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Dear PCN (of over 2600 subscribers),
Above aerial view is at Calp on the
Spanish Med.
The significance is that I have just
completed a flight up the coast to the north at Barcelona for the first time. I did attempt something that could easily be pulled
off in the old days while active Delta, and that is to bring the wife along. In these days in the non-sked world it
doesn’t always work out so well. My
schedule was altered 4 times and the best laid plans of mice and men went
array. Couldn’t bring Barb so will try
it again some other time. Oh well.
Getting closer to time to retire for good.
By way of update: I did indeed get to
Barcelona and of course the city really impressed. Really enjoyed my one day there walking
around and taking in the sites of this beautiful city on the Spanish
Riviera. In addition I have had a chance
to visit Copenhagen a couple of times on this trip and was out today for a city
center walking tour that was very very nice.
If you need a moderate temperate city to visit, put Copenhagen on the list.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Avoidable crashes:
There are
some crashes that make you sick and others that just make you mad. AF447
A330 stall enroute Rio to Paris…….. Colgan Air Flight 3407 stall
crash outside Buffalo, New York…….. Comair Flight 5191wrong runway at
Lexington, KY. Now Asiana 214 in SFO! Yeah, I know that
regarding Asiana it is early and the full report won’t be out for a few months,
but on first glance it simply looks like a flight deck screw up and they may
have heard the proverbial "too
low.......pull up"! As I travel the world and am not
only still active in the system but extensively "riding" on other
commercial airlines, I see some trends. They aren't all good!
I see airlines that do not have the wealth of experience as U.S. airlines have
had in the past. I also see a calamitous tsunami coming within U.S.
airlines that will scurry ill prepared and under experienced crew members to
the flight deck. In fact the other day when I was on a regional, name
withheld, I saw the U.S. future. The cockpit crew was Indian and Arab
immigrants and I thought ......wow, they can't find enough U.S. pilots to
fill their seats. This sets up some issues that will affect aviation
going forward. Manufacturers will continue to try and develop a dummy
proof airplane that can't be crashed by fools. And fools will still find
a way. On the foreign front, they are trapped in a scenario of training
cadets with little total and zero small plane experience to the right seat of
aircraft like the B767. The Captains then are expected to pass along
their brilliance and metamorphacize this
neophyte. The cadets can be well trained to be good flight "managers,"
handling checklists, and radio calls and the like. But when someone has
to make a flying decision, you know what we want and need........ a real
“pilot” with experience! Experience that has to be earned and not
awarded. Experience always comes
from time and circumstances. My fear is that the next 20-30 years we will
see an increase in "pilot error" type accidents simply because of the
cockpit compliment. I hope that I am not right. I was wrong about
the RJ explosion. I sincerely thought as we multiplied CRJ's by the
gazillions that there would be more tragic mud baths. I was, on balance,
wrong. But going forward, even the CRJ and ERJ crews will be
different. So too will the crew experience level on Jumbo’s be
different.
As it
currently looks, Asiana just screwed up one of the easiest approach and landing
flying airplanes ever built. Having been on a Lufthansa landing in
Naples, that I thought was my last, I hope my vision of the airline world is
wrong. What say you?
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