What If They Gave A Crisis And Nobody Came?

The Times covers Team Obama's reaction to events in Egypt:

Egypt Crisis Finds Washington Largely Ambivalent and Aloof

John Kerry ambivalent? Obama aloof? Who could have seen that coming?

WASHINGTON — In polo shirt, shorts and sandals, President Obama headed to the golf course Friday morning with a couple of old friends, then flew to Camp David for a long weekend. Secretary of State John Kerry was relaxing at his vacation home in Nantucket.

Those golf balls aren't going to sink themselves. And Ed Driscoll shows that mocking Kerry will never get old, taking us back to 2004 with "Thurston, We Have A Problem".

Comments

[OldTimer]

At least two dead in SFO crash:

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/boeing-777-crashes-while-landing-sfo/nYfcx/

[OldTimer]

At least two dead, 61 injured in SFO crash..

http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/boeing-777-crashes-while-landing-sfo/nYfcx/

[NKonIPad]

Henry-- worst gout attack I had was from dehydration. Take care of yourself.

[narciso]

Surprise, surprise;

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2013/07/another-day-another-radical-leftist-busted-with-bomb-arsenal-in-back-to-their-stolen-pick-up/

[Jack is Back!]

TK,

Rice was a temporary solution. Ca you believe not one electronics store here has any silica gel packs. No hobby store nearby so stuck with rice.

sbw,

Yeah ehen I went to P.C. Richards for the silica gel the guy showedme the case. This gives me the oppotunity to get an iPhone 5.

matt,

I lived 5 years in San Francisco and travelled around the world out of SFO and never had a problem. You being from SoCal experienced NoCal sweet revenge:). Ever seen that YouTube of the Virgin Atlantic approach into SFO? Next to Capetown its my favorite approach especially from the WNW.

[Danube on iPad]

Hard to figure why that guy held a press conference.

[glasater]

Went to the Philippines years ago out of SFO. There was a earthquake tremor just as we were heading for boarding! The jet was a 747 loaded to the gunwales it was so horribly packed with humanity. Had to stop for fuel in Hawaii for the next leg but the winds were against so we next had to land in Guam of all things to get enough juice to get us to Manila.
There were about fifty Canadians on board who drank all the booze and were noisy as can be. It was the most miserable flight I've ever been on.

[Ignatz]

--Ca you believe not one electronics store here has any silica gel packs.--

Gun stores often do to use in gun safes, JiB.

[Jane -walk like an Egyptian]

I'm actually booked onto that exact flight in a few months.

I first read that to say "in a few minutes" which was a little too close for comfort.

[Agent J]

For those of you drying your electronics. The one an only time I needed it was after I had washed my phone in a full Heavy cycle on a front loading washer..I used oatmeal, what happened? I am currently using it.Never lost anything..

[Jack is Back!]

Iggy,

LOL. I am New York state and in particular, the once conservative, now left of Castro, the Hamptons. They don't even sell guns in the toy store:)

[Clarice]

JiB.Amazon has them--order some and pay a few $$ extra for quicker delivery if you can't find any --or fish around in your medicine and vitamin pill bottles for a coupl until you can find them

[NJJan]

Jib
You may be lucky using rice. My daughter dropped hers in a pool and didnt see it in the pool til about an hour later. She used rice and it worked. Hopefully, it will for you too.

[Rob Crawford]

Gun stores often do to use in gun safes, JiB.

You'd think. I was in one last week and looked for dessicant packs -- couldn't find a one.

[Clarice]

We tried rice and it didnt work--glad it worked for others.

[henry]

NBC news says Elbaradei is not PM. Negotiations ongoing or something...

[rich@gmu]

henry-

thought he was climbing onboard to be deputy. or it could be his press officers trying to con everyone so he'll have a job.

[Clarice]

Interesting.

[daddy]

Just FYI,

I just crossed the northern Pacific in a 777, landing right around the time the 777 out of Seoul crashed in SFO.

Very bumpy ride for about an hour during the crossing, and i suspect they were pretty much flying the same route for much of the way.

Very gusty winds in Narita Japan the last few days (windshear on approach) and also quite windy landing at Anchorage 2 hours ago.

Looking at the Aviation weather for San Francisco Intl, I don't see any evidence of strong winds or possible windshear that you might expect. I do see that the Papi light/landing system for Runway 28L is notamed out of service: SFO RWY 28L PAPI OTS. (I can't tell if the PAPI was out of service prior to this incident or was wiped out as a consequence of this incident).

The PAPI is a visual aid erected on the ground next to your landing runway. When viewed from the cockpit, you can tell, starting about 5 miles out, if you are to high, to low, or exactly on the proper glidepath for landing, all do to the color of lights you see: for example, all red lights and you are below glidepath and will land short of the runway unless you do some corrections; all white and you are above glidepath and will land long, wasting valuable runway behind you. The proper combo of red/white light colors you are looking for tell you if you are on the proper glidepath.

If the SFO PAPI's were out of service, as the Notam seems to indicate, no big deal, as you still have an ILS glideslope and other helpful instrumentation things (a HUD glideslope for example) that would keep you advised of your proper glideslope position on final approach.

Too early for me to have an opinion on this one, but they definitely touched down well below glideslope, so if the PAPI had been working properly they would have been looking at all Red lights.

This may help explain it:

[MarkO]

daddy,

It appears the tail section of the plane hit the embankment at the water's edge, on the east side, just before the runway.

[Ignatz]

--Iggy,

LOL. I am New York state and in particular, the once conservative, now left of Castro, the Hamptons. They don't even sell guns in the toy store:)--

Well damn it, start a gunshop then, JiB.
Think of the sense of community you would inspire if you were to sell the gun to Alec Baldwin that he accidentally shot himself with.

[Ignatz]

--daddy,

It appears the tail section of the plane hit the embankment at the water's edge, on the east side, just before the runway.--

After my six years in the AF I feel knowledgeable enough to speculate that is probably "too low".

[glasater]

From the the presser at SFO the fire chief says they cannot account for sixty people!

I'll bet the chinese who were on the flight have headed for the hills...

[MarkO]

All we ever need to know about Baldwin is in this phone call: "You are a rude, thoughtless little pig." "You don't have the brains or the decency as a human being."

To an 11 year-old girl. What a toxic queen.

[MarkO]

Iggy,

It wasn't the top of the tail, unless Denzel was the pilot.

[Clarice]

Interesting info as always, daddy.

[Extraneus]

I forget who posted it, but the speech by Ted Cruz's father was pretty interesting, and thanks for the link.

Here's a guy who seemingly spoke without notes, in a heavy accent (for those who question Cruz's Hispanic cred), and hit quite a few red-meat conservative notes.

He was part of the Cuban revolution, claims to have come here after realizing his idealism was based on a socialist fraud, and sent his son, who he claims had memorized the Constitution while in Junior High School, to Harvard. Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Pretty impressive.

[pagar]

Compare the Air Crash coverage to Chicago.

"Fifty-five people have been shot across the city since Wednesday, 9 fatally."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-man-critically-wounded-in-west-side-shooting-20130705,0,2231095.story

Here's a clue.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/how_democrats_exploit_minorities.html

"In a matter of just a few decades Chicago went from being a city that provided great opportunities for blacks to being the most racially segregated and oppressive city in America."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/07/how_democrats_exploit_minorities.html#ixzz2YJMZEMnm

People really vote to have the Democrats destroy their lives?

[daddy]

There has been an update in the NOTAM's available to me, and it appears to me that the PAPI was listed as inop after the crash, so I'm guessing it was operative during the landing.

I haven't been watching the TV so you guys may have better info than I do if you've been watching tube.

The approach and landing to Runway 28L is fairly easy and no big deal.

Just turned on FOX and a guy is now saying that from prelim radar data the plane on final was descending at 1,400 feet per minute. I don't know where along the final flight path that was but generally 1,000 FPM is the maximum descent rate you want to have once you're within the last 1,000 feet above the touchdown. But again, this is too little input to have any answers at this point.

[pagar]

From the group that didn't know where the SOS was.

http://weaselzippers.us/2013/07/06/white-house-says-it-categorically-rejects-false-claims-propagated-by-some-in-egypt-that-obama-supported-muslim-brotherhood/

Wonder if any one told the the US ambassador?

http://freedomoutpost.com/2013/07/us-ambassador-to-egypt-vows-to-apply-pressure-to-support-muslim-brotherhood/

[Some Guy]

I don't know where along the final flight path that was but generally 1,000 FPM is the maximum descent rate you want to have once you're within the last 1,000 feet above the touchdown.

On plane as modern as the 777 don't alarms start going off if you're as far under the glide path as this guy appeared to be?

A passenger on the plane with a window seat toward the rear stated they were so low that when the pilot gunned the engines to correct, the jet wash spewed bay water into the air.

(I've landed on 28R & 28L so many times that I'd know instantly if we were too low, and apparently so did this passenger. If pilots do error, it will tend be too high rather than low)

[Threadkiller]

From the memory banks:

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/2008/12/04/malcolm-gladwell-on-culture-cockpit-communication-and-plane-crashes/

[jimmyk]

the plane on final was descending at 1,400 feet per minute.

Daddy, there was a graphic from Flightwatch, or something like that, also showing a relatively steep descent compared to a previous flight, then dropping a bit more sharply at the end before the start of the runway. Can't find the images at the moment.

[Threadkiller]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/04/obesity-disease-insurance-coverage/2447217/

[jimmyk]

Here it is, from FlightAware:

https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208/photo/1

[DrJ]

Here's an unabashed plug for my step-daughter's blog, featuring world's cutest grandson (Kenso) and pictures of the yard (grapes, flowers, fruit, etc.).

http://www.simple-savvy.com/

[Jane on Ipad hi there NSA]

Daddy, so glad you are back. And I look forward to your analysis. That's a huge plane you pilot.

Every bullshit liberal will now declare Obama isn't in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood. And the press will sit on its hands.

[daddy]

On plane as modern as the 777 don't alarms start going off if you're as far under the glide path as this guy appeared to be?

Absolutely, SG.

The computer voice would have been loudly saying something like "Sink Rate, Sink Rate" once they were below about 2,500 feet and descending outside of parameters, and then there would have been something like "Glideslope, Glideslope, Too Low, Too Low" once they were well below glideslope. There would also have been visual warnings, amber or red, on their computer flight displays.

Just for an example, here's a short video of EGPWS electronic callouts(Enhanced Ground Proximity Warnings)

And one of GPWS electronic callouts (Ground Proximity Warning System Warnings)

They would have been hearing some variation of those calls or something very close to a few of the examples on the short videos.

[Manuel Transmission]

I've done the Point Reyes arrival many times coming into SJC, as well as watched it out the left side riding in back coming into SFO. (I always sit on the left side out of habit.)

Can't imagine what fubar would have led to that terrible mess.

[pagar]

Cute Grandson DrJ, And a garden full of WOW.
Beautiful!

[narciso]

I did, Ext, I wondered what was your take on it, daddy

[Manuel Transmission]

So, has anyone heard enough witnesses to rule out terrorism? If someone blew the tail at the last minute, it would pitch down pretty quick. (Although that would probably make it nose down hard, not quite what the pix showed after it all stopped.)

[pagar]

TK, this will not help the insurance coverage part of Obamacare.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/06/not-qualified-for-obamacares-subsidies-just-lie-govt-to-use-honor-system-without-verifying-your-eligibility/?partner=yahootix

[Some Guy]

btw, weather/visibility was not a factor. Spectacular day in the Bay Area.

[daddy]

Jane,

I'm an MD-11 guy, so a little smaller than the 777. I was jumpseating home on one of our 777's today instead of taking scheduled deadheads tomorrow so that I could get home a couple days early. Guess who's glad to see me? Woof:)

[DrJ]

Thanks pagar. Kenso is remarkably good-natured so far -- hope it continues! The delightful and charming MrsJ deserves all the credit for the garden, and there's a lot that was missed in this brief collage.

[daddy]

Jane the guy on FOX they just cut off was talking about tailstrikes, and he was making the point that the 777 is a great flying airplane and does not often have tailstrikes. Then by comparison he was just getting started talking about the MD-11, which is infamous for tailstrikes, but he got interrupted by the latest Breaking News Conference and cut off.

[narciso]

So the El Baradei boomlet, came from his press flaks, I saw that Shafiq was the runner up, and I thought that was a pedestrian choice, not up to the occasion, an opportunity to pick someone like Ibrahim or Nour, naive I guess,

[Some Guy]

Hey daddy I've heard several reports that the NOTAM for the PAPI being INOP was prior to, not after the crash. Anyway to verify one war or the other?

[Oliver Hardy Har Har]

Daniel Ortega rocks.

[Jane on Ipad hi there NSA]

Great pix Dr J!

I wonder if something happened to the pilot, because it's all quite odd.

[Manuel Transmission]

From ZH commenter:

South Korean pilots had a bad reputation for years - poor cock pit communication because of odd formalized speech patterns and far too much deference to authority i. e. the captain. Coming in that short on a clear day should have been pretty obvious.

Maybe daddy can confirm/deny that bit of gossip.

[Janet --- -... .- -- .- ... ..- -.-. -.- ...]

Kenso is SO cute DrJ. Scroll to July 1st & the pic of him doing pushups is great.

[daddy]

Some Guy,

Not that I know. Guess we'll have to wait some official word.

[Manuel Transmission]

Paleo over at PJ offered this:

From the pictures I've seen it appears the aft flaps may not have been deployed completely. This would require a faster landing speed but it isn't 'by the book' to land without flaps. You would need a very long runway. The 'canoes' that cover the jack screws while retracted look to be fully in place. This may be as a result of the crash but I'm having a hard time figuring out how they could be in the up position after a crash if they were in fact deployed as per landing requirements. The inboard and outboard 'canoe's look to be very undamaged. The leading edge flaps are shown in the deployed position but may have done so as a result of no hydraulic pressure. I'm not sure if the leading edge and trailing edge flaps can be deployed independently.

[Threadkiller]

MT, check out my link at 8:07.

[Clarice]

Very purty, Dr J. Kenzo is delicious looking, yummier than the fruit trees and grape vines which also ook quite lovely.

[henry]

Wonderful blog by your step-daughter DrJ.

[daddy]

Now the talk on FOX is that the GlideSlope for the ILS was inop.

Probably time for me to sit on my hands for a while to see what the ultimate answer is as to what was working at the Airport and what wasn't. I didn't see anything about the ILS to 28L being out in the Notams. For the non pilots here, the ILS is an electronic glidepath beamed from the field that you capture, either manually or via auto-pilot, and when flown properly it keeps you on a safe and optimum glidepath to safely touch down @1,500 down the runway. It gives you indications inside the cockpit on your instruments---it is not an external visual system at all like the PAPI.

[matt]

I usually pray every time I land, but especially with most Asian Airlines. China can be very scary. There was the China Airlines pilot who was depressed and dropped it into Tokyo Bay and I seem to remember another China AL plane that took off in the middle of a monsoon. And those are the Taiwanese. We once lost an engine on a China AL flight from LAX-Taipei and had to return to LAX.

The mainland airlines are outright scary though. We have had some pretty hard landings. They never broke one on me.

The Koreans were usually ok as I recall.

Singapore and Cathay Pacific are always my default if I can take them. The American airlines will get you there but it is sort of like prison.

Daddy, do you get to deadhead commercial much?

[Laura White]

Great but impossible flight path out of SFO in 1972 What's Up, Doc--Ryan O'Neal watches the bay and bridge with a sigh before he realizes that the disaster-causing love of his life (Barbra Streisand) has followed him and is sitting just behind him. I ask my students: given all the horrible things she has somehow caused to pass, why aren't we afraid the plane will crash? Right answer: true love, which has cured her of everything (not the real Barbra, of course, who continues to this day to be in unmitigated and dangerous idiot)--

[daddy]

do you get to deadhead commercial much?

A fair amount Matt. It is contract driven as to who we will fly on and what class of service. This trip they had to get me home from Guangzhou after we got modified and spent an extra day in India.

They had been using China Southern to fly us Guangzhou to LA, but we have had a number of recent problems with China Southern (some safety related), so we just had them pulled as a carrier, and instead they were trying to get me home via Al Nippon to Tokyo, then via Delta to LA, and then Alaska Airlines on up.

That's why I just jumpseated on company planes and got home 2 days early. Most of the time I'd much rather deadhead on a spare seat on our cargo birds than having to do the commercial bag drag and deal with the TSA screening and all the rest you mentioned earlier about delays etc.

[narciso]

Thinking about Korean airlines, reminds one of KAL OO7, which was of course one part deliberate shootdown, but also miscalibrated navigation instrument, that steered the plane into Russian airspace, and apparently there are a number of similar instrument or pilot error situations in the 70s and other times,

[narciso]

And then there is this;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Flight_801

[matt]

plain and simple murder, narciso. They should never have been there but the Russians bear every iota of responsibility.

I have actually flown that general flightpath a few times ever since the Russians opened up the coastline. It is spectacular. Huge islands and fjords. I didn't have a GPS but it was definitely the Sakhalin/Kamchatka area.

[DrJ]

WSJ on the SFO crash:

Law enforcement and counterterrorism agencies so far have found no sign that terrorism was involved, officials said. The White House said President Barack Obama was being kept informed about developments.

Safety experts said it was premature to speculate whether pilot error or a flight-control problem was at fault. The weather was excellent, with light winds and good visibility. The 777's pilots were following a routine visual approach and didn't radio any problems or declare an emergency before impact, according to preliminary reports. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board and South Korea's transport ministry are sending teams to the crash site for a full investigation.

Thanks for the step-daughter blog comments. Kenso indeed is a cutie.

[narciso]

Well I don't mean to diminish the former, but I recall the latter point, of course Sy Hersh had to throw his conspiratorial spin into the mix,

[Jack is Back!]

Don't jump to any conclusions. I have actually been on a plane that crashed (in the civvie term) but we had about 26 nuclear weapons on board.

All other crashes are so,so to me.

[rse]

McDonald was my congressman and one of my teenage distinctions was having him ask me to leave his office during his first term when he thought I asked an impertinent question.

I was on a Close up trip in high school and they arrange to meet with congressmen and senators. He made a statement in his speech that made no sense so I asked something along the lines of "if x is the problem, isn't z the effect and not Y".

I think he was not used to any one actually listening and then adding up what he just said.

I met him a few times after that. Never a pleasant man. But still a tragedy.

[Captain Hate]

When did it become ok for dimwit communities to set off fireworks on some date around July 4 rather than on the day itself?

[DrJ]

Legal Insurrection reports that Liz Cheney is considering running for Senate from Wyoming. Go Liz!

[narciso]

I'd say there is some equivocation in some places but it is a much more nuanced view of the events of this week;

[daddy]

FOX guy now is saying the ILS 28L glideslope was definitely out, and he is also now saying that the PAPI was reported as being intermittent. If so, the guy should have still been able to safely land, but he has lost 2 important tools that really help provide valuable situational awareness about where one is on the glideslope.

The important thing about flying any approach, is to start off stabilized. That way, you only have to make miner corrections to glideslope and heading. If you start off way high or way low or way cocked from your final heading due to overshooting a turn, then you are already behind the 8 Ball and need to be more aggressive to get back rapidly to stable parameters.

The ILS Glideslope will set you up on a good glideslope by about 10 to 15 miles out. The PAPI will give you good glideslope info much later, depending on one's eyesight, but no where near as far out as the ILS. But if you are established decently on either, both will be giving you a stable descent rate of about 700 to 800 feet per minute.

So just idle speculating, but if the ILS is inop, and for whatever reason he is not properly established on a decent glideslope at 10 miles out, then he has to wait for the PAPI info, and if that is inop, then he may find himself flailing a bit, expecting to have had decent PAPI info but suddenly not having it, and at the last minute trying to figure out where he should be on a decent flightpath angle to touch down about 1,500 feet down the runway. The earlier report, which may be erroneous, said he was descending at 1,400 Feet per minute, somewhere near the end of the approach. That is excessive. If he was established on a decent ILS or PAPI, he would have been descending at about 700 to 800 feet a minute in those last few miles once he descended below 1,000 feet, not anywhere near 1,400 FPM.

At 1,400 FPM you have a big sink rate going, and you may have to really cob the power to arrest the sink and get up on glidepath, and it can cause you to yank the nose high, which is another bad thing to be doing in close to the ground.

All that is idle speculation of course and I have almost less facts in the matter than the State of Florida has to convict George Zimmerman. But if it wasn't wind shear or a mechanical problem, and if he wasn't getting decent glideslope info from the ILS or the PAPI, and if he was in a 1,400 FPM rate of descent within the last 1000 feet and 3 miles of touchdown because he was initially too high, then overcorrected and got too low, then it would not surprise me if it was a case of too much of a sink rate in close, cobbing the power, yanking the nose high, and the tail striking the wall short of the runway.

Apologies for such idle speculation, but that's one plausible scenario of many.

[narciso]

From the Times piece referred in Jacobsein, might need Vicks to deal with the vapors;

It would bring about “the destruction of the Republican Party of Wyoming if she decides to run and he runs, too,” Alan K. Simpson, a former Republican senator from the state, said in an interview last week. “It’s a disaster — a divisive, ugly situation — and all it does is open the door for the Democrats for 20 years.”

[Frau Steingehirn]

DrJ - IMHO you can go OT with Kenso any time. What a delightful sight!

[Stephanie]

And if both were out or intermittent then the dems will blame it on the sequester. Ignoring of course that buthole should have directed various departments to make the cuts to nonessential items instead of trying to make the cuts as visible and painful as possible. I really really hate these people.

[Manuel Transmission]

Thanks, TK. Missed it on the first pass.

My worst flight in China was nearly 20 yrs ago when a flight from HK to Guilin at night was aborted at the destination apparently because there was no visual/inst help. When they did the go around and back to HK, I didn't see anything remotely like an airport underneath.

[Jack is Back!]

BS on Simpson, Wyoming, so far, is the only protected Red state. Go cowboys and elect Liz.

[daddy]

I seem to recall a Doris Day Movie where she is a stewardess married to some psycho f'urner who winds up shooting her pilots, so she jumps into the captains chair and ATC talks her into doing a safe landing at I think 28-L in San Farncisco:

que sear sera...KayRooooooo!

[narciso]

I wondered if that was the inspiration for Julie Haggerty's part in Airplane, since that part didn't come from the film Airplane,

[narciso]

So there was no feedback from the tour, telling him his glidepath was too steep, does that seem odd,

[Clarice]

Lots of excitement about a potential Liz run She's fab! So's Kenso, my new heart throb. So adorable. Niters.

[Strawman Cometh]

Narc, not to out N ya, per Kesey, but a few minutes screening would reveal to you that "The High Mighty" (John Wayne and Robert Stack)is the inspiration punching bag of Airplane LUN

[Strawman Cometh]

and

[narciso]

That maybe so, Strawman, I was thinking in terms of direct connection, it may have inspired Hailey, from which Airport was derived.

[narciso]

Speaking of poisonous froads;

[Account Deleted]

Narciso,

If you are looking for antecedents, consider MT and Daddy's comments in relation to "Zimmerman is no hero" comments. Daddy and MT are (IMO) talking about situational awareness as it relates to a pilots "expected" reaction to conditions beyond the "normal" range of anticipated conditions. I'd like to know if the South Korean version of the challenge which Daddy faces on a very regular basis (simulator incidents involving catastrophic failure) pertains in the South Korean licensing structure.

The reference to Zimmerman pertains to his demonstrated lack of ability regarding situational awareness. He is "no hero" because he went into the darkness without even putting his hand to the only tool available. IOW - a clueless romantic, as any LEO would be more than happy to testify.

At first glance, the Asean pilot falls into the same "not actually qualified" in which Zimmerman is quietly coming to a boil.

[Rob Crawford]

He is "no hero" because he went into the darkness without even putting his hand to the only tool available.

If he had, that would show premeditation. It would have made it a lot easier to claim he planned to shoot.

Have I said self-defense laws are screwy? It doesn't help that about half the country thinks the "moral" thing is to let yourself be beaten to death.

[narciso]

Well the Wiki says Korean Airlines, is regarded as the 5th worse, the scenario didn't make much sense for the outset, and the apparent lack of adverse wind or other factors, makes it more curious,

[Threadkiller]

Airlineratings.com also rates airlines in terms of “product”, based on passenger reviews. Just 11 carriers score top marks for both safety and service: Air New Zealand, Asiana Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Emirates, Etihad, EVA Air, Korean Air, Qantas, Royal Jordanian, Singapore Airlines and Virgin Atlantic

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10113234/Worlds-most-and-least-safe-airlines-revealed.html

[Account Deleted]

RC,

I believe you are correct wrt the legal ramifications of Zimmerman doing what any LEO who wished to remain among us would do but my reference was to "he's no hero" and that pertains to him having taken an action contrary to what situational awareness (or survival instinct) would dictate.

I regard Zimmerman as a romantic, possibly as much of one as Tolstoy's Count Bazukhoz. He lacks the requisite exposure to CSM Meza which might have allowed him to foresee that wandering into the darkness may have the unfortunate consequence of running into a cannibal.

[Stephanie]

New thread.

[jimmyk]

Well the Wiki says Korean Airlines, is regarded as the 5th worse

I think Korean Air was iffy in the 90s, but has improved a lot. I would have flown them on my recent trip to Seoul, but I ended up going on Delta. I don't know much about Asiana, but I think Korean Air's improvement was a national effort, so it probably extended to Asiana as well. Still, this seems to point toward basic pilot error, with perhaps extenuating circumstances.

[bgates]

Minor correction - Airplane! is actually based on Zero Hour!, a film which had a lead character named Ted Stryker, a sports great (Elroy 'Crazylegs' Hirsch), and lines like "We have to find someone who can not only fly this plane, but who didn't have fish for dinner."

But they played it straight.

[narciso]

did they, then again Orlando which used to be relatively staid, and balancing point for some of the excesses farther South in the state, seems to have gone slightly mads, hence
the giant frog sent to congress in the earlier LUN.

[narciso]

Btw that piece on Liz, redolent of Top Men agita was written by Journalister Jonathan Martin, formerly?? of politico.

[felix the cat burglar]

This has been another episode of "Theodoric of York: Medieval Secretary of State".

btw, why are we meddling in Egypt's internal affairs? Since when did it become the brief of the State Dept. to supervise other country's elections and coups?