No. of Recommendations: 3
The recent airplane issues - -- anyone know - -- are they within the statistical norm, or is there someone new going on?Turns out that we're within the statistical norms, despite the flashy headlines:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/business/airplane-c...It feels like there are suddenly way more plane crashes and incidents. Here’s the truthAnd:
Take a look at January’s preliminary data from the National Transportation Safety Board.
It appears that last month there was a record low number of airplane accidents nationwide, when combining private and commercial airline flights. Most of the 62 total airplane accidents were on private flights, and that total number was 18 less than the 80 recorded in January 2024.
In fact, if the preliminary numbers hold, January 2025 will surpass the previous record for the lowest number of total accidents, with eight fewer than the prior record low of 70 from January 2012.Sometimes people just goof up. Take today at Midway in Chicago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6Mp9aUJaTY&ab_cha...In this video (it's only 3 minutes) you can listen to the radio traffic during an incident with another near miss, this time a runway incursion.
The setup:
-When a jet pushes back from the gate and wants to leave, they first talk to the Ground Controller. The Ground Controller owns who drives the plane where. All the runways have alphanumerical names like "Alpha", "Bravo", "Whiskey", etc. Runways are designated by the compass bearing they point towards and start with a number. "31L" would refer to a runway that points to bearing 310 on your compass and the "left" means there's at least 2 of them that point in that direction. You can have "left", "right" or "center".
In this case this private aviation dude (callsign FlexJet560) was told to "hold short" (meaning, stop right in front of) a runway that happened to have a Southwest jet coming in for a landing. What happens in radio calls is that the controller tells the pilot to do something and the pilot is supposed to read the instructions back, so everyone knows everyone is on the same page.
The ground controller told Flexjet 560 to hold short of runway 31C...and Flexjet 560 reads back the instruction. But then the guy just ups and drives across the runway anyway - a CLEAR pilot f-up. The Southwest jet had to do a touch-and-go (meaning, he actually landed but immediately went full throttle and took off again) to avoid plowing into Flexjet 560.
The Southwest jet pilot HAD to have been ex-military due to how calm he was. You can hear him practically yawning as he tells Midway tower he's going around. The tower tells Southwest 2504 to get back up to 3,000 and turn to a certain heading to reassume a position in the landing pattern.
That's where the ground controller starts getting on FlexJet. "Possible pilot deviation" means you messed up and didn't do what the controller told you to do...and when that happens you get the dreaded "Stand by for a phone number" to call the tower directly (where you'll be read the riot act over the phone at length, plus the FAA paperwork train starts up). Southwest airlines will also probably file a complaint with Midway/the FAA on it.
So sometimes people just...mess up. With sites like VAS Aviation these things that normally wouldn't get coverage now do.
