Hey Jet Blue, when a pilot goes fucking nuts mid-air, you don't have to suspend him. You can just go ahead and fire his ass outright.More seriously: The moment I heard about the Jet Blue incident, I flashed on the strange case of Egyptair 990 in November of 2001.
Although the exact cause of that horrific tragedy has never been officially determined, it is known that the autopilot somehow became disengaged and the co-pilot began repeating the words "I rely on God, I rely on God." The co-pilot, Gameel al-Batouti, was not considered very religious; he was a "big, friendly guy with a reputation for telling jokes and enjoying life." The pilot was somewhat more religious but by no means an extremist.
It is very possible, of course, that "I rely on God" was something Batouti told himself because he suddenly found himself dealing with a horrifying mechanical failure and was trying to avert catastrophe. At the time, however, most Americans presumed that Batouti intentionally caused the catastrophe. For some reason, the right-side elevators were pointing straight down; the Captain was pulling the left side up and yelling at Batouti to do likewise on the right.
If I were a conspiracy theorist of the lower orders, I might take this opportunity to mutter darkly about MKULTRA experiments on airline pilots. Feel free to do so yourself if that's your bag.
4 comments:
The Egypt Air flight remains in my nightmares. If you look at the path that the plane took from the black boxes, it was apparently very similar to a 35,000 foot roller coaster. First down to 4,000 feet then up to 38,000 and finally inverting and spirally out of the sky.
I can never forget it when flying.
Harry
In two airplane disasters I remember reading about one was pilot error due in part to fatigue and the other caused by dirty hydraulic fluid caused a control surface malfunction. The root cause of both is an industry looking only at the bottom line.
In most industries it's cheaper to work people longer hours than hire more employees.
What I recall about that matter was some discussion of the 33s involved (Masonic signature, supposedly), and perhaps a proof of concept for remote control takeover of the controls. Of course, I read crazy commentators, LOL!
XI
Mr. Mike, not so. It's actually quite a bit more expensive to work people longer hours instead of hiring more employees. This used to be common knowledge and accepted science, and was studied extensively in the past. The conclusion was always the same......working people more than 40 hours gives you about 1/3 or less productivity. Hiring another person would be less expensive, since you'd be getting double the productivity, which simply does not happen when you work someone more than 40 hours a week, 8 hours a day.
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/14/bring_back_the_40_hour_work_week/
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