Writing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — Lost in the conversation about what could have caused Malaysia Flight 370 to go missing on March 8th during a routine flight to Beijing, is any discussion over the calamity that could have occurred, a mid air collision over one of Malaysia’s populous urban centers. When the transponder stopped working on the Boeing 777 jetliner, it was flying in the dark of night and headed Lord knows where. In the same air space at the time were at least two Malaysia Airlines wide body jets and several other airliners. A medical charter jet, piloted by Richard Fulton out of… Read More…
Satellite image released by the Chinese Saturday evening UPDATED WITH NEW INFORMATION AT THE END OF THE POST. Writing from Kuala Lumpur—News this afternoon that a Chinese satellite has recorded images of a large piece of what could be debris from the missing Malaysia flight 370 will provide a distraction to the otherwise newsworthy realization that official investigators hyped a theory of criminal intent by the pilots with little evidence to support it. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, it is my hope that this friendly little country and the people who lead it, will re examine how their minister of transport and defense handled this unprecedented event…. Read More…
The aircraft arriving at LAX in 2013 courtesy Jay Davis Writing from Kuala Lumpur — Regarding the quizzical disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 and the overwhelming flow of theories from professional and arm chair investigators alike, Tom Haueter told ABC News on Monday, “All it would take is one additional data point to say, ‘Wow, we were completely off base.’” These wise words from the former director of aviation safety with the National Transportation Safety Board should serve as a mantra for everyone reading, writing and jawboning about the Boeing 777 that left Kuala Lumpur for Beijing on March 8th and never arrived. Several days… Read More…
9M-MRO shot by Jay Davis at LAX last year. Writing from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia — The lowly satellite pinger, a humble device designed to make sure that expensive satellite communication time is not wasted, is having its day in the sun as the mobile communications company Inmarsat, gets called in to help find the missing Malaysia Flight 370. In an announcement this afternoon at the Sama-Sama Hotel at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak said evidence increasingly suggests that the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board has been hijacked. Further, the once-an-hour pinging between Inmarsat’s satellite network and the plane… Read More…
Several years ago, I wrote a story for The New York Times about Ellen Simonetti, who was telling all – albeit under a pseudonym – about her experience as a flight attendant with “Anonymous Airlines”. When she posted a photo of herself in her uniform it didn’t take long for the fliers who frequented her blog to figure out she worked for Delta Air Lines and shortly after that, Ellen was unemployed. Delta may have felt the hard-partying, wise-cracking Queen of Sky as Simonetti dubbed herself didn’t fit the image they wanted for their airline. They ought to be thanking their lucky stars they didn’t… Read More…
Sometimes being a mom helps me make sense of the world, because even when the world isn’t sensible, it at least is familiar. Take, for example, spoiled children. We’ve all seen these children, pitching a fit at the grocery store because mommy and daddy won’t purchase that tempting something on display in the check out line. (Not, my kids of course.) This is the image that comes to mind when I read about America’s budget impasse between Democrats and Republicans. Only in this case, something more significant than supermarket embarrassment is at stake. When the Republicans inserted into the Federal Aviation Administration’s operational re-authorization bill,… Read More…
ATC simulator at FAA Center in Oklahoma City Just a few days after taking the Flight Safety Foundation to task for publishing what can only be considered outrageously inaccurate statistics in 2007 regarding airport ramp events, I have to commend the Foundation’s present boss for his excellent commentary today on the future of air traffic control in the United States. William Voss, writing for CNN, does the seemingly impossible, explaining the nation’s air traffic control system and its hot subtopic, Next Gen, in a way that ordinary users of the system can surely understand. Then, like a good controller, he takes them to the next… Read More…
