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 ...
Always look at the date of manufacture in the doorway of the aircraft.
I an just assuming that the wokeism revolution is not just confined to the military where I saw what was happening.
Yep. How hard is that?
“I am declaring a fuel emergency.”
This is one hell of a scary picture...
” If I can not drive (or take a boat) I don’t go.”
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That is my stance, CIB-
My family (in Maryland) is well aware of my intense dislike of airports.
I also have a real fear of crowds (say, anything over 3 people). We joke because we know that in order for me to get through an airport I would need to be dead and being carried via a coffin.
About the only reason I’d go back to Maryland would be for a funeral and it would be my beloved husband driving with the furbabies in the back seat! I’d never make the funeral, though I would pay respects at the graveside.
My point was that whatever point the author was making, he did not substantiate it in the least. He said what he claimed was a problem, but showed no evidence of it - one anecdotal case is not enough and even that case did not point to “affirmative action”, as no identification of the air traffic controllers involved was made.
Exactly - I’ve heard the tapes and that flight crew was not nearly assertive enough.
Talk about jumbo jets—you’ve got planes the size of Rhode Island on that map!
OObomma was known to dumb-down the entry standards in the interest of darkening the rank and file of the ATC.
Well after the Reagan firing kerfuffle days.
Dems never let a chance for social engineering go by, instead of just get the best and brightest willing to take the job.
“That was the hook trapping the wire.”
I experienced a landing like that in a commercial airline once. I was seriously tempted to ask the captain how he graded with the LSO on trapping the right wire with the landing. I thought better of that by applying the old “walk away” rule about landings.
I was a USAF controller. In 20 years, I never knew anyone who didn’t know what it meant. If a pilot declared min fuel, we handled them expeditiously. If they declared emergency fuel, we just let them do whatever they wanted to do, and got everyone else out of the way.
The FAA academy, on the other hand had a HUGE washout rate. I knew a few USAF controllers, who went to the FAA academy, and as far as I know, they ALL washed out. These guys could move some sheet metal around the sky, but still washed out. Later, the FAA started taking military controllers and placing them directly into facilities. A wise move I thought.
I don’t know about the current FAA academy washout rate, since I retired in 1988. I never tried, cuz I was afraid I would wash out, even though I worked one of the world’s busiest airports (Vietnam, a nightmare experience) As far as I recall, the qualifications, were to be a high school graduate, and a US citizen.
The best controller I ever saw, was a black female Ssgt. That woman could move airplanes around the sky.
The pilot might not have been able to head to a near field. All the area may have been socked in and needing ground control help him land an airliner. I remember flying back from Gainsville in a light plane trying to land in Miami New Tamiami. It was socked in, so I flew to Homestead General. It closed in on my final. I knew about a little unused field (Aero Oasis) out in the middle of the everglade on Tamiami Trail where I landed. I would have run out of fuel if it had been socked in.
AA is poison everywhere and especially deadly in a control tower. But what I read most is seeing a fat smelly person waddle down the aisle and the seat next to me is empty.
Why didn't the pilot shut down two engines to conserve fuel?
That's until they start the state border checkpoints for COVID vacs passports!
I flew into an airport in WV. Can’t for the life of me, remember the name. But it was one were they shaved off the top of a mountain and put a strip on it. Nice little airport as I recall.
Anyway, I’m in this regional jet, Bombardier, and we’re coming into landing on this nice curvy course through the mountains and the pilot must have been having a good time and then just sticks the landing - wham - and we’re down. Figured it had to be a Navy pilot.
If he’d been available upon leaving; I would have asked him if he hit the three wire and given him a 👍🏼.
There is a Russian female weight who can jerk (?) about 600 lbs as I recall. What was your point?
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