Up up and away?
Okay, I’m a little bit confused on an issue here: Why the hell are planes failing at such a massive rate? In sunny South Africa we’ve had so many incidents its a daunting proposition to fly. On Tuesday an SA express airplane veered off a runway in George leaving many stranded. I’m not quite sure how you veer off a runway… Surely it’s a fairly common process to take off? I mean we’re not talking about landing a plane with no engines or anything unusual. Taking off is a pretty common situation.
The situation brings an important question to light: do we blame the pilot for negligence or is there a problem with the airplane? Previous incidents such as an engine falling off a Nationwide plane are pretty obviously the maintenance crews fault. The same can probably be said for the Kulula plane that had to turn back after an engine failed. I’m on the pilots side, they’ve only been super professional in these past examples.
On the bright side, it’s not only in South Africa that engines are falling out of the sky. According to this story, a Canadair plane in Munich burst two tyres at 120Km/H. Incredibly the pilots managed to stop the plane in time although the apparently caused over 3 million euros damage to the plane and the runway. This is clearly a maintenance issue and negligence on the airlines part. Another story of airline doom occurred last month in America. A SouthWestern airliner’s engine just exploded mid-air shattering debris and the engine blades were sent flying. The details can be found here.
I find all this very worrying. Nationwide has been totally grounded which makes me even more worried. Are the low cost airlines (as well as our national carrier SAA) cutting costs at the expense of safety? Mango, 1Time and Kulula all operate on tight margins, there is a huge amount of competition between the three due to lack of differentiation in their product and you have to wonder: are they lowering maintenance schedules to save a few bucks?
Considering the common occurrences with air travel issues in South Africa at the moment, I think it’s safer to drive even considering the danger on the roads during that time. I really hope someone sorts something out soon, it’s potentially only a matter of time until a plane looses two engines and something really bad happens.
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