Iceberg categories; Alaskan speak; Burger Jim

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated 07/02/2002 9:03:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
Bapopik at AOL.COM writes:

>  Then, on July 6th, I fly to southern Germany, where my plane will collide
> with another plane in mid-air.

I have no knowledge of the accident in Switzerland that you don't, and I've
never worked with European air traffic control.

One controller I talked to said (based on news reports) that it looked like a
"skinware" problem.  "Controllers exist to prevent collisions, even when
their collision avoidance software is not available.  You can get used to
having computers around, but controllers did their job before computers were
available."

Like most major accidents, this one was probably the result of a
concatenation of things going wrong, followed by sheer bad luck (Do you have
any idea how difficult it is for two airliners to hit each other in the
vastness of the airspace over Switzerland?)  Compare the Titanic, which
required five separate things to go wrong, follwed by the bad luck of the
ship sideswiping the iceberg at exactly the wrong distance.  A few feet to
one side and the Titanic would have missed the iceberg completely; a few feet
to the other and it would have rammed the iceberg, after which it would have
made it safely to port, bloody and literally unbowed, but safe.

Since one of the ill events that led up the airplane collision was the
handoff from German to Swiss air traffic control, and since you are not
flying to Switzerland, you won't have to worry about incompetent Swiss
controllers.  I suggest you lean back in your seat and read Earnest K. Gann's
"Fate is the Hunter".

           - Landau