[Zuljin]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4178868.stm

A passenger plane has crashed in Peru's Amazon jungle, with at least 40 of the 100 on board now known to have died.

[karajorma]

I did say that these things come in 3s.

Very sad. No fancy pictures cause it's far away enough from civilisation that the press will pretty much ignore it though.

[WMCoolmon]

[Flipside]

Glad to hear there was a fair percentage of survivors at least. A terrible series of events (as Kara says, it always seems to happen in 3's). After all our fear of Terrorist bombers etc, I findly it sadly ironic that we have lost so many lives to purely accidental causes of late

[Kosh]

Yeah. I just hope it will be a while before there are anymore plane crashes. I have to fly in 3 days.........

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma
I did say that these things come in 3s.

Very sad. No fancy pictures cause it's far away enough from civilisation that the press will pretty much ignore it though.

More than 3, though; before the Cypriot and Columbian planes, there was a Tunisian plane that crashed off Italy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2008892.stm

[karajorma]

This month?

[Charismatic]

How the hell can they keep crashing? Learn to fly dammit!

[karajorma]

Yeah! Cause the rapid depressurisation of the Helios Airways flight obviously must have been due to pilot error or some mistake of the flight crew's like winding down the window to give the finger to a passing rival airplane

[WMCoolmon]

Humanity has been trying to drive for over two centuries now. It's not surprising that we're still not that good at flying, which has only been around half as long as driving.

[Nuclear1]

Originally posted by Charismatic
How the hell can they keep crashing? Learn to fly dammit!

Being the best pilot in the world means nothing if your wing is severely damaged or if your cabin pressure drops without warning.

It's not the pilots' fault that this happens. Man was made to walk on the ground, not fly in the air, and when something comes along that fights gravity enough to put a man where he is not naturally supposed to be, something is bound to go wrong.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by karajorma
This month?

August 6.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4127636.stm

Originally posted by nuclear1


Being the best pilot in the world means nothing if your wing is severely damaged or if your cabin pressure drops without warning.

It's not the pilots' fault that this happens. Man was made to walk on the ground, not fly in the air, and when something comes along that fights gravity enough to put a man where he is not naturally supposed to be, something is bound to go wrong.

Yeah.  There's kind of a reason birds and insects are made of several tonnes of aluminium and sophisticated electronics.

[Turnsky]

what is it with planes these days?.. i mean they're dropping out of the sky like flies, either by minor technical failures causing emergencies, crashes, and whatnot.

[Zuljin]

Originally posted by aldo_14


More than 3, though; before the Cypriot and Columbian planes, there was a Tunisian plane that crashed off Italy.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2008892.stm

5 actually.

2. August: the emergency landing in Toronto, no one was hurt in that crash though, thankfully.

6. August: This was the Tunisian plane that went down.

14. August: Greek airliner crashes outside Athens.

16. August: Airplane goes down in the Venezuelan mountains.

23. August: Boeing 737 goes down in the jungle near the airport in Peru.

So far, about 331 people have died just this month from disasters like these..

[brugger]

I forsee many more plane crashes like this happening as the major airlines farm out maintainance to vendors in third world coutries that lack the experience to be working on commercial jets (at least the US airlines I don't know about the foreign ones)

[Flipside]

I'd say it's far more likely down to the fact that a lot of Aircraft owned by these countries are quite old compared to the more modern ones used in the UK and America. Planes are assigned 'Flight Hours' which is the maximum amount of time they can spend flying before they need to be mothballed. A lot of these aircraft are now approaching their maximum flight allowance and have been reconditioned to keep them flightworthy.

Now, by official standards, Reconned aircraft are perfectly acceptable, and as someone who's worked on them, I'm inclined to agree, however, these aircraft are still getting old, and just like humans, no amount of maintenance can really fix that