Jet2.com now flying from East Midlands to Chambery.

Pablo Escobar wrote:Of course you could list off numerous incidents based on negligence (or whatever) but it is a pretty useless picture without giving some idea of the sheer amount of flights that go without incident each year, it is a tiny fraction and the chances of it happening to you must be close to nil.

Pabs, again you are correct. It is just a numbers game. But i was just pointing out that for Tony to say that unsafe planes do not fly due to 'stringent checks' is wrong. Unsafe planes do fly.

American Airlines which has the greatest number of crashes, 13, offsets that against 25m filghts. So the chances are indeed very small.

Snapzzz wrote:

Tony_H wrote:
But that plane will not take off if it is not safe to do so.

If only that were true.

Tell that to the passengers of Japan Airlines flight 123
Tell that to the passengers of American Airlines Flight 191

The fact is that planes DO take off in unsafe conditions, history tells us this. Both the cited examples are botched maintenance and whilst humans maintain aircraft then you are always going to be at the mercy of these technicians.
You are correct in saying flying is really safe, i agree. But to say that unsafe planes do not fly is simply wrong or we would not get crashes like these.

JAL123 was back in 1985 - a lot has been learned from that accident. If you know about these disasters, you will be aware that this aircraft wasd previously involved ina tail strike incident - something that VERY rarely ever happens. The repair of the rear bulkhead was botched by Boeing, at a time when the company was in financial trouble. The repair was said to be good for 10000 pressurisations, and this flight was number 12000 and something subsequently. When the bulkhead failed, it tore out the hydraulic lines - something that would not be expected, and thus the place was unable to be controlled. Boeing admitted responsibility, but it appears that JAL were not inspecting their planes sufficiently.
This accident led to a change in JAL inspections, a review of Boeing procedures for bulkhead replacements, and additional safeguards against the failure of the hydraulics. The whole rear tailplane was ripped off, yet the plane a 747 managed to fly for 32 minutes before crashing. There are not many disasters where 747s are involved, and you can always find an ISOLATED incident to show up things.

As for AA191, that was back in 1979 and involved the no longer flying DC10. In fact virtually all 3 engined passenger jets no longer fly. If I recall, this is where the left hand engined literally flew off over the wing on take off? I seem to remember that American Airlines took the option NOT to install a 2nd and additional stall warning system TO KEEP COSTS DOWN at the time - this is no longer an option available to any airline!
This was the 4th fatal accident involving the DC10, which had some serious design faults, and all stem back to the late 60s when aircraft manufacturers were trying to go bigger, faster, cheaper etc. 3 engined jets like the TriStar and DC10 were regarded as more economical yet capable of carrying up to 500 passengers.
Again in this scenario, improper maintenance was deemed to be at the cause. Yet again, the scenario involved taking out much of the hydralic system which led to a failure to control the aircraft, and something which was unprecedented at the time.
The engine in question was previously damaged and removed. The procedure for its removal and return to the wing were incorrect, and involved using a forklift truck. The airline did this to save time. This has now been outlawed, and AA have changed maintenance procedures.

I agree accidents happen, but there is ALWAYS chain of events, not one single incident. When they happen, they are usually catastrophic, but the number of accidents these days is less than ever, and procedures across the FAA are far greater than they used to be.

If I looked too closely at the A300 I flew on last week, I would worry about loose rivets, but I have confidence in the maintenance of that airline and the knowledge of that flight crew. You have to, dont you?

:lol: TonyH, that could have been my Dad writing that last post, he knows all the facts on planes. He was an aircraft technician all his life, not big planes, harriers and such like, he said they often had to fly in them after work had been done by the technicians, just to keep them on their toes.

With my previous fear of flying, I made it my business to find out what happened to just about every major air crash in history. The programmes on Discovery are interesing viewing as they cover off these issues, and what it makes you realise is that one thing does not take down an aircraft, they have millions of back ups. In times gone by, they had not looked into the what ifs as much, and have learned by mistakes. Which only goes to make flying safer than ever.
One thing I learned recently was about Dopplar radar only hainv VERY recently been installed at many airports - this is what detects dangerous weather conditions that have been known to cause accidents and problems around air fields. It has been proved that with Doppler, a lot of accidents would have been prevented, especially ones involving microbursts.

Hard to imagine that a flock of birds could bring a jumbo down still though, isnt it?

Tony, we could debate this forever really couldn't we? And it is not my intention to do that for fear of being argumentative.
My point was simply that a company that cuts corners/cost on the cheapest and most basic repairs instills precious little confidence in me in other areas. Simple as that.

Tony_H wrote:With my previous fear of flying, I made it my business to find out what happened to just about every major air crash in history. The programmes on Discovery are interesing viewing as they cover off these issues, and what it makes you realise is that one thing does not take down an aircraft, they have millions of back ups. In times gone by, they had not looked into the what ifs as much, and have learned by mistakes. Which only goes to make flying safer than ever.
One thing I learned recently was about Dopplar radar only hainv VERY recently been installed at many airports - this is what detects dangerous weather conditions that have been known to cause accidents and problems around air fields. It has been proved that with Doppler, a lot of accidents would have been prevented, especially ones involving microbursts.

Hard to imagine that a flock of birds could bring a jumbo down still though, isnt it?

My Hubby watches all the aircrash investigation programmes and told me he had seen a plane fly off a runway and over the edge of a cliff into the sea. When we landed at Preveza airport last year, we got of the plane, then he said 'Oh I meant to tell you it was this airport that the plane went over the cliff'. At least he had the decency to tell me after :lol:

RoseR wrote:
My Hubby watches all the aircrash investigation programmes and told me he had seen a plane fly off a runway and over the edge of a cliff into the sea. When we landed at Preveza airport last year, we got of the plane, then he said 'Oh I meant to tell you it was this airport that the plane went over the cliff'. At least he had the decency to tell me after :lol:

Bless him.

I always point out the accident black spots on the road to my Mrs as we wizz past at 100mph!

What you dont want to know are the numerous incidents that go unreported, such as undercarriage which fails to come down, or at least a warning light telling the pilot thats the case. Quite common.
Or birdstrikes that cause emergency landings, more common. There was a good via on youtube last year about a Thompson flight from Manchester which took a bird thorugh the engine on take off causing it to misfire. They had to burn off a lot of fuel and make an emergency landing on 1 engine - all quite normal and procedural, but not too comfortable for those onboard!
A flight I was on as a kid from Tunisia to East Mids was ushered away from the terminal on landing, and we were surrounded by fire engines. It turned out one of the tyres burst and caught fire on landing, again quite a common thing to happen.

Planes are designed to withstand these kind of things. Its quite comforting to know these do happen I think.