Saturday 29 January 2011

Why I Hate Reports on Air Travel

From the Huffington Post this morning: Quantas Flight Looses Pressure, Drops 26,000 Feet
The Boeing 737 was roughly 30 minutes from Melbourne when oxygen masks fell from the plane’s ceiling as the plane dropped from its cruising altitude of 36,000 feet to a whopping 10,000 feet.
The culprit? The plane’s air conditioning system. An airline spokesman told the AFP: “There are two air conditioning systems on the aircraft — one of them failed at the cruising altitude, that’s when they started to descend.”
Really? Really? So you’re telling me that the 737, an airplane that takes off around the world every few seconds, of which has been in some form of rotation for as long as I’ve lived (basically), can’t fly when the air conditioning goes on the fritz?

Bullshit.

This completely obfuscates how airplanes work in general. There is always redundancy, there are always backups. Oftentimes more than one layer. For instance, when it comes to hydraulics you need to break through four redundant layers at precisely the right time with an exact speed using specific pressure to render it unworkable. It’s actually considered statistically impossible unless you loose a whole wing—and in that case hydraulics aren’t your biggest issue.

So no, writer of article, I don’t actually believe that an air conditioning system (one of two) malfunctioning would cause the cabin air to just loose pressure all of a sudden and cause the plane to “drop”. Which—by the way—it is not mentioned if the descent is controlled or not. It is standard procedure to descend to an oxygenated altitude after a loss in pressure. There is a big difference, especially for nervous fliers, between ‘dropping’ 25k and ‘descending’ 25k. If you cannot write that out clearly—perhaps writing articles on aviation should be avoided.

Why do I even bother to visit that site anymore?

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