IF the European Aviation Safety Agency is going to uphold its own mission “to promote the highest common standards of safety and environmental protection in civil aviation,” it must take strong action when it receives the French Accident Investigators first results.

There’s so much speculation out there regarding what this account will be that it just seems better to wait and see what it says before second-guessing it. Regardless of the details, you know the report is going to talk about 1. lightning and weather 2. pitot tubes; they may also talk about computer issues, composites and the stabilizer/tail fin/rudder also. I doubt they’ll tackle Airbus’s fly-by-wire technology.

The only thing I don’t understand is why Airbus 330’s have not already been grounded pending the results of the investigation. With several recorded incidents of Airbus 330’s suffering near-disasterous incidents and generating data similar to what was received from the AF447 flight, it makes more sense to ground these planes now before another accident occurs. Why are they letting people fly around in a plane that is an accident waiting to happen?

Or are paying passengers the world over just guinea pigs for Airbus to test their craft on until they get it right?

George’s Point of View

So, it took the Air France Airbus Flight 447 flying into the eye of the storm and never coming out for storm alerts to come of age.

The US FAA has had a system in development which is (as they term it) a “satellite-based upgrade of air-traffic management” which can send climate pictures through satellite access. This is a vast improvement of the current system, apparently. I have to take someone’s word on it since I just use the weather channel on tv, and haven’t spent a whole lot of time checking out cockpit weather access.

It just seems like such a practical and obvious technology for aviation, I wonder why it has not been in place for years. Maybe it’s the $22 billion bill that is the stopping point, but sometimes you just have to pay the piper. Or in this case, ITT Corp, which is developing “NextGen.” The Next Generation Air Transportation System task force has meetings that are open to the public.

I wonder if this is the same technology where they’re planning to live-stream aviation black box contents via satellite to air traffic control. That could save billions of dollars in searches such as the current hunt for the Air France Airbus black boxes, where they have a little more than a week to find a needle in the haystack…(black box in the Atlantic Ocean) before the “ping power” runs out.

Who knows if this technology would have warned

They say about real estate that the three most important things are location, location, location. And that makes sense, because the key factor about real estate is its lack of portability. Whether you’re in Calabasas or Timbuktu, where you are ultimately is where you are. The fact that it is where it is is what makes it what it is. Intrinsic value, and all that.

One could argue what the most important thing about travel is. You could make a strong argument for getting there, being there, or smelling the roses along the way. If we narrow the question to the single most important thing about air travel, the most important thing is probably getting there in one piece–mostly because it seems that getting there safely and completely without incident is an ever more dubious proposition, a perception which is being emphasized now more than ever due to NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System. When record keeping changes, it is difficult to say if some underlying factor has changed, or if the reporting is the only change. At any given time, it looks like the odds of getting there in one piece–on a plane that is 100% airworthy–are starting to look slim. And that is important whether the a plane is landing at LAX, (third busiest US Airport)

NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System allows crew members to phone in anonymous reports, a whistle-blower’s hotline as it were. So there’s a record of blunders, errors, faults, and slip-ups, like improper repairs, substandard repairs, unqualified mechanics and maintenance deficits that might otherwise have slipped by or gotten swept under the rug.

Honestly, what I see on these reports makes me seriously anxious. I’ll be facing more white-knuckled flights, just knowing that in the past six years, 65,000 flights have taken off in less than airworthy condition in conditions of deferred maintenance, or sporting less than stellar repairs farmed out to contract shops. 65,000 flights is a lot of flights, even if it is spread out over 6 years and 63 million flights. And do I believe that ALL of the other planes were in perfect running order? No.

Some of the mechanical problems that down planes can be linked back to tiny repairs, or perhaps I should say involving small but very important parts. If a plane can go down because a single screw is loose, or the threads are worn, then acute attention to maintenance is exponentially more important. I wouldn’t set foot in a golf cart in the condition some of these planes are in. But as a commercial passenger, I would never know if repairs on my flight were deferred. I would not know if a plane were outsourced to a sub-standard repair facility by mechanics without repair manuals, proper tools or correct parts. Outsourcing repairs to other countries not only removes shops from proper supervision, it also opens up the possibility of security risk. But I digress from what is my primary concern right now.

A sense of proportion and common sense should be applied here. Lights over a passenger seat are not as crucial as a screw assembly on the tail that provides pitch control.

I’m just saying:

We need more qualified supervised aviation repair facilities on U.S. soil.
We need airlines to stop deferring repairs.
We need airlines to maintain high standards.
We need the FAA and the NTSB to do their jobs.

Now we lay 2011 to rest, a year to be thankful for.

They are all years to be thankful for, even when they are times that try our souls. Our lives are the testing grounds that reveal our mettle. Of course life changes us; life is the crucible that forges the metal of which we are formed. So even if it has been an uphill challenge, it is a path we have climbed successfully; it has been another year to thank God for. We climbed to the summit to plant the flag of 2011 at the topmost peak. Join me while I shout, “Wahoo! We made it!” A year of turmoil; a year of deliverance and grace, of salvation.

So now we can pause and note the passing of 2011. Life chips away at us, smoothes the edges. When I think of how the passing year changed me, the changes are real but ephemeral, as hard to pin down and hold on to as a note of music, or a beam of light. I hope this year has made me a little kinder, a little stronger, a little more patient, a little more of a better man. It is easier to imagine time as a flowing river, with each moment being a unique sip of the water of life. I cannot let the year fade into history without acknowledging my gratitude and wonder. God is the source of the river of life. I can nod and smile at the scientists as they argue their big bangs (or some other competing cosmological paradigm). I am ok with science. God made scientists too; and if there was a bang, God was behind it. Einstein talked about life as a vast library we are born into; like preverbal infants, we can see the books in the library, and order in the universe, even if we cannot read the words. I do not need to hold the pencil of God to know the hand that wrote the book of life.

For another year, Molly and I wish you the very best New Year’s Day, and a 2012 filled with great health, and an overabundance of love and happiness.