BuzzMachine

And they still are trying to ban cell phones on airplanes!

A cell phone would be a valuable tool for security in case of a hijack or an unruly passenger.

Could the photos go out to the web?

Blogebrity finally earns its citizen-journo cred.

They should put the baggage carrier on trial for the attempted murder of all the passengers. How infuriating! Its so great to hear a first hand account of the incident rather than regurgitated editorial cruft.

I don’t think Alaska Airlines will suffer to much for this. They currently have a monopoly where I live (Juneau, Alaska), and I imagine they still have a strong following throughout the rest of the state.

This is why I don’t fly.

From Patrick Smith, author of ASK THE PILOT:

Here’s the text of a post I just left over at Jeremy Hermann’s place. I plan to incorporate this into my next column for Salon.com as well:

Hermann’s description of the incident is a definite overreaction.

That’s not to say the decompression was a pleasant experience, and I could never blame the majority of passengers for being scared and confused. However, a problem of this nature, from a technical standpoint, isn’t that serious. It was noisy, and no doubt disorienting for many of the plane’s occupants; the need for the crew to initiate a rapid descent was, I’m sure, frightening to those who didn’t understand what was happening. But it was not a life-threatening situation. The plane lost cabin pressure and so the pilots descended as quickly as possible to 10,000 feet. They did nothing heroic or unusual, and will be the first ones to admit it. As professional airline pilots, they did what they’re supposed to do. Any other crew would have done the same thing. The passengers, meanwhile, could breathe using their drop-down masks.

Now, different kinds of in-flight decompressions can result in different situations — some more hazardous than others. Bombs, for example, can cause an entire fuselage to tear apart in fractions of a second. Large-scale structural failure, like the infamous fuselage burst of that Aloha Airlines 737 in 1988, can be similarly disastrous. But those are extremely rare occurrences, and that’s not what happened to Alaska Airlines. The breach was a small one, and once the cabin pressure had escaped, it could be reasonably assumed that the plane was going to stay in one solid piece and fly just fine. Which it did.

Hermann reminds us that he’s a private pilot, but he also misinterpreted the smell of the oxygen generating canisters as jet fuel, and seems to have been just as panic-stricken as all those non-pilots around him.

Best regards,
Patrick Smith

A Post from Patrick Smith, author of Salon.com’s ASK THE PILOT column:

This is one of those rare instances where the media actually got it right by downplaying the seriousness of the situation.

Hermanns’ account of the incident, which he describes as “horrific,” and “the unthinkable,” is something of a lurid overreaction.

That’s not to say the decompression was a pleasant experience, and I could never blame the majority of passengers for being scared and confused. However, a problem of this nature, from a technical standpoint, isn’t that serious. It was noisy, and no doubt disorienting for many of the plane’s occupants; the need for the crew to initiate a rapid descent was, I’m sure, frightening to those who didn’t understand what was happening. But it was not a life-threatening situation. The plane lost cabin pressure and so the pilots descended as quickly as possible to 10,000 feet. They did nothing heroic or unusual, and will be the first ones to admit it. As professional airline pilots, they did what they’re supposed to do. Any other crew would have done the same thing. The passengers, meanwhile, could breathe using their drop-down masks.

Now, different kinds of in-flight decompressions can result in different situations — some more hazardous than others. Bombs, for example, can cause an entire fuselage to tear apart in fractions of a second. Large-scale structural failure, like the infamous fuselage burst of that Aloha Airlines 737 in 1988, can be similarly disastrous. But those are extremely rare occurrences, and that’s not what happened to Alaska Airlines. The breach was a small one, and once the cabin pressure had escaped, it could be reasonably assumed that the plane was going to stay in one solid piece and fly just fine. Which it did.
Hermanns reminds us that he’s a private pilot, but he also misinterpreted the smell of the activated oxygen canisters as the smell of jet fuel, which he erroneously describes as “Av-gas” and “JP-4≤ (it’s neither), and seems to have been just as needlessly panic-stricken as all those non-pilots around him.

(Not to the guy who doesn’t fly: Approx 17,500 commercial flights arrive and depart safely *each day* in the USA alone. We haven’t had a catastrophic accident since 2001.)

Cheers,

Patrick Smith
http://www.askthepilot.com

“So I suppose the wing breaking off the Chaulk plane last week, killing all aboard, wasn’t a “catastrophic accident”?”

He’s referring to a major airline crash. That’s not to negate the unfortunate loss of life in the Chalk accident, but the fact remains that a Grumman G-73T Turbine Mallard is not a large airliner.

Hermanns twice deleted the entire post.

He’s saying some comments aren’t showing up because of server overload. That might explain it if your comments were, as you say, “somewhat lengthy.” Did you try asking him?

Poor form?

I complained to Jeremy Hermanns about the deletion of my post and asked why he’d done it. Here is his reply (I’ve consolidated it for clarity):

“Your statements literally amazed me. This was a careless accident caused by, and not reported by, a baggage cart operator creasing the planes fuselage. I was unaware a foot long hole tearing open in a fuselage at full altitude while traveling at cruise speed “isn’t that serious.” I hope you got paid a grip of cash to write that article. And, yes I did delete your technical fluffery; next time, try to address the situation at hand, not the imaginative one. Nice try – PR Hack!”

For good measure, he included this postscript:

“Please don’t reply — I probably won’t read it.”

I was not addressing neither the cause of the accident, nor the matter of who was at fault, or why they were at fault. I was addressing only his description of the in-flight events, and the realities of a depressurization. Hermann himself had no idea how the hole was made, or who made it, until well after the aircraft had returned to Seattle.

I’m the PR hack, while Hermanns is the one getting his mug splashed on newspapers and TV shows across America, describing the event as “horrific,” and “unthinkable.”

Again, the dangers of the citizen-as-journalist

Patrick – give it a rest with the constant copying and re-copying of your post, on this site and others, showing the text “… in my column next Friday on Salon.” and “… Patrick Smith, author of Salon.com’s ASK THE PILOT column” as well as your own site’s URL prominently in your comments. A little less blatant self-promotion would be nice. You’re site’s URL showing up in your comment sig is enough, I think. If you are trying to establish your SME status, let your comment do that for you.