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As famílias da TAM, três anos depois.

As famílias da TAM, três anos depois.

Às famílias que agora rememoram a tragédia com o voo JJ 3054 da TAM Linhas Aéreas – o Airbus A320 que se chocou ao pousar em uma noite chuvosa, em uma pista com problemas de pavimentação, em 17 de julho de 2007…

Às famílias, muitas das quais são amigas minhas…

Este mês de julho não pode passar sem que relembremos. Assim como cada primavera faz lembrar o inverno, e cada noite faz lembrar o dia, em17 de julho, nós lembramos.

Espero que, a essa altura, vocês tenham criado algum tipo de tradição que ajude a família a se reunir e lembrar.

É um privilégio recordar toda a virtude de suas vidas – quer visitando seu túmulo, acendendo uma vela, plantando uma árvore ou realizando atos de bondade em sua memória.

Vela alguma brilha o suficiente ou por tempo o bastante; arvore alguma se ergue suficientemente alta ou dá sombra o bastante; nenhum ato de caridade é suficientemente generoso. Mas, ainda assim, fazer algo a cada ano que nos ajude a realmente lembrá-los traz em si um ato de vida. Fazê-lo traz a chama da lembrança, entrelaçando o ontem ao presente e ao amanhã.

Um ritual que, a princípio, pode funcionar como uma muleta emocional, mas tarde dá asas à nossa alma. Um ritual que nos faz lembrar que cada vida é como uma pedra em um monumento, um alicerce que sustenta a todos nós que seguimos em frente.

Que a perda não seja em vão.

Lágrimas não nos podem devolver o ser amado, mas espero que o tempo tenha trazido cura e alívio para a dor, deixando apenas a ternura da lembrança.

Amigos e amigas, celebrem a memória.

George Hatcher

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    Anniversary of Bhoja Air Crash

    The anniversary of a plane crash is always a sad day;

    It is a day few people recall if they didn’t lose someone;

    It is a day remembered by children as the moment they found themselves orphaned–and mothers and fathers who found themselves without a child; and husbands and wives who found themselves widowed.

    It is a day with consequences that reverberate through the lives of those affected like ripples in a pond–except that ripples in a pond eventually come to rest, and the victims of a crash will be victims forever.

    We remember the day Bhoja Air crashed. It was en route from Karachi to Islamabad, with 121 passengers and 6 crew.

    The owner of Bhoja Air remembers too, and the FIA is not likely to let him forget:

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    Farooq Bhoja was not arrested. His office was raided and the FIA seized official documents.

    Press Release Below:

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  • Foreign Aviation Tragedies, Thoughts on Compensation

    Lives have value. It doesn’t matter if a man makes $10,000 a day, or 10 cents. If he dies in a plane crash, he’s irreplaceable. Maybe his boss can put a dollar figure on what it would cost him to lose that worker; maybe his banker can come up a specific value to subtract from the family’s credit rating.

    But to his wife
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    His loss leaves a hole in a family that money can never fill.

    And then the attorneys for insurance companies will “try” to get by with compensation offers that are equal amounts for each passenger, that in some cases, equal to “peanuts” — I don’t see that too much, but ‘they’ try, especially if the laws in the country have established maximum low-values for the loss of life in aviation accidents. Even with Warsaw and Montreal the compensation I’ve seen is seldom governed by the caps provided for in these treaties.

    Instead, the compensation is based on the profile of the decedent. Age, Occupation, Family, etc. With this said, each seat on that plane is occupied by an individual and the family of the victim should be compensated accordingly, and in addition, the family should be paid non-pecuniary damages for pain and suffering, etc. In a perfect case, that’s how it works.

    Whether he makes $10,000 a day, or 10 cents will not affect a man’s pain and suffering. In fact, his pain may be worse, knowing his ten cents is all that lies between his family and ruin.

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    Warsaw: An opinion

    What: LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Newark,NJ (USA) to Warsaw (Poland) with 220 passengers and 11 crew
    Where: Warsaw
    When: Nov 1st 2011
    Who: 220 passengers and 11 crew

    Belly landings happen frequently enough that there is a checklist of procedures. What makes it difficult? Visualize how a match works. Then think about that plane landing, full of fuel, scraping on the runway. That’s what makes it difficult.

    There are basic procedures that are performed. Consider that a 767-300ER has a total of 24,140 gallons, or 161,800 pounds in two wing tanks at 6,070 gallons (or 40,700 pounds), and a center tank at 12,000 gallons, or 80,400 pounds. ( Landing heavy on wheels would cause a wheel or brake fire.) In a gear up landing, the pilot has to lighten the plane by burning off and/or dumping fuel; and in the meantime, the crew does their best to get the gear to work. If they do not, they have to land with the nose up, on a long runway on fire retardant foam. Of course nothing is certain till the investigation is complete, but in my opinion, the crew did a stellar job. And everyone survived, which is what most matters.

    Dumping fuel and spending eighty minutes circling Warsaw would not have been enough to completely burn off fuel. There was still the danger of fire as the flight was landing. Flight and cabin crew took every precaution. The landing appeared picture perfect, sliding smoothy on the fuselage. Inside the plane, the passengers were quietly terrified.

    It may be that the pilot’s glider experience was a help. Between you and me, it looks a lot smoother if you watch the videos with the sound off, so you don’t hear metal screaming against pavement.

    The airport was well prepared, and crews foamed the runway with flame retardant in advance, and stopped any fires from spreading. There is plenty of footage of sparks and flames from the friction of the weight and force of the fuselage driving forward, and yet it came to rest with remarkably little damage.

    The emergency crews did their job. So did the pilots, and so did the flight crew. The flight crew secured the stairs in place as soon as the plane was at a standstill. Passengers could not have moved out of the jet and on to the runway any faster.

    It isn’t that common for all the gears to fail, but less common for all of them to fail at the same time. . My pilot-experts tell me that the most likely way for the hydraulics of all three landing gear to fail is total loss of fluid. There’s an alternate system; the alternate system for landing gear performs as a combination of electricity and gravity. You release the electronic locks, and gravity kicks in. I don’t think I have seen a reason given why the alternative system failed, but that would seem to be an electrical problem.

    But enough speculation–the investigation will reveal everything. For now it certainly appears that even if the gear system failed, the human system did not.

    We hear so many bad things about pilots, and airlines, about the entire industry. Aviation watchdogs were badmouthing the industry yesterday, and will be doing so again tomorrow, but for today, it is refreshing to hear something good. What I am hearing about the expertise of the Polish flight crew and airport is all commendable. LOT, you did well. First Officer Jerzy Szwarc and Captain Wrona, you have made your mark in history with the lives you saved today. The Polish media has been hungry for heroes to balance the April 2010 disaster, and now they have you.

    Already there is already a polish jingle that is a play on the pilot’s name, Captain Wrona. Wrona means “crow.”

    “Lataj jak orze?, l?duj jak Wrona”
    This translates to:
    “Fly like an eagle, land like a Crow”

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