Flight 1549

RantWoman is acutely aware that a whole ocean of words are likely to be written about Flight 1549 and the miracles of training and professionalism that got the plane down and everyone evacuated with nothing but minor injuries among people on the plane and NO injuries for anyone on the ground. RantWoman could even link to something else she wrote, but that would kind of blow her anonymity and has to wait.

If only in the name of blogging practice, though RantWoman is going to add to the stream of public commentary.

First, some compelling visuals.
Flight 1549 Path

Second, a couple articles from my beloved and endangered local paper, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer :

Plane Lands in the Hudson

Crew Tells Media to Cool It

Now time for RantWoman to weigh in:

I think after 9/11 and a couple other air disasters around New York city, the sight of passengers just standing in an orderly way on a mostly-intact plane, a strangely beached bird is an occasion for total amazement.

RantWoman seized on one detail from the tale of the evacuation: a flight attendant at the back of the plane decided not to open the rear door, probably to prevent the plane getting swamped and then later a passenger jumped in and did open the door. I hope the media and the world do not jump all over this poor passenger, but I also hope we all learn to think about why highly trained people might do or not do things that look obvious at first spin to laypeople.

Getting out of the plane is a perfectly understandable desire after a landing like the one this one went through. Getting out of the plane by getting the whole plane flooded with near-freezing water and having to pray to get plunked up even faster because of the cold is a really scary option. So I want to hear about plane design. If the fuselage is not breached and the wings are intact how long would this plane float? How do flight attendants train to decide whether to do or not do all their different options?

The storied passenger revolt of Flight 93 is a situation where lay people's initiative is now part of the media narrative, but the Flight 1549 is a brilliant opportunity for all of us to learn more about what airline crews are trained to do in different emergencies. And if this touches hot button issues like who sits in exit rows or how passengers behave on flights, oh well. Once those doors close and the plane takes off, like it or not, people might need to be a team in ways they would not think of at first pass or even second or third pass. So let's all learn and talk about this.

As for wanting to swamp the crew with hero worship, GIVE IT A REST folks. These people did their jobs. They did exactly what they were trained to do. I cannot imagine that it is fun to have to go through all the Bad Things That Can Happen in training scenarios, but the outcome in this case is exactly what makes all the training worthwhile.

Even if the crew did their jobs flawlessly though, it can be exhausting to have to tell and retell and relive all the different elements of the events. The most important people who need to hear the stories first are the investigators; the investigators need to talk to the passengers and probably ohter witnessess too. There will be plenty of time to talk and the public does need to talk, but give it a rest for now folks!

RantWoman is speaking from personal experience, though not on anything like this scale. Well, once RantWoman was on a plane coming into Seatac. Something happened and the plane lost part of its hydraulic system. The pilot announced that we were going to try something else and repeat the approach. Then he announced that the fire department would be meeting us on the landing and we would be landing further away from the terminal. Probably almost everyone said a prayer and reviewed the locations of emergency exits. We made it down fine. Rattled as I was, it was not even very easy just to talk about it to people I know well let alone gawking strangers from the media.