I haven’t spent any time in the pity before. I’m only here because I got diverted.
Does everyone usually smile this nice at the end?
Is there usually an end?
I usually don’t come here. I got dragged in when the thread was moved. Usually I can’t stand the attitudes, and I’ve left because some honestly evil sides were coming out of people, and I wouldn’t be a part of it.
Cardinal, I hope you perceive the changing tide. Or maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part.
Wow, that was convoluted. A link to a thread that was about a link to the end of another thread that had apparently been about a few different things. I didn’t sort it all out.
I assume you mean that there was some badness going on, though. It’s the kind attitude that takes something that’s very debateable and goes off on a cursing rant, acting like they’ve never even ever heard the other side of the argument. There’s a big difference between being firm or even aggressive in your arguements, and having that evil touch.
No
Of course. At the very least, the main combatants eventually exhaust themselves.
I think the pilot should have said something to the passengers.
I disagee.
I think you’re both wrong.
Oh, and you suck.
An interesting go-around story for the end of the thread.
We went to Israel last year. I flew in on KLM a few days before my brother came in on BA. We both like to fly, and are not at all afraid of it. I went to meet him at the airport, and he comes out of customs with a broad “You ain’t gonna believe this” smile.
Apparently, they were on final into Ben Gurion Tel Aviv through a stormy patch, and lightning hit the wing on his side of the plane. Big flash and boom, pilot throttled up and went around.
This was about two weeks after terrorists fired a shoulder launched missile at an Arkia (Israeli charter airline) plane flying out of Mombassa, Kenya. It was about 5 minutes before the pilots came on the intercom and let the passengers know that it was a lightning strike, not a SAM.
If you think that people were shreiking over a little runway fishtailing in Sacramento as per the OP, just imagine what the BA plane looked like for those 5 minutes.
Yeah, but did anybody sue? Sorry Extraneous, cheap shot.
Hmm, is there a pattern here? I posted earlier about being on a flight that aborted its landing twice - that was a BA flight too.
I’ve flown BA many times and I’ve never had problems. I have heard stories (perhaps some of the commercial pilots here could verify) of pilots being docked or disciplined (perhaps that is too harsh of a word) for using too much fuel. I’m sure most of these are apocryphal, as I have usually heard them from friends who have some stake in the airline industry. F’r insance, all of my Dallas friends complain about Continental (hub in Houston); all my Houston ones complain about American (hub in Dallas) – many of them have relatives who work for the airlines.
Any airline would be suicidal to compromise safety for some jet fuel. But it is nice to be reassured of that by hearing lots of stories about the pilots throttling up and going around. From this thread, perhaps you would want to favor the airlines who do lots of go-arounds (to a degree, I’m sure most airlines have reasonably equivalent levels of pilot competency).
Don’t complain until you’ve flown a real substandard airline. I flew Cibir (Air Siberia) from Moscow Domodenevo to Tomsk, Siberia a few years ago. It was an old Tupolev Tu-154, which fall out of the sky (or get shot down) at relatively alarming rates. I had no incidents, but one of the trip leader said that the last time he flew that route, while walking out to the plane on the tarmac he noticed that at least 1/4 of one of the tires was missing. Before they took off.
I view the OP as the same thing as a bus driver swerving away from an accident. Yeah, it is scary and disconcerting, but he has as much at stake as you do. And he has more pressing things on his mind than apologizing.
Crap. I was beginning to think this was a nascent Love Connection.
Edwino, as far as whats on the pilots mind, how about 125 people who may never fly on Hawaiian Airlines again? Let’s just think about once the plane was on the ground: why didn’t they come out of the flight deck to at least say sorry about that? No excuse is plausible, well…except that they didn’t give a crap.
su-z-k
Perhaps the pilot was giving the copilot a dressing-down. Perhaps if it was truly a training run, the pilot and copilot were discussing what went wrong and how to avoid these things. Perhaps they were being nonconfrontational to a fault. It is all speculation when all we have to rely on is a secondhand retelling (does that make it a thirdhand telling?)
Yeah, I would expect an answer as well. At least, I would ask, which apparently people did. In my experience, people often tend to be under a lot of stress during airline flights, and even small bumps are magnified. I would hate to see it all come uncorked if something doesn’t go exactly according to expectations. My wife is a reluctant flyer, and I can totally see this happening – moderate chop is turned into “Omigod the wings are gonna fall off.”
I would find no fault in your son and everyone else on that plane if they chose never to fly Hawaiian Air again. Though I have no reason to disbelieve you, I could also say that something like this can get magnified. Even if his nerves are steel, if his neighbors starting freaking out, communal tension rises. Especially if his girlfriend is freaking out – the stress caused on a loved translates neatly into stress on us. I can see the beginnings of this in me: flying by myself or with a group of easy flyers can be far less stressful than flying with my wife. I seek to reassure her that every bump, every flap and slat extension, every bank, and every throttle change is normal. I worry about her mental well-being, and this stresses me to a certain extent.
This can lead to a large gap in the perception of the experience between the passengers and the flight crew. My friend is a flight attendant and she recently strained her neck and cut her shin by getting thrown around in the galley of a 737 in turbulence; she wasn’t particularly fazed by the matter (she was more embarrased – since they are union, she was transported by ambulance from the tarmac for a 1 inch cut). So you have to weigh in the fact that these things may not be that far out of the ordinary for the flight crew.
Something that hasn’t been pointed out: People seem happy to point fingers at flight attendants, but were the flight attendants even allowed to get up after the go-around? Presumably the plane never left the approach pattern. I don’t know FAA regulations, but it sure seems like the flight attendants buckle themselves down in even light turbulence and well before both takeoff and landing. So if the passengers were freakin’, maybe the flight attendants weren’t in a position to offer reassurance.
I have insufficient factual evidence to point fingers. From your account, it certainly seems that the flight crew should have done something. But from personal experience, I know that as much as people are “comfortable” with flying, a few overturned drinks, unexpected noises, and jarring movements, make people start praying to their respective Gods and going for the airsickness bags. It’s still safer than almost any form of transportation out there.
I have no idea why the door stayed closed. Maybe the co-pilot was getting chewed out and the captain wanted to do the dressing-down in private. Maybe the airline has a policy about the pilots not talking to the passengers in this sort of situation. Maybe… well, hell, I don’t know - I wasn’t there.
I repeat - if you’re not happy with your flying experinece say something to the airline. (On the flip side, if you ARE happy say something, too - they need to know what they’re doing right, too).
If an airline has multiple situations where the crap is scared out of passengers and no explanation is given they won’t stay in business. That’s reality. It’s your money and, yes, your life. If you feel strongly enough about this you don’t want to ever fly Hawaiian Airlines then don’t - fly with someone else. Preferably an airline that does care enough to explain what the hell required an alarming manuver, or at least hires pilots who care that much.
FAA regs require everyone to be belted in during taxi, take-off, and landing. During a go-around yes, they must remain belted. The only exception would be for “necessary flight duties”. I always took that to mean if there was a fire in the galley a FA could unstrap, grab a fire extinguisher, slide down the tilted main aisle, and deal with the situation, but unless it was something that important they stay in their seats. (And no, I’ve never heard of that particular situation actually happening, it’s just an example).
Even so, most FA’s have lungs and voices. It’s probably a job requirement. I was on a flight once where one of the doors to an overhead baggage compartment popped open on take-off. Yes, one or two very nervous fliers screamed. Although the FA’s couldn’t reach the PA mike they still shouted reassurances to the passengers that it was a very minor thing and they’d deal with it later, everyone please stay in their seats.
Me, if I was sitting on such a flight I’d probably tell mye seat neighbors something like “well, the pilots aborted that landing, probably for good reason, and well go up, circle a bit, and come back down”. There’s no reason the FA’s couldn’t have said the same thing. Even those that aren’t pilots themselves* should be familar enough with flying that they could make that leap of logic. I think someone saying in a calm voice that there was a reason for what just happened, sit tight, here’s what will probably happen next would have gone a long way towards calming people.
And, oh yes, the FA’s may belt in even during light turbulence for two very simple reasons. One, light turbulence can sometimes turn into heavier turbulence unexpectedly. Two, as edwino’s friend’s story shows, FA’s can be and are sometimes hurt by being tossed around inside the airplane. If the captain says “belt in” it’s in their interests to do so.
- Yes, a certain number of flight attendants are also pilots, too. In fact, one of the flight instructors at my local airport is also a flight attendant for United.
The obvious recourse: 125 letters of complaint, signed by each passenger plus as many of their immediate relatives, friends and neighbors as possible, to each of: Hawaiian Airlines’ CEO & Chairman of Board, FAA administrator, heads of Pilots’ and FAs’ unions (if any) and each major Hawaii newspaper and TV news station; describing the situation, berating the failure to provide the proper courtesy of an explanation, describing any long-term ill effect they may have experienced and what fiscal and emotional cost it’ll bring; announcing that they’ll reccommend anyone they meet against flying that airline; identifying flight date, number, names of crew, etc. That would have got noticed.
I believe we all agree it would have reflected positively on the crew if at some point, even after the emergency was resolved, someone had said something, but that is just that: something that would have been good from a human perspective (and it woul dhave done little for some of the more traumatized) .
Then we have an opposing force in many corporate or organizational environments: the frequently-applied unwritten rule that you should avoid volunteering an apology or a justification for your actions, because then people may take THAT as an “admission” that you knew you were doing something wrong and use THAT as grounds to complain, sue, etc. Unfortunately that is seen as a real enough risk that it’s “better” to act rude.
(Also, in any case, the 2nd-hand explanation from the Attendant as to that this was a “training” incident is uncorroborated, after all how do we know the FA had no axe to grind with the cockpit crew or management?)
I wanted to underline this. Here’s a little story.
I’m not afraid of spiders. I think they’re pretty neat. When I get a big one in the house, I catch it in a glass and study it close up. Then I put it outside. Small ones, I don’t even bother with. I figure every spider in the house means a hundred ants I don’t have to worry about. Heck, right now, I’ve got a snapshot on my desk of a tarantula I found during my trip last week to California; he was on the road, and I poked him repeatedly in the butt to get him off the pavement so he wouldn’t get squished.
Many years ago, in college, I roomed with two women. (Yes, we had the “Three’s Company” theme on our answering machine.) Neither of these women liked spiders, and I was frequently summoned for arachnid-eviction duty.
I remember one time specifically when there was a particularly sizeable eight-legged critter in one woman’s bedroom. It was fast and skittish, too; I had a heck of a time convincing it to come out from under things so I could apprehend it, and then it was too quick to capture, disappearing under something else. All the while, the woman was behind me, standing on the bed, gibbering in fear, hugging herself, and every time the spider would dash out from beneath the bookshelf or desk or whatever in response to my prodding, she would let out a piercing scream before going back to sobbing in despair. I tried to get her to leave the room, but she wouldn’t put her feet on the floor, so I was stuck with her. And after five minutes of this, my own adrenaline was pumping so much I myself was unable to cope with the spider; I was keying into her reactions and jumping back in associative terror every time the spider would move at me. I hated myself for doing it, but I couldn’t help it; the woman’s extreme fear reaction was just too contagious.
Eventually I just had to kill the thing. Er, the spider, not the woman. I didn’t want to, but there was no other way to get out of the situation, short of physically throwing the woman over my shoulder and tossing her out of the room. Actually, now that I think about it…
But that’s the point. I wasn’t thinking. A close friend of mine was having a no-holds-barred freakout, and my deeply buried primate brain was being triggered without my conscious control, and beyond my ability to restrain it. Obviously, the instinct center was saying, if this person is terrified, there must be a reason for it, so I’m going to be terrified also. I knew, consciously, there wasn’t any reason to be terrified, but it was almost impossible to fight the reaction.
I submit that something similar happened on the airplane in question. If the passengers had been uniformly experienced, I doubt anyone would even remember the incident a week later. But instead, naive and panicky fliers overreacted, thereby precipitating a herd response with everybody else whether it was warranted or not.
My two cents.