temporary link

(for educational purposes only)

"Alberta Tue Feb 8, 6:38 pm

Emergency Landing

A Northwest Airlines DC-9 jet was forced to make an emergency landing today at the Calgary international airport. The plane, with 70 people on board, ran into mechanical problems shortly after takeoff this morning, but was able to land safely. The aircraft's primary stabilizer was the cause of the difficulty. That's the same problem that apparently caused the recent Alaska Airlines crash off California. Today's incident will be investigated by The Transportation Safety Board."

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000

Answers

Personally, I'm happy it wasn't a "plane falling from the sky".

I definitely prefer a safe landing for everyone on board.

Is it just me, or are things like this becoming daily, rather than monthly events?

Maybe I'm a doomer looking for all the bad things that are happening, somehow, I would prefer that not to be the case.

I very well could have been a sheeple in the past and just ignored anything that didn't directly affect me, Y2K could have made me more alert to my surroundings.

I'm still in the observational mode, time will tell which was which.

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), February 08, 2000.

Michael

The passengers in this case were transferred to another airplane to continue their journey. At the very least, stress the passengers who are preparing for an emergency landing must feel seems to be getting spread around more. I wonder if any of this is causing people to reconsider their decisions to fly?

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000.

Test
Test
Test


-- testor (testor@test.ing), February 08, 2000.

Rachel,

I had no plans to travel anytime soon, but if I did, If I chose not to drive, Amtrak might look a little more feasible as a choice than it has in the past.

In our "hurry up" society, I doubt this option will be considered seriously by most people unless more frequent problems occur in the near future.

Frankly, train accidents seem to be something I'm more aware of now also.

Either I was totally unaware of accidents happening worldwide before hand, or the reality is, more are happening now. Y2K, doubt it, that connection is not politically correct.

I'm sure some historian sometime in our future will have a better handle on things, through hindsight.

Be nice to know the truth now though, wouldn't it??

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), February 08, 2000.

Michael, I've been monitoring aviation safety worldwide since SR111 went down in my country in early Sept. of 1998. It was obvious to me in reading discussion boards and in following the links given there that much more happens worldwide than we realize--all the time. That said, the past few weeks feel like there has been an increase. In time, the sites that tally incidents/accidents will indeed show whether or not the increase is real. Let's hope it's not!

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 08, 2000.

Rachel,

My best feelings agree with you, let's hope it is less or at least the same occurence. I doubt it though, the hairs on the back of neck are standing up, argh, hate when that happens...darn.

-- Michael (michaelteever@buffalo.com), February 08, 2000.

Stabilizers AGAIN?? I bet there are an awful lot of those non-compliant servo-drive units out there. The Greyhound bus is starting to look very comfortable. Maybe even Amtrak if you're feeling brave, but no planes.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), February 08, 2000.

Rachel, you wrote "I've been monitoring aviation safety worldwide since SR111 went down in my country in early Sept. of 1998. It was obvious to me in reading discussion boards and in following the links given there that much more happens worldwide than we realize--all the time. That said, the past few weeks feel like there has been an increase. In time, the sites that tally incidents/accidents will indeed show whether or not the increase is real. Let's hope it's not!

I would like to comment on how pleased I am to see that you share one of my concerns, namely aviation safety. I have been interested in this ever since I started flying in 1970, and I have had to study the subject ever since I became an instructor in 1987.

In some ways I agree with you that there does appear to have been an increase in incidents over the past few weeks as I have had to personally fill in one incident report, and comment on two others as chief flying instructor over the past six weeks. I have only ever handled one such report in the previous six years.

However a check of all reported incident and accidents at the NTSB site, or here in New zealand at the CAA site, shows that actually there has been a decrease (but not significant) over the last two months.

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), February 09, 2000.

Italics Off

-- Malcolm Taylor (taylorm@es.co.nz), February 09, 2000.

Malcolm, a site for you. :)

SR111

The links are especially good. The group is a mix of industry and of non-industry people.

-- Rachel Gibson (rgibson@hotmail.com), February 09, 2000.