After Muhammad Abu Tahir drank 5 airline bottles of wine, when the crew refused to give him any more, he became abusive and belligerent and locked himself in the bathroom. For this, the Air Tran Airways jet had a fighter jet escort. The Department of Justice says Tahir faces “up to 20 years in federal prison, a fine of up to $250,000, as well as restitution to the airline. ”

I really hate to see drunks go to jail for being drunk and stupid but really, keeping this guy in jail and out of harm’s way might be doing him a favor.

As far as amenities, like leg room, food, wine and beverage service, seat width, pitch, video access, laptop power, and WIFI are concerned, Economy, Premium, Business or First Class offer varying combinations depending on the airline. But for those “unruly” passengers who seem to be in the news more frequently, the airlines should come up with a new, discounted standing-room-only corner class called Time Out.

For Time Out class, of course, there would be no leg room, service, or amenities whatsoever. I would vote for a metal bar for them to hang on to for stability, but no doubt the airline would probably have to put in some kind of secure safety harness for insurance purposes. And, the unruly being by nature unruly, this time out area would also have to be sound-proofed, to keep from disturbing the other passengers.

If pressurization weren’t an issue, I’d even suggest a “rumble” seat on the exterior of the plane, from which in an emergency the objectionable passenger could be ejected (with parachute of course, we’re not heathens) or at least isolated. Certainly ejection of a parachuted passenger is a more democratic solution that the threat of fighter jets shooting down a commercial airliner carrying 131 paying customers and 1 drunken idiot. The experience of riding a “rumble seat” would no doubt present an entirely new perspective on flying to the drunken idiot.

I did mention that this would be a “discounted” class. I would expect that the aforementioned discount would not apply back to the passenger’s wallet; the difference between the origin ticket and the minimal expense of “Time Out” class would be forwarded to establish ongoing psychiatric therapy which would inevitably result from riding the rumble seat on the exterior of a plane.

Of course, none of this editorial is true–except for the fighter jet escort threatening to shoot down a commercial plane carrying 132 passengers.

The San Francisco bound flight that was escorted by two F-16 fighter jets was being escorted because a drunken, disruptive passenger locked himself in the bathroom. I do hope when the U.S. Gov’t lets him out of jail, they send him the bill.

One thing I feel is that someone out there in aviation (and I don’t know who it is)-the pilot in general, ATC, or the airline-does not respect Mother Nature. Weather happens. Sometimes very BIG weather happens. And people will just not be dissuaded by a little common sense. No matter what, if we want to go, we’re going to jump on our magical Boeing-Airbus-Embraer-McDonnell Douglas Sleigh like Santa Clause, the Postal Service or Fed Ex, and we will go. People want it, so the airlines are going to provide it, like the inscription on the James Farley post office in New York “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Or to more-or-less paraphrase David Farragut, “Damn the lightning, full speed ahead!”

So my first point is that we should respect nature a little more. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.

We commonly make assumptions here in all of our posts, because we’re using a who/what/where/when format. The “What” usually ends up as a synopsis of events, with just a little bit of why thrown in. But “why” is not a question we can take lightly. “Why” an incident happens is just too big for us to cover, especially since we try to get our posts up within hours of the event. Between you and me, if it takes a year for the whole NTSB research team made up of a federal building full of highly educated and experienced experts, thousands of pages of recorded documentation, video and concrete evidence, and the nation’s keenest analytical minds juggling all the permutations to figure out “why” a crash happened, then we don’t really think we can come up with the perfect “why” off the top of our heads fifteen minutes after the crash.

That said, there’s an expert in Jamaica–Lt. Col. Oscar Derby, director general of the Jamaica Civil Aviation — who says that the aircraft touched down at 4,100 feet (assuming this is fact, since one can assume the director general of Jamaican aviation has access to all the facts) and that number isn’t referring to altitude, it’s referring to the plane’s wheels contacting mother tarmac halfway down the runway. I’m not going to talk about his decisions, or his inquiry because it is simply too soon.

But if the plane landed halfway down the runway (if it is not internet gossip, but a fact that the plane did land halfway down the runway)…that is significant. It probably wouldn’t matter if the plane hadn’t bounced. Or if it hadn’t been raining. Or if the plane hadn’t hydroplaned. But ALL of those things happened too.

I don’t know why the pilot landed halfway down the runway; but I do know there is always some point of no return where the pilot must commit to either fly by or land. I don’t know the factors that came into play with this pilot, on this day, on this runway, during this storm that affected the decision. Experts will be spending years looking at this pilot’s split second decision.

The fact remains that in a harrowing rainstorm, after a turbulent flight, a bounce on landing, and hydroplaning, the American AIrlines crew still managed to come out of it with everyone aboard alive, and that is a job well done.

Remember the story of the boy who cried wolf? In the days when people’s lives depended on their herds, someone had to be there to watch over them. So our boy had the watch, and got tired, or was mischievous, or maybe he fell asleep, or was just plain old bored. Whatever the reason, he claimed to see a wolf when there wasn’t one. So the whole town went into overdrive emergency mode, and turned out in full force to protect the herd. But of course, there was no wolf. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, patted the boy on the back sympathetically, and went back to what they were doing. Everything got back to normal. After a time, the boy, for whatever the reason, got bored again, or tired, or mischievous. Maybe he liked all that energy or attention he got the first time he’d cried wolf. Whatever the reason, he did it again. And of course the town rose up into emergency overdrive again, bringing swords and pickaxes and plowshares and whatnot, but of course, there was no wolf. So when the townspeople headed back, they didn’t amend their procedures; they didn’t put up cameras, or send a new watch team in. No pat on the back for the boy this time–they just went back to what they were doing. And of course, the infamous third time he called, the town rose to the occasion, but there was no occasion. They had another chance to amend their procedure, but no, this time they glared at the boy, and went back to what they were doing. This is when they should have put someone else there, because he’d lost all credibility. It was inevitable that now that everyone was desensitized, the wolf was going to show up. And so he did. And of course, the boy cried wolf this time because this time there was a wolf, and of course as the story goes, by now no one believed him when he sounded the alarm, even though this time it was really an emergency.

So, this is why I have been wrestling with whether or not to write about the Northwestern Nashville event. The one where the plane was stopped over a suspicious looking package that turned out to be christmas ornaments. The one that has figured so highly in the news. It seems to be very important that 75 passengers and five crew members were evacuated, screened and for two hours, dogs and a bomb unit searched the plane and nothing was found. The plane went on its way.

But here’s the rub.

This was an emergency procedure. The package could have been dangerous. It could have been a red herring, while something else was on the plane that was more dangerous. The boy did NOT cry wolf. The boy did his job. The herd was safe, and went on its way unharmed.

This is a non-event. Passengers reboarded after about two hours and the flight continued. A few people had their schedules rattled. Maybe a little more importantly, a few people had their calm rattled, but ultimately nothing was lost but a few hours. This was a good thing for all concerned. Can you say “Your Homeland Security Dollars At Work?”

It is important for us to remember that the watch worked.

Perhaps the whole emergency procedure turned out in the long run to be nothing more than a drill. But the value of a drill is that it hones skill. Practice builds expertise.

I am sure in some countries, anti-American spindoctors are chuckling over keystone-cop-three-stooges retellings of our efforts at national security. I hope there are no such versions in this country. Because the watch worked.

The package could have meant another disaster. It could have been bad news. It could have meant the end for 80 individuals, and grief and terror for the rest of the country. Instead, it was just another piece of lint that got caught in the filter.

We should be thrilled at the effectiveness at the filter, not ridiculing the process anywhere (except perhaps on Saturday Night Live or in the desperate humor of late night talk show hosts no one is taking seriously anyway.)

We should not be distracted by this non-event. We should be glad that our emergency crews are out there, doing their jobs, flexing their muscles, refining their procedures and keeping the watch. In the words of Winston Churchill, It is no use saying,” ‘We are doing our best.’ We have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.”

We are doing what is necessary.

The boy has not cried wolf. Neither should the media.

While last night’s American Airlines Boeing crash landing in the Jamaican rain with limited visibility, with significant tailwinds on ungrooved pavement, with patches of residual tire rubber no less, was catastrophic for the plane, it is rather amazing that even though the Boeing was subjected to forces powerful enough to split the plane into at least three pieces, it neither caught fire, hydroplaned 10 more yards to end up in the bay, nor lost even a single one of the passengers.

An achievement in survival. A testament to piloting skill. Or maybe it is just an improvement in plane design.

I hope that someone out there is appreciating how different this crash is from the Tam (Airbus) crash in Brazil, where a bad landing in rainy conditions on an ungrooved surface was exacerbated by a malfunctioning thrust reverser, and the plane ended up crashing a perimeter fence, crossing a thoroughfare and causing a blazing fire that annihilated a warehouse across the street from the runway.

Someone more versed in plane design could explain the difference in dynamics between plane crashes; someone expert in runway physics could explain how the runway surfaces did or did not play a part, but that analysis will come later during the NTSB investigation.

For now, I predict that you’ll be seeing the powers that be blaming the pilots for breaking the airplane, rather than applauding the fact that no one died. There has already been at least one article blaming the crash on the fact that the pilots were in the 12th hour of their (up to )14 hour shift.

This is just a taste of the spin-doctoring to come. I’m sure we’ll see the crash “arm-chair” analyzed a dozen different ways, depending on the writer’s agenda. We will watch the groups lobbying for in-country maintenance flipping this story to blame it on out-of-the-country maintenance; the pilot fatigue people will be using this as a morality tale about long pilot hours; the Norman Manley International Airport improvement people will be talking about fixing runway surfaces or maybe doing other needed airport alterations.

For now, I think we should all spend a few moments taking a good hard look at the mess that used to be a Boeing 737-800. How did anyone live through that? In fact, everyone survived.

Some families in Jamaica will be hugging their loved ones just a little bit harder this season. Anyway you look at it, we had a little bit of a Christmas miracle this time.

George’s Point of View

An out-of-date (circa May 2008) 93-page Transportation Security Administration federal airport screeners manual that tells U.S. airport screeners how to do their jobs was posted on a government jobs site. The government document had been edited in Adobe, but the edits were removable. Of course, the manual has been updated half a dozen times since that date.

On the other hand, if you consider over time the number of ex-airport security screeners, the contents of that (out of date) manual is probably not exactly a national secret.

Here’s an idea: maybe the Transportation Security Administration should leak some more old manuals to get seriously useless misinformation out there.

A number of audit visits have also been requested by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to evaluate the safety situation of authorities and companies in Albania, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan and Yemen.

Why only an audit? How many second chances did the 153 passengers on Yemenia Airlines flight have? I ask why Yemenia Airlines is not on the banned list, after the terrible crash in the Comoros? The EU is displaying a terrible, unforgivable unconcern for human life.

Inspections in Germany and Italy had shown up “deficiencies” with the airline, and in July last year the EU commission had insisted Yemenia provide an “action plan” to address safety concerns. A year before that, “SOS voyage aux Comores” (SOS Travel to Comoros) began protesting shoddy aviation service, and called on French authorities to act. According to SOS spokesman Farid Soilihi, “Flights between Sanaa and Moroni are carried out by cowboy operators. The accident was predictable, these are planes that do not meet international standards. Yemenia was the cheapest of all the ‘rubbish companies’ with a near-monopoly on this destination”

Yemenia Airlines is presently owned by the Government of Yemen (51%) and the government of Saudi Arabia (49%).

–GH–

The ban list announcement is here:

The European Commission published today (27/11/2009) the twelfth update of the Community’s list of airlines banned in the European Union which comprises those of three additional countries following safety deficiencies highlighted by audits. With this update the ban imposed upon three airlines is lifted and one airline is allowed to resume operations under conditions given satisfactory improvements in safety.

“We cannot afford any compromises in air safety. Citizens have the right to fly safely in Europe and anywhere else in the world”, said Commission Vice-President Antonio Tajani. “Our aim is not just to create a list of airlines that are dangerous. We are ready to help those countries to build up their technical and administrative capacity to guarantee the safety of civil aviation in their countries. We will step up our cooperation with the International Civil Aviation Organisation to ensure that our efforts are better coordinated to grant assistance where it is most needed. We cannot, however, accept that airlines fly while not complying with international safety standards. This endangers all of us who unknowingly could be on an unsafe plane. This is why the list is necessary”.

The new list replaces the previous one and can already be consulted on the Commission’s website .

The rationale of the rules governing the list of banned airlines is two-fold:

a) The list serves as a preventive instrument for safeguarding aviation safety. This is illustrated by the numerous instances where the Community has successfully addressed potential safety threats well ahead of resorting to the ultimate measure of imposing restrictions.

b) The list also acts as a last resort when serious safety problems persist by imposing restrictions or banning access to European airspace; . Such measures give a strong incentive to remedy safety deficiencies;

With this update three carriers licensed in Ukraine have been removed from the list: Ukraine Cargo Airways and Volare have both lost their Air Operator Certificates; following the receipt of certain information from the Ukrainian authorities, the carrier Motor Sich is also removed from the list. A fourth carrier, Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines is allowed to resume operations with one aircraft. This is the result of a successful visit lead by the European Aviation Safety Agency with the participation of two Member States in Ukraine to verify improvements achieved by the companies.

In the same vein, the significant progress made by the civil aviation authority of Angola and the air carrier TAAG Angola Airlines to resolve progressively any safety deficiencies are recognised. TAAG is therefore allowed to increase the number of aircraft it uses for its flights to Portugal.

This update also highlights the continuous dialogue with certain States regarding the safety of their carriers. Strengthened cooperation and progress was noted with Albania, Angola, Egypt, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. A number of audit visits have also been requested by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) to evaluate the safety situation of authorities and companies in Albania, Egypt, Kyrgyzstan and Yemen.

At the same time, the list was extended to include all air carriers certified in Djibouti, Republic of Congo and Sao Tome and Principe because of safety deficiencies identified in the system of oversight by the aviation authorities of these countries.

All carriers covered by this and previous updates continue to be subject to prioritised ramp inspections at Community airports in order to ensure their consistent adherence to the international safety standards.

Today, the Community’s list has five individual carriers whose operations are fully banned in the European Union – Air Koryo from the Democratic People Republic of Korea, Air West from Sudan, Ariana Afghan Airlines from Afghanistan, Siem Reap Airways International from Cambodia and Silverback Cargo Freighters from Rwanda. All carriers from 15 countries – 228 companies in total – are banned: Angola (with the exception of one carrier which operates under restrictions and conditions), Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, (with the exception of three carriers which operate under restrictions and conditions), Indonesia, Kazakhstan (with the exception of one carrier which operates under restrictions and conditions), the Kyrgyz Republic, Liberia, Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone, Sao Tome and Principe, Swaziland and Zambia. There are eight air carriers allowed to operate under restrictions and conditions – TAAG Angola Airlines, Air Astana from Kazakhstan, Gabon Airlines, Afrijet and SN2AG from Gabon, Air Bangladesh, Air Service Comores and Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines from Ukraine.

George’s Point of View

Can’t phone while driving, can’t text while driving, can’t drink while driving. What next? For pilots, don’t surf while flying. No federal rules specifically ban pilots’ use of laptops or other personal electronic devices above 10,000 feet, but Delta does have just such a policy.

I know the Internet can be engrossing. I’ve logged on for one minute and looked up 2 or 3 hours later, but I wasn’t driving—or flying a plane—when I did it.

Delta has suspended Richard Cole and Timothy Cheney, the pilots who overshot their destination by 150 miles.

Would it have been better if they’d been sleeping?

You may be surprised that in some places, it is allowed for pilots to sleep while flying. Pilot Antonio De Biasi provided me this little tidbit of information:

International carriers including former Varig, Air France, British Airways and Qantas allow pilots to nap, but sleeping while flying is prohibited at U.S. airlines by the FAA. Just last month, the Air Transport Association again pressed the FAA to allow controlled cockpit napping, citing NASA research that found a mid-flight snooze significantly reduces the risks of overall pilot fatigue.

The NASA study begun in 1989 and allowed one group of pilots flying across the Pacific to take a 25-minute nap while their co-pilots flew the planes, while a control group was required to remain awake for the entire flight. Those without the naps nodded off five times as much – including while on the approach to the airport – as those who got some sleep.

What is scary to me is the finding that pilots without naps nodded off five times as frequently as those who slept. If this was a blind study, those same ratios may be true for all pilots flying across the Pacific. Pilots nodding off may not be that unusual. That’s disturbing enough for me to want to bring an air horn on my next flight, just to honk it at regular intervals or whenever the captain is not a chatty sort.

Sleeping and surfing on the job: neither are illegal, at least, not yet, anyway.

And I am sure that I’m not the only passenger who wants the only law I want my pilots breaking to be the law of gravity.

George’s Point of View

Thanks to Alexis Stevens of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, we know that this week Delta :

• landed on the taxi way instead of the runway at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
• flew 150 miles past their destination.
• had a landing gear emergency.
• posted a $161 million third quarter loss.

However, I would like to point out that Delta’s tough week didn’t involve Delta losing a life. However, this week also:

• Divi Divi lost a pilot in the Caribbean
• Victoria Air DC3 lost a whole flight crew in a fiery crash into a warehouse.
• Westjet had a member of the flight crew injured in turbulence
• Indonesian National Transportation Safety Committee released their preliminary report on the Merpati DHC6 plane that flew into a mountain, killing 14
• a part of a Lufthansa’s galley landed on someone unfortunate enough to be in falling distance

And there were the usual bird strikes, unruly passengers, engine failures, cracked windshields, medical emergencies, flat tires, hydraulic failures, random burning smells, electrical fires, engine shut downs and a myriad of other emergencies that somehow managed to be non-catastrophic.

So all in all, a week as usual. Well, maybe a slightly unusual week, what with Northwest overshooting its destination, and Air Asia delivering a baby….

Or maybe in the immortal words of Walter Kornbluth (Eugene Levy, Splash) “Oy, what a week I’m having.”

George’s Point of View

I fly a certain carrier.

I fly a lot of miles on this carrier.

This carrier impresses me as a company. They got through a bankruptcy as a team, and that says something to me.

Now let me tell you what I don’t like.

A half-*** approach to maintenance.

You fill in the blanks.

What if the maintenance of this carrier’s fleet were as bad as the aesthetic condition of the interior and exterior of the planes? Within a couple of months even new and re-configured planes lose that “new plane” smell. I can live without the “new.” What I can’t live without is working parts. I don’t care how shiny the bells and whistles are, I just want the important parts (engine, hydraulics, on board computer systems, etc.) to function. When I board one of these planes, every single time, I send a little prayer skyward that the maintenance has been done, perfectly.

There’s no margin for error. I know I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. It’s not like a car–when you get a lemon, and you have to keep pulling over to the side of the road and calling road service. It’s not like a ship, where at least the passengers can get into a lifeboat and have a fighting chance at survival. There’s no soft shoulder or lifeboat for a plane. There’s only straight down, and certain termination. Every pilot, every crew member, every passenger puts their very lives into the hands of those mechanics. And if they’re American mechanics, I can be relatively confident that they’re well-paid, well-fed, and well-educated. Do I have that assurance if the mechanic is in some other country? No, I cannot.

How can any passenger feel confident when the mechanics can’t read the plane’s manual? When I board a plane, I have every intention of getting where I am bound. With an American maintenance team, I am assured that if there were the slightest inkling that the maintenance were not up to par, I still can be confident that the parameters of maintenance are overseen by the FAA and the NTSB, and prescribed by American standards of excellence; and any default of or deviation from that standard of excellence is proscribed by and accountable thru the massive engine of our legal system. Can I say that when maintenance is farmed out to some obscure third world entity? Of course not.

I had one emergency landing one hour out of Sao Paulo and was forced to stay the night, and wait 24 hours for the dubious right to depart on what turned out to be the same plane. Instead of taking off as expected, we rolled to a complete stop out on the runway. The captain came on the PA system stating that he was just not comfortable with the smell in the cockpit, and we were going back to the terminal.

The pilot knew better to trust his own senses over dubious maintenance practices. So for that flight, it was back to the terminal for more waiting.

I do have some cause to worry about maintenance. If there is belt tightening that must be done, by all means do it. But not if it means sacrificing safety standards in favor of a third world discount.

George’s Point of View

Right now, the European Union allows pilots and cabin crews to work up to 14 hours straight, a situation which the president of the European Cockpit Association says is “a dangerous gamble with passengers.” A U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration pilot survey said 80% of pilots admit to have fallen asleep during a flight. Easa’s Moebus Report recommends lowering the max time to 13 day hours day and 10 night hours.

I would no more want to be in a plane piloted by an exhausted pilot than I would choose to drive myself when I’m sleepy. 14 hours straight is simply too long a time-span to be entirely safe.

George’s Point of View

It’s published so it must be true. Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger–hero of the Jan. 15 Airbus A320 miracle landing on the Hudson–is going to be part of US Airways Flight operations safety management team. This means he’ll be handling regular flights and also they’re giving him a suit and making him management. (Or would that be the uniform with the really shiny epaulettes?)

Never has anyone deserved recognition more.

Do you hear us Sully? We’re still applauding.

George’s Point of View

New technology is coming in 2013 that will replace pilots current “see and avoid” avoidance system over the Hudson, where pilots rely on listening to a traffic frequency to keep them out of harm’s way. Obviously, this is proving inadequate over the Hudson River where the helicopter and plane collided last August killing nine. All those buildings to avoid–and all those planes and helicopters too.

Until 2013, more regulations will be in place regarding what vehicle flies at which altitude. The new system will involve GPS tracking on visible receiver screens carried on planes and helicopters, a new take on old radar technology.

It’s never too late to save lives. Though one wonders if pilots can’t see a whole plane coming, (or conversely, a helicopter at nine o’clock, or right in front of them) if a blip on a screen is going to be more effective. Given the heavy traffic over the Hudson, it just might look like Space Invaders and how much good will that do?

Bombardier is promising their new C series planes will “cut greenhouse gas emissions, ensure substantial fuel savings and be four times quieter .”

Let’s hope all these cuts don’t also sacrifice safety along with heavier materials. As far as safety is concerned, will the new planes made of “lightweight composite and aluminum lithium materials, built to accommodate stricter environmental standards and” well-built airplane(s) … capable of withstanding turbulence” be sacrificing the safety of sturdier construction and time-tested safety features to reach optimistically green standards?

How will these new lighter planes fare when subjected to unexpected turbulence, which is commonplace in realistic day to day flying conditions? I have no answers, only questions.