No more feral cats at JFK

by Grant Martin on

Look out, the next security threat at John F Kennedy airport in New York isn’t terrorists, no, its cats. Reuters reports that authorities at JFK have started rounding up the feral cats that have been calling the airport home (seventy of them!). Animal rights activists were naturally up in arms, and have been protesting the Port Authority headquarters.

Seems that the airport workers (and the rats) have been feeding the animals, who have in turn been running around baggage claim and attracting more animals, such as birds. And when you mix birds and flying jets, well, then you have a safety issue.

Don’t believe me? Check out this video on YouTube. Make sure you have the audio on so you can hear the pilot saying “MAYDAY”.

I have an idea. Let’s the put the activists on a flight with a compressor stall we’ll and see how bad they want to keep the kitties afterwards.

Woman tries to open emergency exit — midflight

by Grant Martin on

Ever wonder what happens when you open the exit door while you’re in the air? I know that the thought has crossed my mind once or twice while I was sitting in the exit-row seat.

Well, you can’t. You’ll notice that emergency exit and cabin doors open inward, meaning the air pressure from inside of the plane is going to be pushing hard out on the door at 30,000 feet. Meaning it’s going to be near impossible for you to pull the door open. That and you’re going to make the crew really mad at you.

Apparently, a woman on an American Airlines flight headed for Dallas yesterday didn’t realize this and had to be subdued by the crew until they could divert to Houston. The Age reports that after landing in Houston, six passengers got off (because it was their final destination) and the rest of the plane went on their merry way to Dallas.

It’s nice to know that not any nutjob can open an emergency exit at altitude and suck us all out of the plane, isn’t it?

Airline safety survey kiboshed by NASA

by Grant Martin on

NASA appears to be sandbagging on reporting the results of a survey they conducted a few years back on airline safety. Their data, which is taken from phone interviews across 24,000 pilots, apparently suggest that the number of “incidents” in airline travel are significantly higher than reported by the FAA.

Asked to reveal the data to the AP, NASA politely declined, stating that revealing the findings could damage the public’s confidence in airlines and affect airline profits.

Since when does safety take a back seat to airline profits? Does anyone else see the airline lobby at work here?

I’m well past the conspiracy theory and into the complacent stage in my life where this sort of stuff doesn’t bother me anymore. Perhaps its because I’m still confident in the general safety record of the industry. As the MSNBC article concedes, there is only 1 fatality in about 4.5 million departures. I suppose I can take my chances for now.

Airline Safety Info on the Web

by Iva Skoch on

For those of us venturing outside the warm embrace of the big carriers, the web has a bit of info about individual airline’s safety records.

For example, the FAA has a list of carriers that meet it’s standards here. It lists only those carriers allowed to fly to the U.S.

More comprehensive is the International Air Transport Association’s cite, listing those with a passing grade on their audit of 251 members. You can order the audit results via email.

The E.U. maintains a nice PDF list of airlines banned from European skies here. Interestingly, about half are based in Congo.

For more info, today’s NY Times has an article here which served as the source for these links above.