great work OP and thanks for an interesting thread.

So after 9-11 there was talk of arming pilots and sealing off the cabin in order to prevent hijackings. What are your thoughts on that? Would sealing off cabins simply be too expensive?

For a couple of years I used to fly our shuttle operation out of La Guardia. We flew to Boston and to Washington D.C. (National airport). La Guardia's runways are both 7000' long; DCAs long runway is 6869' long. These are shorter than most fields that scheduled airlines fly into.

A lot of pilots consider the River Visual approach into DCA to be, well I don't want to say unsafe, but let's say "less than optimum". I always enjoyed it...lots of opportunity to yank and bank the airplane as you fly down the Potomac River. However, the safest approach is a long straight in approach which is very stable (i.e. on speed with a constant descent rate). The River Visual has you banking the entire time to follow the river and then turning into the runway over the 14th street bridge while about 500' AGL (Above Ground Level). You can't screw around looking for that greaser landing; you've got to get it on and get it stopped. For pilots who don't fly in to DCA regularly this can be more...exciting.

ok that won't fly in this thread

i was told by a pilot that there are always guns aboard the plane

Is there a safety advantage to certain carriers only flying one type of plane (ie Southwest)? When you show up to work is it possible you will fly one of several different aircraft you are rated for? Obv very subjective, but is there any real skill difference in hiring from one major carrier to another?

Great thread.

How accepted are e-cigs for long flights (ie transcontinental)?

unacceptable for life, unacceptable for flying imo

(1) I've always like that too. It's a marketing decision and I'm not sure why it hasn't caught on throughout the industry. American used to have a camera in the cockpit looking forward (only on for takeoff and landing and there were often problems with the lighting) which I always enjoyed (this was in the mid-80s).

(2) My favorite light airplane to fly was my little Grumman Yankee, which had a max gross weight of 1,500 pounds and carried 22 gallons. It was very maneuverable and I used to love to do aileron rolls in it. Of the big iron, I really like the 757 and 767, though the 757 handles more like a sports car.

(3) Yes, I've submitted probably a half dozen ASRS reports in my time. One was followed up by a call from the ASRS people at Moffett Field because it was the first of its kind they had seen. I wrote up a flight I had on a plane with no flight attendant (the J-31) and had 20-something Down's Syndrome passenger traveling alone who freaked out as soon as we entered a cloud. I had to go back to the cabin to soothe her and find a passenger to help and when I returned to the cockpit found that we had busted an altitude assignment (the FO had been distracted by what was going on in the back).

My company (Delta) also has its own internal safety reporting mechanism, very similar to ASRS and highly encouraged by both the company and the union. It really is a good concept; find the systemic errors and get the word out to the pilots so we can be avoid them.

(4) I was in training in Atlanta for the MD-88 and had just come out of the simulator for a break when we were told of the first tower being hit. Then we all saw the second hit and I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Seeing Atlanta airport, the busiest in the world, with no airplanes moving for the next 3 days was like a Twilight Zone episode. I expected to see Burgess Meredith come out on the ramp looking for books. (too obscure a reference? meaningless to anyone under 50 probably.)

Six months later I was furloughed for 39 months.

I get absolutely freaked out when I go through turbulence nad the plane starts bouncing around. Please tell me there is no way for the plane to just plummet to earth like a lawn dart.

I'm 34 and I got it. Keep up the good work.

Probably pretty accurate. Once we get above 18,000 (Positive Control Airspace; no up there who's not on an instrument flight plan) we can pretty much rule out accidents related to other aircraft (i.e. midairs). The approach and landing is the most critical due to the congestion and time spent at those low altitudes. Communications and vigilance is the order of the day in that environment.

To add to what others have said: Amazing thread, filled with both great questions and great answers.

Can you elaborate on this? What sorts of judgments are you talking about exactly?

Less seriously, I've had a theory for a long time that airlines deliberately inflate the "estimated arrival time" by 10 or 15 minutes, because flights always seem to arrive a little earlier than scheduled, and I think the airlines just want to make the passengers feel like they're getting in early when actually they're just right on time. Care to confirm?

They haven't issued a finding on that one yet, but there was initial talk of it being related to pitot tubes being iced up. Those really are essential to safe flight and it's why we have triple redundancy and also why they are continuously anti-iced (heated) during flight. This is just speculation at this point.

One thing that can kill any airplane is a really mature thunderstorm; we avoid these things at all costs and will go hundreds of miles out of our way to avoid really bad storms. If they were having problems with their weather radar and flew through one, that's a possibility, but not sure if this could ever be determined. We do see lots of convective activity around the equator. They call it the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone) and it's where the Northern and Southern hemispere airmasses masses meet and produce storms. It's been a rare trip to Brazil where I haven't seem some lightening near the equator.

Because of where they went down and the lack of radar data, this one may never be completely explained.

There absolutely is and I know that Korean Air, for one, has gone to great lengths to train this cultural tendency out of their flight crews.

It used to be that way in U.S. airlines back in the 40s and 50s. Read "Fate is the Hunter" by Ernest K. Gann for a great look at these early days. It's a great book, probably my #1 aviation book ever.

Thanks AU2006 (gold?). And your answer is right on the money.