@PaxBoy, @172Driver, @GlobalNav, @India 4-2, et al.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts guys (gals?). If I may, I do believe that for a properly qualified and equipped airplane,
some ETOPS time is appropriate. I am not smart enough to know the
magic number, but I suggest that 60 minutes is not enough and that 330 minutes is far too high. Of this I am quite sure: when a high time ETOPS flight converts 450+ living souls into 450+ dead bodies, the ETOPS times are too high and they will come down. IIRC, @India 4-2 is the fellow that posted the great maps; (Thank you!!) I'm going back there for a more detailed look.
As wonderful as today's airplanes truly are, they are not perfect. Once in a while one of them will fall from the sky, not through pilot error - which can also happen, but due to some mechanical fault. If that airplane was sixty minutes closer to the '
nearest suitable runway,' would the crew and SLC survive? I do not know the correct answer. Do you?
The only item
about which I am absolutely certain is that when a Big One falls while under ETOPS conditions, the allowed ETOPS times will come down.
Thanks for reading; more importantly, thank you for thinking!
