Are you serious? If you think some clown running around naked on the flightline is going to crash someone landing your about as bright as the people that write these BS safety reports. His crappy landing crashed the plane and the other pilot froze. Simple as that. ...you could also go on to say the dead bugs on the windscreen contributed to the crash. Have you ever been in an cockpit with TCAS II on a short approach? I wish I could sing louder than that damm speaker! Please explain to me how someone sends emails while taking off or landing? how did you come up with that one?

About the hollywood part... I come from a pilot family, my grandfather flew with the 322 squadron during WWII, he flew untill the end of the Hawker Hunter, a year before that my father entered the Air Force in the F-84F, F-104 and F-16 and then F-16MLU. We even moved to Tucson because my father was the Dutch trainer at the time.

When I hear the stories about what happened at the Air Force base and the things I saw myself. As in lighting pianos on fire, and releasing wild boar into a squadron building over the weekend as a pranck. And the RNLAF still being a good respected Air Force I do indeed think that a military unit that cannot take 1 guy standing butt naked on a platform is worthless.

I personally fly glider planes as a hobby, and eventhough a glider plane isn't a fighter jet going mach 2 I still need my concentration and somehow still manage to land an aircraft with many distractions around me comming from people who havent had strict military training to minimise distractions.

We can’t even bring our cell phones to the flightline because of distraction it may cause … definitely don’t need this type of buffoonery out there.

1. A good pilot can land his plane with his co-pilot throwing up all over the place in near zero Vis. If someone making some noise bothers him he needs to go work in a library.

1. A good pilot can land his plane with his co-pilot throwing up all over the place in near zero Vis. If someone making some noise bothers him he needs to go work in a library.

Authorities confirm engineer in deadly LA train crash was texting

The National Transportation Safety Board requested the cell phone records of Metrolink engineer Robert Sanchez, seen here Sept. 17, after two teenage train fans said they had exchanged text messages with him shortly before the train collided head-on Friday with a Union Pacific freight train in suburban Chatsworth. (AP Photo/Lilian Barber)
Friday, September 19, 2008 6:52 AM CDT

By Daisy Nguyen
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- Federal authorities investigating why a commuter train engineer ran through a red signal and into an oncoming freight train have confirmed that he was text messaging while working on the day of the fatal collision. | Photo gallery | Video

The revelation came a day before the California Public Utilities Commission was scheduled to vote Thursday on a proposed emergency order banning the use of cell phones while operating a train. Commission President Michael R. Peevey, who is seeking the order, said some railroads have such policies but they're widely ignored.

"Our order would make it the law and we'll go after violators," Peevey said earlier in the week.

Southern California's Metrolink prohibits rail workers from using cell phones on the job, but there is no current federal or state regulation regarding the use of cell phones by railroad employees.

The National Transportation Safety Board requested the cell phone records of Metrolink engineer Robert Sanchez after two teenage train fans said they had exchanged text messages with him shortly before the train collided head-on Friday with a Union Pacific freight train in suburban Chatsworth. The wreck killed 25 people, including Sanchez, and injured more than 130.

In a statement issued Wednesday night, the NTSB did not say how many messages were found in the records or if any texting occurred just before the collision. However, the teens told KCBS-TV last week that they received a text message from the engineer at 4:22 p.m. - a minute before the collision.

Messages left with NTSB spokesman Terry Williams were not immediately returned. Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca declined to comment.

In 2003, the NTSB recommended that the Federal Railroad Administration regulate the use of cell phones after finding that a coal train engineer's phone use contributed to a May 2002 accident in which two freight trains collided head-on near Clarendon, Texas. The coal train engineer was killed and the conductor and engineer of the other train were critically injured.

Members of the FRA's railroad safety advisory committee have been considering restricting electronic device usage in the locomotive cab as it develops new safety rules, agency spokesman Steven Kulm said. He said the group discussed the matter in meetings earlier in the year, and plans to meet next week in Chicago.

"We've been working on this issue before this event happened," Kulm said.

The NTSB has determined Sanchez did not apply the brakes before the collision and ran a red light that could have prevented it. The agency said the tracks and signals were working properly and that human error was to blame.

Also Wednesday, Metrolink voted at an emergency meeting to create a Victims Assistance Fund for public and private donations to families of crash victims, and a $200,000 Temporary Assistance Fund to speed payment of costs for the families including funeral expenses, Oaxaca said.

The Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which runs Metrolink, called the closed session partly to discuss anticipated litigation as a result of the collision.

The board also approved a unanimous motion to support legislation introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein requiring the installation of technology to prevent train crashes.

Feinstein hoped to get Congress to pass the requirement for so-called positive train control before recessing at the end of next week.

I realize what you say is at least partly in jest. However I feel I must say the following.

Don’t you see there is a difference between a skilled pilot being able to handle distractions that are part of the job, and a reckless pilot that deliberately puts themselves, their crews and their aircraft at jeopardy by taking unnecessary risks.


Remember that the FAA dictates that during critical phases of flight such as takeoff and landing that the cockpit is supposed to be a sterile environment. ( professional related conversations only, professional related tasks only, etc…) to prevent distractions that could lead to tragedy.

I will use this train wreck as an example. Though some aspects of engineering really is engineering for the most part driving a train is not rocket science and is not nowhere near as intense task load as being an aviation pilot. Paying attention and not being distracted is still very important.




http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2008 ... 629067.txt

As an example I also cite Aeroflot Flight 593: where children against regulation were allowed to enter the cockpit and take the controls. The pilots put the aircraft on a mode of autopilot and allowed the children to take the yoke, things worked out okay for the first child, but the second child used enough force to disable the autopilot. The child was able to get the aircraft into an attitude that it could not recover. The pilots broke the rules by letting the children in the cockpit during the flight. The pilots did not notice that the autopilot was disengaged or in a different mode because they were too attentive to the child and did not pay attention to the instruments until it was too late.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroflot_Flight_593

Your example is a bit weak... a single operator missing a stop light vs. a multi crew landing???

Nothing alike.

Police may prosecute 'singing' pilot

06:01 AEST Tue Oct 23 2007344 days 15 hours 12 minutes agoAAPVIEWS:

Indonesian police may prosecute the pilots of the Garuda airliner that crashed and killed 21 people in Yogyakarta last March, despite a lack of cooperation from government investigators.


It has also emerged that the pilot of the ill-fated Garuda flight, was singing as he began his descent.

The National Transportation Safety Committee (NTSC) made a series of recommendations following its investigation but, despite finding flaws with the pilot's actions — including that he ignored 15 "very loud" alarms to continue with his unstabilised landing approach at excessively high speed and steep descent — it did not recommend any criminal action.

But the chairman of the NTSC said evidence from the black box flight recorders would "not be given to police or any institution", Fairfax reports.

He also said his staff would refuse any police summonses.

Chairman Tatang Kurniadi's announcement came despite emotional pleas from a bereaved relative for Indonesian authorities to take action against the pilots.

Caroline Mellish, whose brother Morgan was one of five Australians who died in the plane crash, challenged Mr Kurniadi during a press conference.

"If you won't take responsibility for a pilot who effectively killed 21 people, what exactly is your government doing in order to ensure anything like this never happens again?" she said.

"What is happening to the pilots? Twenty-one deaths on his conscience, is that all he has? Is there any legal action from your government or external source?"

The chief detective overseeing the investigation, Aridono Sukman, said information from the Boeing 737's black box recordings was key to the police case.

The plane overran the runway in Yogyakarta, central Java, crossed a road, and hit an embankment before exploding into flames in a rice paddy field, 252m from the runway.

The report revealed details of the final minutes of the flight, obtained through analysis of the plane's black boxes.

It found the pilot was "singing" during the approach, below 10,000 feet and prior to reaching 4,000 feet, which was "not in accordance with the Garuda Basic Operations Manual policy for a sterile cockpit below 10,000 feet".

"The pilot was probably emotionally aroused because his conscious awareness moved from the relaxed mode "singing" to the heightened stressfulness of the desire to reach the runway by making an excessively steep and fast, unstabilised approach," the report said.

It found the pilot, who was uninjured, later "fixated" on landing the aircraft, ignoring the 15 loud alarms in the cockpit and two calls from his copilot to abort the landing.

However, there were clues that he realised things were amiss prior to the crash, commenting "Oh, there is something not right", the report said.

"The pilot in command's intention to continue to land the aircraft, from an excessively high and fast approach, was a sign that his attention was channelised during a stressful time," the report said.

The report found the copilot also failed to follow company procedures that required him to take control of the aircraft when he saw the pilot repeatedly ignore the warnings.

Gaurda records showed no evidence that the company provided simulator training for flight crews covering required responses to the warning sirens.

It found the Directorate General of Civil Aviation's surveillance of Garuda had failed to identify safety deficiencies and that authorities had only checked the plane's safety and airworthiness twice in almost a decade.

The airport did not meet international runway standards, and its rescue and firefighting vehicles were ill-equipped and unable to reach the crash site, which may have "significantly reduced survivability".

More than 100 others survived but many suffered horrific burns, including Sydney Morning Herald journalist Cynthia Banham, who has since had one leg amputated and the other partially amputated.

The fire was extinguished more than two hours after the crash.

NTSB: Engineer texted just before deadly wreck

Wednesday, October 01, 2008 | 3:39 PM LOS ANGELES, CA -- A Metrolink engineer sent a cell phone text message 22 seconds before his commuter train crashed head-on into a freight train last month, killing 25 people, federal investigators said Wednesday.

Cell phone records of engineer Robert Sanchez, who was among the dead, show he sent a message after receiving one about a minute and 20 seconds before the crash, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a press release.

Investigators are looking into why Sanchez ran through a red signal and collided with a Union Pacific train Sept. 12 in Los Angeles' San Fernando Valley. It was the nation's deadliest rail crash since 1993.
Sanchez sent his last text message at 4:22:01 p.m. According to the freight train's onboard recorder, the accident occurred at 4:22:23 p.m.

Records obtained from Sanchez's cell phone provider also showed that he sent 24 text messages and received 21 messages over a two-hour period during his morning shift. During his afternoon shift, he received seven and sent five messages.

NTSB investigators were continuing to correlate times from Sanchez's cell phone, the train recorders and data from the railroad signal system.

"I am pleased with the progress of this major investigation to date," acting NTSB Chairman Mark V. Rosenker said in a statement. "We are continuing to pursue many avenues of inquiry to find what caused this accident and what can be done to prevent such a tragedy in the future."

NTSB spokesman Terry Williams declined to release information about who was exchanging text messages with Sanchez.

In the days after the crash, several teenage train enthusiasts told a reporter Sanchez sent them a text message just before the collision. Federal investigators spurred by the media reports interviewed two 14-year-old boys, who they said cooperated in the investigation and provided their cell phone data.

The collision, which also injured more than 130 people, occurred on a horseshoe-shaped section of track in the community of Chatsworth. Investigators say the two trains were in sight of each other only for a few seconds before the crash. The freight engineer was able to apply brakes but brakes were never applied on the Metrolink train.

Dude, don't have a coronary. I'm not defending a rapist or murderer, not even what these idiots did, I will defend their right to fair punishment. The A.F. found out 5 months later and then did engine inspections...5 MONTHS think about it. What the heck are you doing engine inspections for after that time lapse? The decision to perform those inspections was useless, don't you as a CC do a tube crawl and exhaust inspection every flight? DID YOU FIND ANY FROG ENTRAILS? Now do not compare these idiots to a rapist or murderer or car-jacker...I'm sure they aren't that smart. By the way where are you located, no I'm not going to stalk and kill you..I'm at **** with the depot in Flt Test. we get the jets ready for delivery to the owning units. We work from 15's - 52's. I've been at this a long time, from **** til now. Seen alot of things but never an idiot throwing frogs into a tube. Heck I was in **** doing a trim on a blk 10, we threw the frogs into the afterburner exhaust, fried frog legs. Later Dude

Feel free to email me your credentials.

Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;

Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;

Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;

Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;

Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;

Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;

Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.