If you feel so moved, call the FAA at 405-954-4821. When you reach a human being, ask what's going on with PI#0608379 (that's their internal reference number for my case). Let me know if you get any results.

There were no surprises in this report for me. In fact, it just confirmed my initial guess when I heard about the accident. Great care has to be taken with the reversers on the 88. The technique for their use is hard to master and it's easy to overboost one or both reversers. Additionally, they can spool up at different rates so the pro method is to deploy the reversers and only use idle thrust initially, gingerly increasing the reverse thrust symmetrically as needed. I always brief the other pilot to closely monitor the power I'm using with the reversers and to call it out if I start getting the power too high on one or both sides.

As for other planes landing priot to this one, while the conditions were probably very similar, if not identical, no two landings are exactly alike. These guys were making an approach in very low visibility and if they touched down just a little long and with just a few extra knots, they would find themselves in a critical situation on a short (7000 ft) runway with degraded braking conditions. If they are then just a little "enthusiastic" in the use of reverse thrust, they could easily use too much power and also experience a significant asymmetry. The point is, not all landings are equal. This one had just the right ingredients to give a bad result.

IMO, the whole press release about being "good neighbors" by taking the noisy planes out of LGA is a red herring. We've all known for some time that the 88's days were numbered at LGA, and it had nothing to do with noise. It's all a result of the FAA mandating that all aircraft operating in and out of LGA must be equipped with GPS. The deadline for complying has now arrived and the company has obviously decided that the benefit of putting GPS in its entire fleet of 88s didn't justify the cost.

So now, in a smart PR move, they make it sound like an altruistic move. "We do it because we care!"

I've set a reminder to try this tomorrow. I'm actually thinking of calling my congressman too.

The last and only time I flew JFK-EZE-JFK, early 2001, I noticed that the pilot never deviated from altitude even for moderate turb. In CONUS I assume he would have asked for and gotten another altitude. Was there some reason for this having to do with the route?

Two possible reasons for this that I can think of: (1) ATC wouldn't allow an altitude change due to conflicting traffic or (2) the Captain didn't consider an altitude change as an option because the turbulence was due to convective activity (perhaps associated with the ITCZ). Altitude changes (or course deviations) can be effective when the turbulence is caused by the jetstream, but not so much when it's just a large unstable air mass.

What is an FT? Am I correct in assuming you don't want a bunch of scrubs like me calling the number you provided? I would be happy to call them on your behalf if there was the potential of something good coming of it.

Not sure what an FT is. You'll have to ask fromFT.

The idea of everyone calling is probably not a good one and was born of my complete and utter frustration with the situation.

Had my worst flying experience yesterday afternoon. Was connecting from LAX to LAS and the winds in Vegas were pretty crazy. Gusts up to 50 MPH. Maybe more. It was a Delta Connection EM 175. Roughest decent I have ever experienced with a couple of moments of getting lifted out of your seat. Looked like a pretty young flight deck and a couple more pilots deadheading.

Attempted to land to the West. We got down to about 50 ft and got hit with a nasty wind shear, fish tailing and tilting us over so the wing almost touched. They went full throttle and aborted the landing. We diverted to Orange County as we were told it was currently too windy to attempt again. We would have to refuel and wait for the winds to subside.

Once in Orange county we were then told there was a maintenance issue that had to be cleared before they could take off again but there were no mechanics there and had to wait for one to drive over from LAX. One of the deadheading pilots explained that with this aircraft, anytime they have to do a full power maneuver, the plane has to be inspected before it can fly again. WOXOF, if this true or was it most likely something else?

Delta finally decided to off load all baggage and order a bus to take folks to LAS.

I ended up finding a cheap one way rental and shared it with three others to drive the rest of the way.

If they exceeded temperature limits on the engine, an inspection (boroscope) of the hot section is required. On many modern aircraft, there is an electronic engine controller (EEC) which provides safeguards against overtemp and overshoot of the engine. On some planes, this safeguard feature can be overridden by forcefully pushing the throttles fully forward over a limiting gate which normally stops the forward travel of the throttle.

I don't know if the Embraer has an EEC or any sort of safeguard to help avoid overboosting the engines, but this crew may have deemed that the situation required maximum power available.

It seemed like we were very close to a crash. We were told after seeing what happened to us, the next 3 aircraft lined up to land also diverted to Orange.

Damn autocorrect. I was typing that response on my iPad using the Swype keyboard and it changed "overboost" to "overshoot."

I was wondering if this is an inside joke in this thread. I'm not 100% caught up.

FT= flyertalk (the other side of some readers on this thread, aka frequent flyers. Sorry, I am not even playing poker )

Based on the note above, I presume not calling. You may want to delete the case number

PS-- I got few good hours (almost three) on the A350 SIM. It was just certified for training. Feels to me a lot like a computer game, way more than a plane. But it does handle alot of things 'thrown' at it well. My overall take- You fly a B777, you give recommendations to the A350 and it decides whether to accept them

(Yes, they gave me at the end about 45 minutes on the B777-LR to test few things)

Not that I'm aware of. It was just a little joke from pig4bill that didn't seem to merit a comment.

fyp


Can't edit that post...past the edit window.

I've heard that observation before and it seems to be pretty spot on.

Consider me trolled then. I was thinking "that can't possibly be right....."

Hey there, Cptn. Flying into terminal E at DFW yesterday our plane parked 500' outside of several empty gates and had us bussed over to one of them. An hour later when I'm leaving the airport the AC was still there and those two gates were still empty. Any idea why we wouldn't have used one of them? It was Interjet, and they only have one route out of DFW, so I considered that they might not have a gate, but we got onboard the plane properly. Is that something they might do if they're not going to fly the AC anywhere for a while, in this case the next day?

If I'm asked this by a small child, the correct answer is that the air is also rotating at more or less the same speed, right?

Couldn't find if you'd answered this earlier, but your talking about Dulles in the "shouldn't piss you off" thread made me think of these. Worst airport for you as a pilot? As a passenger?

A couple of possibilities occur to me. It might be that the type of plane doesn't work well with the jetways at the gate. I've never heard of Interjet so I Googled it and found that their fleet consists of Airbus 320s and 321s, as well as a type called a Superjet 100 (which I've never heard of, but is shown as a 93-seat twin-jet). All of these seem to be okay for any jetway, so that probably isn't the reason.

So, it's probably just the arrangement they have with whatever airline owns those gates. This is not all that uncommon for "connection carriers" (the feeders to a mainline airline). When ACA served as Delta Connection with a fleet of DO-328J regional jets out of LGA, they were all boarded using buses to bring the passengers to a remote location on the tarmac.

The last fact you mentioned is probably the real determining factor. If that plane is not going to be leaving until the next day, they certainly wouldn't want it occupying a gate for that entire time. Although, in this case, it seems that they could just offload the passengers and then reposition the plane to a remote parking area.

The logistics at airlines would frighten and confuse a caveman who, awakened from suspended animation, tried to make sense of what he saw. I will admit that, at times, I share the caveman's sense of bewilderment.

Well, yes, that's kind of the way to look at it. The air mass spins along with the earth in its rotation about its axis. None of us would expect that a hovering helicopter would sit and watch the earth move eastward beneath it.

And, btw, I'd give the same answer to a large child.

The layout of taxiways and ramp space makes some airports more prone to delays and that is a major irritant in this business. One configuration that results in gridlock at times is the use of alleyways, i.e. single point access to multiple gates, such as at JFK and, to a lesser extent, LGA.

Airports like ATL and IAD are laid out beautifully with easy access to all gates and runway configurations which almost eliminate the delays associated with waiting to cross active runways.

As a passenger, the airports with long slogs to the gate are irritating. IAD is a major offender in this which is sad because it was the epitome of simplicity when it first opened in the early 60s. As the airport has grown, it has gotten progressively more confusing and inconvenient to get from the check-in counter to the gate.

There are more than a few airports in Europe where the walk to the gate seems interminable, but now that it's been a few years I'd be hard pressed to tell you exactly which ones. I seem to recall long walks in Amsterdam, Frankfurt and Mumbai.

One of the best international airports, from both a pilot's perspective and that of a passenger, is Nice, France. Easy approaches and departures when flying, and simple access and short walks as a passenger. When I flew international, I often said that I could take a steady diet of nothing but trips to Nice and be very happy. (The city is great too.)

In most European airports (with the exception of the very biggest ones handling intercontinental flights) there are no air-bridges so it's always a bus or a walk to the aeroplane. Sometimes it isn't raining.

Budapest had the genius move of greatly expanding their capacity for almost no money by simply paving over an area for the planes to stand on and providing a Guantanamo style wire-mesh corridor (with a metal roof) for people to walk out to the planes without getting wet (only one plane in that area can board at a time though as the official "gate" is still in the main building).

I fly out of YYZ (Toronto) fairly regularly and it's generally fine except the regional US carriers sometimes get relegated to this corrugated steel shed that's a 5-10 minute walk from the rest of the terminal, is barely heated, and never has enough seating.

Deplaning on the tarmac at MEX is a real bummer. It smells. It's a long bus ride. It takes a long time for a bus to get to you. It's a long walk along all the baggage handling stuff to get to passport control. Deplaning on the tarmac at DFW was a cakewalk. Busses were standing by. We were directly adjacent to an empty gate. Moving sidewalks take to you where you need to go.

Interjet was actually pretty nice. Lots of legroom and complimentary firewater from the beverage cart. Unfortunately the Superjets were grounded by the Russian safety folk (it's manufactured by Sukhoi) after I booked this flight. I was looking forward to flying on one. Seems like a nice plane with a cush cabin.

They also have cameras mounted on the front gear so you can watch the takeoff and landing on the IFE screens. Not particularly interesting in the air, but it gives you a much greater perspective when taxiing.

Is that the one that crashed on the demo ride?

Edit: Yup