Moved from commercial to here : o )

John

I’ve read the discussion on pprune, I was always brought up and taught it is the “cone of confusion”.

Thanks newforest, just googled them. Very interesting, there’s a fair few Q400 operators in Africa now.

I think it’s Togo, Ralf.
Thanks mate, hate doing type ratings, particularly at my age, but it is an amazing machine, system logic is superb, it’s also a lazy pilot’s aeroplane, I’m amazed at what it can do, even compared to the Airbus.
That’ll be good to get that back, what are you looking to teach?

It is remarkable, we have two pilots with us who have prosthetic arms, a captain (this chap) and a first officer. Both of them are excellent and are no less capable or safe than our able bodied personnel.
It is nice to see that flying is not off limits to the disabled. I haven’t taught any physically disabled people but I have taught a few people with mental disabilities. It’s very rewarding.

Tony, don’t forget Lord Lucan as well, he’s on the moon with Elvis 😉

We have no plans to paint an E175 in that livery.

I wonder if Deano would have continued or went around with his craft at such an attitude so late into the landing?

It’s all too easy to crucify the flight crew. Looking at it the only thing he/she did wrong was lower the nose too much because the ars3 of the aeroplane was not sitting down. They were floating. Notice the level attitude followed by a rather large push forwards. The A340 would be eating up alot more runway than my humble Q400 so it’s hard to say whether a baulked landing would have been the better option. Obviously in hindsight it would have been.

Simon – yes engineers can download the G loading data and send it off to Airbus for inspection. I can only speak for my aircraft because I don’t have knowledge of how Airbus do theirs but we have two gradings. If it was 2.0g or over then a grade 1 inspection is required before flight. If it was 2.5g or more then a grade 2 inspection is needed. A grade two requires a complete strip down and takes about 10 days so I am led to believe.

Depressurization is not instantaneous (nobody wants that). Giving time before the descent to the vent system to cope with extracting the air might help in clearing the fumes (pressure differential). Then FL100 for safety.

Initiating the descent before the fumes are fully cleared is how I understand the recommendations on your checklist

If you look at the checklist again for a flight compartment fire and cabin fire, the first one tells you to open the forward outflow valve. Whilst not akin to a rapid decompression it will depressurise the aircraft within 30 seconds. In the second part in the cabin fire checklist, switching the controller to dump will have exactly the same effect.

Initiating the descent is not what the checklist tells you or what it means. However any flight crew worth their salt would have already called a mayday by this point and would be diverting and descending, but it most certainly is not a pre-requisite of the checklist.

Sandy

You’re right. I’m talking about the internal structure of the floor beams, pax cabin and the tail plane. The skin is the aluminum alloy you talk about so I’m led to believe. I think the main structure of the aircraft is composite and this is what gives it it’s strength that you allude to in the said crashes.