Originally Posted By: DeepFriar
An Air India flight was diverted last week because the crew didn’t raise the landing gear. There were apparently lots of clues that something was terribly wrong but the A320 crew pressed on, climbing to 24,000 feet instead of the normal 35,000 to 37,000 feet and reaching only 230 knots as the plane gobbled huge amounts of fuel to beat the drag of the wheels. About 90 minutes into the flight from Kolkata to Mumbai, the fuel state demanded a diversion to Nagpur. They reportedly didn’t realize their error until they went to drop the gear for landing.
The pilots have been suspended pending an investigation by the airline. The aircraft was carrying 99 passengers who got to their destination after refueling in Nagpur.
I'm not a pilot. So perhaps Astro, or others who are, can help me in understanding how things like this can possibly happen? I can understand making mistakes because I've made them. I can understand moderate carelessness because at times I've been so. But how can certified pilots do such things?? Then there was Air France 447 that crashed because the pilot induced a stall for over 4 minutes! All he had to do was nose it over and he would have easily recovered. But instead he pancaked the aircraft with the yoke in his lap, all the way down from over 30,000 ft. to impact with the water. Yeah, his pitot tubes froze up. But don't these guys have even some stick and rudder skills that would allow them to feel the airplane, along with how it is acting? It just doesn't make sense how stuff like this can happen.
Then there was the Asiana Air 214 crash in San Francisco that landed short. There was nothing wrong with the airplane. The guy flat out didn't know how to land it. He stalled out and landed short. How did he ever get certified in that airplane? And while we're at it why didn't JFK Jr. look at his artificial horizon? It stares you right in the face on the instrument cluster on most every plane made. In all that instruction is it even possible someone never pointed it out to him? Or what it is for? Hard to believe he never even said, "What does this thing do?"
And then you have the other extreme. What I like to call the "Miracle Men". Guys like Sully, Al Haynes and Denny Finch, (United Sioux City crash, landing with zero hydraulics). I can't understand how there can be such a difference in talent in the left seat of these aircraft, that range from superstars, to idiots. We are all human. And we all make mistakes. But there are mistakes.... and then there are MISTAKES. And with so much at stake you wonder how such things can happen with supposedly skilled people who are in charge of hundreds of millions of dollars of airplane, and hundreds of peoples lives. (With the exception of Kennedy who snuffed 3 including his own). It's hard to make sense of it.
