Top Letters And Comments, April 26, 2019

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LAX 24L: A Runway With A Tragic History

GREAT, well written article by Myron Nelson regarding the 24L accident at LAX. As a retired major airline captain with 35 years of experience flying into LAX, I could relate completely…Well done.

Tom Rosen

Great recap of the runway 24 L indecent. I remember it well because my best friend Scott Martin was flying for Skywest in Metro liners. His sister called me to let me know that Scott was not flying that day. I could hear the relief in her voice as well as Scotts parent’s.

Mike Walker

I want to commend Captain Nelson for an excellent article, informative, thoughtfully written, and sympathetic. Thank you.

Anne Umphrey

Engine Failures

Just read your excellent article on engine failures and how to mitigate them. A magneto recently failed on my 177 during climb out and that brought the message loud and clear that engine out practice is essential. I am doing a lot toward keeping my engine healthy but I see there is room for improvement. I will review the article in detail and make necessary improvements to my procedures and maintenance activities.

In the section near the end of the article describing the NALL report, I think there may be an error. The author says about 11% of engine failures are fatal and goes on to say a pilot stands only a 10% chance of surviving an engine outage. One of those two statements seem to be wrong, they contradict each other the way they are written.

Rory Filer

Quote from the article: “Of them, 82 (54 percent) involved the powerplant. Only nine (11 percent) of the powerplant failures during 2015 were fatal, meaning we basically have a one-in-ten chance to survive an accident resulting from an engine failure.”

This should read that the there would be an 11% chance of not surviving an engine failure or an 89% chance that you could survive.

Grover McNair

Flying Wing Crash

Regarding the flying wing that crashed. It was the last one flying. NOT the last one over all. There is one in a museum somewhere I have read. Such a shame. I had seen that plane fly not long after they restored it. Someone else was flying it at the time.

Patty Haley

Northrop, not Northrup. It’s still a sad loss of human life and a rare machine.

Patrick Lynch

There Will Be Mud

Just wanted to thank Paul Berge for the thoroughly enjoyable article “There Will Be Mud” – Education with brilliant Self Deprecating Humor.

Learned about:

  • County Fair Culture [Mud Boggin’ – though have already suffered the gastronomic displeasure of Corn Dogs]
  • Viscous Fluid Dynamics – Don’t Stop the Plane on turning
  • Prairie Animal Husbandry – Badger Feeding
  • And a new Mantra applied to why I own a canvassed rather than motor boat – “I Sail – but not to actually get anywhere.”

Barry Gloger

Cirrus SF50 AOA Sensor AD

“Quality Escape”? I could not let this go by without noting the creative replacement for “somebody or something screwed up. We didn’t catch it, so it escaped. We have captured the escaped quality and inserted it in the replacement AOA’s”.

Seriously, the inevitable march toward total automization will equally inevitably have some casualties.

Unfortunate bad timing for Cirrus.

Dave Ahlberg

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