Posts with the tag ‘pilots’


Experienced Airmen at the Controls in Air Canada Near Catastrophe NTSB Says

May 2, 2018

The pilots in command of the Air Canada Airbus A320 which nearly landed on top of four airliners in San Francisco last summer, were experienced airmen, an investigation shows. The captain who was flying that night, had 20,000 hours with 4,000 in the Airbus A320 while the first officer had 10,000 hours. Still, the two attempted to land on a taxiway on which four airliners were waiting to to depart. Camera footage of the near collision of Air Canada Flight 759 was released today by the National Transportation Safety Board which is investigating what might have been a multi-airliner pileup and a disaster of record-breaking potential…. Read More…


Times Have Changed: Breitling Stops Ads That Objectify Women

February 13, 2018

Breitling, the Swiss watch company that has taken heat for using scantily-clad women in advertisements and store displays, announced over the weekend that the practice will end. The company’s new chief executive, Georges Kern, told the German newspaper SonntagsZeitung that those themes are “no longer suitable and do not reflect values of today’s society.” Kern, whose college degree was in political science, knows the direction the wind is blowing. It was just one year ago at a Breitling store party in Manhattan that the company arranged for models to be in attendance, posing as pilots in caps, epaulets and stiletto heels but notably missing their pants. The year before, astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly and… Read More…


Dollars Not Enough to Fill Cockpits For The Holidays at American

December 11, 2017

When American Airlines chief executive Robert Isom sat down with the president of the Allied Pilots Association, Daniel F. Carey last week, it took mere minutes to come to an agreement, according to APA spokesman Dennis Tajer. “They had this,” Tajer said of the close-call American had with cancelling ten thousand or more flights during the busy holiday travel season. American agreed to pay pilots double time if they would return to the cockpit, filling flight decks left vacant after a software problem allowed too many pilots to opt out of holiday flying. But as I reported for Forbes, not all pilots are taking the… Read More…


This Christmas, SAAnta Pilots Earn Double Time

December 4, 2017

Last week I wondered how much will it cost to fix the American Airlines pilot scheduling snafu? This week I can tell you the answer: Double time pay for all American Airlines pilots who fly over the Christmas holidays. In a communication to members this weekend, the Allied Pilots Association said that the union and American management had agreed that those would-be Santas would be paid double their hourly rate for flying for the carrier between December 17 and the end of 2017. The terms came a day after a joyfully playful announcement by the union and the airline that read, “If Santa is flying,… Read More…


How Much Will It Cost to Fill AA’s Cockpits for Christmas?

November 30, 2017

Getting paid time and a half for flying over Christmas is an adequate incentive if you are an American Airlines executive. But if you are the pilots’ union,  you might consider it coal in the stocking. Like the homeowner who doesn’t know there’s a leaking pipe until the kitchen floor is underwater, the Dallas-based carrier was unaware that a software glitch on its pilot scheduling portal was allowing flight crews to drop or trade December assignments without those flights being picked up by others. Had the program been working correctly, that would have been impossible. Faced with the horrifying prospect of cancelling flights during the… Read More…


Icon Suggests Pilot Erred In A5 Plane Crash

May 18, 2017

Investigators don’t know what caused the fatal plane crash last week of the new and highly-anticipated light-sport Icon A5, but in a statement on the company website, Icon’s director of flight, Shane Sullivan suggests pilot error was an issue. “We’re unsure why the plane flew into such a narrow canyon that had no outlet,” Sullivan wrote.  Such speculation by an interested party during the investigation is highly unusual and frowned upon by the National Transportation Safety Board. On May 8, aeronautical engineer and chief test pilot Jon Karkow was piloting the two seat amphibious A5 with Icon’s new director of engineering, Cagri Sever on board as a passenger…. Read More…


WestJet Denies Close Call Caught on Camera at St. Maarten

March 9, 2017

Air travelers to St. Maarten expect a thrilling view approaching Princess Juliana International Airport. But thrills turned terrifying for passengers and observers of WestJet Flight 2652 from Toronto on Tuesday. When the Boeing 737 descended through the clouds it went well below the minimum descent altitude. The scene of the jet skimming the surface of Maho Bay was captured by aviation photographer Christine Garner,  shooting from the roof of a nearby building. She said she thought the plane was going to crash. “When this plane came out of the cloud, I was so shocked,” she said. “The surprising thing was he was lower than me. Normally they pass… Read More…


Breitling Can’t Find the Female Superstar Pilots. Can You?

May 24, 2016

Steam was coming out of my ears at the sight of photos from Breitling’s big New York City publicity event last week. The watchmaker was opening a new boutique on Madison Avenue. In addition to the flyboys, astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly and John Travolta, some athletes were in attendance, but the only women who were featured in front of the camera were the models selected to portray pilots in somebody’s aviation-themed fantasy. That’s the photo, above, you be the judge. Breitling hasn’t replied to my question, “What gives?” but some women pilots sure have their thoughts. You can check out their comments in my story… Read More…


Lawsuit Questions Lufthansa’s Supervision of Student Pilot in GermanWings Crash

April 18, 2016

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…


MH 370 Report on Night of Errors Raises Questions About Competence

March 9, 2015

The story making headlines on the anniversary of the disappearance of Malaysia Flight 370 is the news that the battery for the locator beacon in the plane’s flight data recorder was not changed on schedule as it should have been. This raises the possibility that one of the plane’s two black boxes may not have been emitting an audible signal for searchers to have picked up. Failing to replace a dying battery and the consequences of such a lapse is a scenario everyone can relate to, which is why this particular revelation is big news, even though it is exceedingly unlikely that the towed pinger locator was ever within a… Read More…


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