Airplane crashes

[siouxbrew]

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So a couple days ago they are returning home and at 24000 feet they suddenly felt this explosive decompression and the cabin filled with smoke and really hot air. No masks dropped down (charters don't have masks(?)) so they had to breathe through their shirts. Meanwhile the pilots make a quick descent to 10,000

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the aircraft has to have oxygen masks if the airplane is going to be higher than 14,000 feet far 91.211 , so i am assuming what they told you was true about the backup system, and the cabin depressurized from around 7-8 thousand feet up to like 12-13 thousand and therefore the masks would not drop.

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Ya, it seems like they should be able to do it by memory. I guess it's a good idea to go through a checklist but it would have me worried if I'm flying out of the amazon on a grass strip with who the hell knows in the cockpit. Wouldn't the thought of this guy not even knowing how to operate an aircraft cross your mind? It's not something we ever see in the U.S so it would have to be a little concerning.

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On big commercial planes there is a copilot who can help to make 100% sure the pilot has done everything right at takeoff. With one pilot it makes perfect sense that he checks the book every single time, just in case.

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there are different types of checklists, a few are do-lists, like engine start where you must go step by step and do it in that order. most are flow patterns that you learn as a pilot and the checklist is then used for redundancy to ensure all things were completed, that pilot could be certified in several types of airplanes and therefore it would be very hard to memorize all the different checklists. So the fact that the checklist is out is very standard and should comfort you more than anything showing he is actually verifying he did everything.

[Bostaevski]

incidentally the COO and pilot of that flight came in today to talk to staff (and apologize I guess). They explained everything and he just forgot to flip the switch that pressurizes the cabin. The plane was at 24,000 feet, meanwhile cabin pressure was steadily dropping. The "effective" altitude or whatever of the pressure inside got to something like 8700 feet when the backup system kicked in. Evidently the pressure then has to go back to being effectively below 7000 feet or so before the backup system will turn off. THe pilots couldn't get it down so they decided to just descend to 10,000 feet and finally the backup system turned off. Nobody was ever in danger other than the 5 guys were absolutely terrified and the pilot kinda "forgot" to tell them everything was ok.

[subandi]

one uncle of a friend of mine was one of 10 passengers surviving the Kenya Airways plane crash january 30th 2000. he not only managed to swim (the plane crashed into the water) back to the land all by himself, he also switched places with a friend he met at the airport, letting him sit business class and sat economy himself. the friend died. true hollywood.
actually I dont know if he really swam all the way or was fished out of the water later... but still a miracle