I'm trying to figure out what works I should use in a Flight Manual Supplement, if I mean "go down from here right now, and don't stop 'till you get there"...
Land immediately — Continued flight may not be possible. Ditching or landing in hazardous terrain is preferable to continuing flight.
Seems pretty clear to me and is more or less the same for all the types I've flown.
Maxwel,
all I can say is that we as pilots DO climb into this aircraft, and fly it several hours per day, and that should be your re-assurance. To put it in context, would you fly in a Boeing 777, after all there are 220 of them in current service with a known engine roll back problem that will take over a year to fix? If you flew in an MD-11 would you ask the pilot to fly not above 20,000 ft, as the Swissair could never have descended to safety from their cruise altitude following their fire? and so the list goes on.
For the sake of clarity/accuracy, there was not a similar incident in Malaysia, only Australia.