Everything flying

Man is a curious animal and in that he wants to conquer the land that he lives on. Conquering is not just in terms of ruling but understanding the mysteries of nature. Look for instance, he saw the fish in the ocean and he prepped himself to triumph over the waters and sail away to the far, far land. He saw the birds fly in the sky and he invented airplanes more than a century ago. (Pardon me, aviation buffs, for not providing the exact dates. I will leave the honors to you). He has pretty much left no stone unturned to master the natures’ workings. But as Spiderman was told, "With great power comes great responsibility…”

We certainly have made a breakthrough in aviation. Different types of planes with immense technology to get anyone across the world in the minimum amount of time possible. With every step forward, we also see that many accidents take place in the flights. A couple of months back, two incidents in flight accidents grabbed our attention. One good and one bad… The good kind of accident (are accidents ever good? Yes, if you walk out of it scratch less!) was when the pilot had the presence of mind to land the US Airways plane with 155 people on board into the Hudson River in New York, when a bird struck the engine during takeoff from New York's LaGuardia Airport. This incident happened on January 15th of this year, when everybody on board that plane was saved by the quick-thinking of the pilot of that plane.

Now the bad kind of accident is the one when the repercussions are not good. This can be loss of lives, damaged goods or reputations, or whatsoever. On February 12th, 2009, exactly 3 months from today, Continental connection flight 3407 crashed into a house in Buffalo, killing 50 people, 49 on board and one person living in that house on which the plane crashed. The plane was flown on a wintery day and ice was formed on the windshield and wings and it began to stall. The pilot Captain Renslow was caught in shock of the stall and he jerked the plane upward and caused it to spin out of control. If he had lowered the nose of the aircraft, increased power and leveled the turboprop’s wings, the plane would have stabilized. As a result of the pilots’ actions, the plane crashed, taking the lives of 50 people.

Hind sight is always 20/20. We can take any situation after the fact and analyze it in slow motion and can come up with alternate results or theory of that action. The NTSB is doing investigations on this accident and has mentioned that the pilot didn’t have enough experience to fly this kind of commuter plane nor did he have any training for stall-recovery. Authorities are putting in hours to investigate this mess-up. If the board had put in these same hours before the fact in selecting a well-trained pilot, maybe they could have avoided this incident perhaps?

I am not pointing fingers at anyone nor am I concluding that the pilot made a mistake. I am sure he did his best in that situation, because it was just not others lives but his own was in danger. He just was caught with the problem like the deer-in-the-headlights because he was not paying attention to the situation but instead of chatting with his co-pilot. This just added to the inability to take proper actions along with his lack of training and experience on the situation at hand. If the flight management team took the time to select a proper pilot for the flight and if the pilot had the quick-thinking needed to take action in situations like these, maybe the 50 people who lost their lives would be breaking bread with their families tonight.