I've never been a fan of military aviation, but today I want to express all my sympathy and compassion to the family, friends, and colleagues of French Pilot, Commander Caroline Aigle, who died on Tuesday, the 21st of August 2007, from a rapidly evolving form of cancer, at age 32.
Commander Caroline Aigle was one of the people who helped modern aviation to progress, as she was the first female fighter pilot in the French Air Force. She got her chase pilot license in 1999.
One of the reasons for which I admire them is that she also combined her very demanding military career with being mother of two children. This certainly deserves high respect from all of us.
Today, a Boein 737 from China Airlines caught fire on japanese airport in Okinawa, after landing. All passengers were able to leave the plane, only three of them have been lightly hurt. The following YouTube video shows some images from this fire
As always, the media said it was a miracle that no one have been killed... What they forgot to mention is that the certification standards include evacuation rules. The rule says that the plane must be evacuated by a full load of passengers using only half of the exits within 90 seconds.
This has to be demonstrated by the manufacturers. Obviously the demonstration takes place with calm people, but it's in the dark, with their seat belts fastened at the beginning. The following video has been taken during the official demonstration for the Airbus 380. They evacuated through 8 of the 16 emergeny slides.
You also might object that there are no obese people amongst the "passengers" this day...
Nevertheless, this requirement demonstrated its usefuleness with this chinese Boeing, and it is not the first time... In 2003, an Airbus 340 with 309 passengers did crash-land in Toronto. All of the passengers have been evacuated within 90 seconds, and beleive me they were all but trained ! On top of that, the aircraft was also under fire, so half of the exits were useable, exactly as by the rule !
So, friends journalits, it is certainly a good thing that all those people could evacuate the plane safely, but this is because of WORK, not because of a miracle !
As hurricane Dean is starting the season, let's talk a bit about hurricanes, their impact on traffic, and planes flying through them. Yes, you read correctly, some planes do fly through hurricanes. In fact, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organisation (NOAA) has planes flying through each of them !
To remain simple, a hurricane is a zone of very low pressure, arround which strong winds are setting up. Wind speeds can be far above the maximum values admitted by airlines for their operations. However, the wind is not a big problem compared to the windhsears, or changes of wind, which cause severe turbulence. Shortly said, commercial traffic does not fly through them, nor close to them.
So who does, and why ? There are two reasons for flying through a hurricane: research, and forecasting. In fact, getting data from the site directly helps forecasters to do a much better job than with sattelite observation only, and for this purpose, crews are flying through each and every hurricane, as I mentionned before.
I've never been a fan of military aviation, but today I want to express all my sympathy and compassion to the family, friends, and colleagues of French Pilot, Commander Caroline Aigle, who died on Tuesday, the 21st of August 2007, from a rapidly evolving form of cancer, at age 32.
