Mass casualty disasters in modern times tend to be followed by a second disaster: the converging horde of relief organizations with zero organizational command. Canada's DART is largely PR fluff. The enormity of the carnage in Nepal vastly exceeds the best DART effort and intention. The Nepal regime, while Nepalese are generally extremely friendly and hospitable, is anachronistic and useless. Hundreds of seismologists went to painstaking lengths to warn Nepal of impending large-scale earthquake, only to discover no representative has the vaguest idea about anything. Talking to a brick wall. All the best for DART, but natural disasters require national military precision command and oversight. Nepal has to rise to the task, which has next to no capability.

(Written on 08/05/2015)(Permalink)

Oh, no, no, no, no, italy430. That's your task It's in CARs. You can find it. Maybe with the airline you fly, adequate night vision during landings is shunned on. Perhaps you don a blindfold after spray painting the windshield in Kryon jet black. Most real pilots don't do that. They want to see an adequately illuminated runway at night time, or as much of it as possible, to avoid what is called collision. Still able to see the said runway with adequate lumens should the runway lighting unexpectedly fail. It's called being a smart pilot.

(Written on 12/09/2014)(Permalink)

Night-rated aircraft are mandated to carry adequate external lights to safely discern any terrain, obstacles and ground objects in the approach and landing path, excluding poor visibility /w landing decision subject to captain's (and/or flight crew's) discretion. At 3.9 million lumen per bulb the only way a crew can miss a runaway truck crossing the threshold is if neither crew are looking for ground obstacles. This AC crew wasn't looking or paying attention to the tower's go around order. Of course the AC crew erred. These aircraft have TCAS and ACAS and blindingly bright landing lights, visible up to 100nm away at sufficient altitude/line of sight and weather conditions. This is not 1903. These jets can see every callsign in the CZ and beyond, the same SSR FlightAware uses. When the only AC in the CZ hears "Air Canada" from Tower, it means them, whether or not Tower muffs the numbers in the urgency of the moment. Pearson is supposed to be a 1st class international aviation fa

(Written on 30/08/2014)(Permalink)

I haven't been able to see any of my posts on the FA board or why that is, so not ignoring if don't respond to any comment, should there be any. I heard the tape several times. The Air Canada pilots, as bad as the negligent tech truck, messed up big time. The pilots' TCAS informs of every call sign in the control zone. They would know they were the only AC aircraft in the CZ. Even if ATC flubbed or garbled AC's call sign an alert pilot would heed the warning and go around out of sensible precaution. The landing lights on these jets can illuminate any moving or still obstacle. Had the pilots been focused on the runway and threshold would've easily sighted the wayward truck. I've listened to hours of late night Pearson ATC and found AC red eye crews to be hit & miss in adequate ATP professionalism. They seem to be push button/glass cockpit clock punchers.

(Written on 02/08/2014)(Permalink)

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/kase/KASE-Jan-05-2014-1900Z.mp3 Link via poster comment on thedenverchannel.com story. KASE Tower: "November one-one-five-whiskey-foxtrot, wind three-three-zero at one-six, runway one-five, cleared to land. One minute average, three-two-zero at one-five [etc]." 115WF accepted, plane wobbled before touchdown, wing tip hit and dug in, plane flipped and caught fire. Is it unreasonable to presume KASE was using Rwy15, the absolute worst choice, to avoid jets flying overhead, irking Aspen's moneybags? I can't think of any other airport that would land and takeoff planes in 16-35kt gust tailwind. Waste of life and of a great airplane.

(Written on 10/01/2014)(Permalink)

UMESA, TAGRU and SEPTU, so says Viras, are intersections over Iraq. Flight appears to originate in the Middle East, maybe Saudi Arabia, inbound to somewhere in Western Europe, perhaps UK (couldn't recognize the night landscape of destination airfield).

(Written on 05/01/2014)(Permalink)

Drug trafficker? The C172, a rental from the Windsor Flying Club, had no active transponder, made no communication with ATC. Just swooped down in fog and darkness somewhere between 2am and 3am. Makes no sense if were a legitimate pilot. A legit pilot would be in radio contact with Nashville Intl. ATC, probably placed in a hold or diverted. The guy stealthed it onto Rwy02, went splat. Tower can't see through fog. No x-ponder = no ground radar. Airport crew that sweeps the runway before the crash won't be able to discover a crash scene that hasn't yet occurred.

(Written on 02/11/2013)(Permalink)

Of course, F=MA. I don't know what the math is for a deflecting inelastic collision between a B737 with a mass upwards to 50,000kg against a 1kg bird (the Comair incident) or B757 against whatever that involved. No numbers have been published. And most of all it's China. The 26,000' altitude claim could be false. Bird strikes are most common at t/o, short final and approach. But have happened as high as ~37.000'. Incredible microscopic needle in a haystack misfortune.

(Written on 18/06/2013)(Permalink)

The 737 hit a yellow-billed kite after V1 on t/o from Durban, RSA. The Captain and Comair confirmed the event. Soft tissue birds *deflected* off radomes (hollow, non-rigid object) do not leave behind blood evidence. Scuffing is not uncommon, but no blood, unless the bird was already bleeding outward, therefore presented the material. For one, the impact event transpires faster than the bird can egress blood. Two, under impact physics, with the bird's skin and blood, veins, arteries, each immediate adjacent layers meeting the impact surface at basically in unison, the skin and veins would have to be ripped apart for blood to escape and occurring faster than kinetic energy can deflect the bird and all its matter off to whichever so-called new path. I don't know which or how many bird strikes you've been involved with, but all collisions, whether elastic or inelastic all conform to the laws of physics. All of which include the transfer of energies between dynamic matter.

(Written on 17/06/2013)(Permalink)

This is a bird strike on the radome of a B737 http://avherald.com/h?article=45b9d9a8 Fairly uniform compression, no scuffing. Birds don't explode on impact. They tend to punch through aluminum if direct hit or deflect in off-angle. Can sometimes leave scuff marks (as in this case), sometimes not. Birds ingested into engines leaves snarge because are blendered. Have to figure,with millions of radome incident-free airliner flights on the books, that Boeing radome designers know what they're doing. They're built in accordance with the buckling equation.

(Written on 17/06/2013)(Permalink)