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Old 1st Apr 2010, 22:43
  #78 (permalink)  
eastsidewillie
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: new jersey, usa
Age: 78
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i try to stay silent and learn, but just a few comments.......

this is only my second post on this forum, so bear with me. i just have a few comments after following this thread, listening to the tapes (do people still use tape????), and trying to empathize with the situation from all sides.
1) i'm familiar with busy airspace, having lived in the nyc area all my life, and having run the busiest heliport (at the time) in the u.s. and possibly the world. having flown in that space (controlled and uncontrolled) countless times under just about every condition, i have to ask - why would anyone want to put themself and their pax at risk by going near any busy airport, unless it were for an emergency, or for some absolutely necessary reason such as commercial photograpy, inspection or the like? much better scenery elsewhere to my mind. so i agree with those who feel that general aviation, especially on vfr, should stay away, as far as is practical and practicable, unless you have a really good reason to be there. and back then, there was always an issue with cowboy floatplanes, or seaplanes just doing their thing.

2) i'm certainly not as technically proficient in flying the "big jets" as many of you are, but i can't imagine that having to do a major correction between 1000 and 1500 agl on takeoff would not make my sphincter tighten quite a bit - that's what makes flying so exciting - but again, if it were just me, well, that's my choice; with two or three or more hundred poor souls in the cabin behind me, i think the responsibility level rises. not to fault the ua pilot and especially the first officer, i think the upset is quite understandable, and i think they handled it very professionally - adrenaline makes you go "unplugged" sometimes, as long as you bring it back down, and do what you do.
at the prescribed attitude on their takeoff and climbout i doubt that anyone in that cabin could have seen the other aircraft with any degree of certainty until it was right there in the windscreen, and so it then comes down to the controller and his advisories. i couldn't enumerate the number of times i alerted a pilot to conflicting traffic he hadn't seen (both from a controller standpoint, and from being on an aircraft on a collision course when the pilot was distracted). the controller in this case probably should have added more info (somehow, they don't seem the same out there on the left coast as they do in this area), but he did what he's supposed to do, and rolled with it.....after all, it still comes up to "see and avoid", fortunately, or unfortunately.
just an aside, if you ask me about the buffalo incident a little more than a year ago, if you listen to the tapes, i feel that the controller in that incident was at least 50% responsible in not alerting the pilots to icing conditions at the altitudes they were flying through).

so.....a close call, some hairy seconds, and all is well again....just another incident to learn from. oh, and by the way, screw the media; nothing that i've ever been involved in has been reported truthfully by most of the media - the actual truth only sells papers maybe thirty years down the line, in the midst of the actual event, only bulls@@t rules. now why the f@@k did that get highlighted? what a world.

i wait to be corrected.
thanx
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