If all today's aviation systems were bound to fail, would you fly? Do you think that people who designed the system didn't think about links going down? What if power goes down in a regular tower? What if... what if... radar goes down in a busy terminal environment. That one I can answer having been there for quite a few years. But you don't really want to hear the answer...

(Written on 2021年05月07日)(Permalink)

The situation was not at all the same ... except for accidents. Jetliners were entering the market and would have swept away the Electra anyway. But great aircraft indeed therafter. What a luxury to fly the Nordair Electra to and from the Artic instead of the old DC-4... or even the Connie!

(Written on 2021年01月01日)(Permalink)

Going down to the basic: does this design carries inherent stabilty? If you need a computer to keep it in the air, the answer is NO. Let's not try to make a cat bark like a dog...

(Written on 2020年11月20日)(Permalink)

Certainly less than what they are paying now for a faulty desing and less bodies scattered over the ground...

(Written on 2020年09月18日)(Permalink)

They got a good price on early Airbus 319 winglets...

(Written on 2020年09月04日)(Permalink)

hits, not its!!!

(Written on 2020年09月04日)(Permalink)

In 1972, I was a co-pilot on DC-3 based in Fort Chimo (now Kuujjuaq), Ungava Bay. Around 11PM, my captain called me to ask if I was welling to fly the DC-3 with him to the village of Leaf Bay (Tasiujaq) 60nm to the west. Over a 2-summer period, the company had competed a small gravel strip about 1,700 ft long, daytime operation only. Being winter, it was to be pitch black out there but a patient on the eve of giving birth presented a Fetal Cord Entanglement and the solitary nurse on duty for the village did not feel she could take responsibility for this delivery. When I asked my captain how people were planning to light the runway, he replied that he had no idea but that he had been promised that it would be lit like Dorval International... Believe it or not, you could see a strip of light at least 20 miles before reaching our destination. People had emptied just about every large tin cans available, filled them with kerosene, and planted bundles of sanitary napkins in them to make tor

(Written on 2020年09月04日)(Permalink)

In Canada, in the days I was a Twr and thereafter a TCU controller, the only involvement of ATC related to landing gears was to issue a "check gear down " with the landing clearance. Observing a/c on final approach was not part of the job since it would be a function impossible to perform anyway. Wx, day/night, distance of the final approach area from the twr, a/c landing attitude, name it. Furthermore, and I believe it was the case in this accident, the approach controller often obtains the landing cx from the tower to keep the a/c on his frequency. Especially here, the a/c was kept with TCU since it is obvious the controller was worried about that flight and expected that the pilots (if we can use that term here!) would abandon that approach. A landing cx is not an instruction or an obligation to land, it is only a declaration saying that if you put down on a runway, you won't find any other known traffic or obstacle on it. When someone is so determined to jump of the cliff, don't bl

(Written on 2020年06月30日)(Permalink)

We should not be designed aircrafts with such inherent stability deficiencies that they have to depend on automated systems to remain in flight.

(Written on 2019年06月10日)(Permalink)

Mirabel was not a total failure, it became one. The dramatic changes in the international situation contributed to that with the 1st major oil crisis but also, in a situation very similar to the shut down of the Avro project, the change of gouvernent from Liberal to Conservatives. Of course, the cost had exploded like just about any such project but in my opinion, the failure to complete the high speed links between Montréal downtown (subway), Dorval Airport (highway 13), etc. which represented the final steps for the survival of YMX, killed the whole entreprise. I was a terminal controller at YUL at the time and one had to see this airport on a busy Thursday to Monday weekend. Runway 10/28 often had to be closed to park airplanes and DOT pick-ups escorted city buses from Dorval to ferry passengers. There was also a increasing wave of citizen's protests in the US around "metro" airports and the project of a new airport in Japan was violently opposed by the neighbourhood. Noise abatement

(Written on 2019年04月19日)(Permalink)