A few years ago I got to see an excellent piece of
theatre called Charlie Victor Romeo, that was made from
dramatisations of cockpit voice recorder conversations. An amazing
bit of theatre, and incredible how it changed the way you thought
about it. There was one that made you hate the pilots, who were
goofing off and harassing the hosties, just before their plane
dropped out of the air -- but the pilots were held blameless, and a
major flaw with the automatic pilot (that should have been squealing
loudly long before) was the cause. Another one was agonising, with
the pilots desperately trying to get information from the ground to
counteract their own crazy instrument readings -- unaware that the
ground staff were just relaying bad information from the planes
telemetry, which was nonsense because tape had been left over the
instrument ports after maintenance.
But the most astonishing one was the Soux City disaster
dramatisation that was the climax of the show -- where one of the
engines more or less exploded and all three hydraulic systems failed,
leaving them with only engine throttles on the remaining engines to
steer with. 111 people died, but 185 survived -- that they managed to
actually fly it into an airport at all was just incredible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Victor_Romeo
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
Airline safety is fascinating, so much effort is put in to
make such an intrinsically dangerous activity safe.
Cheers
David
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