Aviation is all about lessons learned. That’s not just nice talk, its the reason millions of people get on airplanes and travel around the world in near perfect safety. Airlines make a big effort to learn from mistakes. So just what is up with United Airlines, which just can’t get a handle on customer service despite the master class it gets each time it mishandles its image by manhandling its passengers? On Sunday, an unidentified traveler was hauled off a United flight from Chicago to Louisville when he refused to give up his seat so airline employees could get to work. Does anyone else see… Read More…

The lawsuit filed on behalf of nearly eighty of the 150 victims of the suicide-induced crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 on March 24, 2015, directs attention to the training of the pilots who fly for the airline (now called Eurowings) and its big brother, Lufthansa. Full disclosure before I continue. From 2001 until 2008, I was the primary investigator for Kreindler & Kreindler, the American aviation law firm that has sued Lufthansa’s pilot training center, called Aviation Training Center of Arizona or ATCA. In October 2010, I spent a week living and flying with the cadets who would, as Lubitz did,  go on to become pilots with the airline. I wrote several… Read More…