 "Aw, c'mon, man, I can fly this baby in there! Why, I used to drive a big 18-wheeler, for heaven's sake! Let me try! Let me try!" |
I found this informative article to post. For those interested in aviation: It's a good example of a royal administrative screwup at either SW or AA.
Now, whether the pilot chickened out when faced with a bit of weather is another discussion altogether, and in this woke climate - airlines are infected with DEI - it is not something that can be easily dismissed.
Should be an entertaining thread and a nice diversion...
“A man has got to know his limitations.” —Harry Callahan
disclaimer - my father was a carrier qualified Navy pilot.
I give him credit for not trying something for which he was not qualified to do. We have a local airport (Drake Field in Fayetteville) that has a mountain on one side and landing there (depending on wind direction) you pop over the mountain and descend pretty quickly and it was a decent sized plane (737). Better the diversion to SLC than having an accident.
I’ve landed there before coming from Denver in a prop plane. Seems like we made big circles in the clouds before we lost enough elevation to land.
Better safe than sorry. The pilot did the right thing even though the passengers were inconvenienced. Better inconvenienced than dead in a fireball.
Not only did the pilot know he was unqualified, but so did Alaska Airlines.
The FAA should sanction them both.
Aren’t there supposed to be two pilots?
I love my grandfather’s stories of the daredevil flyers of the 1920’s who flew between Oakland CA and Reno NV.
So he didn’t know beforehand he was flying in to Jackson H? Didn’t he bother to read his flight plan given to him by the dispatcher?
We once sat on the runway in a full flight leaving Eagle County Airport (near Vail and Beaver Creek ski resorts; Elevation: 6547.4 ft.) on an unseasonably warm day in March. We had to wait until the air was cold/dense enough for us to be within parameters to take off (!!!).
I am not a white knuckle flyer, at all. But I do have a bit of an engineering background, and understand a little about the functioning of gas turbine engines, and how air density plays with output. I don’t mind admitting I was a little nervous about that take off.
I think the pilot did the proper and safe thing rather than rolling the dice and saying “hope I make it.”
Unless there were unusal extenuating circumstances, Alaska Airlines should have had a properly rated pilot for the route.
Though I can’t imagine what such circumstances might have been.
Sounded pretty clear to me
“ The complexities of landing at JAC earn the airport a Special PIC (pilot in command) qualification for the airport — in place since 1990 — as well as a SAAT level 4 rating, requiring a more experienced line check airman sitting copilot.”
Planes get diverted from JAC to SLC all the time in winter ice conditions.
Excuse me Captain, but can you fly???
CitationMax on YouTube has many videos of himself landing his Citation III at Jackson Hole. Doesn’t look especially dangerous on a nice day - but I’m sure the winds off the Tetons make it pretty hairy on a bad weather day.
This makes Alaska Air look amateur and unforgivably unprofessional. A buncha numbskulls!
"Aw, c'mon, man, I can fly this baby in there! Why, I used to drive a big 18-wheeler, for heaven's sake! Let me try! Let me try!" |
Flew into Jackson Hole a number of times. Wouldn’t want to be some pilot’s first time.
It's also not a matter of him "chickening out". The rules are set by the FAA, if he breaks them then the company will incur a heavy fine and the pilot will likely have action taken against his license, he'll lose his job. It's pretty cut and dried, if the weather is below the requirements then you divert to an alternate.
Good on the pilot.
I have always wanted to get on the flight attendant intercom and casually say “No need to panic, but does anyone know how to land a plane?”