An undetected hairline crack in a drag link or manufacturing defect could easily been the cause of the collapse. Where do you think AD Notes come from?
In the old days when men were men and women were stewardesses, an ATP was not needed to sit in the right seat of anything and a 250 hour male with a brand new commercial license could have been sitting there.
In the old days the captain was the captain and even if he got a 12 year old girl up from the cabin to land the airplane, the results thereof were on him.
Statement by the Ninety-Nines:
âDiversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives do not determine who becomes an airline pilotâ
Check out this list of Ninety-Nines scholarship winners from 1941 to present and let me know how many of the winners are men:
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I didnât know you had to be a 99 to fly for an airline. Is this kind of like the Vermont Pilotâs Association not giving scholarships to people from New Hampshire?
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Maybe it wasnât the pilotâs fault. Maybe it wasnât the planeâs fault. Maybe it was the asphalt. (Sorry, couldnât resist.)
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Would you have said something this asinine in public? If not⌠Maybe skip saying it here.
If that was directed at me, yes. Say it all the time. Itâs funny.
Deltaâs comments are typical. The issue is very very simple; as long as non aviator financial people have been empowered with the decision making, the issues in all of commercial aviation will continue to degrade. Even the focus of technology and research in aviation is financially centered. The only stand out might be the NTSB, who are continually ignored if it âcost too muchâ. Argue all you want, but when we see the manufactures, such as Boeing, putting non aviation decision makers empowered to make engineering decisions, this issue will only chip away public trust and real airline safety. Painting âDeltaâ on the side of a commuter who is operated by another company entirely (other than the few standards Delta does set for its commuter sub contractors) is only a false sense of security. Of course there are good aviation centered commuter operators out there, but when we see these continuous âbuy-outsâ, it is likely a financial interest and not an aviation centered transaction. Yes, we need the financial folks in aviation, but not in positions way over their heads. For many years in the free world, people went into business primarily to make a good product. And, they knew profit would follow. But when the sole goal is profit and not reputation for quality and high standards, it starts the clock of eventual disaster and destruction of a company. Trust me, Jack Northrup, Bill Boeing and people like Gordon Bethune would know exactly what we are talking about here. Bethune while not an engineer, knew how to listen and understood what was the right thing to do, (unlike people like Frank Lorenzo who was continuously fined by the FAA for safety violations). Bethuneâs first act was to build back Continentalâs reputation starting with safety (and clean airplanesâŚlol)
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An absolutely ridiculous statement.
Just look at the âdiversity hiring goalsâ of the major airlines.
Donât try and tell me making âdiversityâ your PRIMARY hiring goal doesnât affect the quality of the people who get hired.
Itâs simply a lie. And if you deny it, youâre a liar.
I watched the beginnings of this crap during my career at my airline, and was told on several occasions by instructor/evaluators that theyâd been informed before training/checking events that a particular pilot âwill passâ this ride, or you wonât be doing this job.
Itâs easy to say they shouldnât succumb to that pressure, but itâs naive as hell to say that, too.
Letâs just stop lying about it.
DEI is a stupid idea in ALL situations.
But in critical safety positions it has already, and will again, gotten people killed.
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There ya go again, AJ. Disparaging a fully qualified pilot with your usual BS. She didnât slam a perfectly good airplane into the runway and you are in no position to judge anyone. And nobody gives a ratâs ass if you disagree. Thereâs a reason why what you say is a fart in a hurricane.
Iâm more amazed that AvWeb still allows your unhinged rants.
From Russ:
Iâll admit I cringed at that but it is one possibility in the myriad potential causes being argued here. Art annoys us with his manner but his comments do not violate any community guidelines, which Iâll admit to applying liberally. I wish he was more generous and empathetic but heâs not. The difference is that I have to read his comments and you donât, Chuck
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What do WE THINK?
Donât ask us to support your butthurt over support for women in aviation. There has been discrimination, a lack of recognition and denying womenâs abilities in many ways over the years, and in some places there are ways it still exists. Even without it, thereâs nothing wrong with anyone supporting womenâ's place in aviation.
You canât change history, Mike. It isnât discrimination. Nothing here discriminates against men.
From Russ: No name calling.
You certainly are hell bent on hanging the pilot(s) prior to the official factual findings. Perhaps you are right; but maybe not completely. Pilots (assuming you may be one) that quickly jump in to hang other pilots are usually attempting to elevate themselves based on their own shortcomings. Itâs best to wait on transport Canada and the NTSB before degrading the crew without the hard facts.
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Usually when a boat or airplane crashes the captain gets blamed no matter who was physically touching what, so if this is pilot error, it is white-male pilot error.
The poor guy at DCA was handed an impossible job that should have been done by two people. Expecting superman controllers that can do two or three jobs at once is a system designed to fail.
So there is a reddit thread from 4 years ago about âCRJ Landing Tipsâ where CRJ pilots were discussing how difficult it is to get a âgoodâ landing in a -900 and not slam the mains down. From reading that it seems this -900 is especially tricky to land nicely, and especially for newly minted ATPâs. I know I am not qualified nor will I ever be qualified to be in the front two seats of a jet.
This airplane was built in 2008 right down the Trans-Canada a few clicks from where the crash happened. I wonder how many cycles/hard landings it has had in its 16-17 year life.
The FAA/TSB/MCAI put out a service bulletin FAA-2022-0885 670BA-32-062A MCAI-2021-01429-T requiring inspection of the NLG and MLG components for age. Apparently there were/are some old worn out corroded landing gear parts out there that werenât getting scrapped. This SB might or might not be related.
The real question is why did the wing box fail? It seems a âreally hard landingâ would first scrub the tires off, then the MLG fail, and then you would see an airplane skidding down the runway veering to the right due to the RH wing dragging on the concrete with a load of pax sitting(upright) on broken seats(designed to absorb energy while crumpling up) and spinal compression injuries. Didnât that just happen to a Lear recently and it held together for the most part? Instead, in this case the RH MLG touches down and the wing liberates immediately and the pax were walking away shooting video with their phones that they were supposed to leave behind. Sure the RH wing tip might of tagged the runway, but the contact force wasnât even enough to turn the airplane to the right let alone break the wing box at the wing root. Primary structure like wings donât just liberate from an airplane due to a hard landing. This smells like stress corrosion cracking in the wing box/fwd/aft spar. Maybe a few to many hard landings left some undetected now corroded cracks? If so, the whole CRJ fleet could be in for a messy AD/TC investigation. I am not sure I feel safe flying in an airplane that has history of wings âjust breaking offâŚâ Which serial number is next?
Door plugs, MCAS, yikes, they grounded a whole fleet for these transgressions, guessing there are some stressed out stress engineers in Mirabel. Luckily the investigators and metallurgists have something to inspect and not a just a smoking hole.
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The whole issue isnât even about a single person in this event. This is a situation of unintended consequences of a new government regulation. In the past, you could put a 500 hour commercial pilot in the right seat, but they couldnât be PIC until they earned their ATP. Fast forward to the Colgan accident when the FAA changed the rules requiring both to have their ATP. The unintended consequence is that the right seat pilots get most of their hours acting as a flight instructor. Reality is that most people shouldnât be flight instructors unless instruction is truly a passion. I have known plenty of 1500 hour pilots who truly have about 400 of ârealâ flying experience, and even fewer hours where they were in tough weather conditions, had to evaluate weather, and had to be on-their-game. How do we fix it? Take away the stupid ATP requirement for right seaters on some of these regionals and go with perhaps 500 to 700 hour commercial pilots with no more than 100 hours of âdelivering primary instructionâ in their logbook. Making real decisions on cross country flights in a fast airplane is a completely different story than right seating a 172 in VFR weather.
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You are right that it SHOULD be the case, especially when lives are on the line.
But, if you or anyone else wondered about an ATCâs selection criteria, it sure as hell shouldnât have been over gender or another discriminatory reason. DEI hiring SHOULD NEVER have been âpart of the conversationâ in the DCA collision, as it was based on a bullshit politically motivated comment by (guess who?) who was and never will be an aviation expert and certainly not qualified to say âhe knew what caused the incidentâ a half hour after it happened.
If industries hurt themselves by hiring unqualified workers, regardless of their reasons, is is their doing. If lives are lost in the process, they have blood on their hands.
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For sure, that controller had more on his plate than it was reasonable to expect him to handle. I expect the NTSB will, as usual, attribute it to pilot error. To me, whoever decided that it was a good idea to have a helicopter training route under short final at a busy civilian airport bears significant responsibility.
But looking at the country at large, the prioritization of DEI over ability in hiring across the FAA as well as so many other industries has indisputably resulted in a lowering of standards. Iâm not the only pilot I know who has had to respond âUnable, going around,â to unsafe instructions issued by what certainly seemed to be a DEI-hired controller.
Pilot error doesnât cause the right main gear to collapse, and neither did gender. Either one.
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THIS!
A copilot could have had 250 hours back in the day. A new 1FO was in many ways an apprentice learning all about the DC-3 or 727 from the highly experienced captain.
Now we seem to have forced a system of sit in a C-172 until you have memorized every stain on the carpet in every plane in the fleet.
If all your CFI work is primary students doing VFR stuff you will learn a lot, but only about landing 172s in VFR.
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