Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
I only discussed the article. You made a full on personal attack full of misrepresentations.
At least we know you are sensitive to misrepresentations when you feel they involve your writing. What you do to others ... not as much.
Originally Posted by
Bucking Bar
The article's psychobabble is cringeworthy. When faced with a similar threat, here is how it turned out at Delta.
Originally Posted by Aviation Today 2-7-2011
The NTSB said another incident may have occurred on June 23, 2009 on a Northwest Airlines A-330 flying between Hong Kong and Tokyo. The aircraft landed safely in Tokyo; no injuries or damage was reported.
The Northwest A330 was cruising at 39,000 feet on autopilot near Kagoshima, Japan, when it encountered intense rain and both the captain's and co-pilot's airspeed indicators immediately showed a huge rollback in the plane's forward velocity. With autopilot and automatic-throttle controls disengaged, the cockpit was filled with beeps and bright warning signals indicating various system problems. The Northwest crew said the event lasted more than three minutes, but they maintained airspeed, manually flew the most direct route out of the storm and nobody was hurt.
A critical difference is that we hire experienced pilots.
Yes, I remember, you described the article as "psychobabble." I don't know when you got hired but CRM has, in my opinion, made for a much better cockpit environment than we had in the 1980s. Back then there was little standardization and many Captains just did their own thing. CRM training was a little hokey in the beginning (the 90s) but it has come a long way since then. I thought the writer did a very good job of describing the history of the culture, its problems, and where we are now. You called it "cringeworthy" and "psychobabble." To each his own.
Then, your "discussion" went on to outrageously boast that such a similar accident could never happen at DAL because "we hire experienced pilots." That comment reeks of arrogance to me. The AF447 pilots obviously made mistakes. Critical mistakes that cost them their lives. It's fine to Monday morning quarterback them, it's important to do so for us to learn from their mistakes and hopefully not repeat them. But it's wrong, in my opinion, to claim that our pilots are immune from misreading instruments, misjudging, making bad decisions, etc... The fact is we're not. We're human.