Risky Business

It always amuses my students when I tell them I was scared of heights. Why is it when you’re standing on the edge of a tall building or a bridge you feel weak-kneed and woozy with fear - but not when you’re streaking along at 83 percent of the speed of sound at 41000 feet?

The Gospel According To Airbus

(by the Rt Reverend Friar Walter Waldeck. New convert and Training Captain A340
SAA.)
Converting to your spouse's religion when getting married is a bit like converting
from Boeing to Airbus. You don't really want to, but to keep the peace you'll do just
about anything! And man, what a crazy religion this is!
How could they all trace their beginnings back to Kittyhawk, just like the Jews and
Muslims to Abraham, and then trudge down such radically different design paths?

Saa Hyjack

Picture the situation. You’re the captain on a SAA Boeing 737-800. You’re airborne
out of Capetown en-route for Johannesburg. It’s a lovely winter’s morning and
you’ve just leveled off at 37000 feet. The sky is indigo blue with a patchwork of
stratus resting serenely in the valleys far below. Your thoughts are momentarily lost
in the majesty of the stratosphere. You’ve seen this sight countless times yet it
never ceases to enrapture you.
A coded buzzer pulls you back to reality. The cabin attendant requires entry onto the
flight deck. She brings in the breakfast trays and takes a seat behind you, closing
the door as she does so.
Seconds later you hear screaming and loud thumping. It’s coming from the other
side of the cockpit door behind you.

Mission Impossible

EVERY ONCE IN AWHILE something goes so badly wrong in an aircraft that not even
the designers or manufacturers considered it plausible.
When it happens in a jet fighter you cut your losses, curse your luck and escape on
the ejection seat. In an airliner, you stay in the game, play your best cards - and
stretch your wits to the limit!
Here's the scenario - you're the captain on a long haul flight over the ocean in a
modern twin-jet airliner. You notice a fuel imbalance developing between the fuel
tanks. You read the checklists and take the appropriate action, but what you fail to
recognize is that the imbalance is caused by a fuel leak on an engine pylon! In due
course both engines flame-out from fuel starvation, and you're now the commander
of the world's biggest glider.

I'am God (institute For Aviation Medicine.)

(IAM – Institute for Aviation Medicine.)
Every now and then a subject comes up that, if discussed candidly in the aviation
domain, is bound to disturb the bureaucratic karma. I was reminded of one recently
that although contentious, is long overdue for a serious debate.