Whoa, big hoss.
It is grossly unfair and professionally offensive to criticise either this or any another 'transport' class aircraft, or the operating crews during this passage of play. Even if speculation and 'informed', professional discussion are the meat and potatoes of the Pprune forum.
The ATR series, for those who have not had the pleasure; is a mighty fine aircraft. One which has seen and survived much hard service (and some abuse), in many tough ports, world wide, often providing survivability where little was available, (read the accident reports). It was designed, built and tested by professional engineers who have their names and; in some cases, their signatures on the type certification data sheet. The aircraft has, even after being in some manner 'abused', served faithfully and flawlessly, many times over, often above the call of duty. Same –same the trusty Dash, Saab and Twotter, the peerless Metro, Shorts and Fokker variants. They all fly lots of hours, countless sectors in a wide variety of weather conditions and made many 'safe' landings in some bloody awful conditions. They stand as testament to the visible, viable engineering and pilot skills, hard won over the decades. Cheap shots and bickering; - save them for the kids footy club.
There is no data to support a crew stuff up. I, for one have no doubt that VARA fulfil, at very least, the minimum crew competency requirements and would not allow any pilot to 'captain' an aircraft who was anything else but competent and qualified, same for the FO. I wonder if SLF have any idea of what it actually takes to 'qualify' an operation; such as VARA. Hint, if it were that easy and guaranteed profitable; every one would be doing it. There is little fun in the doing of it and you do need deep pockets to even contemplate such a venture. No one sane is going to bet all that on a 'dodgy' aircraft or a 'suspect' crew. Certainly no one with a business brain; it just don't make sense. QED.
So, must we look deeper? On surface hearsay, somehow and in some way, something got busted, and claims of "Bird strike" just don't (for me at least) seem to cut it. Perhaps that explains the almost indecent haste of the ATSB and the marked lack of a preliminary report.
So, what about it Beaker?, hows about throwing the hungry, unwashed a bone to chew on. Preliminary report 'on time', that sort of stuff. (It's probably there, but the 'new' ATSB site makes things remarkably difficult to find).
Heigh Ho. Back to my knitting.
Last edited by Kharon; 30th Apr 2014 at 08:05.
Reason: Well, it's interesting - ain't it.