The Bus guys have long complained that the radar is about worthless as soon as you go into the weather. The Multiscan 2100 could be retrofitted into that fleet also. I think given the recent incidents, it would be a great investment. The business case had already been sold as a savings in reduction in injuries and damage. You're right, now's the time!

Wonder what the leading edge looked like?

http://avherald.com/h?article=48a8329f&opt=0

As a fleet training captain once told me at an undisclosed airline,"It's a competitive industry out there."

And besides, Douglas gave dividends to the very end!!

Effing idiots. There was no reason to be flying through that area. They were very lucky they didn't kill 150+ people.

I've flown with guys who seem to like to get the wingtip as close as they can to the storm when they deviate. Why I will never know.

Is what happened bad? Yep. However you weren't there. Or are you telling me you're going off some weather service history maps and some FlightAware positions and determining what they actually went through? YGTBSM. I'd be real careful about Monday Morning Quarterbacking that.

Valid.... Until the safety board or whatever the civilian version of that is, comes out, it's probably a little arrogant to assume what happened.

I hope our union uses this opportunity to ensure we spend the money to upgrade our radars ASAP.

The A 320 radar is by far the worst of any aircraft I have flown. Worthless in many situations.

Maybe the safety board will prove you right, maybe not. Way too early to pass judgement. I can't imagine the stress they are going through right now.

Just because you got hired by a company that by our own words apparently likes to hire idiots, it doesn't mean every other company does the same. Dry hail is extremely difficult to detect on airborne RADAR. I wasn't there anymore than you so I'm certainly not saying this was the case; but, if it was they may have had very little to no warning at all.

edit: for your reading pleasure
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/os/aviation/...4dec-front.pdf

A good conservative rule of thumb that I use is never fly downwind of a cell if at all possible. On occasions where flying upwind of the cell isn't possible, I use 1 nm per knot of wind coming off the cell for minimum distance for avoidance. For example, if winds coming off a cell are showing 85 knots, I'll pass at least 85 nm from the cell, but never less than 25 when above FL250. Also, I read that the flight was running about 90 minutes behind schedule. I wonder how much, if any, the pressure to make up time and get back on schedule played in this event. Here's an excellent tool I use in my flight planning: Storm Prediction Center Convective Outlooks

I hope some of this is helpful.

Letting us get on the Internet and pull up a radar map on the surface would go along way to mitigating these issues. When you have two holes to go through and you just have to pick one is a gamble. We need to stack the cards more in our deck. They could give us a password to use today for the wifi.