September 27, 2016
Interview with Christine Negroni, author of the book The Crash Detectives
Mike Carruthers:
When you fly you worry, at least for at least a moment, about airline safety because if the plane has an accident that’s it. Right?
Christine Negroni:
The big misperception is that if you’re in an airplane accident you’re going to die. 95% of aviation accidents do not have fatalities.
Christine Negroni, author of the book The Crash Detectives…
Because if you’re in an airplane and they have to land with the nose gear up and you scrape your way across the runway that’s an accident. There are many more accidents that we don’t hear of.
It used to be that airline pilots typically came out the military but not so much anymore.
I spent a week in flight training school with Lufthansa they train their pilots in Arizona and most of those students had never been on an airplane before they started training as airline pilots. At Lufthansa they told me that it’s harder to find the pilot type personality. You can teach once you find that personality you can teach them to fly.
Airplanes today have become so sophisticated that they in a sense fly themselves – which is not always a good thing.
We have seen cases in which the pilots lulled into complacency because the airplane is flying itself. They have neglected to stay on top of the flight and flown beyond their airport.
