Aviation In Canada

Tuesday, August 02, 2005

AFR358 Crash at CYYZ

Of course, it's an aviation incident and it happened in Canada. I have no choice but to make a comment on it, do I? Unlike the myriad of other "experts" who are quite excited to have the opportunity to spout off their opinion of what happened. Well, now that the passengers are all confirmed to have lived, and all the crew survived as well, I'll say this. These experts commenting on the incident on the news are idiots.

Let's look at it: There is a reason why there is a dedicated group of individuals whose sole function is to investigate incidents such as this. Why have them if everyone and their dog has the correct opinion of what happened. There were microbursts in the area. There was water on the runway. Lightning struck the airplane, and killed all power on board, and therefore the hydraulics failed, too. They were landing "extremely fast" and hydroplaned off the runway. So many theories, so few of them comprehensive, even fewer correct. Phooey on them all, damn it! Some newscasters are even pilots themselves, so their opinions are worth more? I think not.

Let's let the real investigators interview the pilots, look at the recorded radar, weather, flight data and voice recorders and come up with the real story. Planting all of these stupid and unnecessary ideas of what's safe and what's not into the public's heads is stupid, and speculation is not helping anyone's job, nor is it helping anyone's view of aviation.

For now, let's, instead, focus on the fact that the crew was apparently quite capable of getting everyone off that plane before it was completely engulfed in fire. This is truly a credit to their training, and their abilities under duress. I can't wait to read the REAL report and see just what actually happened. Until then, I guess I'll have to continue to listen to the speculation of the idiots who think they're experts simply because they were there, or because they have a microphone planted in their faces.