Well, ISTM strictly speaking the “incline” can be positive (climb) or negative (dive) and still be an incline.
And this is what you do when you have what may be a serious emergency and you cannot handle it onboard. Point that sucker at the nearest airport AND pretend you are peeling off for a strafing run. Even better in these no-food days, you can disregard that the passenger’s stomachs are now in the overhead bin.
No. “Decline” is not a word that describes a literal downward slope.
That article is an embarrassment.
They had an ill passenger and so they landed expeditiously at a nearby airport.
And the article sounds breathless that somehow they survived making a descent and making a normal landing at a standard airliner airport, albeit not the ones the passengers had booked travel to.
OK, now reports are that there were more than problems with the one single passenger.
Not that the Daily News articleis any great example of a well written piece, either (if “a door had flown open” at cruise altitude, everyone would notice immediately, you would not suspect it from some people getting respiratory distress).
Unfortunately the mix of unreliable lay-witnesses and media means that it is pretty much impossible to gain any useful information out of the news articles.
So what, that’s on a plane, can cause 3 people to lose consciousness and not require hospitalization? They say initial evaluation is negative for a pressure leak. Inert gasses, random chance, hmm?
WAG: One person has a legitimate health problem, the others panic and hyperventilate.
I happened to have the TV on when this story broke on CNN. All Wolf Blitzer knew was that one passenger had passed out, and that the plane may have lost a door. Blitzer went on and on, about whether one passenger had passed out, or two, or more. Meanwhile I was screaming at the TV: “You stupid cunt! The passenger passing out is not the story! Losing a fucking door is the story!” He didn’t listen to me.
Exactly. We certainly are seeing the media hyperventilating here over (probably) nothing.
Once the authorities release some sort of fact-based information I wonder how breathlessly they’ll be offering an apology for their earlier scare-mongering.