‘Round the Blogosphere
Gary posted an interesting read yesterday, about a Jetstar pilot so busy texting on his phone that he forgot to put the landing gear down. Here is the account of how it went down, no pun intended, on a flight from Darwin to Singpore:
“Somewhere between 2500 feet and 2000 feet, the captain’s mobile phone started beeping with incoming text messages, and the captain twice did not respond to the co-pilot’s requests. The co-pilot looked over and saw the captain “preoccupied with his mobile phone”, investigators said. The captain told investigators he was trying to unlock the phone to turn it off, after having forgotten to do so before take-off. At 1000 feet, the co-pilot scanned the instruments and felt “something was not quite right” but could not spot what it was. At this stage the captain still did not realised the landing gear had not been lowered, and neither pilot went through their landing checklist. At 720 feet, a cockpit alert flashed and sounded to warn that the wheels still hadn’t been lowered. At 650 feet, the captain moved the undercarriage lever “instinctively” but then a “too low” ground-warning alarm sounded as the plane sunk through 500 feet, indicating the landing gear was not fully extended and locked. The co-pilot was confused by the captain’s action in lowering the wheels, as he was getting ready to do quite the opposite — to abort the landing and re-ascend to the skies, investigators said. Neither spoke to each other about their intentions. At 392 feet, the crew aborted the landing and powered up the thrust. At this time the pilots had lost track of their altitude, thinking they were much higher, at about 800 feet.”Between a texting pilot and fatigued co-pilot they completely lacked situational awareness. Lovely. In the words of Gary, “It’s one thing when passengers play Words with Friends with the aircraft door closed. It’s another thing when the pilot does it, on final approach!”
Makes you wanna fly Jetstar, doesn’t it? This has been since added to pilot training as a Lessons Learned.
Frugal Travel Guy presented a solid way to keep track of credit card accounts.
And One Mile at a Time points out that there is a 40% discount on solid, long-lasting Tumi luggage.
Point Me to the Miles 