Of course, Airbus could always buy Boeing…
"…In the transcript, the traffic control tells the coast guard plane that it was given a “No. 1” priority for takeoff, an expression some experts say might have led the Bombardier crew to mistakenly believe they got a permission to proceed to the runway.
The ministry’s new emergency measures call for making sure pilots understand the terminology specifically related to runway entry, urging them to repeat the instructions given by the traffic controls, and ask if they are uncertain. They also instruct traffic control not use numerical terms such as No. 1 suggesting takeoff and landing priorities to avoid confusion…"
Happy birthday to Cal Rodgers, one of my early-aviation heroes! I visited his grave in Pittsburgh last summer: Calbraith Perry Rodgers - Wikipedia
Bombardier doesn’t actually build commercial airplanes anymore, although I think they still build business jets. They “sold” the C-Series to Airbus (essentially Bombardier gave it to them in exchange for Airbus agreeing to take on the debt they they inured developing it). The CRJ series is out of production, and Bombardier sold Mitsubishi the rights to the design. Similarly they sold the rights to all the DeHavilland planes to Viking Aircraft.
Embraer has been increasing the size of it’s jets over the years, they are now on the 195-e2 which can seat 132 passengers, so they are closing in on the lower end of the A220/A319-320/737 seat range, so not impossible they could keep expanding. But I concur that is a matter of many years before they could become a serious competitor on the international aircraft market.
Just MHO. YMMV.
Well China is the major manufacturer of nuclear power plants in the world–and a failure with one of them could cause a lot more deaths than an airplane crash.
I’ve been following the TNflygirl crash and wow, she was a bad pilot. I saw a review of one of her earlier solo flights and she was unable to do even basic flying like “turn right until the number at the top of your compass is a 9”. My question is: is her getting signed off an aberration or the norm? What do you have to do to not get signed off on your pilot license?
i firmly believe that BOTH the US-Gvt and EU-admin. will object to that on base of limiting competition in the marketplace(s)
but obv. letting boeings knowledge/processes/etc… go to wast would also be extremely destructive … kinda lose-lose scenario here for lawmakers…
I haven’t heard stories of pilots getting signed off without being able to meet the standards (available here for anybody who wants to read 101 pages of govspeak). The complaints I hear are more about the difficulty getting an examiner to come and test you on a reasonable schedule. Certainly I would expect anyone unable to turn to a heading to fail.
I am traveling today. In fact I’m in the back of an A320 over the Gulf of Mexico as I’m typing.
At the airport in Medellín Colombia I was surprised to see a COPA 737-MAX 9 being loaded for departure. I had been under the impression the FAA’s grounding in this case had worldwide effect. Perhaps that’s wrong. I also don’t know whether the grounding applied only to MAX 9s with the plugged emergency exits or to all of them.
I had also thought the older 737-900ER used the same door plug design, yet the grounding only seems to apply to the MAX9. I suppose that could make sense if the FAA believes the problem is a manufacturing defect / poor quality control with the MAX specifically, rather than a bad design.
Sounds like the Feds think it’s manufacturing. And also like they think if it was gonna fail, it’d do it pretty early in the life of any jet. IOW, “if the dummy door hasn’t already fallen out of a 5yo 900ER it isn’t gonna.”
I’ve seen reference to United and Alaska finding multiple loose bolts but I can’t find the one that gave a number of 15. Also saw mention of a crack in the missing door’s upper guide. Can’t find that one either to quote.
Having this happen to a new airplane is very disturbing.
The guide crack might be unsurprising as a consequence of weird loads applied to it with the loose bolts. So maybe not a separate issue. Maybe.
I have firsthand knowledge of a designated examiner (meaning not an FAA employee, but a person able to give certain pilot checkrides) who was removed because they were supposedly not following the requirements.
What I observed was that in addition to checking all the boxes required for a checkride, they were also sometimes instructing (afterward, for no further fee) on topics they felt the applicant might need to know, or hadn’t been exposed to in training. They’re not supposed to do that. However, I also heard there were other irregularities that I didn’t witness. But I doubt very much they were letting people slide on basic technique. I saw this examiner pink slip more than one person for being below standards on a maneuver, and once even during the oral portion of the exam.
At the professional level, I saw one applicant get washed out of airline training. He really didn’t have it, and everyone knew it. The instructors tried to help him along, but it just wasn’t going to happen. In my bizjet career I haven’t witnessed anything like that, but instructors have told me about applicants who came to training without proper preparation. They hadn’t memorized their numbers and procedures and were playing catch-up throughout training. That’s unprofessional. But the instructors (and the training facilities that employ them) see it as their mission to train people to standards, and they mostly do. If you need extra help, they’ll give it to you. Possibly more than one might really deserve. In that way, it’s a bit more gentlemanly than the airlines, I think. Would you agree with that @LSLGuy?
Total aberration. I was a ground school instructor for several years, and you couldn’t pass that class without understanding all the jargon, the regs, procedures like rate-1 turns, etc.
On a flight test, she would have been told, “turn to zero niner zero”, and the examiner would have watched for a proper rate turn, altitude gain or loss during the turn, airspeed gain or loss during the turn, etc. Also whether you hit your assigned direction or overshot it or undershot it. Screw any of that up badly, and you fail the ride.
One of our students failed the checkride because he lost altitude awareness in the pattern while being given a bunch of instructions and dropped 150-200 ft, from a 1,000 ft downwind to 800 or so. Instant fail.
I can’t imagine someone passing even a pre-solo checkride without being able to carry out a simple turn properly.
I don’t know what this “TNFlygirl” crash someone’s talking about is/was. If there was any internet celebrity involved, then you can assume there was BS throughout her and her training program.
Ref @Llama_Llogophile’s comments. IME …
At the professional level there are rigid standards. The employer will work with you a lot as long as you’re working with them. But ultimately if you can’t / won’t keep up, you’re out of a job. I have personally known some no-hopers at new-hire time and at airplane change time. They don’t work here any more. I also know plenty of folks who had a problem in training and went back to their old seat and plane, then retried the same training program a year later & did well. There’s plenty of slack to help the willing.
I never CFIed. I do know folks who did or still do and one airline co-worker who worked part-time as a designee for a flight school. From what I gather, most Feds & Designees take it real serious. The standards for a private pilot aren’t exceedingly high, but they need to be met and they’re fairly cut and dried.
The designee I mentioned worked with a flight school that specialized in training Far Eastern pilots. They’d come over here for 3 or 6 months sponsored by an Asian airline, get run through a zero-to-hero program here in the sunny wide open airspace of SoFL then be sent back to wherever to start as turboprop or RJ copilots.
The designee finally quit after too much pressure to pass students who were hopeless. The school’s POV was that they were contracted to deliver pilots, and attrition looked bad and wasn’t in their (or their customers’) budget.
The trick is to pull enough G’s in the turn to cause the instructor’s vision to narrow.
TNFlygirl was a 40ish year old woman who had her own aircraft (Bonanza or something like that?) and documented her training on YouTube. She had a fatal crash recently with her father sitting next to her. Because her flying has been so well documented, her lack of proficiency is out there for all to see.
There’s a good chance the accident flight was filmed so I imagine we will eventually find out exactly what happened. Initial theories are autopilot mismanagement. Some videos show her forgetting or not understanding that if you pitch the autopilot up to climb then you also need to add power. The autopilot also didn’t have control of the trim, instead it flashes a NU or ND light when it detects an out of trim condition.
Link to blancolirio video on the accident. https://youtu.be/ViO1j1iYn18?si=te_73zdbY2a7nah9
This is the specific video I was referring to. I am not a pilot (I’ve taken one lesson ever) but what struck me was how she was just oblivious to anything going on around her; she would hyperfocus on a minor detail to the exclusion of everything else needed for flying.