Pilot dies in mid flight

[astroron]

A sad story,Peter may want to enlighten us on the true situation of this story:(
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8107838.stm

[Spanrz]

Yeah, I watched this about 1am this morning, on FOX NEWS.

Freaky. So sad.

[multiweb]

Sad story indeed. On another note I have a mate who's a firie. He's telling me that everytime there's a fire in the news, people ring him asking "what's going on? You know anything about it?". ... then he goes "why do you ring me? I don't know more than you do" :)

[astroron]

Mark, I was more interested in the two Co-Pilot situation? the way the article made it out that the pilots who landed the plane did not have the experience to land the plane:shrug:
If there had been only one co-pilot on the plane would the plane have been landed safely?

[multiweb]

I reckon they always double up and have some sort of redundancy. They apparently had one official co-pilot and the guy at the back could pilot too.

[Enchilada]

:sadeyes:

[Rod66]

I don't want to be insensitive but the scene in Flying High comes to mind - "Attention passengers, is there anyone on board who can fly a plane?"

[Jen]

:scared::scared: i have never been on a plane yet, and with all these accidents lately im not sure if i want too :help:

[Peter Ward]

With QF at least, both pilots (Capt, F/O, Pilot/co-pilot, whatever) are qualified and hold the same licence, so either can take-off, fly and land the plane.

QF operate a "leg for leg" scenario, meaning one pilot will do the flying for the first sector, and the other the support duties, then the roles are reversed on the second sector etc. However, there is only one "pilot in command" (even if two captains may be rostered to do the flight) who takes on the regulatory responsibilites for the flight.

On ultra long haul flights extra pilots are rostered to keep the flight deck duty time below 8 hours.

While sad for the deceased pilot's family, I'd venture to say the safety of the flight was never at risk...this is the very reason there are at least two qualified pilots up the front.

[astroron]

Thank you Peter:That's what I thought would be the case :thumbsup:

[Lee]

This is also why medical standards for pilots are so high - to try and avoid this occurring.....

[Enchilada]

Jen. I think statistically, driving on the road is far more dangerous. Thinking about it, in 2007, the 1200 major airports processed 4.8 billion passengers and made about 32,400,000 flights. There are approximately 250 to 300 airplane crashes (aviation accidents) per year, but for ALL major airlines the average is about 100 to 120 deaths per year. (9/11 is very difficult to place in the assessment, making this number much higher.) You actually do have about 1 in 10 million chance of being killed in a plane crash and about 1 in 6,000 in a car accident.
You have more chances in dying by just driving to the airport! :scared:

(Some general statistics of interest here appear at ; http://www.planecrashinfo.com/cause.htm . This gives some detail on the chances by cause and during times of flight.)


** Errors for the results quoted above are fairly inaccurate due to the wild distribution of information. They are roughly in the ballpark though!

[Jen]

:eyepop::eyepop: wow still i like my feet on the ground :P

[Enchilada]

Me too... except when I'm astral travelling, of course!! ;)

[Jen]

:lol::lol: Yeah i wont fly overseas but i would fly to the moon :lol::D