This week in Patrick Smith's ASK THE PILOT on Salon.com: Disasters and Delays
Seven years and counting: it has been the safest seven years in modern aviation history. Has anybody noticed? Plus, a federal task force weighs in on tarmac delays.
Disasters…
“…Quickly out of control, the plane plunged into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Rockaway. All 260 passengers and crew were killed, as were five people on the ground. It remains the second most deadly aviation accident ever on U.S. soil, behind only that of American flight 191 at Chicago, in 1979. But what makes this 7th anniversary so important has nothing to do with the disaster itself, but with the remarkable streak that has followed it. Eighty-four months have passed since then. That’s 2,555 days and counting. In that span, our carriers have transported approximately five billion people, and made more than 51 million takeoffs and landings. Yet the crash of flight 587 was the last large-scale mishap involving a major U.S. carrier -- the longest such streak since the advent of the jetliner five decades ago.”
Delays…
“…Enforcement of an arbitrary time limit is bound to cause more problems than it solves. Imagine you are on a delayed airplane going from New York to Chicago. You have been parked on the taxiway for the past two hours. Your assigned wheels-up time is only a half-hour away, but because the new, federally mandated time limit has just elapsed, the crew is required ask if anybody wishes to get off. Imagine now that one person raises his hand. Well, the rule is the rule, and so the pilots ask for clearance back to the terminal. There are no vacant gates at the moment, and waiting for one to open takes half an hour. Then we learn guy has two suitcases somewhere below, and security regulations require they have to come off. Twenty minutes there. And because taxiing to and from the terminal will burn 2,000 pounds of kerosene, the plane must also be refueled. Together this entails a new weight-and-balance manifest, and possibly a whole new flight plan. And missing that wheels-up time means you're assigned a new one, and lo and behold it’s another hour away. What initially was less than a three-hour delay has now become a five-hour delay…”
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http://www.salon.com/tech/col/smith/...skthepilot299/
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