Conference back40::soapbox

Peers:		Our lordly style
		  You shall not quench
		With base canaille!
Fairies:	  (That word is French!)
Peers:		Distinction ebbs
		  Before a herd
		Of vulgar plebs!
Fairies:	  (A Latin word.)
Peers:		'Twould fill with joy,
		  And madness stark
		The oi polloi!
Fairies:	  (A Greek remark.)

Peers:		One Latin word, one Greek remark,
		  And one that's French.

    Boy it's a good thing we now have GATT.  US Airlines will flock to
    purchase foreign planes now that the prices are REALLY low.  (along
    with safty standards apparently).  
    
    Check the label next time yer going somewhere...
    
    "Made in Fredonia"  
    
    ... and hold on tight.

So they are going to allow these birds to fly only in warmer climates.  
There is not too many places that you can go in the U.S. that the air doesn't 
get freezing at altitude.  Add a little rain to the batter and you get ice.
Are they also going to fly low?  I think the hell I would just stay off the 
damn things.  Ban the purchase by major airlines of any FOKKER, ATR, SAAB, 
AIRBUS pieces of sh** aircraft.  Let the good guys at McDonnell Douglas, 
Lockheed, and Boeing build ships for U.S. airlines.  I would gladly spend an 
extra $100.00 for a ticket if the airlines would stop this stupid cost cutting 
crap that is getting people killed.

Paul  

ATRs are propjets; They do have pressurized cabins, so they can fly above
10,000, but on their short hops they probably rarely go above 15,000.

The ban applies at 40 degrees or below with visible moisture.

/john

    re: .0
    
    Talk about an experimental airfoil, WOW!
    
    Bob

    ho ho! Protectionist accusations, funny stuff

Why isn't this in #131?

>so DC-10's never fell from the sky in the 70's ?

I remember one DC10 falling from the sky in 1979.  Airlines grounded all
DC10s in an effort to check the mounts for the engines.  Don't remember 
what the conclusion was about this, but I do know they took action
immediately.

    .9
    
    only 1 ?? perhaps i'm wrong (never !! :-) ) maybe it was Tristars but
    i'm sure one of the big jets with three engines at the back turned out
    to have a defective door and there were several incidents in the 70's.
    
    anyway, my point is i don't think US companies have a spotless record,
    though whether its any better or worse would require exhaustive
    reseaarch into a accidents-per-thousand-miles-flown statistic. and i
    really don't care enough to even begin to think of doing it.

    There was a rash of DC10 crashes it seemed.  Detroit, New Orleans, and
    a few others.  There was definitely more than one.  
    
    Brian

I do remember an aircraft crashing into a church in NYC.  Was that a 
DC10?

Paul

 A Turkish Airlines DC10 crashed outside of Paris in the early to mid 70's.
 A cargo door blew off, the cabin depressurized severing the hydraulic lines
 that were mounted in the floor (ceiling of cargo area) rendering the aircraft
 uncontrollable.  It literally fell out of the sky from about 20000 feet.
 An interesting book "Destination Disaster" was based on this crash.  It
 described the development of the 747, L1011 and DC10, outlining a number
 of "cut corners" in the DC10 project, one of which resulted in the 
 primary and backup hydraulic lines being located in the floor of the
 aircraft. 


 Since this problem was fixed, along with the engine mounting problem resulting
 in the 1979 crash, the DC10 has been a workhorse.




Jim

    A DC-10 crashed due to a defective bolt which holds the engine onto
    the wing which broke.  This caused the engine to roll over the wing
    and screw up it's lift & control surfaces (understatement).  This is
    the incident which there was a photo (I believe) of the plane winging
    over and heading towards the ground.
    
    The bolt failure was due to poor maintenance.  Things on airplanes
    have a service life.  After XXXXX hours, they are considered junk and
    replaced.  
    
    Most US planes that bounce, do so because of poor maintenance/pilot
    error.  Not a design flaw.  As paul said, you get what you pay for.
    If ice were to gather on the wings of a Boeing or something, the
    problem would have been found and corrected before the plane entered
    production.  THIS is where our Federal gov't does something right.
    GATT will force our industry to compete against people who slap some
    engines onto a wing, bolt it onto a fuselage, put some seats in it
    and call it an airliner.  And US companies in pursuit of the $$$$$ will
    buy them by the boatload (and ultimately have to park 'em.  Penny wise
    pound foolish?)

RE:            <<< Note 170.11 by CONSLT::MCBRIDE "aspiring peasant" >>>

   > There was a rash of DC10 crashes it seemed.  Detroit, New Orleans, and
   > a few others.  There was definitely more than one.  
    
   
     I recall an MD-80 (DC9 derivative) crashing in Detroit and a 727 in
     New Orleans, but don't recall DC10's.



 Jim

    
    .13
    
    That was early January 1974, don't remember the exact date.  I had friends 
    on that plane.
    

RE:       <<< Note 170.16 by POWDML::LAUER "Little Chamber of Perdition" >>>

    
       
   > That was early January 1974, don't remember the exact date.  I had friends 
   > on that plane.
    


    :-(  Sorry to hear that, Deb...horrible thing it was.




Jim

My lady friend and I just made reservations to fly to Upstate NY for the 
holidays.  We have to go through Nashville and Cincinnati on the way up.
More takeoff/landings than I like to make.  Michelle has never flown before.

If the weather looks at all dodgy I am staying put here in Atlanta.

Paul

Where in Upstate NY are you headed? (That's my old stomping grounds.)

Chances are the weather won't be nice there this time of year.

-Jack

Rochester and Buffalo (it snowed there this weekend), and your right Jack,
chances are very good for snow.  I worry about blizzard type snow.

I used to work in the Rochester District office and the ACT during the 
glory days of Digital.

Paul

Yar, well then you know what to expect in that loverly corridor south of
the lake.

re: .14

Mike,

>    The bolt failure was due to poor maintenance.  Things on airplanes
>    have a service life.  After XXXXX hours, they are considered junk and
>    replaced.  

I thought the 'poor maintenance' was improper use of a fork lift during engine
reattachment, causing too much/improper stress on the bolt, rather than the
bolt having simply exceeded its life and not being replaced.

Bob

    Ho Ho Bob,
    
    Did the bolt fail due to poor maintenance?
    
    I'd say slamming the engine back into place is defined as "poor
    maintenance".
    
    Did the bolt fail because it exceeded its service life and wasn't
    replaced?
    
    No, but I'd say the heavy whack it recieved prolly aged it a couple
    thousand hours or so.  :^)

    yet another opportunity to haul out the curmudgeon's dictionary:
    
        airplane, n.  A cigar-shaped counterfeit bird with an alarming
        propensity for falling out of the sky at inconvenient times and in
        equally inconvenient places.

    First rule of aircraft maintenance?  If it doesn't fit, use a bigger
    fork lift?  I think I'll start walking places from now on.  
    
    Brian 

    .25
    
    > I think I'll start walking
    
    sounds like you're joining up with haag and me.  gawd i hate airplanes.

Mike,

I thought you were saying that the bolt failed because it had been left in
service too long.

Bob

I was in the USAF (Uncle Sam's flying circus) for a few years as an F-4 
crew chief.  Some of the stuff I saw and was forced to do was appalling.

I really don't want to mention them, because it would scare the hell out 
of all of you.  One thing that I will say is these birds had probably 100
lbs of RTV (silicone sealant) on board.  Got a leak, pull out the RTV.

With Bilary's defense cuts I can only imagine this is worse than ever.

Paul

    .28
    
    are you the same guy who was saying in .3 how sooper-dooper US stuff
    was versus foreign muck ?

    
    I'm with Haag, Binder, and Sir Isaac Newton.  Why do otherwise sane
    individuals voluntarily climb into hunks of metal and suspend
    themselves over the earth a few miles ?
    
      bb

    
    i can hardly wait for Digital to give out Greyhound tix
    along with the travel auth.

    I suppose this should have gone in News Briefs but I was in this
    topic when the news came on......another American Eagle commuter
    just went down at Raleigh-Durham airport; 18 aboard according to
    initial report.
    
    

    > Why do otherwise sane individuals voluntarily climb into hunks of
    > metal and suspend themselves over the earth a few miles ?
    
    The usual answer to this given by said individuals is to recite the
    poem "Flight" by somebody-whose-name-I've-forgotten.  No doubt it'll be
    posted here shortly.
    
    DougO

    
    
    
          That DC-10 crash referencing the "bolt" problem was on an
          American Airlines flight out of Chicago. I remember seeing 
          the photos that someone had taken and were broadcast on the
          news. I don't believe that the aircraft was airborne much
          more twenty seconds or so.
    
          The case was in court for years. People were blaming AA for
          "shoddy maintenance" and AA turned around and pointed the
          finger at McDD questioning the design. I believe that both
          AA and McDD both paid out settlements.
    
          I believe that the McDD DC-10 effectively ended Lockheed's
          commercial aircraft development,.....their (Lockheed) L-1011
          just didn't get the the sales among domestic airlines that
          McDD did. I believe that the only two american carriers that
          purchased the Tristar L-1011 were Delta and TWA.
    
    
          Ed
    

    
    
    
        I don't believe that The Concorde has ever "gone down",....does
        anyone know when the "end of life" is scheduled for this plane?
    
    
        Ed

    
    when it hits the waves?

  re L1011    PSA (the late PSA) in Calif used L1011's on the SFO-LAX run
  for a while..wasn't really practical for short haul work..a good airplane
  though..




Jim

    .35
    
    my brother who flies the things says 2005 approx

    
    Eagle Air grounded today.  bb
    

	Kiwi Air (they fly 727s) grounded, too.

Why are these airlines being grounded?

Bob

    Eagle grounded by prompting from the pilots citing they were not given
    enough poor/cold weather training.  No flights out of Chicago and
    Peoria (?) and a few others midwestern locations I think until 1/4/95.  
    
    Brian

 American Eagle sent the ATRs south for the winter, and replaced them with
 other aircraft.  the pilots are saying that they haven't had proper winter
 flying training on these aircraft and won't fly them.


 Back to L1011s for a minute...Eastern Airlines was another US carrier that
 flew them.




Jim

    
    all these grounding and crashes are really making me feel a bit uncomfy 
    about flying to san fran in jan...thru chicago, too...i was never
    really afraid to fly...never say never, right??
    
    
    

    raq, the groundings are at the insistence of the pilots, who feel
    inadequately trained and who have a vested interest in not bouncing
    their airplanes.  groundings of this nature are a good thing.

 still, the fact that they feel inadequately trained does little to bolster
 one's confidence in the entire airline industry.  i dare say.

    
    RE: San Fran...
    
     raq.... don't drink the water....
    

    
    how come????
    
    
    

    
    Cause I said so?????

    .46
    
    lady di, they are adequately trained for the routes they have been
    flying in the past - it's just that presenting a tropical pilot with
    snow on the runway isn't the kindest way to introduce said pilot to the
    joys of our northern climes.

 okay, how about this: still, the fact that the pilots themselves have to
 refuse to fly does little to bolster one's confidence in the entire airline
 industry. ?

    i'll buy that.  but then i don't often buy plane tickets.

    Actually, it boosts my confidence.  It shows that the airline(s) is
    willing to work with their pilots to help ensure the safety of the
    passengers and employees.  The fact that there was allegedly iadequate
    training in the past is not so comforting but the idea this is being
    recognized and fixed, is.  I would fly tomorrow if I had a ticket, to
    the Carribbean, like Belize or somewhere.  I dare ya to buy me one. 
    :-).
    
    Brian
    

    
    re the Paris DC-10 Crash.
    
    The cargo door fell off because a locking bolt didn't engage fully. 
    MD retofitted and inspection hole into every cargo door so that the
    ground crew could inspect whether the bolt had or had not fully
    engaged. Next time you go up the back stairs of a DC-10, look to your
    left and you'll see the cargo door with its warning sticker reminding
    the groud crew to check the bolt.
    
    POL.

 RE .54

 Right...I'd forgotten about that bolt thing..





Jim

    
    CHICAGO (AP) - Passengers clutched a flight attendant in danger of
    being swept out after the cabin door blew off an American Eagle
    commuter plane minutes after takeoff.  
    
    The French-made Sper ATR with 64 people aboard immediately returned to
    O'Hare International Airport on Sunday.
    
    The main cabin door was still missing yesterday, somewhere in Chicago's
    western suburbs.
    

    Was this an accident or an example of Direct Action by Greenpeace?
    
    Stuart

 For some reason I thought ATR's were Italian (after the big crisis with them
 last fall I seem to recall hearing they were built in Italy.





 Jim

    The ATR is made by a French-Italian consortium, so you're both right.
    History has shown neither can engineer their way out of a paper bag.
    ;-)

ANTONOV PLANES GROUNDED AFTER CRASH. Following the crash of an Antonov
An-24 in the Caucasus on 18 March in which some 50 people were killed,
the Russian Federal Aviation Service (FAS) decided to suspend the
domestic use of all airplanes of this type, Izvestiya reported on 28
March. All An-24s will now be subject to a technical inspection. An-24s
form the core of the Russian passenger fleet, servicing 40% of all
passenger traffic in Russia. The An-24 is also one of the oldest Russian
passenger carriers; manufacture began in 1962 and continued until the
end of the 1970s. The ban can be lifted only when An-24s get another
technical certificate. -- Natalia Gurushina