So often — too often, it seems — the world goes into mourning when we hear of a fiery jetliner crash. Not so with an Aeromexico flight that crashed and burned in Mexico.

All the passengers and crew survived the crash in Durango, Mexico. That’s 103 people. Thus, we have a reason to smile and to thank the Almighty for this miraculous event.

That said, it sort of reminds me of an event I covered years ago while working as a reporter in Oregon. A DC-8 jetliner crashed into a heavily wooded east Portland neighborhood in the winter of 1978. Ten people died in the crash; many times more than that survived. CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite called it the “miracle on Burnside Street.” Yes, my heart broke at the sight of the deceased victims who were laid out on the ground at the crash site.

A reporter asked one of the survivors a few days later if she was more fearful of flying. Her response was classic. She wondered, are you kidding? She then said the chances of her being involved in a single jetliner crash were astronomical. That she ever would be involved in two of them were even greater than that!

That passenger, I submit, embodied eternal optimism.