Handling Aircraft Emergencies: A job best left to the professionals.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Community Activist speaking…

This article is not about social media posts. Rather, it is about a group of very specific people who unjustifiably provide themselves public platforms to rain down copious amounts of misinformation upon the unknowing public. This misinformation then becomes a basis for peoples opinions on various matters. The people at the helm of this misinformation campaign are irresponsible in their endeavors and are culpable for their words (social media for example) and actions. This article highlights this irresponsible behavior.

Sitting at the proverbial controls of your Tweed-New Haven Airport aviation information stream is a group totally unqualified for the job. To illustrate this fact, I showcase a woman who lent “sage” commentary via a social media post. The authoritative commentary is made by a 10,000 Hawks “Resident Expert”. It showcases all her finery as she dissects the intricacies of an in-flight mechanical problem. I’m sharing her commentary as a way to showcase her arrogance in describing for others something she knows nothing about. Factual commentary from an actual person who has “been there and done that” when it comes to aircraft problems should lend some credibility to my writing.

This article is about a recent diversion of Tweed bound AVELO 737. The crew of this flight comes under the scrutiny of someone who has never flown a plane before. Who better than to be at the controls than her? We will call this person G.C. In this article, mention will also be made of another accomplice in the chorus of misinformation surrounding Tweed Airport. This person we will call L.V.

Spaghetti Loops?

Our expert Aviatrix who pilots nothing more than her car, surely seems to have forgotten a basic tenet of airmanship. Namely, many aircraft abnormalities are meant to be handled in a deliberate, orderly and non-rushed format. These spaghetti loops are on purpose. These “delay vectors” as they are technically called, are on purpose (crew request) and are intended to give the flight crew time to:

1. Run checklists.

2. Troubleshoot.

3. Brief passengers and flight attendants.

4. Communicate with the dispatchers and operational control center.

5. Brief and discuss with one another the situation at hand.

6. Notify Air Traffic Control.

There are myriad other things that factor in to the handling of an in-flight emergency, but need not be discussed, as to do so, would be pointless given the person in question and her non-expertise.

Take your time Captain!
This particular flight and the kind of mechanical malfunction they experienced was exactly the quintessential type of problem that would require deliberately spending extra time in the air for the very reason (and others) I just described. I wonder how I would come to know this.

A brake related problem does not jeopardize an airplanes’ ability to fly. It is not a distress situation. This is exactly the kind of distinction a trained pilot can make between various aircraft problems as opposed to the Social Media Warriors and their community gossip.

Further, an airplane has other means to stop on the runway…they are called Speed Brakes and spoilers, Thrust Reversers and wait…Emergency Brake. I’m sure the crew at 10,000 Hawks and this particular woman knew all this? Finally, not a person in the outside world knows exactly the specific problem with this flight and aircraft. Therefore, the 10,000 Jurists should stay out of the business of speculation.

Specificity aside.
The above items are the basic elements that involve the handling of almost every aircraft mechanical irregularity. Delay vectors are a purposeful way to manage aircraft problems. The meandering you see in the sky is for a purpose, namely the demonstration of a kind of Airmanship that is taught to every pilot. How much Airmanship have you been trained in Ms. Aviatrix? I know the answer. None. Just like 10,000 of your friends!

To describe and commentate the sequence of this emergency in the fashion the way this woman does, makes her sound….well…I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

“They don’t know where, how and when to land” certainly sounds like she does. At the next airport focused community meeting, ask this 10,000 Hawk member what she would do in similar circumstances.

If this member of the 10,000 Hawks were in a position to represent and voice my concerns as a nearby resident to Tweed New Haven Airport, I’d ask for new leadership. She never piloted and airplane in her life and yet she can critically speculate on the actions of a professional flight crew? Sounds brave to me. She and her friends do this every day.

I offer myself to a forum in which she, her hatchlings and I can discuss aircraft abnormalities.

Don’t outdo yourself now?

To add insult to injury, our self-appointed ‘Captain of the sky’ goes for more. In the same inaccurate diatribe about this diversion, she meanders onto another tangental subject, one that yet again, highlights her lack of factual or contextual aeronautical knowledge. She misapplies and lacks any context when it comes to her description of visibility minimums for landing at an airport and equates rain to be a safety hazard. In one thing she is right…rain is a safety hazard…at all airports (I will describe below).

Visibility can be a problem.

During times of inclement weather, airplanes navigate to the runway via use of instrumentation. A routine occurrence for airplanes is to fly “in the blind” to as low as 200 feet above the runway before the pilots MUST see the runway in order to land. Despite incredibly sophisticated technologies, systems and training, seeing the runway at some point is still required. If not, pilots conduct a “missed approach”. Missed Approaches are simply a maneuver performed when the pilot doesn’t see the runway at the appropriate time so as to make a landing. After such a maneuver, the crew can opt to circle (holding pattern), try the approach again or divert to another airport.

The 10,000 Hawks and their propaganda machine like to allege danger in the sky every time an airplane “goes missed approach” at Tweed. The woman G.C. who made the social media post shown at the start of this article is the lead cheerleader in this regard. She and her 10,000 friends bemoan holding patterns and diversions as a rallying cry to shutter Tweed’s doors.

Holding patterns and diversions are nothing more than realities of flight as they relate to weather. “Crutches” as another prominent Hawk likes to bellyache about what pilots call Alternate Airports. Little does she know, Alternate Airports are a legal requirement for many flight operations. No conspiracy here. Crutches are perfectly ok in aviation.

Look, it’s another Hawk and her infinite aviation wisdom!

Sorry to diminish your drama, but I just did a missed approach last week. We lived and even landed on our second attempt. It’s funny what happens when the clouds break up. My crew and I did not protest to close the airport. Every airport experiences problems with weather.

Wet Runways.
The crew of every single Transport Category airplane must compute landing and takeoff distance per regulation. If this Hawk (G.C.) knew anything about what she pontificates, she would know a wet runway (and other factors) degrades all aircraft performance parameters. This isn’t so much unique to Tweed as it is pertinent to every airplane that flies and the airfields they operate from. Wet runways compromise aircraft performance everywhere.

Wet runways are yet another reality of powered flight that are dealt with millions of times a year by flight crews. While a dry runway is theoretically more safe than a wet runway, a wet runway is not inherently dangerous. If you’ve been reading my articles, I wrote about wet runways and how the longer a runway is, the less it is affected by water and commensurate aircraft perfromance.

As a Professional Pilot, I’m familiar with regulations, calculations, decision making and most importantly, their relationship to safe flight. I have been a pilot for more than half of this Hawks’ life and yet my experience has taught me one very important thing…there is much more for me to learn. Learning would be a great goal for some other folks as well.

Final Approach.
These particular Hawks are ravenous in their faulty assertions, errant in their mission and nothing short of irresponsible as a so-called community activists. If they could be so radically wrong in things aviation, what else are they wrong about?

But alas, not only are these two Hawks ignorant to the particular facts of the above commentary , but they clearly don’t read my contributions to the Patch! These contributions are expressely for the purpose to explain technical elements that pertain to airports and aircraft. My articles are meant to be helpful explanations of airplanes and airports. I’ve learned in life, some people don’t want to be helped. The two persons described in this article (G.C and L.V.) are two such people.

These two self appointed expert Aviatrixes lack any qualification to speak authoritatively about the things they know nothing about. So too can this be said about their 10,000 friends. Yet they still do it. This makes them disingenuous in their efforts to “help the community”. To me, like the nest of hawks they come from, these two persons demonstrate a supreme arrogance, a malicious nature and a closed-minded mission that is purely to coerce others to subscribe to their views.