On Sat, Jul 24, 1999 at 06:04:57PM +1200, Russell McMahon wrote:
> Almost certainly you are right - I wasn't aware that anyone had died.
> A great shame but I guess better a few at an early stage to help them
> get things right than many at a later stage.

There's nothing technically to get right that can be learned
from that particular crash - it was human error plain and simple.

The aircraft was too low and too slow, and a low altitude flypast
should never have been planned with 136 passengers on board in the
first place. The Airbus fly-by-wire system probably saved the aircraft
from a low-altitude stall which would have killed all on board.

Similarly, JFK jnr's crash was the result of bad decision making - there
was still enough technology on board to save the situation if it had
been used properly.

The big aviation killers year after year are all fundamentally bad
decisions - #1 is VFR flight into IMC, then you get things like
running out of fuel, low flying etc. Mechanical or technological failures
are way down the list. The worst air disaster of all time, the Canary
Islands collision between two Jumbos was a communication breakdown - human
communication, not equipment failure.

--
Clyde Smith-Stubbs               |            HI-TECH Software
Email: clyde@htsoft.com          |          Phone            Fax
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