Never been to Ecuador, but indeed I hear Quito is usually an airport with challenging landing conditions.
Nonetheless, the number of accidents in the airport doesn't seem greater than some others in equal or even "worse conditions" and, behold, Iberia is right there on the recent A340-600 landing accident in Quito, that prompted Ecuador goverment to suspend operations of Iberia (and only Iberia) in that airport for a while, until Iberia could "guarantee" that their operations there wouldn't endanger anyone.
Ecuador's Dirección de Aviación Civil required from Iberia a security plan that included a commitment from the company to guarantee the "professionalism and permanent training of the pilots in that company". All they had to do is watch the (leaked) airport security camera video and figure it out, as it was later confirmed in the preliminary report by the investigators (landed high and fast ... the rest, the landing gear damage, lack of reverser deployment, etc, as contributory factors).
We won't talk about the evacuation fiasco in that case, or the previous blown tires a few months before in August on the same runaway by another Iberia A340.
Easy or hard airport, it wasn't my intention to finger point a particular airline or a particular airport. It was just an example. Many airlines could benefit from less risky pilot's behavior.
And Iberia or Spanair are not exceptions.
I hope the usual disclaimer is not needed on how Iberia/Spanair has many world class pilots and that a few rotten apples exist in any airliner in the world. And that accidents happen to good pilots as well. And that I'm not implying the pilots in the Quito accident didn't do everything they could but it just didn't work well for them. This was Spanair first accident with victims in 20 years and Iberia has moved 500 million passengers in 40 years with only 4 accidents with victims.
Last edited by justme69; 29th Oct 2008 at 03:52.