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”

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Slovakia Plants Explosive on Dublin-bound Flight


Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Diego Ruiz De Vargas

What: Danube Wings Boeing 737-400 en route from Poprad/Tatry Slovakia to Dublin
Where: The entire flight
When: Jan 2nd 2010
Who: Number aboard not released
Why: A Slovakian agency decided to test their security by slipping 9 packages of explosives into innocent passengers’ luggage. Eight of those packages were found.

George’s Point of View

ONE of those packages—85 grams of RDX plastic explosive— made it all the way to the innocent Slovakian-Irish passenger’s HOUSE, where suddenly Irish forces evacuate their entire neighborhood (reportedly evacuating several apartment buildings and shutting down a couple of intersections) to retrieve that one package of live explosive from his apartment on Dorset Street. Stefan Gonda, a 49-year-old Slovak electrician working in Ireland, must have been really surprised at that knock on the door. On the other hand, maybe not, since he’s from Slovakia and may be used to such thoughtless, stupid, ridiculous, dangerous, psychotic behavior from his government.

How do they justify endangering a plane full of innocent passengers on a commercial jet? RDX is considered unstable–it can light without a detonator. What if there had been turbulence? What if the temperature had dropped to make the compound even more unstable?

One head has already rolled for this. The head of the Slovak border and foreign police Tibor Mako resigned. Was he the one responsible or did he throw himself on his sword? Is there more to this?

I find it difficult to believe that anyone would use real passengers as guinea pigs, put real explosives on an actual international flight. If Ireland has a legal chip on its shoulder the same way the US does, there’d be an International lawsuit pending.

The Slovokian ministry claims no one was endangered.

Excuse me?

85 grams of RDX plastic explosive aboard a plane. Irish forces evacuated the neighborhood to retrieve it…but hey, on a volatile oxygen pumped package like an airplane, no problem.

It’s hard to believe they call that branch of government “intelligence.” Talk about an oxymoron.

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Before US Airways Flight 1549–Update

  • US Airways ship number N106US flew on January 13, 2009, and January 15, 2009, with the same flight number of AWE 1549 from New York’s LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas [International] Airport in North Carolina.
  • Multiple passengers said that on a a different day, on the SAME plane, same flight, SAME location the SAME airbus experienced a series of compressor stalls on the right engine, punctuated by some backfires or explosions, with fire coming out of the engine. Although the pilot announced an emergency landing, he then continued on to Charlotte.
  • This was confirmed by one source to be the same Airbus A-320, which is N106US.
  • This prior incident could have also been caused by the engine ingesting a bird or birds. But…was it?
  • This brings up two questions: Could something else have been wrong with the engines on the N106US Airbus? OR can something be done to safeguard the engine intake to prevent the vacuum from sucking birds inside?

What: U.S. Airways passenger Airbus Flight 1549 enroute to Charlotte, N.C. taking off at t 3:26 p.m
Where: Hudson River off New York City
When: Thurs jan 15
Who: 155 on board scrambling onto rescue boat (50 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots )
Why: Pilot hit a flock of geese after taking off from LaGuardia. (Two bird hits) Four minutes after takeoff passengers report hearing an explosion from the left side of the plane.

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Warsaw: An opinion

What: LOT Polish Airlines Boeing 767-300 en route from Newark,NJ (USA) to Warsaw (Poland) with 220 passengers and 11 crew
Where: Warsaw
When: Nov 1st 2011
Who: 220 passengers and 11 crew

Belly landings happen frequently enough that there is a checklist of procedures. What makes it difficult? Visualize how a match works. Then think about that plane landing, full of fuel, scraping on the runway. That’s what makes it difficult.

There are basic procedures that are performed. Consider that a 767-300ER has a total of 24,140 gallons, or 161,800 pounds in two wing tanks at 6,070 gallons (or 40,700 pounds), and a center tank at 12,000 gallons, or 80,400 pounds. ( Landing heavy on wheels would cause a wheel or brake fire.) In a gear up landing, the pilot has to lighten the plane by burning off and/or dumping fuel; and in the meantime, the crew does their best to get the gear to work. If they do not, they have to land with the nose up, on a long runway on fire retardant foam. Of course nothing is certain till the investigation is complete, but in my opinion, the crew did a stellar job. And everyone survived, which is what most matters.

Dumping fuel and spending eighty minutes circling Warsaw would not have been enough to completely burn off fuel. There was still the danger of fire as the flight was landing. Flight and cabin crew took every precaution. The landing appeared picture perfect, sliding smoothy on the fuselage. Inside the plane, the passengers were quietly terrified.

It may be that the pilot’s glider experience was a help. Between you and me, it looks a lot smoother if you watch the videos with the sound off, so you don’t hear metal screaming against pavement.

The airport was well prepared, and crews foamed the runway with flame retardant in advance, and stopped any fires from spreading. There is plenty of footage of sparks and flames from the friction of the weight and force of the fuselage driving forward, and yet it came to rest with remarkably little damage.

The emergency crews did their job. So did the pilots, and so did the flight crew. The flight crew secured the stairs in place as soon as the plane was at a standstill. Passengers could not have moved out of the jet and on to the runway any faster.

It isn’t that common for all the gears to fail, but less common for all of them to fail at the same time. . My pilot-experts tell me that the most likely way for the hydraulics of all three landing gear to fail is total loss of fluid. There’s an alternate system; the alternate system for landing gear performs as a combination of electricity and gravity. You release the electronic locks, and gravity kicks in. I don’t think I have seen a reason given why the alternative system failed, but that would seem to be an electrical problem.

But enough speculation–the investigation will reveal everything. For now it certainly appears that even if the gear system failed, the human system did not.

We hear so many bad things about pilots, and airlines, about the entire industry. Aviation watchdogs were badmouthing the industry yesterday, and will be doing so again tomorrow, but for today, it is refreshing to hear something good. What I am hearing about the expertise of the Polish flight crew and airport is all commendable. LOT, you did well. First Officer Jerzy Szwarc and Captain Wrona, you have made your mark in history with the lives you saved today. The Polish media has been hungry for heroes to balance the April 2010 disaster, and now they have you.

Already there is already a polish jingle that is a play on the pilot’s name, Captain Wrona. Wrona means “crow.”

“Lataj jak orze?, l?duj jak Wrona”
This translates to:
“Fly like an eagle, land like a Crow”

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Guam Route Emergencies Reflecting Vigilance or Roulette?

After four emergency landings in Guam in the past couple of weeks, Continental/United made a statement to the press.

Actually, four emergency landings…that’s not that unusual, is it? Of course, they were all at the same airport, with the same airline. I’ve written here recently about shabby looking, poorly maintained commercial airlines. As frequently as I fly, I really do not want to worry about whether or not a plane is capable of staying in the air. I don’t want to worry about a crew with a crippling pecking order, or pilots who don’t know how to fly. I really don’t want to worry about a broken plane.

I am always pointing out the need for maintenance to keep a plane in peak running order. Maintenance is important; and also, the pilots tell me that it is crucial to keep an eye on safety directives, and concurrent events which may reveal crucial matters affecting entire fleets, such as operating parts nearing the end of their lifespan, faulty parts, etc…

So someone should maybe look closely at those flights, and see if there is some factor that applies. Better to have prevention now, beforehand, than have a disaster happen, and lawyers looking into it after it is too late. Have these Guam flights been problematic in the past? Why are there problems now?I might ask how necessary are those flights?

About those 4 landings, Koji Nagata Director of Corporate Communications said that:

“We treat any issue aboard our aircraft seriously and our pilots will not hesitate to declare an emergency, when the situation warrants, in ensuring landing priority and returning our passengers and crew safely to the ground as quickly as possible. Typically a declaration of an emergency is precautionary in nature, as was true with both cases in question, and the situations were effectively managed without incident.”

Sure it would be great to never have emergencies. However. The time to handle an emergency IS BEFORE it turns tragic. Being able to handle emergencies is one safety skill at the top of the list of pilot skills, and one that can not be separated from the other skill that is becoming alarming among pilots (pilots who are losing the ability to fly due to automation.)

Sometimes factors are not clear. For example, it is true that in some recent tragic situations like the RusAir jet crash I talked about yesterday, there was a problem in the cockpit that prevented the crew from coping with the emergency. Bad flying? Primitive Airport? Insubordinate navigator and Inexperienced pilot? But it all came down to one conclusion: together or not, at that date and time, they were unable to cope with their emergency-bad weather, foggy landing, a plane that is a flying behemoth landing in a primitive airport, and they took down a whole plane full of people with them.

And as for the four emergency landings Continental/United experienced recently:
-the air speed indicator (PITOT tubes? like in AF447),
– -two landing gear situations
-and in the Guam flight CO-117, altitude equipment failure (another tube?)

The landing gear situations could reflect bad tires, hydraulics, landing at too fast, or even runway conditions; altitude and airspeed problems could be anything on the system, from the tubes to the electronics. Only detailed examination will reveal if there is some common cause

The planes landed safely. An emergency landing, a precautionary landing (whatever they want to call it), they handled the emergencies proactively, and landed safely. It is a whole lot better than the alternative.

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Spain Punishes Officers for Body Misidentification

George’s Point of View

After 30 bodies were misidentified and sent to the wrong grieving families, General Vicente Navarro received a three year sentence; and Commander Jose Ramirez and Captain Miguel Saez received 18-month sentences.

Some of the bodies had to be exhumed so that the misidentification could be verified.

Sixty-two soldiers died in the Yak-42 crash in Turkey on May 26, 2003. Imagine how the families felt. First they have to suffer the deaths. Then almost half of the victims were misidentified. And remember to the families, these weren’t random victims. They were husbands and sons.

Imagine how the families felt when they had to dig up their husbands and sons and have the remains crosschecked with dental records and DNA samples. It probably wasn’t limted to 30, either; they probably exhumed all the victims except for whichever ones might have been visually recognizable by family members.

One wonders if the buck stopped in the right place. Was the decision not to perform DNA/Dental verification really made by General Vicente Navarro or was it a decision that was passed down to him from defence minister Federico Trillo? Isn’t there a public policy of aviation procedure in cases such as this? My question is not whether the sentence is just, but whether the right individual was sentenced.

Carelessness of this profundity goes beyond cruelty.

If I were a Spanish lawyer or on the Ministerio de Fomento, Civil Aviation, I’d be going through policies with a fine toothed comb. I’d love to hear from Madrid to find out just exactly what they’ve done in the past three years to prevent this kind of inhuman treatment in the future.

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Southwest Airlines: Hole in fuselage


Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact Photographer Tim Perkins

What: Southwest Airlines 737 en route from Nashville to Baltimore
Where: Charleston’s Yeager Airport
When: 6:30 p.m Monday July 13
Who: 126 passengers and five crew
Why: While en route, the cabin depressurized when a hole (metal fatigue?) approximately the size of a football appeared in the fuselage. The plane managed to land safely in Charleston West Virginia. The NTSB is investigating.

(News photos don’t look football sized, but it is sure big enough to see plenty of daylight through.)

George’s Point of View

The 737 is a true workhorse, built to land and takeoff almost without too much delay except to load and unload passengers.

I fly Southwest to Las Vegas all the time. It’s a short hop.

I must admit, that every time I fly in one of these planes I have begun to worry about the age and/or the fatigue of the structure. A trip like one from LA to Vegas, most times, is a beating on the passengers and the plane itself. My guess is that 4 out of 5 of these short trips encounter turbulence, sometimes bad turbulence. This beats up the plane. In this case, the plane being beaten up was manufactured in 1994. That’s a lot of years of turbulence abuse. Metal fatigue in these conditions is not surprising, and neither is it completely unexpected. An inspection on this plane last January revealed eight cracks in the frame that required repairs.

I’m just glad it was a BOEING, and that the pilot remained in control of the aircraft. And of course, it’s a good thing that Southwest is now inspecting all of their planes for fatigue. Last year Southwest was fined $7.5 million for overdue inspections. I hope this is not going to be a repeat of last year. All the timely inspections in the world aren’t going to make this plane any younger. Maybe it’s time to put this particular plane out to pasture.

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