope you enjoy it.
Our hostess will be serving dinner shortly.
Thank you.
It was Christmas Eve 1959, and the beginning of another routine flight.
The hostesses started preparing the food trays.
A few of the passengers was trying to get some sleep, but most of them were reading.
There was nothing to see from the windows except the vast blackness of the Australian desert below.
There was nothing unusual about the flight, except perhaps that the plane was nearly full.
A lot of the passengers were travelling home to spend Christmas with their families.
The hostesses started serving dinner.
It was a smooth and quiet flight.
The hostesses had finished collecting the trays, and they were in the galley putting things away when the first buzzers sounded.
One of the hostesses went along the aisle to check.
When she came back, she looked surprised.
It's amazing, she said, even on a smooth flight like this, two people have been sick.
20 minutes later nearly half the passengers were ill, dramatically ill.
Several were moaning and groaning, some were doubled up in pain, and two were unconscious.
Fortunately, there was a doctor on board, and he was helping the hostesses.
He came to the gallery and said, I'd better to speak to the captain.
This is a severe case of food poisoning.
I think we'd better land as soon as possible.
What caused it? asked one of the hostesses.