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.

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.

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.