Fighting Rudeness With Kindness

There is a lot of attention being paid to the real time retaliation of Elan Gale against a woman who was mad that their flight was delayed. There are now rumors that the woman is dying of cancer and was desperate to spend what she feels is her last Thanksgiving with her family.

I initially read the live tweeting and thought it was somewhat humorous. Then I reached the end. Elan Gale reached a line and then crossed it. Had he left it with the glass of wine and a funny note, that would have been enough. But when the woman responded and he countered, things took a turn. He went from being someone using humor to defuse a situation to someone just making things worse.

The best thing he could have done was just ignore the note from the woman and leave it at that.

Is the Boeing 737 Safe? Or is this Scaremongering?

Is Boeing’s 737 an Airplane Prone to Problems? →

Clive Irving on skin cracking on Boeing 737s:

For decades, Boeing had had that market to itself. Then, in the late 1980s, Airbus introduced a competitor, the A320, loaded with the latest technology; Boeing seriously underestimated the European upstart—until itrealized that it could lose a world market that it had created and monopolized. The result was the NG series, which arrived in 1997 and was a huge improvement on the old Classics. The NG had new wings, engines, and avionics systems to match the Airbus. But, surprisingly, the original fuselage was retained, albeit with some refinements.

It is an interesting posit by Mr. Irving but in the entire article he fails to lay out why the Airbus A320 is supposedly so much safer. While the A320 has not been involved in any decompression incidents it has been involved in around twelve fatal accidents.

The other piece in all of this that does not really fit is Mr. Irving pointing out that hard landings have generated concerns about the bulkheads in the aircraft. Of course it should generate concerns. Any hard landing puts a lot of stress on an aircraft and that’s the reason most airlines put aircraft through extensive inspections after such incidents.

The whole article comes off as scaremongering masquerading as a investigative reporting. I fly Boeing 737s just about every week and I’m not going to change my booking habits to avoid them.

This Week’s Links | May 15, 2009

Not a lot of links this week, but they’re interesting.

  • Captain’s Training Blamed in Crash of Flight 3407 – The pilot had never done any simulation training of the kind of icing he experienced the night of the crash. Worse than that is the fact that Colgan allowed him to fly after failing multiple check-rides.
  • Pelosi: C.I.A. Misled Congress Over Waterboarding – Pelosi strikes me as someone who only her immediate constituents can stand. She cannot get her story straight and when she tries, it sounds worse than the time before. Their plan of making people think that waterboarding is awful and not worth the lives it saved has somewhat failed, so they fall back on this scheme.
  • Maine Bill Targets Parking By RVs at Commercial Lots – Wow, what a surprise, a state government steps in to try and combat a “problem”. If they think that charging RV drivers to park in their state is going to help the economy, they need a basic course in economics. Wal-Mart had no problem with the RVs parking in their lots, but the RV campsites did, they claim they’re struggling, so the state comes to the rescue.

I will be at Wordcamp MidAtlantic in Baltimore this weekend. If you will be there, leave a comment or find me at the conference.