Posted on 04/06/2021 5:33:23 AM PDT by MtnClimber
I have a friend who is fearful of commercial airlines.
At the gate, before boarding, he asks the agent the following question: "What is the captain's name?" If the answer indicates the pilot is female, he will not board that flight. Any criticism of my friend's lack of confidence in any qualified aviatrix is answered along these lines: "She can't drive a stick shift. I should trust her with a Jumbo Jet?"
My friend is right to be cautious about flying, but for different reasons.
SNIP
Affirmative action has eroded the efficacy of the air traffic control system to an alarming degree.
SNIP
Unfortunately, the responsible are not always fingered, and mostly they are coddled and protected by the same bureaucrats who appointed them to the positions they can't handle. An illustration follows:
January 25, 1990. Avianca 052, a Boeing 707 en route from Columbia to JFK Airport in Queens, N.Y. After two missed approaches in bad weather, the pilot told the approach controller that he was "running out of fuel" and that he "needed priority." The flight received neither sympathy nor priority. All four engines flamed out, and the 707 crash-landed in a wooded area of Long Island. Seventy-five dead. The FAA pointed to poor communication by the pilot and a language barrier. At the time, when asked about this by a New York–area journalist, I informed the scribe that the ATC tapes were transcribed fully in English and that no foreign language was heard on the tapes.
As hard as it may be to believe, the controller(s) apparently did not know that running out of fuel is a serious event when it happens to an aircraft in flight.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Landing
I quit going by air when airlines became Greyhounds of the sky. I am old enough to remember when you dressed up when you traveled by air (and you could leave to the airport 30 minutes before your flight and still get on the plane).
My last trip by air had to be close to 30 years ago and that was on business. If I can not drive (or take a boat) I don’t go.
Amen. I remember a time when ATC refused to give us priority (F-4 military jet) and we just declared an emergency and then TOLD them what we were going to do. We ended up shutting down the engines with 2 minutes of fuel left. If we had obeyed ATC, we’d have punched out.
Or this on a daily basis
Now tell us about your daily commute.
Correct! The term of non-compliance to an ATC is “unable”
“Pan Pan Pan” and “Mayday Mayday Mayday” trump all other aircraft and controllers.....
Gravity.
("we've declared an emergency, we're landing rwy(?)...get everyone out of our way")
I taught my girls how to drive stick. There wasn't much choice if they wanted to drive any of my rigs. But no, none of them are pilots (I suspect that they would be great ones if they had been so inclined).
That was the hook trapping the wire. 😁
“I knew a real “affirmative action” surgeon. I handled medical malpractice insurance claims. Need I say more.?”
Unfortunately, it has permeated all aspects of our lives! Thank goodness, at least for now, we get to make our own choices — like walking off the airplane.
The one important area that we can not escape is in competing with other countries that don’t have these silly concepts. Can you imagine going to war with China or Russia and sending out a division of purple head transgenders to face them? I can imagine it. I can also imagine the result! Watch Putin in Ukraine. I fully expect him to move in as he did in the Crimea. I’m pretty sure he does not have purple head transgenders in his army.
One anecdotal event does not a case make, and just as importantly, the claim of the author is “affirmative” action yet the reporting of the one anecdotal event does not identify the air traffic controllers involved.
Was the author’s one anecdotal event really the result of “affirmative action” or was it a case (a) dead tired overworked controllers?, or (b) controller(s) working under the influence of drugs or alcohol?, or (c) some other condition unrelated to “affirmative action”. We’ll never know.
I avoid both. Tired of the incompetent, rude and arrogant AA cashiers hired in the supermarkets these days.
All of the supermarkets around here, save one, have self-check out lines and I head straight for those - I can check myself out faster, more competently and bag better than they can.
I noticed a lot of people using this option, more than ever before - and I'm guessing for the same reasons I use self-checkout.
Too bad they don't do that at our polling places.
Only three dangerous things about flying: takeoff, landing, and the part in between.
“One of those four women went on to be an astronaut trainee until she was arrested in a diaper traveling across country in an attempt to murder her cheating boyfriend.”
__________________________________________________________
Actually, the way I remember it, the “cheating boyfriend” was a pretty boy astronaut trainee and the woman in the diaper was enroute to where the guy’s other woman was located, in an attempt to murder her rival.
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