I'm sure you will have something to add to this and I appreciate your point of view so don't go off on me with stuff that you might not have as much knowledge about as I do.
I can see that you probably have a lot more knowledge than me on most subjects.
After the summer of 1987 at Delta they pulled their heads out of their arses and started doing things by the book and slowly but surely they got their act together, before Pan Am arrived on the scene.
I was joking about the 783 Pan Am pilots raising standards
but the feds were indeed all over Delta after a slew of screw-ups in 1987:
Delta Probe to Focus on Four Suspected Human Errors
July 16, 1987|ERIC MALNIC | Times Staff Writer
A federal investigation of Delta Airlines initially will focus on four safety-related incidents that apparently involved human error, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Frank Leyden said Wednesday.
The FAA is conducting a systemwide investigation of the carrier after at least a dozen mishaps in recent weeks involving Delta jetliners.
The latest incidents occurred Wednesday, when a Delta flight bound for Salt Lake City returned to Los Angeles International Airport shortly after takeoff because a galley door was improperly closed and another bound for Mexico returned to LAX after it experienced a control panel malfunction, the FAA said. No injuries were reported.
Dick Jones, a spokesman for Delta in Atlanta, said that the airline will cooperate in every way it can with the investigation.
"We are every bit as concerned about safety factors as the people at the FAA," Jones said. "We will enthusiastically participate in their review of Delta's procedures."
Leyden said investigators will examine Delta's long-range navigation procedures and training, crew training for routine and abnormal procedures, and pilot training.
The first four incidents targeted for scrutiny include the sudden plunge of a Delta Boeing 767 to within 600 feet of the ocean off Los Angeles when the pilot accidentally cut off fuel to both engines on June 30; the landing of a Delta Boeing 737 at the wrong airport in Kentucky on July 6; a narrow miss and a close pass of a Delta Lockheed L-1011 with other jetliners off Newfoundland on July 8; and another Delta 767 landing on the wrong runway in Boston last Sunday.
"The data collection phase has already begun and is expected to take three to six weeks," Leyden said. "Preliminary results should be available within 90 days. . . . The FAA will initiate immediate action to correct any deficiencies found."
Delta Probe to Focus on Four Suspected Human Errors - latimes
As far as I could tell Pan Am and Delta used pretty much identical procedures.
Pertinent to this long range navigation thread, Delta was forced to adopt Pan Am overwater procedures after the infamous 1987 L-1011 gross navigation error and coverup attempt. You'll remember that the Lockheed almost hit the Continental B-747. You might also remember that the L-1011 then followed the contrail of Clipper Skipper Skip Coolidge in his A310 to radio nav and landfall:
Disturbed by new evidence that bad piloting nearly caused a collision of two jumbo jet airliners over the Atlantic in July, the United States and Canada yesterday announced urgent recommendations for upgrading intercontinental navigation procedures.
The National Transportation Safety Board said the Delta Air Lines crew members whose 60-mile error led to the incident ''did not plot their present or predicted positions'' on a special chart when crossing checkpoints. The Delta plane did not carry such charts, which are recommended but not required by Government rules. Nor did the crew members otherwise verify that they were following the assigned track, the board said.
The board said the two American planes, both westbound from England to the United States and carrying a total of almost 600 people, had flown within about 30 feet of each other. Previous estimates of the distance between the planes was ''100 feet or less.'' The Canadian Aviation Safety Board said only that the distance was somewhere from 30 to 100 feet.
In the July 8 incident, which occurred around midday in clear weather about halfway across the ocean, the three-engine Delta L-1011 and a four-engine Continental Airlines Boeing 747 were assigned to parallel east-to-west tracks 60 miles apart at the same altitude, 31,000 feet. Near Collision Over Atlantic
But the Delta plane gradually strayed south toward the Continental plane's track and, at a slight angle, passed just beneath the 747 to the horror of people on board who, at the last moment, saw what happened.
The consensus among safety experts is that the crew of the Delta plane inserted incorrect data into the inertial navigation system, which automatically guides a plane from waypoint to waypoint, and neglected to check the plane's position.
One way to check would have been to draw the projected flight path on a special navigation chart and, as each waypoint was reached, make sure that the position shown in the computerized navigation system coincided with the position prescribed on the chart.
But the Delta plane lacked the special chart, and checking it is only one of several typical checking procedures that can be used on such flights. Another involves referring to a written flight plan made out before the flight, which is a listing of geographical latitude and longitude coordinates for each successive waypoint on the trip.
Talk of Keeping Incident Quiet
After the near miss, in a radio conversation involving the crews of the two planes and of two other airliners in the area, repeated suggestions were made that the incident not be reported to the authorities. But the Continental pilot firmly refused to go along. The gist of what he said at one point, according to an industry source, was, ''I have passengers pounding on the door, and crying, and they saw the whole thing out the windows.''
Ultimately the three other craft helped guide the Delta jumbo back to its proper track. But the dominant view of Government and industry specialists is that the deviation from course should have been reported immediately to traffic controllers.
The United States safety board addressed this issue in yesterday's action, saying that ''because the incident was not reported in a timely manner, the responsible air traffic control facility was unaware of the gross navigation error'' and therefore could not guide the Delta plane ''to a safe position on a track free of conflicting traffic.''
When the Delta jet returned to its track, the board said, ''it was unaware of the location of other aircraft on the track, and, as a result, it could have created an additional hazard to other aircraft.''
Sharp Criticism of Delta
The sharp criticism of Delta by both the American and Canadian agencies further damaged the image of an airline that, despite an exemplary reputation over the years, has been reeling from the effects of at least four recent dangerous incidents caused by crew mistakes.
In addition to the near miss over the ocean, they included an inadvertent shutdown of both engines that brought a Boeing 767 to just 600 feet over the Pacific, a landing at the wrong airport and another landing on the wrong runway.
The F.A.A. then began a special investigation of Delta, with initial emphasis on pilot training and procedures. Agency officials said yesterday that the inquiry was near completion.
The Delta pilots involved in the near miss have been suspended from flying, a spokesman for the carrier, Bill Berry, said yesterday. But the company declined to say how long the suspension was to last.
STIFF RULES ASKED IN THE NAVIGATING OF OCEAN FLIGHTS - NYTimes.com