Originally Posted by
NetJets Germany
Sorry, completely unrelated to your original question about compensation, but I just wanted to genuinely ask: Are you sure that was the rational behind lowering the altitude? Air pressure is higher closer towards the ground, so flying at a less high altitude would have exacerbated the risk, not reduce it, right? I would guess that one logical course of action was to reduce speed in order to reduce air pressure on the windscreen. Perhaps the reduction in altitude was also to protect the pilots in case the screen did break properly, so that they would not have to operate in low-oxygen conditions in the cockpit. Then again the speed would still have been far too high to be able to see anything in the cockpit, unless they had some serious helmets at hand (Think of driving a convertible at 150+mph without a windscreen). Anyway, enough armchair-philosophying from me, I am not an aircraft engineer and am just genuinely curious about the correct course of action to take in such an event.
Just to add to this (and others here seem more knowledgable than I about the reasons why these measures were undertaken by our plane's pilot): but, when the pilot announced the precautionary descent from 35,000 feet to 20,000, which lasted for about 3 hours until landing procedures were initiated, and as someone who habitually watches "Flightpath" on all my flights, then the airspeed didn't drop considerably: before the announcement the speed, in mph, was around 560-570; post-announcement about the diversion to Manila, airspeed was still high enough at 495 mph. So, the airspeed wasn't reduced by a huge amount.