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This weekend, 155 people died when Brazil’s Gol Airlines tragically lost a Boeing 737-800 on a flight from Manaus to Brasilia. Our thoughts are certainly with the families of those who lost loved ones.

But the story of the flight’s demise is truly bizarre, and details are bound to unfold in coming days and weeks.

Most disturbingly, the plane apparently collided with another plane, an Embraer Legacy jet, inflight. The extent of the contact between the two planes is unclear, but the smaller Embraer “won” and landed safely.

First off, and most importantly, how could any mid-air contact between two jets equipped with collision avoidance systems happen? These weren’t older generations of planes. They were state of the art. The 737 had only logged 234 hours of flying time, total. What happened?

Second, how could the smaller jet take down the larger plane? (The 737 is nearly double the length and height, with 70% greater wingspan.) I have a hard time picturing the physics of this.

Finally, in the bizarre coincidences department: The New York Times’ Joe Sharkey, who writes the “On the Road” column Tuesdays, was on board the Embraer. I’m glad Joe and the others on the Embraer made it, and I certainly hope that Uncle Joe has a firsthand account to provide this coming Tuesday.

Sitting on the tarmac in Antalya, Turkey, a group of British tourists was treated to the following announcement by their Onur Air pilot:

“I am resigning from my job. Do not fly with this plane. It is not safe. Do not fly with Onur Air.”

Then, after freaking out the entire passenger cabin, he got up, left the cockpit, and got off the plane.

Now THAT’s an exit.

The passengers were left sitting on the plane in sweltering heat, chuckling uncomfortably as their stiff upper lips began to sag.

Onur Air has had its share of security concerns. The airline was previously banned from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland under accusations of security violations, which the airline categorically denied.

At least he made the announcement before takeoff. Which raises the question: Do pilots have a parachute in the cockpit?…

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tags: travel | Onur Air

The Economist magazine has a great piece this week spoofing an “honest” in-flight announcement. Cut to the tape:

GOOD morning, ladies and gentlemen. We are delighted to welcome you aboard Veritas Airways, the airline that tells it like it is. Please ensure that your seat belt is fastened, your seat back is upright and your tray-table is stowed. At Veritas Airways, your safety is our first priority. Actually, that is not quite true: if it were, our seats would be rear-facing, like those in military aircraft, since they are safer in the event of an emergency landing. But then hardly anybody would buy our tickets and we would go bust. [$ Econ]

While the rest of the parody is funny as well as scathing, it got me thinking: would an airline that markets itself as putting consumer safety first acutally be a selling point today? Heck, we have naked air and an airline for smokers. I think it is an idea that would fly.

-Dr. Vino

tags: travel | air travel

Flight attendants on Asian airlines are famous for their attentiveness to customer needs. Flight attendants in the United States will often remind passengers that their primary responsibility is passengers’ safety. Now, China’s Sichuan Airlines is kicking both elements up a notch for newly-hired attendants on flights between China and Korea, by requiring musical talent and martial arts skill:

As well as being aged between 18 and 24 with a knowledge of Korean, skilled in singing and dancing and of “nice appearance”, the new flight attendants will be trained as “part-time security guards” on the flights. “There’s no specific type of martial art we require, it could be kung fu or tae kwon do,” said Cai Chao, a Sichuan Airlines spokesperson.

Ok, I understand the martial arts, for security. But singing and dancing?? Especially the dancing! Southwest flight attendants might lead the passengers in a chorus of “Row Row Row Your Boat” or “Wheels on the Bus,” but I don’t think they’re shaking their booty down the aisle. At least I hope not…

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tags: travel | airlines | security | martial arts | flight attendants

Bad week for birds, both mechanical and natural.

Two planes nearly collided at O’Hare on Sunday — the fifth “runway incursion” of 2006. Great.

Northwest Airlines and Air Canada are responsible for the deaths of 11,000 turkey chicks. Investigations underway.

And now, this “news” from the Onion: “Sparrow Aviation Administration Blames Collision On Failure To Detect Pane Of Glass”

Howard R. Trojanowski, a Pierre-bound, 2-year-old field sparrow who had been licensed to fly since two weeks after he was hatched and had logged over 60,000 flying hours, departed from a ledge near Sioux Falls Regional Airport at 11:04 a.m. CST. Trojanowski never reached his intended tree branch, instead striking a tempered-glass picture window 2.5 miles northwest of Mitchell 74 minutes after takeoff at an estimated speed of 39 mph.

There were no survivors.

SAA Commissioner Vincent Stivolo said the crash was likely due to glass, a “common, yet not fully understood phenomenon” in which an area normally blocked by such barriers as curtains, blinds, or shutters suddenly appears to be an open passage to an indoor facility or an unobstructed extension of the outdoor environment.

Conclusive explanations have historically eluded sparrow-crash investigators, some of whom have themselves apparently fallen victim to the phenomenon. Three investigators dispatched to the Mitchell site failed to show up and have since been reported missing.

Rest in peace, Howard R. Trojanowski.

tags: travel | birds

Safety first!
Flying from the United States to Korea or Japan? If you’re traveling with Asiana or Korean Air Lines, you’ll take a different flight path nowadays, thanks to North Korea’s recent missile tests coming dangerously close to existing air routes. Today Japan’s largest airlines, Japan Air Lines and ANA, announced their own re-routings. No word on American carriers’ flight paths. Yay.

Safety second!
British tourists file more travel insurance claims on trips to Thailand than any other country. Runners up: “…the Czech republic, which came out top for incidents of pick-pocketing, South Africa, top for violent robberies, and Mexico, which is the place to go for over-exposure to the sun, it seems.” By this measure, Ireland was the “safest” destination.

Impressive, but…
China recently completed the train to Tibet and began passenger service. It’s an ambitious and impressive engineering project to be sure (the train cars are pressurized, like a plane, due to the enormous altitudes), but also a highly controversial exercise in internal colonialism. A good overview of the cultural and political ramifications (and fears) can be found here. It’s not all gee-whiz-isn’t-it-neat-what-they-built.

The Denny’s of the Sky?
A new promo: If you fly Aloha Airlines on their birthday (July 26), and you keep the boarding pass stub, you can fly free on your birthday (return within 7 days). Inter-island flights only. But what the heck.

Fare sale to Europe
Air France kicks off their Bastille Day fare sale today (purchase by July 28). Some good late summer/fall fares.

More luxe to Europe
All-biz airline Eos looks to expand from the New York-London route to also serve New York-Paris.

Healthier airborne meals
Northwest Airlines had better keep up. Just a few weeks ago they announced that their Stalinist experiment in inflight dining was over, and that they would reintroduce a choice (gasp!) to the menu in domestic first class. At the same time, other carriers are redesigning their first and business class menus, too, with an eye for lighter gourmet fare. But take away the ice cream, and flyers revolt. (The sarcastic chorus of “boo hoo” is coming from the economy seats.) The article also plugs Peter Greenberg’s book The Traveler’s Diet: Eating Right and Staying Fit on the Road.

Predicting the next protectionist outrage
Chicago Midway under foreign management? It could happen, since the city is soliciting bids for long-terms leases on the airport. We’ll see if a (likely) winning bid from a foreign entity yields as much furor as the Dubai ports affair. If an international firm wins the bidding, it won’t be the first foreign-managed US airport. Indianapolis and Stewart-Newburgh, NY airports are already under British firms’ control. International bids for US assets should be no surprise, given the current account deficit; all those dollars flowing overseas need to be put to work somewhere…

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Ed Hasbrouck tells a chilling Kafka-esque tale of Washington Dulles’ airport security. It’s a long but worthwhile read that raises important questions about the authority of airport personnel and the rights of travelers in American airports. Who is authorized to demand your identification? What are these people looking for? And why can a person’s private papers be removed and photocopied by the TSA?

Besides the interrogation that Hasbrouck received before even officially being inspected at the security checkpoint, he was “SSSS’ed” — anointed as a “secondary security screening selectee.” I had the same pleasure myself just three weeks ago. The warning signs came early, when I was unable to check in online for a flight the next morning. Immediately, I suspected that I had been SSSSed. Sure enough, the check-in kiosk at the airport spit out my boarding pass as usual, but “SSSS” was printed in the bottom right corner. I walked to the shortest security line in Terminal 1 at O’Hare and mentally prepared for the pat-down. After a few moments in a small roped-off corral, I was hand-patted and had my carry-ons inspected by hand. As a bonus, one inspector threw a heavy bag onto my unprotected laptop, resulting in a sharp snapping sound. Great.

So why was I picked? I’ll never know. It was likely a random selection, since triggers that set off an SSSS are apparently things like changing your ticket at the last minute (nope), buying your ticket in cash (nope), having a one-way ticket (nope), flying for the first time ever (heck no), being on the no-fly list or terrorist watch list (nope, and nope, to my knowledge), calling in a bomb threat to keep the plane from taking off so you can catch it when you’re running late (definitely nope), or questioning the authority of some guy at the airport without a uniform, like Ed Hasbrouck did (nope).

One other route to an SSSS is to simply refuse to show any identification at the checkpoint. While airlines require you to show identification before handing you your boarding pass, the TSA’s court-upheld policy (in theory, at least) is to allow you through security with a boarding pass but no identification, as long as you submit to secondary screening. Anecdotally, this is not always enforced identically at all airports, however, and one organization is collecting data on whether or not the TSA is allowing travelers to enter security without ID. At SFO, the policy was recently tested and the result verified by a reporter for Wired.

But this policy is not published. In fact, U.S. appellate court judges in Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Gilmore’s losing battle against the TSA reviewed the federal government’s identification policy in secret, since the policy is not public information. Basically, it’s a secret law. This is democracy!!?

Why on earth is an identification policy not public information? To allow unfettered use and abuse of secondary screenings, no-fly lists, and other restrictions on movement? And what do these secondary screenings hope to find, anyway, that metal detection and the baggage scanning cannot? In Hasbrouck’s case, they took issue with documents — documents!! What kinds of documents endanger inflight security??

Feel free to use comments to offer your own rants on airport security, both philosophically and in practice…

(image: No, that’s not actually my ticket. Soopahviv on flickr via Gridskipper)
tags: travel | air travel | airport security

Last week, readers of the New Yorker were treated to a paean to Irish airline of the year (that’s a pretty small field to choose from…) Ryanair, the king of ultra-no-frills flying. (Read the Gridskipper summary, since the article isn’t online.)

But Ryanair was also recently treated to an undercover investigation by the UK’s Channel 4. This is old news (the show aired in February), but the video is available online now. Click below to watch — it’s about 45 minutes long. (I admit I haven’t seen it all, yet, but some of the video is downright scary. My early favorite: The trainer asserting that passengers seated in 1A aboard Boeing 737-200s are definitely going to perish in case of a crash, because of the placement of the stair handles. Flight attendants should therefore not ask these people to assist in case of emergency, because they’re goners… none of which is true.)

The company responded to the network with a series of correspondence, disputing some of the charges, which you can read (series of pdf’s) on the Ryanair website.

The video is a disturbing insight into the training and life of Ryanair flight attendants. Even more disturbing than Hochschild’s book on Delta’s flight attendant training in the early 1980s, The Managed Heart, because passenger safety, and not “only” the well-being of airline employees, is in play.