64 lines
about the dust upon a sill
How every spec a universe
I think I’m gonna be ill

Every kid knows that
poems should rhyme
but this is prose they say
if they can’t find words that sound the same
they claim “it’s supposed to be that way”

Pretentious poet’s statements
Of  existential rot
I could go on complaining
But I think I’d better not.

Truly an awful accident. Frustrating to some degree because there is no amount of skill or action on the part of the crew that could have foreseen or prevented the accident, or minimized the results once the failure occurred.

Why did this happen?
The airplane was 58 years old. Now, there are plenty of airplanes flying around that are older  than that, and are in fine condition. I think that the daily use that these airplanes have been in, compounded with a salt water environment, and the pounding that a seaplane can occasionally take landing on choppy water all added up to the point where this airplane was just too old and too tired to take it any more.

The NTSB said cracks were found in the support beam of the wing that fell off the 58-year-old seaplane. (the correct term for the“support beam” is the wing spar)

Inspectors will try to determine whether fatigue cracks on the right wing support could have been found and repaired, and whether stress was a factor in the cracking that occurred. Rosenker (NTSB acting Chairman)  said that detecting such cracks would have required sophisticated testing and would not have been readily apparent.

We’ve seen wings rip off airplanes before. One at an airshow, and one fire bomber come to mind. It is believed that each of those was probably pulling some heavy g’s at the time of the failure.  The lack of witnesses and a flight data recorder means we will probably never know if there was any unusual maneuvering going on, but since it was carrying passengers, I’d say it was highly unlikely.

Did engineers in the mid 1940’s suspect that this airplane would be in daily use for 60 years?

Flight hours alone do not determine the life of an airplane, and you may see figures in future reports that will show this airplane has fewer flight hours on it than other airplanes of its age that have no problems.

Sometimes things have simply completed their useful life. I applaud Chaulks for grounding their remaining fleet pending inspections. There are newer twin engine turboprop seaplanes (Dehaviland Twin Otter for one) that could be used on these routes, the Mallard was not the only choice.

While Abrams was confident runway conditions were not to blame, James Burnett, a former NTSB chairman, said investigators would likely focus on the weather."When you're looking at a runway overrun, it almost always involves a runway condition that's improper," James Burnett, a former NTSB chairman,told WFLD-TV

CHICAGO - A jetliner trying to land in heavy snow slid off a runway, crashed through a fence and slid into a busy street, hitting one vehicle and pinning another beneath it. A 6-year-old boy was killed.

At least 10 people were injured, authorities said. Eight people of the injured were on the ground. Two passengers on the plane suffered minor injuries, Aviation Department spokeswoman Wendy Abrams said.

Southwest Airlines Flight 1248 from Baltimore was landing at Midway International Airport with 98 passengers and five crew around 7:15 Thursday night when it slid through the fence.

The airport area had 7 inches of snow, but Abrams said runway conditions at the time were acceptable....

Complicating the cockpit confusion, neither the German pilot nor the young, inexperienced Cypriot co-pilot could speak the same language fluently, and each had difficulty understanding how the other spoke English, the worldwide language of air traffic control. 

A total of 121 people were killed in the crash after the plane climbed and flew on autopilot, circling near Athens as it was programmed to do until one engine stopped running because of a lack of fuel. The sudden imbalance of power, with only one engine operating, caused the autopilot to disengage and the plane to begin its final descent. 

The Greek authorities have made cryptic statements hinting at oxygen problems but have so far not announced the full findings of investigators. 

The people interviewed for this article agreed to do so on condition that they not be identified because none are official spokesmen for the investigation and because of political sensitivities arising from a Cypriot plane crashing in Greece. 

Investigators pieced together the story of the crash from numerous sources. In the wreckage, they found the first solid clues - the pressurization valve and an air outflow valve set incorrectly. Air traffic control tapes provided information on the confusion in the cockpit. 

The plane had a sophisticated new flight data recorder that provided a wealth of information. There were maintenance records from the night before, and investigators interviewed the mechanics who worked on the plane. 

Among other things, the investigators determined that the pilot was not in his seat because he was up trying to solve a problem that turned out to be not the greatest threat facing him. 

The plane that crashed, a Boeing 737-300, underwent maintenance the night before. The maintenance crew apparently left a pressurization controller rotary knob out of place, according to the officials connected to the investigation, and the crew did not catch the mistake during preflight checks the next day. This meant that the plane could not pressurize. 

At 10,000 feet, or 3,000 meters, as designed, an alarm went off to warn the crew that the plane would not pressurize. However, the crew members mistakenly thought that the alarm horn was a warning to tell them that their controls were not set properly for takeoff, the officials said. 

The same horn is used for both conditions, although it will sound for takeoff configuration only while the plane is still on the ground. 

The crew continued the climb on autopilot. At 14,000 feet, oxygen masks deployed as designed and a master caution light illuminated in the cockpit. Another alarm sounded at about the same time on an unrelated matter, warning that there was insufficient cooling air in the compartment housing avionics equipment. 

The radio tapes showed that this created tremendous confusion in the cockpit. Normally an aircraft cabin is held at 8,000 feet pressure, so the crew at over 14,000 feet would already be experiencing some disorientation because of a lack of oxygen. 

During this time, the German captain and the Cypriot co-pilot discovered they had no common language and that their English, while good enough for normal air traffic control purposes, was not good enough for complicated technical conversation in fixing the problem. 

The crew members called the maintenance base in Cyprus and were told that the circuit breaker to turn off the loud new alarm was in a cabinet behind the captain. The captain got up from his seat to look for the circuit breaker, apparently ignoring the confused co-pilot. 

As the plane continued to climb on autopilot, the air grew so thin that the crew became seriously impaired. The captain passed out first on the floor of the cockpit, followed by the co-pilot, who remained in his seat, according to the officials. 

The autopilot did as it was programmed to do, flying the plane at 34,000 feet to Athens and entering a holding pattern. It remained in a long circling pattern, shadowed by Greek military jets, until fuel ran low and one engine quit. 

Boeing, the maker of the plane, is-sued a notice shortly after the crash to airlines that it would revise flight crew training manuals to stress to crews that they must understand how the various warning systems work and what to do about them. 

The notice stresses that the takeoff configuration warning horn will not sound under any circumstances after the plane has left the ground. 

The same horn will then be used only for a cabin altitude warning. The company notice said there had been other instances of confusion over the horn by pilots. 

"Confusion between the cabin altitude warning horn and the takeoff configuration warning horn can be re-solved if the crew remembers that the takeoff configuration warning horn is only armed when the airplane is on the ground," the notice said. "If this horn is activated in flight, it indicates that the cabin altitude has reached 10,000 feet."

In reality, she was no more able to get that door open than if she had walked up to it, streached her arms out, wiggled her finger tips and said "open sesame!" -

So... if your on a flight, and someone's playing with the door:
 - Don't worry
 - Tell them to try the "Open Sesame" method instead - it works just as well and won't get them arrested.

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- A French woman who is terrified of flying admitted in an Australian court Monday that she drunkenly tried to open an airplane door mid-flight to smoke a cigarette.

Sadrine Helene Sellies, 34, was placed on a good behavior bond after pleading guilty in Brisbane Magistrates Court to endangering the safety of an aircraft.

Sellies was traveling on a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong to the east coast city of Brisbane on Saturday when the incident occurred at the start of a three-week Australian vacation with her husband, the court heard.

She walked toward one of the aircraft's emergency exits with an unlit cigarette and a lighter in her hand and began tampering with the door, prosecutors said. But a flight attendant intervened and took Sellies back to her seat.

Sellies was arrested and charged by police on arrival at Brisbane airport.

Defense lawyer Helen Shilton told the court Sellies was terrified of flying and had taken sleeping tablets with alcohol before takeoff.

Shilton said Sellies has no memory of what happened on the flight and that she has a history of sleepwalking.

But Magistrate Gordon Dean sternly warned the woman: "You must understand, if you are on a plane you must behave yourself."

Sellies, who did not speak in court and was aided by a translator, was placed on a 1,000 Australian dollar (US$734; euro623) bond -- meaning she will have to pay that amount if she commits another offense in the next 12 months.

I'm talking about plane crashes, of course. Something that hasn't been in the news for a long time, simply because there haven't been any. Despite recent worldwide news events, air transportation remains safe,  increadibly safe - almost amazingly safe. Far safer than driving to the airport... and now, some comments.

Toronto: Absolutely fantastic that everyone got out of that thing alive. My bet is that due to the thuderstorm in progrsss they landed fast, too far down the runway (possibly partially due to a windshear induced tailwind), and with reduced braking capability due to water on the runway. Landing in a thunderstorm is generally a bad idea, unless your other option is worse - like running out of fuel. Lookiing forward to finding out what really happened.  A safer stopway off the end of the runway (kinda like a run-a-way truck ramp) could possibly have saved the airplane and reduced injuries further. The AirLine Pilots Association continues to push for these installations.

Lessons from that crash.

On the plane crash in Athens, Don't believe initial reports that the bodies were "frozen solid" , or that they were making right turns to indicate radio failure. That "right turn" procedure is pretty obscure and outdated, and the likelyhood that anyone left to fly the plane (currently thought to be a flight attendant) would employ that procedure is pretty far out there.  More likely the autopilot became disconnected and the plane was slowly turning on its own, or the cockpit occupant got the autpilot to turn the plane, but didn't know enough about how to fly it do much more. Very possible that everyone on board was virtually unconscious due to hypoxia. Even at 20,000 feet clear thinking is pretty difficult. For a non-pilot to be attempting to figure out how to fly a 737 under stressful conditions like that might be like an average 6 year old trying to work out an algebra problem.

It also turns out the text message alegedly sent indicating "the pilot was blue" and "we're freezing" was bogus, and accordig to today's news, the offenders have been arrested. Come to think of it, cell phones don't tend to work at 35,000 feet anyway - especially out over the water where no cell towers exist.
I'm still wanitng to know - Why didn't the pilots descend right away to 10,000 feet - very strange

Crash in Venezuela: Trouble with both engines?  Betcha - is wasn't the engines themselves. Unless there was some catastrophic failure of one that affected the other, which with that configuration (completely separated by the fuselage) is pretty unlikely without some serious other problems. I'd be wondeirng if the fuel wasn't more like that nasty industrial solvent DiHydrogenMonoxide.

However, it is remotely possible that it could be the engines. That is what is being partially blamed on the crash of a Canadian Regional jet that killed the two pilots on board. more info

In Security News: (most of it from CNN.com)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Infants have been stopped from boarding planes at airports throughout the United States because their names are the same as or similar to those of possible terrorists on the government's "no-fly list."

It sounds like a joke, but it's not funny to parents who miss flights while scrambling to have babies' passports and other documents faxed.

Ingrid Sanden's 1-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix, Arizona, before boarding a flight home to Washington at Thanksgiving.

However, dispite the childs young age, she had a deep involvement with both Chechian separatists and the pro-Palesinian group, Hamas. Officials believe that the child may have become affiliated with the dark elements through a recently discovered terrorist cell in her pre-school nap-time group, favored by other of extremest children under the age of 2.

Come on, a 1 year old on the no-fly list? When will people (i.e., secutiry screeners/employees) be allowed to think for themselves and recognize obvious misidentifications without causing a ruccus that makes worldwide news for the absurd.

OK, now back to more pretty cloud pictures...

Here's an interesting site, modeled on the "we're Sorry" site that showed up after Bush was re-elected.  It's, of course aimed at telling the terrorists that they were not able to terrorize everyone (possibly anyone). 

There are a wide range of images here (hundreds of them), from serious

 to funny,. 

and everything in between.

 Worth a look.

(I saw the link on cnn.com)

Let's see how long they store the preview for and if I can link it in here...

--experiement time---

--end experiment time