How do we lose an airplane

[Savannahmann]

165. A charter jet flew off of San Juan once

The plane had been sitting for a couple weeks, and was chartered to support an airline that was overbooked. This jet was flown by two experienced pilots, and everything looked just fine for a nice simple flight. Only unbeknownst to the pilots the Pilot's Pitot tube was blocked. In the air, his air speed readings started coming up, and he thought the problem was fixed. Next, the plane started to warn of over-speed, and the stick shaker kicked in warning of a stall. The pilot ignored the stick shaker, and throttled back to deal with the over-speed. The plane slammed into the ocean belly flopping to it's doom.

The investigators never found the pitot tube, but the believe that a wasp built a nest in the tube, blocking it. When the plane went up, the difference in pressure caused the tube to give false readings on airspeed, causing the over-speed alarm. The stick shaker was the most important warning, the plane was stalling, and the pilot ignored it in favor of the over-speed alarm to the sorrow of so many families.

No mayday call was issued, the pilots were busy trying to get the damned plane to fly right. That they misdiagnosed the problem was the human error element of the crash. A plane load of people died because a wasp built a nest in a pitot tube and the pilot paid attention to the wrong warning and ignored the most important one.

There have been so many air accidents, and so many lessons learned. I was talking to my neighbor, who is a pilot, while I am an interested observer. The rules of flying, of airplane design, of piloting the aircraft are written in blood. We learned what not to do by studying the accidents, and learning from them.

I don't know what brought down the Malaysian airlines flight. I do know it is vital to the safety of every person in the sky that we find out and see what lessons can be learned. If it was terrorism, a possibility, but I won't call it probability just yet, then we need to look at why it happened. Most nations have gone to "biometric" passports, which means that identifying information on the individual is coded into the passport. Apparently, nobody thought that someone would steal a passport, and honestly, I'm not surprised someone did.

Allow me to explain. Normally, the close examination of the passport takes place at the destination, not the origin of your travels. They may ask you if you have it, and they may glance at it to make sure it is not expired, but even our TSA (Totally stupid assholes) and our CBP (Complete Blithering Pecker-heads) don't examine the passports all that closely if you are leaving, unless you're on one of the many watch lists which normally identify everyone but a terrorist.