Two accidents involving commercial aircraft within a month..back to back..one where all 155 aboard were saved by an expert pilot ( Captain Sully) ..dubbed “Miracle on Hudson”.. and the other where all 49 on board and one on ground perished near Buffalo, New York. The two accidents are raising some questions- how safe is really air travel? Here’s a nice informative article from Wall Street journal on the icing related problem with the ill fated Q400 turboprop plane ( made by Canadian Manufacturer Bombardier, third largest commercial plane manufacturer after Boeing and Airbus). The article discusses the dilemma FAA ( Federal Aviation Administration)faces in deciding between automated deicing mechanism on planes (which can cost as much as $500k) versus leaving it just as a safety guidelines for the pilots to follow. Obviously my vote would be to make it mandatory on all the commercial flights, $500k on the lifetime of a plane is no big deal compared to so many lives which get lost in a tragic accident like this.
On one hand we celebrated the safe landing of US Airways flight 1549 on the icy Hudson river and the subsequent excellent work by the rescue crew who were there within minutes of the planes splash landing, on the other hand we feel devastated for the lives which were lost on continental flight 3407.
I am a Mechanical Engineer who has worked in the maintenance industry in the past, I can tell from my own experience how maintenance engineers always struggle between making their equipment 100% safe and the pressure to keep them running with various constraints ( time, money, spares to name a few). There are no easy answers, but the more we can learn from these tragic experiences and make them part of the inbuilt safety mechanism, the better off we are. Last thing we need is a lengthy investigation followed by a dud..couple of advisories from FAA which gets quickly forgotten.
Is there a silver lining in all this..indeed there is…for all the talk of air safety and these two recent accidents, air travel is still one of the safest form of travel. The chances of some one dying in an air crash is approximately 1 in millions, the probability of dying in a road crash are much higher( 1 in 10′s of thousands per this article). Here’s a nice article form CNN covering fear of flying. As far as I am concerned..afraid..nah..not at all..last year I took numerous flights on business as well as on personal trips, this year I am likely to fly even more..that’s life! I can’t let the fear get on my nerves and stop me from doing what I do best, that is Project Management at client sites!!! That means travel, a lot of travel!!

>Two accidents involving commercial aircraft within a month..back to back..one where all 155 aboard were saved by an expert pilot ( Captain Sully) ..dubbed “Miracle on Hudson”.. and the other where all 49 on board and one on ground perished near Buffalo, New York. The two accidents are raising some questions- how safe is really air travel? Here’s a nice informative article from Wall Street journal on the icing related problem with the ill fated Q400 turboprop plane ( made by Canadian Manufacturer Bombardier, third largest commercial plane manufacturer after Boeing and Airbus). The article discusses the dilemma FAA ( Federal Aviation Administration)faces in deciding between automated deicing mechanism on planes (which can cost as much as $500k) versus leaving it just as a safety guidelines for the pilots to follow. Obviously my vote would be to make it mandatory on all the commercial flights, $500k on the lifetime of a plane is no big deal compared to so many lives which get lost in a tragic accident like this.
On one hand we celebrated the safe landing of US Airways flight 1549 on the icy Hudson river and the subsequent excellent work by the rescue crew who were there within minutes of the planes splash landing, on the other hand we feel devastated for the lives which were lost on continental flight 3407.
I am a Mechanical Engineer who has worked in the maintenance industry in the past, I can tell from my own experience how maintenance engineers always struggle between making their equipment 100% safe and the pressure to keep them running with various constraints ( time, money, spares to name a few). There are no easy answers, but the more we can learn from these tragic experiences and make them part of the inbuilt safety mechanism, the better off we are. Last thing we need is a lengthy investigation followed by a dud..couple of advisories from FAA which gets quickly forgotten.
Is there a silver lining in all this..indeed there is…for all the talk of air safety and these two recent accidents, air travel is still one of the safest form of travel. The chances of some one dying in an air crash is approximately 1 in millions, the probability of dying in a road crash are much higher( 1 in 10′s of thousands per this article). Here’s a nice article form CNN covering fear of flying. As far as I am concerned..afraid..nah..not at all..last year I took numerous flights on business as well as on personal trips, this year I am likely to fly even more..that’s life! I can’t let the fear get on my nerves and stop me from doing what I do best, that is Project Management at client sites!!! That means travel, a lot of travel!!