DePete: “Pilots need voice in new aircraft approval”

Grease enough palms to look the other way and almost anything goes. We’ve done a lot mitigate the threat at Brown but it’s too much money to leave on the table. Trying to get one lithium battery fire put out is tough. A container full of them will never go out before getting on the ground, or turning the plane into a very expensive boat.
Solid-state lithium ion batteries are the future. We should see these soon in automobiles. It will likely be many years before they are common place for devices, the liquid batteries being so cheap to produce. Solid-state batteries, which are smaller, lighter, hold a longer charge, and can fully charge in about 30 minutes, are more stable. They don't carry the same runaway fire risk.
 
Which I’m still suprised we haven’t restricted yet.

In China, anything over a certain mAh is enjoying an extended vacation at the airport because they like to catch fire.
That's outside the preview of ALPA, isn't it? Rest hours directly impact pilots' performance and safety on the job. Battery fire risk is not related to pilot job performance. Seems like an incongruent analogy.
 
That's outside the preview of ALPA, isn't it? Rest hours directly impact pilots' performance and safety on the job. Battery fire risk is not related to pilot job performance. Seems like an incongruent analogy.
There’s two lost souls from the Brown seniority list that’ll disagree with you if they were still with us. A few from Swissair and South African also.

Our union was heavily involved with making sure Flight 6 didn’t happen again. The company also knew they F’d up pretty bad so that helped the cause.
 
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