AirAsia Flight Missing - 155 on board

[Hemi-Cuda]

Originally Posted by polak

The problem is that it's not just pilots you have to have faith in. It's also the plane itself.

If you get a flat tire, or something breaks in your car, 99.9% of the time, nothing will come of it. You pull over and deal with it.

Something goes wrong with a plane and #### gets real, very fast. So you not only have to have faith in the pilots, but also the mechanics, the airline, luck and anyone that comes in contact with the plane or the planes componenets and then also your fellow passengers. Lots of trust involved.

Pilots are essentially bus drivers. The only difference is, the consequences of things gonig wrong on a bus are exponentially less likely to be fatal then on a plane. Hence the difference in training, pay and stature.

Edit: This post probably isn't helping... my bad.

Things go wrong with planes all the time, you just never hear about most of them because there is so much redundancy built into modern aircraft. I'll take a plane over a bus everytime simply for the pilot redundancy. On a bus if the driver is drowsy and falls asleep, you're screwed (which happens quite frequently). On a plane there's always two qualified pilots and two sets of eyes looking over everything, to me that's much more reassuring

[sa226]

Originally Posted by polak

The problem is that it's not just pilots you have to have faith in. It's also the plane itself.

If you get a flat tire, or something breaks in your car, 99.9% of the time, nothing will come of it. You pull over and deal with it.

Something goes wrong with a plane and #### gets real, very fast. So you not only have to have faith in the pilots, but also the mechanics, the airline, luck and anyone that comes in contact with the plane or the planes componenets and then also your fellow passengers. Lots of trust involved.

Pilots are essentially bus drivers. The only difference is, the consequences of things gonig wrong on a bus are exponentially less likely to be fatal then on a plane. Hence the difference in training, pay and stature.

Edit: This post probably isn't helping... my bad.

Must resist.....

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by sa226

Must resist.....

AirBUS. I rest my case.

Boeing pilots are still gods among men though.

[KelVarnsen]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

AirBUS. I rest my case.

Boeing pilots are still gods among men though.

[InglewoodFan]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

I'm not recommending it (as it may freak nervous flyers out), but go over to the Aviation Herald website and see just how many little things happen in commercial aviation every day, and with the end result of the flight ending safely every single time. It really shows just how safe commercial air travel is, and the levels of redundancy built into aircraft that make that possible.

I was on a flight last year that made the list on Aviation Herald. I had no idea anything was wrong until we were on the ground looking at the firetrucks which came to meet us. The pilot then announced that he had shut down one of the engines over the Alps.

[schooner]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I remember flying Central Mountain Air one time and we had to abort the landing being it was so snowy that the pilots couldn't find the runway. They actually said that over the intercom. They said they couldn't find the runway and would try one more time and if they couldn't find it a 2nd time, they would fly to Quesnel to land. I kept thinking, please just fly to Quesnel and land.

Were you flying into Williams Lake?

I was flying out of Williams Lake a while back. Low visibility on the arrival meant a couple aborted landings. If I remember right the flight went to Quesnel before trying again and landing in Williams Lake. Sucked for me as I was flying to Vancouver to connect to Maui. Missed my flight and had to fly down to LA and take the next mornings flight to Maui.

From what I understand Williams Lake airport has a lot of delays, especially in the winter, due to visibility.

[FLAME ENVY]

Originally Posted by schooner

Were you flying into Williams Lake?

I was flying out of Williams Lake a while back. Low visibility on the arrival meant a couple aborted landings. If I remember right the flight went to Quesnel before trying again and landing in Williams Lake. Sucked for me as I was flying to Vancouver to connect to Maui. Missed my flight and had to fly down to LA and take the next mornings flight to Maui.

From what I understand Williams Lake airport has a lot of delays, especially in the winter, due to visibility.

Indeed. YCG (Castelgar) was much worse however. The good old NDB approach to 15.... YCG is thankfully RNAV enabled now.

[Hackey]

Originally Posted by Bigtime

Yes Canadian North and their "beginner pilots"...

Would you mind elaborating on what you meant by this? I've taken Canadian North a few times and was just curious. Had a few scary moments but for the most part they were alright. Just curious to hear an opinion from someone in the industry who probably hears a lot more than the average person .

[Slanter]

Originally Posted by Hackey

Would you mind elaborating on what you meant by this? I've taken Canadian North a few times and was just curious. Had a few scary moments but for the most part they were alright. Just curious to hear an opinion from someone in the industry who probably hears a lot more than the average person .

Yeah, I'm curious now too... I fly Canadian North often.

[FLAME ENVY]

Bigtime was likely being sarcastic in his response to "Robo's" comment on Canadian North.

CN is a great carrier, I personally know 2 pilot's who fly for them currently. The 737-200 is also a great airplane BTW.

[FLAME ENVY]

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

I remember flying Central Mountain Air one time and we had to abort the landing being it was so snowy that the pilots couldn't find the runway. They actually said that over the intercom. They said they couldn't find the runway and would try one more time and if they couldn't find it a 2nd time, they would fly to Quesnel to land. I kept thinking, please just fly to Quesnel and land.

Without getting into complexity. The pilot's indeed could "find" the runway but there are numerous safety caveats in place on an IAP approach. The runway or markings must be observed by the crew at a certain point on the approach (decision height/minimums). If there is no visual, a missed approach should be executed. That would likely be the case on your CMA flight, the crew could not see the runway when they reached minimums and executed a missed.


Company SOP's, various categories of instrument approaches all come into play as well. At the end of the day, it's all about safety.

[Acey]

Yeah the pilot could have picked his words a bit better there, I can see how it could be interpreted as literally just flying blindly through cloud and not knowing where the runway was.

[skudr248]

Originally Posted by Robo

I was't afraid of flying until I started working up north taking canadian north planes with their very old 737 planes and beginner pilots once a week.... one landing was like a straight 10 - 15 foot drop onto the runway i could only do it for a couple years for my sanity

Amen, had way to many scary times going up north.

[Bigtime]

Originally Posted by Hackey

Would you mind elaborating on what you meant by this? I've taken Canadian North a few times and was just curious. Had a few scary moments but for the most part they were alright. Just curious to hear an opinion from someone in the industry who probably hears a lot more than the average person .

Originally Posted by FLAME ENVY

Bigtime was likely being sarcastic in his response to "Robo's" comment on Canadian North.

CN is a great carrier, I personally know 2 pilot's who fly for them currently. The 737-200 is also a great airplane BTW.

Exactly what I was getting at.

[FlamesAddiction]

Some of those northern pilots are extremely talented but just prefer small town life. I think it is a mistake to say they are all beginners or just doing time there to get flying hours. I knew one that was an ex-air force pilot and they just don't let dummies into the air force.

Some of them do have rickety planes and the flying conditions can be difficult, but I have a lot of respect for the pilots.

edit: The CMA flight I was on was Terrace to PG, but I flew in and out of everywhere on that airline.

[Robo]

sorry that was just the rumor between workers up there about the pilots there is no doubt talented pilots that fly for the company, and im sure alot of the problems had to do with older planes but some experiences were pretty scary.
edit: also talking about experience out of yeg not sure if calgary has a candian north terminal

[Bigtime]

Perhaps the workers should stick to things they actually know? Canadian North doesn't have some freshly minted commercial pilot with 200 hours sitting in the right seat of a 737. A pilot I instructed with got on with them when he had about 2500 hours (including an uncontained engine failure in a Citation).

There is also nothing wrong with an older well maintained aircraft.

YEG versus YYC makes no difference either.

[Robo]

ok i guess but when you start for take off and immediately abort and the pilot says over the intercom that there is some kind of problem with the plane only to sit for about 5 minutes until the pilot comes back on the intercom saying the problem fixed itself how safe would you feel on a plane like that? they are well maintained it helps but they are still old.

[Bigtime]

I'd feel fine, go read incident reports over at the Aviation Herald and you will see stuff like that is very common and is usually nowhere near a situation that would be an accident waiting to happen.

[Acey]

I'll also add that the older airplanes are actually more competent than the new fancy ones WestJet flies: the older ones allow different combinations of cargo pallets + passengers as well as gravel capabilities that cannot be done with the newer airplanes.

The absolute age doesn't matter, but what does matter is the number of cycles (takeoffs/landings) and/or the number of times the fuselage has been pressurized and depressurized by climbing to altitude. That number is 75,000 and you can be sure nobody is going to exceed it.

For what it's worth, I've spent about a hundred hours working on 737's at school which isn't much, but they're all the dang same. New wings and pretty winglets let them fly faster and higher but... lipstick on a pig.