Airliner crash in Toronto

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Uhh, that's my point.

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Yeah but the news were showing the one I showed you., not the one that looks like the aircraft is still in one piece.
 
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Doesn't look all that bad from this angle, considering that the fire started after the passengers had already evacuated:

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Well the time honored standard is "any landing you can walk away from." Simply add "scramble through woods and crawl out of a ravine in a driving rain storm from" and this was a good one.
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Evacuation of Air France flight took less than two minutes

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cpress/20050803/ca_pr_on_na/plane_crash_25

TORONTO (CP) - The evacuation of more than 300 people aboard an ill-fated Air France flight took less than two minutes, with a co-pilot the last to leave the flaming wreckage - a "textbook case" of how to deal with an airliner emergency, officials said Wednesday as the investigation into the dramatic crash of Flight 358 got underway in earnest.

"The evacuation was a minute and a half to two minutes maximum," Figiola told a news conference.
 
Re: Evacuation of Air France flight took less than two minutes

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Brian Lackey, vice-president of operations for the Greater Toronto Airports Authority, which manages the airport, said staff were struck by the severity of the storm as they watched it unfold through the windows.

"As we were looking out the window we were commenting that storm was extremely severe and we hadn't seen one like that," he said.

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Looks like they picked the wrong storm to try to land in.
 
Exactamundo. Camera angle can do a whole lot to make things look different. So of course, the media -- BTW, I heard a maroon say today that it was only 39 pax, not 309 -- went with the most sensational and didn't say that the fire broke out AFTER people were off the plane.

Idiots. First they said it was a 737, even though it has four engines. Then they said it was a Lufthansa flight, even though a CDG to YYZ routing makes no sense for Lufthansa. Then it was 200 pax.
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Re: Evacuation of Air France flight took less than two minutes

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with a co-pilot the last to leave the flaming wreckage -

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Great, lower pay AND the risk of burning to death. Whatever happened to the Capt going down with the ship?
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I'm not sure if it's the audience wanting instantaeneous dramatic information which drives the media to misreport and overhype live events or it's the media which spices it up in order to attract more viewers?

The chicken or the egg...

But more or less, from the other footage, there was just an A340 sitting in a ravine, everyone is already safely evacuated and then a fire gradually perks up. By the time the US media got the story, the flames were much more widespread and the speculation started.

I'm not saying that it wasn't a bad situation, but by the cursory looks of the aircraft, it seems like the velocity wasn't that high as it departed the runway.

Heck, the interesting thing is that air carrier runway excursions happen a little more than the popular media (and the airlines) would like you to know.
 
I think they're pushing so hard for ratings that accuracy is something they throw right out the window.

They blew two of the big five questions you've got to have in order to report something accurately.

Oh, well, at least they got Toronto and the time of the crash right.
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Until the public demands better information, we can be sure we'll get more of this crap.
 
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I think they're pushing so hard for ratings that accuracy is something they throw right out the window.

They blew two of the big five questions you've got to have in order to report something accurately.

Oh, well, at least they got Toronto and the time of the crash right.
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Until the public demands better information, we can be sure we'll get more of this crap.

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Public, demands better information, but, the public demands it yesterday, as soon as the crash took place, everybody wanted to know, where? who? when? what kind of airplane? How many passengers were onboard? How many passengers survived? Who's fault? Pilots fault? Weather? How come the pilot landed in that weather?

In the days prior to the internet, it would have been in the newspaper the next day, giving the reporters time to get their facts together, perhaps, there would have been a brief mention on the news.

Nowadays, we demand immediate information. Reporters were probably writing the story on the way to the airport.

Just look at the websites, and you can see the types being asked, minutes after the crash....
 
I'm afraid the general public may not care.

We watch "reality tv" but there's a army of script writers on staff.

They think people in Arizona paint rocks green to simulate grass.

They think pilots wear their hats in the cockpit and stare steely-eyed at the instruments all flight long.

I bet ya the ratings dropped double-percentages after the Canadian authority said that there were no fatalities and only a few minor injuries. At least Wolf Blitzer got to go to lunch and check his hair.
 
What amazes me the most is that it was not a U.S. carrier, and the incident did not even take place in the U.S. but it's ALL OVER the media here.

Just goes to show how fascinated people are by plane crashes. The media knows this, and panders to it by sensationalizing the way they do!

BTW a young Valparasio lady and 3 friends died in a cessna crash off the coast of Florida a day or so ago. The only mention of that was a brief blurb on our local NBC's affilate's website. A crash where 3 people die isn't getting any attention, but because the YYZ incident was a big airliner with a couple hundred people on board it gets splashed all over everywhere.

In a week or so, this will be 'old news', and we won't hear anything more about it. When the Canadian authorities make their final verdict on what happened, there's a chance it might get a small bit on the news here, but it won't get much attention.


Sorry. End of my anti-media rant.
 
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They eat their fries with gravy...

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My first time there, I thought to myself, "You can buy Poon all over the place here!!!!"

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It probably won't get any attention unless it involves one of the pilots drinking booze within six days of the accident or some missing, pretty 17 year old that was onboard.
 
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They think people in Arizona paint rocks green to simulate grass.

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Sun City West and Sun Lakes. East and West Valley. They both do that excessively.

Doug, why do you have to mislead the people into thinking that Arizonans DONT paint their rocks?
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I think they're pushing so hard for ratings that accuracy is something they throw right out the window.

They blew two of the big five questions you've got to have in order to report something accurately.

Oh, well, at least they got Toronto and the time of the crash right.
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Until the public demands better information, we can be sure we'll get more of this crap.

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I didn't watch much of the coverage. But what I did watch about an hour afterward was amazingly thorough to me. Because communications technology is so much more comprehensive than the Aug 2, 1985 crash of Delta at DFW (yes exactly 20 years earlier) things have to be different and I was anxiously watching the coverage of that crash too, on CNN. The witnesses I heard interviewed for this event were either airport authorities, witnesses with an aviation background, or relatives of passengers who had talked with their loved ones on cell phones as they were wondering on the highway after the crash, or in some cases actual passengers. I didn't hear anything too wild. Most witnesses insisted they could only speculate.

And of course they were able to pull up a weather radar picture from the time of the crash. All that did was point out the obvious, they landed during one hum-dinger of a storm.

Not sure what the beef is here. If it's that they get the aircraft type wrong, so what?

As far as over-dramatizing it. This crash was a carbon copy of the American crash in LIT. The only difference was a miracle of topography that left the Airbus in a ravine with a broken fuselage and on fire, but not so badly damaged that anyone died immediately from the crash. Take the metal lighting stanchions away in the American crash and everyone likely walks away from it too.

This time hopefully (unlike American at LIT) authorities will focus on:

a) Why a professional crew attempts a landing with a severe thunderstorm in progress, not just in close proximity but on the runway they are landing on? and

b) Why ATC could be well aware of the storm, so concerned that ramp operations had been suspended for frequent lightning, yet not have the authority to close the airport to approaches and departures? And why are they specifically forbidden from closing the airport during severe weather until there is actual burning wreckage on the airport?

I've been studying these thunderstorm/windshear crashes for exactly 20 years, motivated by landing over the wreckage of 191. When you attempt to land in weather like this it's almost hard to call it an accident. At one time I thought we would put these behind us like we did the ground icing accidents. But it just keeps happening and it was pure dumb luck that made this a no fatality event. It could have easily been 100% loss of life.

I doubt the press will cover the true drama of this. When the NTSB decided to make the American crash a fatigue issue the press took the bait. No one even bothered to ask how an airport could be open for approaches with such a severe storm on top of it. This one will probably fade away too and it will be business as usual.
 
The coverage I saw was some guy talking on his cell phone on the side of the road that had no idea what was going on (basing which directions the planes land on time of day instead of winds?), Wolf Blitzer was pretty sure he had it all figured out, and a lot of people were asking "Why does ATC let airplanes land when the weather is bad?"
 
I've been out there, I still have no idea who paints their rocks.

(resident since 2000 and lived in AZ 1988 thru 1993)
 
I'm at work and haven't the time to read this entire thread, so forgive me if this was already discussed...

Did any of you hear the comments made on the Imus in the morning program yesterday about this crash? One of the people on that program said the plane crashed "because it's French" and then Don Imus popped up and said "it crashed because it was a Boeing". Idiots...

Again, my apologies if someone already discussed this...
 
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The coverage I saw was some guy talking on his cell phone on the side of the road that had no idea what was going on (basing which directions the planes land on time of day instead of winds?), Wolf Blitzer was pretty sure he had it all figured out, and a lot of people were asking "Why does ATC let airplanes land when the weather is bad?"

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I wasn't watching CNN so I don't know. The source I was on moatly stuck with aviation experts, either on the scene or away. They were very reasonable and measured in their comments.

Of course the question is a legitimate one. I think most of the public and many pilots believe that airports are closed when severe weather hits. In fact that is not the case, only captains close airports for thunderstorms by refusing approach and takeoff clearances. There is a reason for that which the traveling public probably wouldn't find very amusing. It is strictly so the governement does not set any precedent that would make the crash of an airliner in any way their responsibility. So conditions at an airport can be so extreme that controllers fear for their own safety yet they are required by procedure to issue landing and takeoff clearances.

This would be OK but for two things.
1)Some captains don't know enough not to land in severe weather conditions, they simply aren't equipped through training or whatever to make that decision and

2)the people on the ground have the best vantage point of seeing current conditions in a very dynamic situation.

This is not rocket meteorology. When there is a thunderstorm on the airport or effecting any portion of the appraoch you just don't try it, period. It's really no more complicated than that. How it got to be more complicated is a long story, but as usual it involves the government trying to help us be safer while protecting their own ass.

And of course it is the height of idiocy that airports now close ramp operations to protect ground personnel from lightning, as was the case at the time of the crash in Toronto, yet continue landing and takeoff operations. This is so stupid that hopefully someone will notice this time.
 
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