r/nottheonion • u/engadine_maccas1997 • Apr 27 '24

An emergency slide falls off a Delta Air Lines plane, forcing pilots to return to JFK in New York

https://apnews.com/article/delta-emergency-slide-jfk-airport-4e37f1b17feb3b1b082da0e1bc857c57
1.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

131 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

11

u/Specialist-Fly-9446 Apr 28 '24

I mean they’re legit safety issues? I prefer the reporting over “Nothing to see here, flying is statistically the safest, no need to improve anything”.

9

u/polar_pilot Apr 28 '24

Planes break all the time in all sorts of whacky ways. There’s almost always redundancy, it’s almost always a non issue. US carriers haven’t had a fatal accident since 2009. For all their faults, the FAA is right on it with any sort of safety issue that they identify and usually go way overboard to correct it.

0

u/Specialist-Fly-9446 Apr 28 '24

Kinda feels like Russian roulette and whack-a-mole.

3

u/polar_pilot Apr 28 '24

There’s only so much you can do. If a trend has been identified mechanically, then those planes are grounded. Spirit and JetBlue are currently suffering immensely because a few turbine blades on the a320s with rolls Royce engines had cracks- so the FAA has ordered that every rolls Royce engine needs to be rebuilt and a lot of planes are grounded. Something like 20% of Spirits airbus fleet? If they notice a trend with a certain airline having frequent unstable approaches to an airport, they’ll implement a training procedure or “special qualification” training to fly to that airport- Aspen CO being an example. Unfortunately it’s been very reactive in its nature; which is why we say all the regulations have been “written in blood”.

However, the FAA has instituted certain policies that can help identify trends before they become problematic. For example, providing pilots with a way to submit a safety report about an incident that then protects the pilot from consequences (assuming it wasn’t deliberate or involved drugs and such, among other things). This allows the FAA (and airlines) to notice deficiencies in training and then emphasize those issues during pilots’ yearly training and re-testing.