These people obviously never flew on Air Mali or Air Afrique.
There’s a small Thai airline called Phuket Air. It was banned from the EU in 2005 but then removed from the blacklist the following year after it cancelled all of its scheduled flights to there. Looks like there are no flights now. The wikipedia entry says:
“Phuket Air’s final money making bid was to lease its only active 747-300 to Saudi Arabian Airlines in 2009, due to a number of complaints by passengers regarding the state of the aircraft, Saudi Arabian suspended its lease on HS-VAC. With competitor ACIM leasing airlines such as Air Atlanta Icelandic and Hellenic Imperial Airways Phuket Air’s fleet of 1 active aircraft is basically stored derelict at Bangkok’s Don Muang airport. The Boeing 747-300 is currently being used by Saudi Arabian on flights to and from Iran on Hajj services.”
Then there’s One-Two-Go Airlines, which suffered a horrendous crash upon landing in Phuket three years ago. It was renamed Orient Thai early this year. A family-owned outfit, word is the main reason it was started was to act as a cheap shipper for the family’s ammunition factory in Phnom Penh. The joke here, especially after the crash, is that it’s slogan is: “You Fly, You Die.” The Wikipedia entry says it’s been from Europe for a year and a half now. I remember that, but I don’t recall the ban being lifted; I can’t find it on mnemosyne’s list above.
Otherwise, Thailand boasts some very good small airlines, such as Thai AirAsia, Nok Air and Bangkok Airways, although I try to avoid Thai AirAsia just because it seems more prone to delays. Very popular, though.
If you wanted to talk about US carriers, IMHO American Airlines would head the list.
to use the vernacular of an auto technician, them boys are nothing but a bunch of fucking scum bag flat raters.*
*Translation: they will cut any corner necessary to save a minute on a job. Safety does not matter, only speed.
Well, this is a little more like it. I now see the same website also has a list of the Top 10 Hot Stewardess Airlines. With No. 1 the hottest, they are:
- Virgin Atlantic
- Thai Airways
- Southwest
- Qantas
- Hooters Air
- Gulf Air
- Cathay Pacific
- All Nippon Airways
- Air New Zealand
- Air France
Note that Thai Airways is the only airline to make both lists. It’s the 9th most dangerous but has the 2nd-hottest stewardesses. No doubt a comfort as you’re plunging earthward. I know an American married to a Thai Airways stewardess. She is pretty cute. But for most of the photos in this list, I suspect they may be holding the real cuties back. Maybe saving them for the flights. The one in the photo for Gulf Air looks downright scary.
Hooters Air?? I had to look that up to make sure it was real. Sadly, Hooters Air, as the list says, went “bust” (heh) 4-1/2 years ago.
The hottest hosties are Virgins? That all seems very odd.
And Hooters Air went tits up?
Went flat.
I thought for sure Delta would be on that list.
Dangerous? Or Hot Stewardesses?
That doesn’t ring true with my experience at all. I fly a lot and I flew a lot of Chinese regional carriers, and I have no doubt that the safety of certain lines were not up to international standards. One some lines, coming down to land was pretty much always bad, with lots of fussing to keep the wings horizontal and lots of shaking…in a way that is not normally experienced on most airlines. I was not surprised at all when they started finding pilots with fake resumes. Combine a quickly booming airline industry with an inability to enforce safety standards, and this is what you get.
Based on my completely unscientific impression gathered from reading the Curt Lewis newsletter and Aviation Herald every day, I agree. American Airlines seem to be the most unsafe carrier in the US, if not North America as a whole. Their planes are old, they’ve already been caught by the FAA for multiple, repeated maintenance inspection lapses, even after being fined millions of dollars, they have had several airframe fatigue incidents in the past couple of years… Overall, I really don’t get a good impression from them. Not that Delta and Southwest are much better, but AA stands out, it seems.
Well, i’ll certainly bear your aeronautical engineering expertise in mind when i’m evaluating airlines in the future.
As for shaking wings, i’ve had plenty of landings in the US where the plane was swaying back and forth during approach. This is not a sign of poor safety or lack of maintenance standards. The vast majority if things that regular passengers find unnerving or “dangerous” about slying are not, in fact, dangerous at all, and are part of the regular and untroubled operation of the aircraft.
You might be right about their maintenance, but the bolded part is really not much of an issue. From the article i quoted earlier in the thread:
The very same quote you just used makes it clear that the older a plane is, the more inspection, maintenance and overhaul it needs. Given that, an airline that is lax in its maintenance policies is going to encounter a higher incidence of events on a fleet of old aircraft than on newer ones (all else being more or less equal, of course). American Airlines has an old fleet, and has been called out by the FAA for severe maintenance lapses. When it comes to safety, the two absolutely go hand in hand. There have been several incidents in the past few years of age/fatigue-related incidents, enough that the FAA is proposing new rules on aircraft cycles and hours and inspection frequency.
I don’t mean to really harp on AA more than any other airline; they all have problems, but in recent years, AA has been fined huge amounts and has had a recent tear open up in a B757…as I said, it’s an impression I get about them based on Aviation news sources, but that doesn’t mean that others aren’t as bad.
I would like to see a list of airlines (major) that operate the oldest fleet of aircraft. As pointed out above the aircraft require a lot more inspection etc. In addition, they get tired with the seating becoming worn and the electricals (such as in flight entertainment) really tired.
Interesting… my husband flew Pakistan International Airlines once upon a time, and raves about how hot the stewardesses were.
And indeed, they started having troubles with planes flying into the sides of mountains, just after he’d flown with them.
They don’t seem to have a single page with a list, but airfleets.net has fleet ages searchable by airline name. American Airlines has the oldest fleet in the US, about 14-15 years old (note they still fly some MD-80/90s, in process of being replaced with B738s. Their 757s are pretty old too).
Seriously, when it comes to aviation information, there is very little that fans/critics haven’t gone out and compiled in a convenient webpage!
Korean Air had similar problems. Most were addressed several years ago. What you are speaking about, outlined here (and in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers) was recognized in the late 90’s. Their last fatality was in 1999 according to wikipedia. While what you say may have been true, it doesn’t appear to be true today.
Both quotes show how far Korean Air has come in terms of safety. Also note that not everyone agrees with the cultural explanation to begin with.
Right, but the main issue is still the quality of the inspections and maintenance. A lot of people seem to think that the presence of older planes is, by itself, a problem; they think that, because their 15-year-old car is about to fall off its wheels and is full of rust, a 15-year-old plane must have similar problems. But if it’s been looked after as required by regulations, that’s not going to be the case. There are plenty of airlines still flying Boeing 747s and other planes much older than the average fleet, and doing fine.
Right, but at the same time, that’s the problem. “If it’s been looked after as required by regulations”. Both Southwest and AA have been slammed with large fines precisely because they were not looking after their planes as required by regulations, and both of them have had major fuselage tears and rapid decompressions at altitude on older aircraft (B757 and B767s) within the past year or two. Also, there’s reason to believe the current regulations are not good enough at catching problems in an aging fleet, hence the new FAA rules mandating more studies into high cycle/fatigue issues.
Maintenance costs a ton of money, which the airlines don’t have, so they don’t do it as thoroughly as they should. Older planes, who are more likely to begin to become like someone’s rusted old car (::looks out the window at her 96 Tercel:
are more likely to have problems as they age, but these problems don’t get addressed/caught and accidents and incidents occur. Therefore the age of an aircraft fleet becomes important in an environment where maintenance isn’t considered a priority, as several airlines have shown.
Really, we’re kind of agreeing with each other here!
Gladwell talked about these issues WRT Korean Airlines in his book Outliers. Their incident/accident rate used to be many times that of US airlines, and experts were called in to figure it out. Apart from language issues (English was not widely/well understood among crew members), two other major issues were found to be factors in many KAL accidents:
-
a reluctance on the part of the flight crew to question the captain’s judgment/authority in any way;
-
a culture (i.e. Korea) that assigned to the listener (rather than the speaker) responsibility for correctly interpreting the meaning of what was said.
The net result was that copilots and flight engineers often didn’t speak up when they saw the captain do something dangerous, and if they did speak up, they did so in a cryptic, indirect manner that was permitted by the culture in which they were raised, simply hoping (praying, probably) that the captain might catch on to their subtle hints. A training program was implemented some time around Y2K that ensured good English skills were developed, and also worked hard to instill good crew resource management skills, AND instill crew members with a sense of responsibility for ensuring that whatever they said was correctly interpreted by the listener. It’s been a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall that KAL’s accident rate is now on par with (or even less than that of) major US carriers.