Have you ever flew over the Bermuda triangle? Is so, were you nervous your first time?

Yeah, I tought so
Thanks for your (as always) insightful response. I am planning to take the pilot's aptitude test at my local airline in a year and this thread always helps to motivate me to finish my current, less interesting tasks.

Dozens of times.

Not in the least.

What did the extraterrestrial and/or inter-dimensional entities look like?

My 17 year old daughter flew over the Bermuda triangle on Friday 13th and is quite proud of it, while at the same time being totally dismissive of the superstition around it.

If she's totally dismissive of the superstition, what's there to be proud of?

If she's a critical thinker and skeptical of things like the Bermuda Triangle (and other nonsense such as the Loch Ness monster and psychics) she might enjoy randi.org and skeptics.com.

wats the most serious situation you have been in? in a commercial jet.. if you dont mind sayin of course

Well maybe proud wasn't quite the right word. Yes, she's very level headed and although she has no ambitions in that direction, I think she has all the qualities needed to get a PPL at least.

On arrival into LAX last evening, I saw two A380s with engines missing, and I'm assuming they are working on/replacing them due to the scare the other week.

I was kidding, of course. It's great she's already able to put myths like that in their proper place.

It may very well be related, as I don't think that LAX would be one of the places they would normally do any heavy maintenance. Most of that work is done outside the U.S. now (driven by cost).

Any thoughts on this? http://www.avherald.com/h?article=433d30d2&opt=0

Well, when people start on about this sort of stuff she does quite like to brag of her little "adventure".
I suppose being 17 is a contributory factor in that

I'm atheist and proud of it. I'm not scared of flying and proud of it. In fact, my fun new hobby is to save episodes of Air Crash Investigation specifically to be watched at above 10,000 feet . Take that wandering eyes!

I was on a flight last week where we were trying to land in San Jose CR late at night and we had to do a go around due to fog (we'd gotten quite low on the first attempt). If we didn't make the second attempt, we were going to Managua -- and I needed to be at a meeting early the next day in San Jose. I tipped the FO (she did the landing according to a PA announcement) which is my first lifetime pilot tip I was just so happy to not be in Managua.

Also, funny quote from my EWR-LAS flight yesterday. Just after the closed the aircraft door, one of the flight attendants got on the PA and said: "Ladies and gentlemen, our electronic indicator shows that there are still several cell phones, a few ipods and one calculator being used, please turn them off."

Standard 15% I presume?

I've heard this one a few times myself. I'm not sure if it's meant as a joke or a bluff. I'm sure there are some passengers who would believe that we have such a capability.

For those who didn't read the article, here's the Cliff's Notes:

• Captain leaves cockpit to visit lav
• Notices airplane pitching down
• Regains access to cockpit using access code (takes 40 seconds)
• Arrests steep dive (26º nose down) and resumes normal flight
• Uneventful completion of flight

The only way I could see this happening with a competent FO at the controls is if he suffered a stroke or heart attack and slumped forward against the control column.

But further reading shows that it was determined that the FO hit the control column while adjusting his seat forward (I can't even imagine how this was done unless he was actually using the control column to pull himself forward; the seat can't hit the controls). This took the autopilot from CMD mode (where it follows the Flight Director input) to CWS mode (Control Wheel Steering mode, where the A/P maintains the aircraft attitude as set by pilot inputs to the control column).

[Side note: I'm not that familiar with CWS mode as our planes have that mode disabled, perhaps because of potential situations like this. If I were to hit the control column with this much force, it would disengage the A/P and an associated aural and visual warning would alert the pilot that the A/P is no longer flying the plane.]

The following paragraph from this article really has me shaking my head at the incompetence of this First Officer:

This guy is apparently at the pre-solo stage of flying capability. Why you would ever push forward on the controls when the airplane is already descending is beyond me. It's real "outside the box" thinking, I'll give him that.

Caveat Aviator: This is the risk you run when you fly on some third world airlines. I don't mean to sound elitist about it, but I know second hand from friends who are flying in some of these countries that they often fly with FOs who are very marginal. The airline hires type rated Americans because they don't have enough home-grown talent and then they put newbies in the right seat. The idea is that the FO will develop experience on the job and eventually move to the left seat. According to my friends, there's a wide range of capabilities among the FOs and sometimes it's essentially a single pilot operation.

as far as 125 the captain's pounds of pulling pressure on the control column, leveling the plane from the 26º dive in a couple seconds...this feels like what for osama q. passenger in the back? bad idea on captain's part?

also says the passengers were enjoying their dinner during the incident, but made no mention of samosa bowling balls down the aisles or lamb vindaloo projectiles...so until the captain's correction input it was a pretty smooth ride?

The article says that they pulled a little over two Gs, which would be very disconcerting for the passengers. Still, it's not like the Captain had much choice. With that pitch attitude, the plane picks up speed very rapidly. The article said they were already beyond red line speed, with the overspeed clacker sounding. A smooth, firm recovery to normal flight is called for, regardless of how it's perceived by the passengers.

Really bad things could happen quickly otherwise. Once you're beyond red line, you've just become a test pilot. There's no guarantee that the airframe even holds together. And approaching supersonic speeds can cause lots of problems in an airplane not designed for it (e.g. flight controls become ineffective due to flutter or locking up; you could get Mach tuck, which means the nose could violently pitch downward).

The 26° nose down pitch attitude would be very noticeable and, I would think, alarming. That's a pretty steep angle and anything on the tray tables would probably fall or slide off. Chutney everywhere.

It would have been interesting to have some passenger quotes in the article.

Pretty interesting read regarding crashes that I just finished reading.

Air Crashes: What Went Wrong, Why, and What Can Be Done about It
http://www.amazon.com/Air-Crashes-General-Aviation-Reading/dp/1565660064

It is a bit behind the times (1985) but talks about incidents that still happen regardless of the equipment, such as going below the minimum descent altitude and running smack into the sides of mountains.

. just incase you missed it.. was small post

does it tilt you hard when it's hard to hear someone on the phone and they are like

and are clearly struggling to come up with words for each letter and don't know the phonetic alphabet?

The thing is, Air India Express is a wholly owned subsidiary of Air India, the national flag carrier. Doesn't really fill one with confidence in the parent company really eh?

I have some good family friends who use to use Air India a lot to fly from Canada to India. They had some pretty good horror stories although none recently (I think they stopped using them).

Haha, it was a last minute flight and I was on a B fare, 15% is kinda pricey! I just gave her $20. Maybe it would have been more baller to give her 10,000 colones.

All this India pilot stuff has me a bit nervous. I have some relatives about to go on a trip to India and they're going to be taking http://www.jetairways.com/ around quite a bit. They'll even be taking the "JetKonnect" short hop version of JetAirways. I can't even imagine how bad those pilots are if even small regionals in the US (Colgan etc) have lackluster pilot training. I know crashing is a long shot but it's still nerve wracking to have them on those planes.