bm330

I'm not sure which Airbus he's referring to but the A330 in landing configuration (as they would have been) goes around with no perceptable delay. An 8 second response would only be from engines at very low power. That sort of delay would mean every Cat2 go-around would bounce - they don't.

If you read the article, it actually refers to Air China taking control of Cathay. Air China and Cathay own recipricle shares in each other as a political union between Beijing and Hong Kong. The long term expectation is that Air China (Beijing) will eventually take over everything but as CX is a publically traded company, there are significant restrictions on how fast and the method of transfer, should it ever happen. Shenzhen has only joined the Star Alliance.

An airline that still pulls in awards for service and recognition as one of the best airlines in North America. The benchmark is not particularly lofty. AC doesn't come close to any of the full service airlines around the world. That product left a generation ago. Fly on Emirates, Singapore, Cathay, Korean, , , , several others, and you'll get to see what AC used to be.

The issue is no pilots are going to leave companies like EK, CX, KE, CI, etc to work for AirCanada making $40K and having to live in the GTA. The American carriers will have the problem recruiting to the bottom of the pile with their starting salaries as well. The people who can afford to live in the GTA with what AC pays to start are sharing a studio and sleeping in bunk beds. Even the Military pays more to a kid right out of Wings training - on both sides of the border. Unless you're lucky enough to know someone on the inside and can get on with someone like Fedex or UPS, noone will pay for the experience you bring with you.

Lee Moak, president of the pilots union, said he doubts a pilot shortage will be felt in the U.S. for about three to five years. If U.S. airlines start hiring pilots in large numbers, he said, pilots now flying for foreign carriers will likely return home. There are currently about 90,000 airline pilots in the U.S. and Canada. The kind of pilots they need are not going to leave good paying jobs to return to $35-40K starting salaries no matter how much they miss N.A.

Who originally wrote the piece is irrelevent. The point is by merely doing nothing, it can cost millions of dollars a year. Companies that expect employees to use discretion and good will to be profitable often are at the mercy of those same employees when senoir management go awry. When that business is an airline and margins are razor thin at the best of times, it doesn't take very many omissions to go from black to red.

When Westjet started and through their early years, they wouldn't even look at a resume with less than 5000hrs. The number was driven not by some "experience is everything" mantra, but by their insurance carrier. What you pay is largely determined by who you get to do it. Eventually your track record pushes the rates down and you can hire less experienced guys and depend on your corporate culture and training dept to keep up. With the advent of Cadet programs and MPL's, experience is ebbing all the time. It won't be the Govt or some College recognizing career pilots, it'll be insurance and leasing companies worried about their $120M aircraft.

Although this current contract dipute has only been running for a number of weeks, the underpinning issue has been around for a considerable time. Quantas started a LCC called Jetstar a number of years ago and has been steadily shifting flying from the mainline (Quantas) to the LCC (Jetstar). As Jetstar has grown, its cost structure has changed and Quantas management now wants to base a significant portion of Jetstar offshore - with its associated reduction in red tape (and cost) that goes along with getting out from under Oz labour laws.

wrt contribution holidays - does switching to a DC plan not eliminate this loop hole? Wouldn't AC (or anyone else) would be obligated to contribute the 'defined' amount annually. Does the 'defined' amount fall to a CA to determine an actual dollar amount or is it a percentage of ???? (operating revenue, pre-tax profit, .......)

Blame the Pilots of Air France 447? Not So Fast The original mistake of entering severe weather gets the ball rolling but after that, there are many scenarios that become a nightmare for modern FBW aircraft. It's possible for an unreliable speed scenario to have both an overspeed indicated on the speed tape and the stall protection system activated at the same time. With the interconnectivity of auto thrust sytems to flight envelope, power can roll off because it senses an overspeed even though AOA sensors sense a stall. The magic in a 330 needs to be severly compromised for it to sustain a stall. The standard escape manouever is to pull the stick all the way aft and hold it - the aircraft climbs without stalling until clear of ground/windshear/... For the aircraft to remain in a stall would require a major failure of the flight computer system. The report states the 330 was doing 107kts at impact but doesn't say if that was based on sensed airspeed or groundspeed. For the aircraft not to self recover from a stall, it would either have thought it was still flying or not have any flight computers engaged.

If you wander all the way back to the beginning of this topic - "Attention this is the Capt ....... crash landing procedures, 14 minutes to impact.." If there was 30 minutes of fuel remaining, why would any pilot (regardless of language or not) make this P/A? There is still more to this issue.

Checked with passenger who relayed incident and recounted same horror story. Says his wife won't leave sight of their children who she believed had lost their parents and she hasn't slept more than an hour or two at a time for the past week. I would say that she is pretty traumatized by the whole thing. If the incident was a misunderstanding or something just poorly communicated, it's left some people pretty shook up.

Thought so too but after "could barely understand the Flight Attendant on the P/A because she was crying throughout the Passenger brief" part of his story. AAS Thanks. Can assume they may have had problems with a transfer. Can't fathom anyone that was running out of fuel would fly past Seattle, Boeing Field, Everett, Bellingham, heck - even Abbotsford is closer from that direction.

Have been told a rather disturbing story about TS469 on a ZLO-YVR flight where Captain came on P/A just after TOD. Advised pax that they could not make YVR and for the cabin crew to carry out 'Crash Landing Procedures - 14 mins to impact'. It wasn't until 2-3 mins from impact did the Capt come back on to P/A and tell pax and crew that they would just make the airport but would be a hard landing with evac. Haven't seen anything in the Vancouver media or any releases from Air Transat (not that they would volunteer). And no this isn't a "he told someone who told someone who told....." Came from someone on the flight.

For restricted field ops, typically the controlling factor is T/O, not landing. Modern brakes with anti lock/anti skid are phenomenal but it still takes plain old grunt to get it back in the air. There are alot of runways listed on diversion charts that if ever used, would entail a significantly stripped down airframe to get airborne from again.