Finding about air crashes when you're actually in the air is not the most consoling thing to do, and by coincidence, or evidence of our busy lives, we were all flying when we heard. Well, not quite all: Julio had switched his flight to do some statistics tutoring and, since we were all concerned with avionics, he'd used flight safety as an example for his control charts. It wasn't very helpful to anyone when someone put up their hand, asking about special causes in action ... the fact is, the avionics community is relatively small and airplanes are so complicated. When there's a crash, the death of the plane is equivalent, say, to the death of a much loved family pet. Details are normally spread all over the media because of the (usually) major loss of lives and then, behind the scenes, there are months of suspense while the board of enquiry takes place. It's also usual to know someone who was flying: a colleague, an ex, an ex of an ex, and being able to put faces to the casualty figures just makes you reassess your priorities about long term planning.

It just wasn't fair to have two crashes on the same day, which made three in a week, and two on Chinese airlines in a month. The Chinese airline grabbed the headlines, maybe because a BBC reporter (Rupert Wingfield Hayes, I think) happened to be nearby. Also, Chris Yates, from Janes', was ready with the most tactless quote possible. "It's just an unfortunate set of circumstances". No doubt he was trying to be reassuring, but he should be jolly grateful that I wasn't a relative of one of the 112 passengers and crew who died in the crash and that I wasn't standing next to him with a blunt instrument. It's very puzzling, though. It's far too tempting to hypothesise. Lots of recent crashes have coincided with bad weather - like that other crash, the EgyptAir Boeing, which crashed when it was foggy and raining (there were sandstorms rolling in from the Sahara, too, which didn't help). And the other Chinese crash in South Korea last month: there was heavy rain and fog there too. But the Chinese crash happened about 9.40pm, which wasn't exceptionally late. None of the reports I saw said anything about the weather, so the assumption is that it was dry. The Captain reported a fire in the cabin, which is strange: all domestic Chinese flights are non-smoking,. Chris Yates postulates that it could have been fire due to some misbehaviour from the electric wiring. But it was a really intense fire: one of the items recovered was a food trolley, burned black and broken in half.

The third crash? That was an even older plane, a pre-Vietnam War Indian Air Force MiG-21 which crashed into, ignited and totally demolished the Bank of Rajasthan building in Jullender last Friday. There is a rumour of turbulence, though I'm not sure: the plane was on a routine flight when it somersaulted, then crashed into the building.

There's no obvious pattern. This year, there have been five major civilian air crashes. The ones in January and February crashed into mountains, but, to be fair, there's a lot of mountains in Iran and Colombia (I believe: memories of school lessons are flooding back). The two Chinese ones were with different airlines. The only thing which could be dragged out from these diverse news reports is that flying in bad weather in an elderly aircraft is not the best idea you may have: but who wants to spend hours, day, weeks or months taking the long distance haul? More, who can spare the time for that?




  posted by Dovya R @ 10:15 PM :