Germanwings Passenger Jet Crashes In French Alps

I just heard it explained by a retired pilot that the policy regarding holding the door open or not (even when one pilot goes to the toilet or something) has changed after 9/11. They used to leave the door to cockpit open the whole flight before and preferred it that way but it changed for safety reasons. Overall very effective, unless the safety issue is in the cockpit (by himself).

 

Maybe you should add the source if you share such a thing.

 

They have members in Germany?

 

My friend Bill. I dont always believe everything he tells me till i research it. We will see

 

Don't pass along crappy info. There's enough of that in the world.

 

I have had car accidents. One was quite serious, killing two, disabling my friend for life and me losing some teeth. We were only going 90 or so when we hit that truck. Plus , I rolled two cars . One plane wreck= adios fella'. Can't do it. Won't do it.

 

True, but computer processors can detect things in milliseconds, and some in nano seconds. They can definitely detect when an airplane is flying 50 feet off the ground going 300+ miles per hour. I've heard autopilot actually does most of the work these days, and pilots mainly take over during turbulence and landing

 

Your logic is flawed on this. So presumably plane wrecks are more likely fatal than car wrecks. This does not mean that cars are safer. Car wrecks are much more common, so that you're both more likely to die and to be injured per mile traveled by car.

I don't know the exact current stats, but I think this is current or close to it: if you took one major carrier jet flight per day, you would have to travel for 40,000 years before you would die in a crash. If you tried to travel the same distance by car each day (even adjusting for travel fatigue), I'm not sure you would even last a few years.

Air crashes seem much scarier for at least three reasons:

1. People are often scared of heights

2. People are more scared of situations when they are not in control

3. Air crashes are big, dramatic events that kill a lot of people in one shot. The tens of thousands of car fatalities that happen each year usually aren't headline news.

 

My logic might be flawed to you, but one point you mentioned sums it up for me. No control over my ass when flying. For one, I'm claustraphobic. (sp). And two--my imagination.

I know that when a plane starts to go down(usually), EVERYONE is flung from their seats into the front of the plane, screaming and piling up and KNOWING! Yup--I know more die in cars than in planes, but the only way a plane is going to get me is to fall out of the sky on my head. Irrational? I suppose so--but that's the way she is for me.


There's just something unappealing to me concerning flying into a mountain at 500 MPH.

As you can see, I have a pretty decent record of surviving car crashes.

 

I guess that's legitimate. It's the other way around for me though. Knowing that I'm statistically much, much less likely to die on plane makes me feel a lot safer.

I'm not really against the idea of knowing that I'm going to die moments before it happens.

 

Likely nobody on the passenger list knew there was a problem until the captain started to attempt to break down the door... The rate of decent was not that great. Seems the captain wasn't even aware of it at first because he was heard calmly knocking on the door until he realized the copilot was not going to let him back in. Then he knocked louder... maybe thinking the copilot was asleep or something. It was right at the very end that he was trying to break down the door.



Oh... Keep the ISIS rumors to yourself until there's some actual proof of such. No terrorist groups have claimed responsibility so far.

 

they havent found out because their twitter feeds have been cut off.

while its true the auto pilot can handle the plane in the air, its only 50% perfected to take off and land the plane. I dont think people are ready for this yet. computer cant anticipate every single occurrence during a flight and correct for error just yet. maybe in the next 20-30 years they will fly on their own like drones.

automated voice (this is your drone speaking, we are expecting turbulance 10000 ft msl to fl450 .. I got this shit ... over

 

Were the accidents your fault?

 

How much trust do you have in other drivers? Every time you meet another vehicle on a narrow highway, you're four feet from instant death.

This copilot was unusual. At least 99.999% of all pilots want to live just as much as you do, so their natural survival instincts motivate them to do everything humanly possible to land the plane in one piece. The greatest safety feature of any airplane is that the pilots are on there with you.

 

..

 

Several European airlines are now adopting the American rule that nobody can ever be alone in a cockpit during a commercial flight. It's not good to trust any one person that much. The US has the most paranoid air safety rules in the world, because of 9-11.

Even though flying will never be perfect, it will still never be like ground transportation, where there are too damn many things to run into. Like idiot drivers who stop their truck on a crossing when the gates are coming down. It happens all the time. The sky is so empty. Usually, you have room to correct a mistake.

 

So you would rather know you're about to die? Like the people on the plane did?

You guys just place emphasis on different issues related to flying or driving a car. Knowing the stats does quell one's uncertainty about flying, but it seems @scratcho looks at other issues related to flying like if, for example, something does go wrong, how the hell do I get out of here? How close is help? And that's probably because he has experience in those kind of situations

 

In my opinion they should leave the cockpit door open like it used to be before 9/11 (IF the majority of pilots would still prefer it that way). The safety measures taken at the airport are more important it seems. How often does a copilot go nuts like this? How often tries a passenger to enter the cockpit with force?
Like I heard pilots themselves say: it's not always about all the possibilties that could happen, it is more so about how likely it is that it will happen. That's also a good argument to realize for people who are afraid of travelling by plane Yes, crashing with a plane seems even more horrible than with a car, but the chance of it is so much smaller that it is very very likely it will never happen to you or me.

 

Most people just want to FEEL safe. The facts don't really matter.

It's so unlikely, that you and I will never even know anybody who knew somebody who died in a plane crash.

Three people from my high school class died in separate car crashes within five years of graduation.

 

That's far less unlikely though (depending on how much people we know I guess) It seems when that plain full of dutch people crashed in Ukraine everybody knew someone that lost someone on that flight.