Phoenix Ground Loop

What: Parker 77
Where: Phoenix AZ
When: 01/09/2009
Who: Pilot
Why: The pilot “ground looped” during a touch and go

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    Swine Flu Terror In The Skies

    What: United Airlines Boeing 777 en route from Munich to Washington
    Where: Logan International Airport 1:46 p.m.-
    When: 3:45 p.m
    Who: 245 passengers and 14 crew members
    Why: When a woman aboard this flight started to feel the flu, 244 passengers and 14 crew members had to go out of their way (at a cost of how many thousands?) and land en route so she be taken by ambulance to Massachusetts General Hospital.

    George’s Point of View

    The US was founded by stalwart pilgrims. Most of our ancestors came to these shores with pennies to their name. We’re formed of hardy peasant stock born of strong roots with nothing but our bodies and brains to make us what we are. We are the survivors of freezing winters, summers spent barefoot on farms, yellow fever, wars, drought, and more war and more drama. We are the spawn of mixed melting pots, and all the harsh trials that weed out the weak. We are sturdy stock.

    We are the survivors of parents or grandparents who told us stories of trudging to and from school in shoulder-high snow walking uphill both ways.

    (And they didn’t have antibiotics.)

    So what would our stalwart predecessors say about this current terror of the flu?

    I think they’d be a little embarrassed.

    Maybe I’m a little concerned about our oldest, sickest and most vulnerable, but I won’t go into the swine flu brouhaha. I’m not a doctor. I would not wish to be any of those millions of swine flu victims in rural Mexico, with access only to rudimentary medical facilities. Because the oldest, the youngest, the sickest, the weakest are the most vulnerable.

    But.

    Let’s face it. The air in a plane is a closed system. It has always been a closed system. That air recirculates. Maybe planes will install uv light machines in their air systems to sterilize the air. In the meantime, we’re all breathing shared air in planes.

    I’m proud that even in these tough economic times, United Airlines is so solvent that it can afford to spend thousands to divert planes when a solitary patient has the sniffles. But…maybe next time, they could spend the equivalent cost of the next “sneeze-diversion” on a couple warehouses full of surgical masks. So that next time we’re in a United Airlines plane, we can rest assured that-if our neighbor sneezes-next to that airsick bag and airplane weekly magazine, we can find a “swine flu” mask, some kleenex and maybe some anti-bacterial hand cleaner.

    D’ya think?

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    Co-Pilots to the Rescue

    Capt. Lee Collins of the Coalition of Airline Pilots Association said pilots are prepared for emergencies in the air. The pilot of a transatlantic flight died over the Atlantic Ocean, but the jet landed safely.

    What: Continental Airlines Boeing 777-200 en route from Brussels Belgium to Newark, NJ
    Where: en route
    When: June 18th 2009
    Who: 247 passengers and 3 flight crew
    Why: Four hours into the flight, while over the Atlantic, the captain died. The two first officers took over and landed the plane safely in Newark.

    A doctor on board was called to the cockpit, and the on board defibrillator failed to revive the captain who apparently had died of a heart attack.

    George’s Point of View

    It’s a small world.

    Recently I’d been in a conversation with someone about the Colgan flight.

    Remember the Colgan flight? The one that crashed in Buffalo? The wings iced over, the captain was ill-trained, and the co-pilot was too inexperienced and too exhausted to know how to respond to the particular emergency. The combination resulted in disaster for everyone on board.

    So, I was in this conversation with someone about the Colgan flight, and the question came up about the value of the co-pilot’s experience. The rate of the co-pilot’s pay was released, ($11.00/hr) and that provoked me to write about co-pilots needing “professional” pay. What would happen, we speculated (in this conversation) if the pilot died? The copilot becomes the de facto pilot.

    Then, lo and behold, today a pilot dies of a heart attack. Luckily for Continental and everyone on board, there were two co-pilots on hand, and both of them apparently qualified enough to handle the flight. (Apparently so, since they did manage to finish the flight.)

    I just wasn’t expecting that speculative question to manifest itself in a headline today.

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    Taban Air Emergency Landing

    What: Taban Air Tupolev TU-154M en route from Mashhad to Kish Island in the Persian Gulf
    Where: emergency landing in Mashhad
    When: August 7 2009
    Who: 150 passengers
    Why: 40 minutes into the flight, the plane had a technical “glitch” (electrical problems affecting several systems) forcing the pilot to declare an emergency.

    George’s Point of View

    This incident follows the death of 17 and the injury of 30 in Mashhad on July 24, 2009. At that time, an Ilyushin jet with skidded off the runway and struck a wall.

    And a little more than a week before that, on Wednesday July 15 a Tu-154M went down 16 minutes after takeoff from Imam Khomeini International Airport in Tehran.

    No airline named “Taban Air” is listed under the IATA membership website.

    Although this flight did land without death or injury, it appears that Tehran has some airline safety issues to work out.

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    Updating the Brazilian Statistics on the body count/recovery

    Of the 58 Brazilians aboard the notorious Rio-Paris Air France Flight 447, 18 have been found and identified.

    Of the 153 victims, 74 reside on the ocean floor. Some of those may be the 40 lost Brazilians.

    During the recovery process, some families chose not to disturb the remains. Some of the bodies were simply lost at sea.

    There is still a lot of finger-pointing going on. Whatever the cause, Air France Flight 447 stalled and crashed in bad weather, killing 153.

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    British Airways: Take This Class and Please Don’t Die on Our Plane

    Take This Class and Please Don’t Die on Our Plane. That will be £125. Thank you for not dying on British Airways.

    British Airways has a problem.

    It seems that they developed a class for British Petroleum. You see, BP sends their staff to remote locations which are only served by airlines on the EU banned list. As we described it on the last article the last time we talked about it, these poor BA employees ended up on flights on planes that skydivers wouldn’t touch with a ten foot parachute.

    Anyway, this class they worked up must now be like a friday night paycheck burning a hole in their pocket. You see, they keep trying to market this class as a product. Like the guy who gets stuck with a warehouse full of Widgets. The first time we heard this, the class was being offered for purchase, and the purpose of the class was to teach aviation safety and how to behave during a crash to increase your likelihood of not dying on their plane.

    We think the whole thing is kind of fishy, since the plane is not supposed to crash. Landing safety is the airline’s responsibility, not an option. I wouldn’t keep writing about this but I keep getting notices about this class.

    So they’re now looking for a new market, and they’ve found it. They announced that the£125 four hour class on how to survive a plane crash will be available for FREE. Or actually, only free to passengers who want to pay in mileage points, i.e. rich people. So. Rich people can pay in points (or perks) to get a lesson on how not to die. If anyone else wants to be safe, you’re going to have to ante up the cash.

    We are not really arguing against the class, if they want to provide it. Maybe it will make some people feel safer. (Though probably not. Why would you take a course in how to crash if you thought you were going to land safely? It’s probably going to be full of white-knuckled flyers anyway.) We just believe that, since arriving safely is the responsibility of the airline, that the class should be for free. After all, we don’t charge school students for fire drills.

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