What's a pax to do ?
 

re: the current MD-80 thread in which someone was admonished for leaving his seat to report what he thought was a mis-configuration.

It reminded me of the Air Ontario F-28 crash in which one of the survivors (and an FA IIRC) clearly saw the contaminated wing prior to and during t/o, but did nothing because, as he said, he didn't know what he should.

Assuming (big assumption) that a pax is knowledgeable enough to spot something really wrong, what is the right thing to do to get it stopped ?

Other examples which spring to mind are NW MD-80 at Detroit and Cubana 154 at Quito. On the latter, I certainly would have been banging on the cockpit door during the third attempt.

Let me answer your question with a question:

What do you prefer, a)to be admonished, or b)to be dead?

I wish everything was this simple!

Does CRM include the pax? I sure as hell would like to know if something wasn't right. If the cabin crew wouldn't approach me to ask why I was frantically ringing my attention bell, I'd make a trip to the cockpit too.

Kermie :eek:

I was on watch at an airport outside the UK once when all of us in the tower observed a complete wheel come off an airliner whilst it was taxying for take-off. It took a lot of effort to convince the crew to stop, believe me! Later we heard that a pax had seen the wheel rolling out from under the wing, pointed it out to a cabin crew member who said: "don't worry, sir, everything's fine". I still wouldn't fly with that airline, 30+ years later.