Atlas Air 767 down/Texas
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all gone silent....
Longtimelurker
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There is an interim or preliminary report on the NTSB website but it doesn’t say anything really.
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Amazon's 1-Day Shipping Has an Alarming Downside That No One Is Talking About (Including Jeff Bezos)
Jeff Bezos made a surprise appearance this week at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport to break ground on a new Amazon Air hub, a three million-square-foot facility that will help the company make good on its recent promise of free one-day package delivery for its Prime members.
The Amazon chief showed a video of what the facility will look like, ceremoniously moved dirt himself (displaying skills as a heavy equipment operator), and proudly chirped that the Hub would soon be populated with "Prime Air" emblazoned airplanes.
What's not to like? More jobs, faster package delivery, advancement, and growth.
But there's another side to the coin, hinted at by the fact that the pomp and circumstance took place in a closed ceremony with carefully controlled messaging, blocking out representation of one important group in particular and one particularly important issue: pilot safety.
Pilots were not a part of the fanfare, and were literally being interviewed off to the side of the sideshow. Robert Kirchner, a 42-year pilot and chair of the executive council of Atlas Air (a cargo-shipping airline), pointed out in an onsite interview that the fact that the ceremony is a closed one is telling.
His fear is that safety is being compromised as exhausted pilots ferry an increasing amount of packages increasingly fast, while attrition of burned-out pilots is thinning the ranks of people qualified to fly the planes that enable one-day shipping in the first place.
"There's a large uptick in fatigue calls, sick calls. Pilots are just being worn out," noted Kirchner in an interview with local Cincinnati TV station WLWT. "There are a lot of canceled flights, a lot of delayed flights, due to the pilot shortage and the staffing stressed operation, and that doesn't bode well for the future of this enterprise that Amazon is breaking ground on today."
Also this week, Amazon addressed head-on how to find people to drive vehicles to deliver more packages, faster. The company offered current employees three-months' salary and $10,000 in startup funding to quit their current Amazon post and start a ground delivery business. Obviously, they can't offer the same program for employees to quit and fly cargo planes.
So how will they address the needs of getting enough pilots and giving the current cargo flight operators a reasonable schedule that won't compromise their health and safety?
The increased workload generated by shuttling packages around one day after being ordered adds on to the issue of an already well-documented pilot shortage (not to mention the intense trucking shortage). And it adds to the mounting problem of industrywide pilot fatigue.
It's the dark downside of the home shopping boom. Ever more packages delivered ever faster to our homes means more ground and air congestion, and more opportunities for safety disasters if not carefully thought through and planned for. I like getting my loofahs the next day as much as the next person, but at what cost?
I'm not saying one-day shipping can't be a boon for everyone, and I certainly hope it is. But let's have open conversations and open planning to safely enable it, not hide the warts under the shadowed tents of shiny, closed ceremonies.
PUBLISHED ON: MAY 16, 2019
Jeff Bezos made a surprise appearance this week at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky airport to break ground on a new Amazon Air hub, a three million-square-foot facility that will help the company make good on its recent promise of free one-day package delivery for its Prime members.
The Amazon chief showed a video of what the facility will look like, ceremoniously moved dirt himself (displaying skills as a heavy equipment operator), and proudly chirped that the Hub would soon be populated with "Prime Air" emblazoned airplanes.
What's not to like? More jobs, faster package delivery, advancement, and growth.
But there's another side to the coin, hinted at by the fact that the pomp and circumstance took place in a closed ceremony with carefully controlled messaging, blocking out representation of one important group in particular and one particularly important issue: pilot safety.
Pilots were not a part of the fanfare, and were literally being interviewed off to the side of the sideshow. Robert Kirchner, a 42-year pilot and chair of the executive council of Atlas Air (a cargo-shipping airline), pointed out in an onsite interview that the fact that the ceremony is a closed one is telling.
His fear is that safety is being compromised as exhausted pilots ferry an increasing amount of packages increasingly fast, while attrition of burned-out pilots is thinning the ranks of people qualified to fly the planes that enable one-day shipping in the first place.
"There's a large uptick in fatigue calls, sick calls. Pilots are just being worn out," noted Kirchner in an interview with local Cincinnati TV station WLWT. "There are a lot of canceled flights, a lot of delayed flights, due to the pilot shortage and the staffing stressed operation, and that doesn't bode well for the future of this enterprise that Amazon is breaking ground on today."
Also this week, Amazon addressed head-on how to find people to drive vehicles to deliver more packages, faster. The company offered current employees three-months' salary and $10,000 in startup funding to quit their current Amazon post and start a ground delivery business. Obviously, they can't offer the same program for employees to quit and fly cargo planes.
So how will they address the needs of getting enough pilots and giving the current cargo flight operators a reasonable schedule that won't compromise their health and safety?
The increased workload generated by shuttling packages around one day after being ordered adds on to the issue of an already well-documented pilot shortage (not to mention the intense trucking shortage). And it adds to the mounting problem of industrywide pilot fatigue.
It's the dark downside of the home shopping boom. Ever more packages delivered ever faster to our homes means more ground and air congestion, and more opportunities for safety disasters if not carefully thought through and planned for. I like getting my loofahs the next day as much as the next person, but at what cost?
I'm not saying one-day shipping can't be a boon for everyone, and I certainly hope it is. But let's have open conversations and open planning to safely enable it, not hide the warts under the shadowed tents of shiny, closed ceremonies.
PUBLISHED ON: MAY 16, 2019
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Sadly, this is America now. As long as Wall Street is happy with the stock performance, everything else is immaterial.
Planes full of loofahs crashing? Who cares. Earnings dividends are being paid.
Planes full of loofahs crashing? Who cares. Earnings dividends are being paid.
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Robert Kirchner, a 42-year pilot and chair of the executive council of Atlas Air (a cargo-shipping airline), pointed out in an onsite interview that the fact that the ceremony is a closed one is telling.
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Isn't that the big flaw in capitalism? Everything done for the stockholders and owners. Fire people, close plants, cheat salaries of rank and file, skirt safety as long as they can, etc., etc.,
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Isn't that the big flaw in capitalism?
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If UPS6 crashed into the middle of Dubai, instead of into the desert outside the city, there would be no "cargo carveout" on crew rest rules.
does UPS6 have to do with crew rest?
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If anyone is on the "inside", they're definitely not in a position to talk. But let's do a thought experiment here. If, as has been suggested, the PF responded to an inadvertent TOGA paddle press by pushing the nose down as hard as he could and then locking up, what safety bulletins would follow? "Hey, don't freak out and crash the plane"?
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It's bigger than that
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It has to do with the quoted reference I cited:
The tendency is that nobody pays attention to an airplane crash where nobody is hurt except the pilots. Hence, a large segment of the industry is saddled with a lesser level of safety and regulatory scrutiny than the passenger carriers.
Planes full of loofahs crashing? Who cares. Earnings dividends are being paid.
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If you take a 2 -3 million year view on Homo Sapiens from a million years hence, I suspect our super-size brain and highly developed 'id' and 'ego' will be seen as an evolutionary dead-end.
