Flight Paths: a networked novel

"I have finished my weekly supermarket shop, stocking up on provisions for my three kids, my husband, our dog and our cat. I push the loaded trolley across the car park, battling to keep its wonky wheels on track. I pop open the boot of my car and then for some reason, I have no idea why, I look up, into the clear blue autumnal sky. And I see him. It takes me a long moment to figure out what I am looking at. He is falling from the sky. A dark mass, growing larger quickly. I let go of the trolley and am dimly aware that it is getting away from me but I can't move, I am stuck there in the middle of the supermarket car park, watching, as he hurtles toward the earth. I have no idea how long it takes - a few seconds, an entire lifetime - but I stand there holding my breath as the city goes about its business around me until...

He crashes into the roof of my car."

The car park of Sainsbury's supermarket in Richmond, southwest London, lies directly beneath one of the main flight paths into Heathrow Airport. Over the last decade, on at least five separate occasions, the bodies of young men have fallen from the sky and landed on or near this car park. All these men were stowaways on flights from the Indian subcontinent who had believed that they could find a way into the cargo hold of an airplane by climbing up into the airplane wheel shaft. It is thought that none could have survived the journey, killed by either the tremendous heat generated by the airplane wheels on the runway, crushed when the landing gear retracts into the plane after take off, or frozen to death once the airplane reaches altitude.

'Flight Paths' seeks to explore what happens when lives collide - an airplane stowaway and the fictional suburban London housewife, quoted above. With your help, this project will tell their stories.

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Here is the url for the original Guardian newspaper article, 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' (2001) that put the idea for this project into Kate's head:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4223470-103680,00.html

Here's an updated list of names of documented refugee deaths from United Against Racism: 
http://www.unitedagainstracism.org/pdfs/actual_listofdeath.pdf

And the latest recorded flight-related death (3rd July 2009) - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/8132766.stm