Plastic Pilot

This post is inspired by a recent event that lead to temporary closure of Milano Linate, which is Milano second airport, so may be not a major one, but not exactly the municipal airport.

Linate had to be closed, in a planned way, for several hours, for the purpose of chasing hares that were living here. This operation involved many kilometers of nets, and hundred of people to hunt the furry ones. You can find a complete coverage of this event by CBS.

Hare control is really an issue, but most of time the “Faune control units” at the airports deal with birds. The big issue is that large birds can not be easily ingested by engines, and could cause some damages to windshields, wings, and any part of an aircraft.

There is a whole business in chasing birds from airports, with various equipment, including, but not limited to:

-) Remote guns (producing sounds only)
-) Mini fireworks, silent and screaming
-) Loudspeakers prodcasting other birds noises (predator noises)

Part of the problem is also that many airports have open fields where they leave some grass for decoration or ease of maintenance purposes, and this attracts small animals (mice, rats, …), and when the grass gets its periodical cutting, it does in turn attarcts more birds looking for easy food.

I know a place where they recently tried to leave the grass get longer, but then larger animals started to live here… and to eat the lighting system cables !

To fight against these problems all airports have some “Faune control”, patrolling all day long, looking for birds, and trying to chase them.

You all have heard at least one these standard safety briefings. They contain however at least two important points that can save your life once.

The first is about not inflating your life jacket before leaving the aircraft. You probably noticed how bloddy long the boarding can be, so imagine what a de-boarding of scared passengenrs can be. Add to that a thick and impractical inflated jacket, and you understand why. The only possible exception to this rule is when the plane is already filled up with water.

To be certified, any airliner must fulfill an evacuation test, consisting in evacuating the total number of passengers via half of the emergency exits within 90 seconds. Sounds crazy ? Recently, an AirFrance Airbus 340 did crash in Toronto, in a survivable way, but caught fire on one side, so they were exactly in the 50% of exits available. And they made it in time. I was quite surprised, because certification always takes place with trained pseudo-passengers, in a relaxed mood.

The other important point in the safety briefing is to put your own oxygen mask first in case of depressurization. This is really a life saver. In case of sudden depressurization at cruise altitude, your lungs won’t have enough air pressure to continue transferring oxygen in your blood, hence the masks. The issue is that you have approximately 18 seconds before being so dizzy that you become helpless to anybody or yourself.

Given the noise, sudden drop in temperature and potential fog within the cabin, 18 seconds is not so long to find and put your mask in place. You can then help anyone else, but if you start by helping someone, there are strong chances than you will be incapacited before achieving anything.

One more remark, which is really common sense. Keep your seatbelt fastend after landing until the engines are off and the sign is switched off. First, you won’t save any time buckling off early, or may be half a second. But if the pilot has to brake sudenly, you could have a close and unpleasant encounter with the seat in front of you. Beleive me or not, but dozen of people have broken arms, or strong neck injuries yearly because of that… How silly is that ?

To close this post, a sample of safety announcement. The text is the original united one, but the picture…

Ok, this old naval idiom is no longer used when a flight captain enters or leaves a cockpit, but some captain prerogatives survived the time when they change from boats to planes.

Let me first be a bit disapointing for all romantic readers… a flight captain can not get passenger married. This stopped when the move from ship to boat took place… sorry.

Amongst his trendemous responsibilities, the captain is sole responsible for the safety of all passengers and crew on board. This means that he can take any action he think is needed to protect aircraft and passenger safety, even if this violates each and every other rules ! Be sure he would have to report to ATC, aviation authorities, and his airline, but this will be later on. In the action, the captain is really the one deciding things.

Now, something else we heard a lot in the media recently as a french TV producer created an incident on board a flight from South Africa to Paris. The captain of a flight can decide to put a passenger under arrest, and if deemed necessary, to have the crew restraining the passenger freedom of movement, by using handcuffs.

A final word to close this post, about policemen flying on airliners. In the industry wording, they are called “tigers”. Even the crew does not know them, and they interveine only if the safety of the flight is endangered by unlawful interference. They won’t move if something only looks suspicious, or if a passenger is misbehaving under influence of alcohol or so.

This restriction in their actions is to protect their identity. There are not so many of them, and if they had to act for any small incident, it would be easy for terrorists to identify them, even by creating incidents with the sole purpose of then neutralize the tigers.

Be sure that many airliner seats daily are occupied by tigers, and this helps passenger safety.