A very sad event which will happen again and again IAW the "Tombstone Imperative".
I dream that one day we can pillory and maybe hang the DESIGNERS who drew up the specs for such things as O2 masks and smoke clearance procedures.
After a decade and a half wearing the light blue or "growbag" flying suits in 'Bett Windsor's Flying Club', I was horrified in my first civilian simulator smoke exercise at how awful and well-nigh impossible it was to communicate with both my colleague in the other seat and the "ATC" outside. The accoustic qualities of the "Eros" O2 mask (and others?), as described in this topic by "Sqwak7700", should have resulted in these items NEVER being certified for aviation use-what were the FAA/CAA thinking when they OK'd them?!
The early HS125 had a white "pingpong ball" handle beneath the right hand pilot's seat which was supposedly to be operated for smoke clearance. The RAF Dominie pilots who regularly froze in the -200 series of this great little craft (whilst the trainee navs cooked in the back!) discovered that they could stay warm at the front by partially opening this vent, resulting in the DV at the aircraft rear being nearly closed, but still controlling the cabin alt. The flow of warm air FORWARD to the flight deck was very pleasant, but the smoke clearance emgy checklist still commanded one to operate this lever!!!! C'mon Mr Hawker Siddley, what WERE YOU thinking of?????
Re the issue of approach plates for aircraft on fire diversions, hopefully the relevant "target" airfield ATC can provide, at short notice, the best rwy QDM, freq, safe platform alt and QNH? I don't think the MDA, marker check alt, G/A procedure and all the other gubbins littering todays plates would be high on my priorities list, maybe other contributors would like to add/subtract form these items?
After Valujet and other air disasters, why can't dangerous items like Lithium batteries in bulk be prohibited from air carriage? At least on a bulk sea carrier you can heave the lot overboard on the heads of the pirates???
Sorry, did someone shout "Economics" from the back of the room?!
