By now probably everyone has heard about the Jet Blue flight attendant who flamboyantly quit his job.

If you haven’t heard, this is the buzz: Steven Slater was at work at the end what must have been a very stressful flight ending at Kennedy.

A passenger retrieving items from over the seat failed to listen to Slater’s directives, and cussed Slater out. Slater got beaned in the head by this passenger’s falling luggage, failed to get an apology, and cussed out the passenger over the intercom. After blowing off steam, Slater grabbed a beer, evacuated from the plane via the emergency slide, and headed for home. Note that he had the self-restraint not to punch out the rude flyer.

Slater was arrested at his home and charged with 2nd-and 4th-degree criminal mischief, 1st- and 2nd-degree reckless endangerment and criminal trespass in the 3rd degree.

Like thousands of others hearing about this story, I have an opinion–and that is that both the passenger and Slater (and possibly the media) need a time out.

(A little overboard there on the charges, even if Slater is one of those surly attendant types. As a frequent flyer, I’ve come across surly flight attendants who could use charm lessons or another job; I’ve also come across surly passengers who tested flight attendants to their max. The guy should get some slack.)

Both of them should have had escorts off the plane. But as far as this being a criminal offense on Slater’s part–that’s going off the deep end. Maybe Jet Blue will spring for Slater to have an anger management course–and maybe the passenger should take a class in manners. One wonders just what Slater had to put up with during that flight.

Consider this: Just because you buy a ticket that packs you into a glorified flying sardine can in close quarters with hundreds of other ticket-purchasers, why should you have to have any manners at all? Certainly the ticket buys you the right to cuss out the attendants who ARE THERE TO SEE TO YOUR SAFETY. After all, you’re the only person who matters aboard the plane. Wait. Maybe not. Maybe the ticket assumes that the passenger is going to behave like a civilized human being.

I hope that whoever decided these ludicrous charges will consider that Slater did not do any physical harm to the rude/unruly passenger (who would have been arrested if Slater’s breakdown had waited a few moments longer.)

Maybe Slater considers the drama of deploying the emergency slide is worth the cost. I hope so, because that cost is probably going to be coming out of his soon-to-be-unemployed-pocket. It remains to be seen. Anyway, let’s see how long it takes for the term “Pull a Slater” to enter the national vocabulary; he already has a huge fan base, possibly a future with SNL and may end up in a National Lampoon Vacation movie. There’s already a facebook page called ” I Hate The Mf That Called Steven Slater A MF”

To the families who are now remembering the TAM Airlines Flight 3054 (JJ 3054) tragedy–the Airbus A320 which crashed on landing during rain on unfinished pavement in São Paulo on July 17, 2007…

To the families–many of whom are my friends…

July can not come and go without our remembering. As each spring recalls the winter, as each night recalls the day, on July 17, we remember.

I hope that by this year, you have established some kind of family tradition that helps the family come together to remember.

It is a privilege to recall the goodness of their lives–whether it be visiting their memorial, lighting a candle, planting a tree, or continuing acts of kindness in their memory. No candle burns long enough nor shines bright enough; no tree stands tall enough nor casts enough shade; no act of kindness is quite benevolent enough. And yet, doing something each year to help us actively remember carries on the act of life. Doing so carries the torch of memory, weaving the thread of yesterday into today and tomorrow. A ritual that one time may be a crutch at a later date will give our hearts wings, a ritual that reminds us that each life stands like the stones of a monument, a foundation sustaining all of us who continue.

Let the loss not be in vain.

No tears can bring back a loved one, but I hope that time has brought healing and cooled the pain, leaving only the sweetness of memory.

My friends, celebrate the memory,
George Hatcher

A plane wreckage is not simply trash. The wreckage is the story of the crash transcribed in twisted metal and broken gears, legible to experts who can read from it details that the layman can not determine. The wreckage is concrete evidence. Because damaged mechanics reflect forces that have acted on the plane, its legal and historical value is in its very tangibility: it is an actual record that can reveal the course of events, as well as being an important factor in determining the culpability of those involved.

Imagine, if you will, what would happen to paper records left to the mercy of passersby, out in the sun and wind and rain for fifty days. If the paper survives, anything written on it will be degraded by exposure to the elements. If anyone attempts to read it, their task will be 50 times more difficult. This is true whether the record is written on paper–or on crushed metal.

So why is it that the evidence in the Mangelore crash–the wreckage–was left to the elements for 50 days? Whose responsibility is it to maintain the evidence at its most accurate condition? What can be said about leaving evidence on the scene, in an area where the public has access, and/or allowing it to sit exposed to the elements for 50 days following the event?

This is not a crash like Air France Flight 447 where the greater mass of the wreckage is lost at sea, and if and when any evidence is found, it will have been inadvertently degraded by exposure that is beyond anyone’s control. In the causal relationship between conduct and result, in the Mangalore crash, who is responsible for maintaining the quality of the evidence so that it maintains its forensic value, especially in a crash within meters of the runway in a known and navigable area? Is there a chain of responsibility? Is that responsibility safeguarded from possible intrusion, alteration or negligence by vested parties? Is safeguarding the forensics the responsibility of the airline or its insurers? Because, while the airline has hardly any experience dealing with such details, its insurers have a long history of dealing with evidence in aviation cases. Is there not an obligation in the vested parties to maintain the forensic value of the evidence?

George’s Point of View

Time flies, does it not? Though at times it seems the year has dragged by day by weary day, minute by weary minute, it hardly seems possible that it has already been a year since June 30, 2009. I debated whether or not to post this, because I wonder if it is not simply a reminder of pain. But then, it is also a chance to remember another life, when days were brighter.

Everyone at our office joins me in sending the families our kindest regards, wishing you what we hope has been a year of healing. You might ask how you could have healing without your loved one who perished this time last year.

From personal experience, I know that it has not been easy. I believe that when you lose a loved one, through a terrible tragedy like the Yemenia Crash or by any cause at all, our loved one would want us to continue living to the fullest. I’m certain that my grandson, whom we lost many years ago at age 15 in a motorcycle accident, wanted this for my daughter (his mother) and for the rest of the family. We still miss him. We still do a family birthday at the cemetery. Somehow we manage to carry on because he’s still in our lives, in our hearts, every day of every year.

I know you carry your loved ones in your heart too. Some days their presence feels very close. Those are the times, special times, that I believe they remain with us, out of sight perhaps, but never out of reach.

They say that living in the hearts we leave behind is not to die. If that is so, then let us all be a miser of our memories, for that is coin we will never spend, so we can always hold our loved ones and their memories close.

Blessings and memories to you.

GH

The one thing that stands out the most in today’s NTSB statement [about the US Airways Airbus A320 that crash-landed on the Hudson River] is that there is nothing but praise and admiration for the crew, whose quick reflexes, cool heads and complete professionalism saved the lives of everyone aboard.

The NTSB is NOT so positive regarding Airbus, the manufacturer of the plane involved in that crash. See the NTSB’s Executive Summary

There was no appropriate checklist for the event in the manual; and some procedures were so precise they could not be carried out.

Ingesting birds into an engine is rarely so dramatic, mostly because it doesn’t usually happen to both engines. The circumstance allowed experts to examine cause and effect on the plane and a number of surprising things were concluded. Certainly more than I am talking about here.

Some of the concerns conceivably could have applied to Air France Flight 447…if it had landed intact (although we are assuming it did not.)

That the cockpit instrumentation did not reflect the status of the engines.
Did the pilots of AF 447 also not have inaccurate reportage of the status of the engines? We think this is true. How can a pilot in the middle of the Atlantic in the midst of a storm with inoperable speed sensors know what the fly by wire engines are doing of the operating system doesn’t tell him something is wrong? The answer is: he can’t.

That the rate of descent in the manual is unrealistic (claiming a safe 3.5 feet per second when in reality 13 feet per second caused damage.)
Although there’s no telling what the rate of descent was for AF447, it appears likely that neither did the pilots. Also, 447 was not guided/glided down by Sully; if AF447 came down intact at all, it probably fell at a high rate of speed with only limited awareness of the pilots when it was too late.

That in the Hudson event, slides were not flotation devices; wings did not float; and there were no rafts over these wings although the passengers scrambled out there.
In the Hudson crash, the passengers exited to the wings, expecting flotation resources. Fortunately rescue came quickly before they sank. There were no “wing rafts.” Could AF passengers, had they survived the landing have exited, and been able to access rafts? We think not. Of course this is a moot point as we doubt they survived hitting the water–whether or not the plane was intact.

Given that the NTSB called the Airbus manual unrealistic and inappropriate, that Airbus’s claim that for the Hudson crash “LaGuardia Runway 13 was technically feasible from an aircraft flight performance point of view” seems equally unrealistic. In fact, Airbus has a lot of nerve to extend a pseudo-panglossian commendation to Captain Sully for appropriately considering the high urbanization of airport surroundings. At this point, any statement from Airbus is highly suspect.
At this point I consider Airbus itself, “theoretically feasible” but highly unlikely.

At Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the memorial dedicated to the victims of flight 447 will have its grand opening. Family members of those lost in the crash are invited.

Sometimes Air France displays a disturbing lack of propriety, even when they’re doing their public best to appear sensitive and thoughtful.

Case in point: Generously, Air France provided tickets to the family members of the victims of Flight 447 , the flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, that final notorious, fatal flight which disappeared into the Atlantic Ocean on 1 June 2009, killing all 216 passengers and 12 crew members.

Guess which flight Air France put the grieving families on? Flight AF445 on an Airbus aircraft–it is, in fact, exactly the same flight as the one which killed their family members. (“447” was discontinued; “445” is the current designation for the same flight.)

The victim association is intending to rebook on Boeing flights.

It’s difficult to figure out, impartially, what is going on in the heads of Air France management. Are they deliberately ignoring the 400 lb gorilla in the room? (Actually, they’re planning to replace the 400 lb gorilla—the Airbus A330-200— with an even bigger model, the A340. Essentially replacing the 400 lb gorilla with a 500 lb gorilla… but I digress.)

Meanwhile, the families agonize over the details: would the plane have crashed if the pitot tubes had been replaced with another model? Or if the pitot tubes had been maintained properly? And how can Air France possibly expect them to set foot on a plane–especially the same flight as the one that carried their family members to their deaths?

If you want to see the most current mappings of the ash, here’s the British meteorological service site.

As I sit here in a foreign country separated from my home by an ocean and a sky full of volcanic ash they are saying may disrupt trans-atlantic aviation for the next six months, and wondering when I will get home, I read the chilling words of a American scrivener remembering the recent flight that wiped out the Polish “politocracy.”

Michael White: “An airplane is a hollow bullet filled with humans lives, shot from a gun we call an airport. Should it impact with the ground other than according to the dictates of precise technology, its content perishes.”

Those of us who fly so often take for granted that flight is a right, but every so often, Nature reminds us we are not birds, we are Icarus, daring to fly too close to the sun. We are creatures of the earth. We have no wings beyond those our imagination have wrought.

Who among us can say it is worth the cost, especially those people I work with every day who have lost their nearest and dearest.

And yet, how we have flown.

Click to viewPhoto of the ash cloud

When has an aviation disaster so changed an entire nation?

The world is asking “What next for Poland?”

No answers now, only questions. Only time will tell.

The speaker of the lower house of parliament, Bronislaw Komorowski will get the ball rolling on presidential elections that will come early.

Piotr Wiesiolek, a Central Bank deputy governor will temporarily assume the governorship.

No crystal ball is needed to know that the next hierarchy will sort itself out after the crash of Polish politics. Whether the cream will rise to the top or mediocrity stand-in until a new equilibrium surfaces, the dynamics of the Polish political machines will adapt. That in itself is nothing new. Everything changes; it is the way of the world.

It is not possible now or even fair to say that Poland will heal. Healing is not always an accurate word. What is meant, perhaps, is scab over, or scar, bearing in mind that how a scar heals determines if it remains a weakness, or becomes stronger than ever. There will be a time in which to convalesce. It is too soon, possibly even a cruelty– to speak of recovery now. The country needs time. Poland will endure as anyone does who has suffered tragedy, but eventually it will recoup its losses. Now is not the time to speak of the buoyancy of the human spirit, but to walk through the stages of mourning, and for other countries—without intrusion—like siblings, lend their strength where they can. Words can mean little now, but the free world shares in the mourning of the Polish people.

In the sixties, Dr. Kubler-Ross postulated five stages of grief: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance; but I prefer the more recent model of seven stages which adds at the end, reconstruction and hope.

Poland will eventually be all right. Not without scars, of course but however dim it seems now, there will be a light at the end of the tunnel.

There’s always a lot of finger-pointing going on, so it really isn’t unexpected that Ethiopia accused Lebanon of misleading and hampering the investigation. We should remember that the ICAO could not be there if the investigation did not live up to the highest standard.

It is also important to remember that any speculative conclusions, or “leaks” or preliminary investigation results are just that: speculation or investigation, or preliminary. It takes months and sometimes years to get to the cause of a crash, and this one is no exception. Eventually, no stone will be unturned.

Remember that all of the parties involved will be conducting their own investigations–not only the governments, but also the plane manufacturers, the component manufacturers, (any party who thinks they may be sued), as well as attorneys who are looking out for the welfare of their clients.

Many research teams are engaged in ferreting out, determining and studying the facts of the crash.

It is a shame that after all their grief, the families have to endure finger-pointing and speculative theories masquerading as truth, smokescreens which are put out by reporters or politicians for political purposes.

These investigations take time. There are no fast and easy answers. Look at the Air France Flight 447 crash of 2009. We’re still hearing all sorts of theories, but even in that earlier crash, the investigation is still going on; we’re still looking for wreckage and black boxes.

And so, the families weather the storm, continuing to bide their time, enduring their grief, and waiting—patiently or not—for facts, for answers, for the truth to show itself.

In an aviation disaster, what happened is never a true mystery. A true mystery is something that baffles understanding and cannot be explained. We know there’s an explanation. We know something tangible happened. There is a tangible explanation. We just don’t know what it is. What happened. Or in what sequence. Or if one or two of the events in the sequence didn’t happen, could the disaster have been prevented.

Most aviation disasters live in a realm of tragic mystery. We are always walking around, picking up the pieces of the puzzle. In fact, there are usually few pieces of evidence to pick up–and the ones we do find crumble in our hands, or they’re inexplicable or perplexing. So when we put the puzzle pieces together, they may fit a multiplicity of ways. There may be huge gaps. Or there may be no way at all to fit together the disparate elements. Oh, sure, we come up with a thousand theories–perhaps a different theory for each time we consider, each time we try to take another perspective, each time we speak to another expert. These experts agree; those experts disagree. Perplexing, an enigma, a riddle the answer of which remains forever out of reach. The alleged mystery—the answered question— remains, all the more tantalizing because we know there is an answer.

As troubling as it is for those of us who look for the answer to “how” it happened, families struggle with fathomless questions a thousand times harder to deal with: why my loved one? Of all the thousands of trips, why this particular flight, why this particular plane, why this January, why this Monday?

Families play the questions back in their heads, rewind their lives and replay the events as if somehow in the thinking of it, they could reach back through time, stop their loved one from boarding that plane, or otherwise change a single factor–make the pilot leave his phone behind. Make the mechanic give that lug nut an extra turn. Bless that plane designer—or the parts designer—with something extra so that on that long ago day when he came up that design, it was flawless. The thing that if it had been done just a little differently, would have kept the tragedy from ever happening. That magic something that could undo what has been done with such conclusive finality. As if the moment could be rewound as in a movie, and come out differently. These are the questions which are beyond inscrutable, profound questions heavy with the weight of life, of love wrenched away before its time.

The answer may be elusive.

But there’s always rigid hard reality behind a crash. There’s always an actual sequence of events that instigated the tragic event.

So any time I see an airline being proactive, I think of lives that will be saved.

Alaska Airlines begun inspecting their 14 Boeing 737 jetliners because of the emergency airworthiness directive issued Friday. Severe vibration occurred in some European flights was due to “lug failure on an elevator control mechanism. The elevator controls the plane’s pitch.”

There are mysteries hanging about 737s such as ITEK & PERM and recently Ethiopia. In the first two it was determined that it was human error.

I have always believed that pilot error alone will not bring down a plane.

This vibration opens a whole new window of possibility of answers to our unanswerable questions. In some of these past crashes where we have not found the answers, is it possible these tragic flights encountered turbulence which was exacerbated by this vibration? Could this flaw have been instrumental in the Aeroflot-Nord B735 crash at Perm on Sep 14th 2008? or to Itek Air B732 at Bishkek on Aug 24th 2008? Or more recently, to Ethiopian Airlines B738 in the Mediterranean Sea on Jan 25th 2010?

So I am glad to hear that Alaska Airlines begun inspecting their 14 Boeing 737 jetliners. I am glad to hear that Alaska Airlines is committed to safety. They should be commended for wasting no time in ordering an inspection.

If only all carriers were so diligent, there might be fewer grieving families. And that wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it?

LAX to JFK
No, LAX to SWF to (bus) to JFK

Never heard of SWK? It’s Stewart International Airport, 90 miles N of New York. It’s the infamous airport where this Saturday 126 passengers on a Virgin America flight shared a nightmare for four to six hours on the tarmac, completed with rationed potato chips (4) rationed water (every 1/2 hour.)

On the bright side, the flight did not crash.

Diverted from NYC by weather, the 5 1/2 hour flight turned into a runway waiting room. Not all of the passengers were allowed off the plane into the airport; the flight attendants and airport personnel were getting testy. Then Jet Blue provided bus transportation to the stranded…er…trapped…er…Virgin America passengers for the 90 mile trip to JFK.

Passengers amused themselves by elaborating on their ordeal online. Much to the benefit of the travel-weary passengers, Virgin America’s CEO David Cush was one of the people who heard the online tale of woe, and is (we hear) refunding the cost of the trip plus $100 to the 126 passengers.

Cheaper than a lawsuit, I guess. I wonder if he’ll be getting them to sign anything.

What is going on with all of these unruly passengers attempting to open the door?
It is aerodynamically impossible to open these doors most of the time, but it is still a spectacularly stupid thing to attempt.

I hope it is not a trend. IF it is, it’s a bad one.

• Mar 9 2010 SAS Scandinavian Airline – Drunk male passenger attempts to open the exit
• Mar 8 2010 China Southern Airlines female passenger sitting next to the overwing emergency exit turns the door handle
• Jan 23 2010 United Airlines male passenger attempts to open the aircraft door
• Oct 11 2008 Air India Express passenger running and down the aisle demands the airplane’s door should be opened
• Oct 20 2008 South African Airways male passenger attempts to open one of the airplane doors
• Sept 19 2009 China Eastern passenger repeatedly tries to open one of the rear doors
• August 26 2009 Qantas passenger attempts to open an overwing emergency exit

George’s Point of View

Humans are amazing inventors, capable of envisioning a “possible” for every “impossible,” creating incredibly complex feats of engineering, in the name of Hughes and Learjet and McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed and a hundred others whose names won’t be forgotten. Even amazing inventors can engineer lemons, or fail to see every possible contingency. But the possibility of error goes beyond human error. Humans are not responsible for the fact that rust exists. Do you blame Einstein for the fact of relativity? It’s the dichotomy of reality: for every up there’s a down. Everything creates its own opposite. “Fixed” allows the possibility of “broken” to exist.

Thinking logically along those lines…we can speculate and plan, study and test, polish and revise, but does that make our planning and scheduling invincible? Even if it were perfect (and I’m not saying it is, because I am speaking of things in general), things fall apart. The nature of reality is change. Change happens. Plan for contingencies 1-3000 and the one that will happen is contingency # 3001.

We have to be careful sometimes when we start talking about human error. Unfortunately the container where the human error begins is life itself, because in theory EVERY thing can be blamed on human error. The patient died, blame the doctor. Nevermind that the patient was 112 and suffered every illness known to man.

In aviation, gunnysacking the humans happens too. Maybe they didn’t cause the lightning but they flew through it. We humans are pretty amazing creatures but we don’t control nature. We can plan and schedule all we want, but if you are going to fly during rain, you’re going to encounter thunderstorms. So let us say that the storm is responsible for the event. Do we blame the pilot for flying through the storm? Do we blame the arrogance of the plane manufacturer who claims the plane is invincible and can fly through anything?

Pilots are human. We have the full range of the spectrum, from the sublime, Sully, to the ridiculous (Colgan Air’s Marvin) Renslow. The problem that a hero like Sully presents to the rest of us is that he creates the philosophy that well trained pilots should be able to solve any emergency.

But take for example Air France 447… could the pilots have been able to cope with flight speed problems caused by the performance of flawed parts?

Is the failure to recover from an unexpected event (wind shear, potential conflicts with other planes, broken planes) pilot error? If we put human beings in an easy chair of an automated job in some point-and-click fly-by-wire captain seat, when the crisis happens, the built-in redundancies in flight systems fail and the pilot can’t snap out of humanness to turn into Superman when the wire breaks, is that pilot error?

Our pilots now have to deal with cost-cutting industry practices causing fatigue and poor training.

Even if the ultimate safety device in the airplane is the well-trained pilot, guess what? Pilots are human. Humans are capable of mistakes. They are capable of mistakes when operating planes.

Let us not forget that pilots fly planes that were crafted by humans, maintained by humans, orchestrated by human ATC, landing on airports designed by humans.

There is no one single answer. I have seen it a hundred times, and each case is unique unto itself, with one generality that can apply.

Human error occurs at all levels, and rarely alone.

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.