It is a big irony for Glen Joerger, the president of National Airlines to say "Safety is always our top priority at National Airlines” just immediately before adding "This is a devastating loss."
It seems that top priority is not enough anymore.
Away from that, my sincere thoughts and condolences are with the crew members and their families.
Date: 01 May 2013 commenting on http://edition.cnn.com/
1 comment:
* Synk on 01 May 2013
Dude this is nearly-certainly caused by a cargo shift -- ground handlers' fault, not pilot or mechanical error.
* Airlinologist on 01 May 2013
With all due respect, the loadmaster, Mr. Michael Sheets, was on board the crashed aircraft.
What would be the reason for any airline to employ a loadmaster to accompany the aircraft operation?
* Synk on 01 May 2013
You're asking me a question that I simply cannot answer. I don't know why he would be flying. But you seem to implicate that just because he was on the flight, he couldn't have screwed up. Bad stuff happens. It just does. Maybe a strap broke. Maybe he did his calcs wrong. But it's very, very clear that something happened to cause his ass to drop (with a correspondent fatal increase in his angle of attack), which, at that low altitude, is nearly always unrecoverable. This wasn't taliban. This wasn't pilot error (unless he's the dumbest pilot on the planet. A pilot COULD command that AoA on takeoff, but only suicidal ones would), and it wasn't mechanical error. Something happened in that hold. Either something shifted, or it was loaded incorrectly from the start.
I'll reply further that the pitch-over you see in the video (where he rolls to his right and pushes the nose down) was ABSOLUTELY the correct response. The guy knew what he was doing -- trying to gain enough air speed to curtail the stall, AND shift the cargo forward. He simply did not have the room for it to be effective. But it IS SIMPLY the ONLY response that would have helped in ANY way, and was absolutely correct. So. This was NOT a bad pilot. This was a professional, who fought to live until the very last second of his life. I'm entirely confident that safety was on HIS mind
Synk on 01 May 2013
Sadly, I believe, as a professional, he KNEW he wasn't going to make it. I think it would be intensely interesting to hear the cockpit voice recorder. Yet still he tried. A testament, I think, to our will to live.
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