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Old 1st Jul 2009, 07:01
  #2598 (permalink)  
PJ2
 
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: BC
Age: 76
Posts: 2,484
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The call for grounding is no surprise, nor is it a surprise to learn who seems to be leading the call.

Though we know differently, the grounding of an aircraft is a flight safety matter, not a legal, economic or political matter.

Such a serious undertaking is for those who do this work including flight safety specialists and those who certify airliners, not "specialists" in the prosecution of aviation accidents whose goal is winning large quantities of money for clients not the enhanced safety of passengers, and who use as their primary weapon the media in which whipped emotion, not knowledge, advances their goal.

We have seen here and elsewhere, claims that "vertical stabilizers come off Airbus airplanes too easily".....-sweeping generalizations that pitot systems are unreliable and that one "solution" is to mount pitot heads nearer the middle of the fuselage away from where the ice hits first or to mount them behind protective covers. Such lack of understanding and knowledge is precisely what such lawyers value most - it is most easily manipulated.

The goal of this meeting should be to enlighten and to state what new information has been found, if any. The pressure to state preliminary causes may be the 30-day requirement but that should not provide a platform for such calls turning what is a serious responsibility into a media circus.

Whether the case for grounding will be proven cannot be presently determined. Any decision would have to be substantiated by a very high standard of evidence. That is the point that should be made in response to any call to ground the aircraft.
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