A small, 14-seat plane is circling for a landing in Atlanta. It’s
totally fogged in, zero visibility, and suddenly there’s a small
electrical fire in the cockpit which disables all of the instruments
and the radio. The pilot continues circling, totally lost, when
suddenly he finds himself flying next to a tall office building.
He rolls down the window (this particular airplane happens to have
roll-down windows) and yells to a person inside the building, “Where
are we?”
The person responds “In an airplane!”
The pilot then banks sharply to the right, circles twice, and makes a
perfect landing at Atlanta International.
As the passengers emerge, shaken but unhurt, one of them says to the
pilot, “I’m certainly glad you were able to land safely, but I don’t
understand how the response you got was any use.”
“Simple,” responded the pilot. “I got an answer that was completely
accurate and totally irrelevant to my problem, so I knew it had to be
the IBM building.”