Community Chat

[straykatz]

Seems we always hear of the planes that go down with all lives lost...but rarely does a hard landing with everyone safe make the major headlines. Over the weekend a plane went down in Halifax, NS and thankfully no one was killed. 133 passengers were on board.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/29/americas/air-canada-halifax-incident/

[straykatz]

not even thank goodness or a wow or how lucky for these people?

[CANDLEQUEEN]

Thank goodness! You are right-we never hear much about those close calls!!!!!Thanks for posting!

[Disneylandfan]

Wow! Can you imagine getting out of the plane and seeing what it looked like? That's amazing all walked away.

[BellaPaprika]

Happy that people were only injured and not killed but the cause is to be investigated. Very concerning.The aircraft, an Airbus A320, touched down about 1,100 feet short of the runway, said Mike Cunningham, a regional manager of air investigations at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. From there, it hit an antenna array that's part of the airport's landing system and severed a power line.

1100 feet short of the runway? Where was the pilot? I heard the other day, when they were talking about the plane in the Alps, that it's quite common for jet liners to land robotically with the pilot doing nothing. So was this computer error and why didn't the pilot override the system when he saw they were landing short - or was he off having coffee? Seems as if the entire industry needs to take a good look at their pilots and their qualifications. Many of the airlines outside the U.S. do not require pilots and co-pilots to have as many flying hours as the U.S. does.

And, yes, this was all over the news the night after it happened. Obviously a story where there is loss of life will get more press.

[Cakers1]

straykatz: I didn't hear about this and just signed on a few minutes ago. Thanks for posting this - it's nice to see a happy ending to what could have been another terrible tragedy.

[Lucky Charm]

Landings are the worse. Even good landings freak me out. I'm so glad this one turned out to be okay.

[Lilysmom]

Starykatz, thanks for posting. I live in Halifax. There was a very bad snow storm the night this happened. The plane circled the runway for an hour before attempting to land. The choice is the pilot's to make about landing. The pilot before him diverted to another airport, in fact two airports,, before he landed safely.

Officials are calling this a 'hard landing' as opposed to a crash which is media speak in an effort to downplay the event. These passengers were indeed very fortunate. There was almost no fuel on the plane as it circled so long. I believe all but one passenger was released within 24 hours.

. LM

[LucyGoose]

..... This was a very, very fortunate situation.

[Canada61]

On 3/30/2015 BlueCollarBabe said:

Happy that people were only injured and not killed but the cause is to be investigated. Very concerning.The aircraft, an Airbus A320, touched down about 1,100 feet short of the runway, said Mike Cunningham, a regional manager of air investigations at the Transportation Safety Board of Canada. From there, it hit an antenna array that's part of the airport's landing system and severed a power line.

1100 feet short of the runway? Where was the pilot? I heard the other day, when they were talking about the plane in the Alps, that it's quite common for jet liners to land robotically with the pilot doing nothing. So was this computer error and why didn't the pilot override the system when he saw they were landing short - or was he off having coffee? Seems as if the entire industry needs to take a good look at their pilots and their qualifications. Many of the airlines outside the U.S. do not require pilots and co-pilots to have as many flying hours as the U.S. does.

And, yes, this was all over the news the night after it happened. Obviously a story where there is loss of life will get more press.

I did some checking on Air Canada's safety record. It is considered one of the safest airlines in the world. They have not had a fatal crash in over 20 years. Of the 4.75 million flights since its inception it has had 3 fatal accidents. Rated 7 stars out of 7 by airlineratings.com which looks at many factors.