The Discrete State
A small passenger jet makes an emergency landing on farmland and the cheapest way to get it out is to build a runway and fly the plane out.

So perhaps the 747 is still on the ground. Lumbering its way round the taxi-ways back to the terminal. You are about to get a free, partially hot tray meal to eat on you knees in the departure lounge. Something to occupy those long hours when you can only speculate on what is really going on. Hopefully, the main course will not be fish.

It is a ...