While it is wonderful for you to present an aviator’s perspective, it is also important to see this from the passengers’ perspective. For years, the airline industry has touted how air travel is the safest form of travel – and they are right. It is also the form of travel where passengers are the *least* in control – in a car, you are driving and so somewhat in control (one hopes!) and even in a train, you can actually jump off (even if the passenger would likely die from doing so, the ground seems close by).

Given that passengers feel completely helpless, I think it behooves the pilot (or whoever happens to be communicating with the passengers) to present the situation in a way that doesn’t scare the passengers more than they already are. My personal opinion was that this particular captain did a poor job of that.

You make a very fair point that not all problems are identifiable on the ground and that some problems are okay to fly with – point taken.

And I completely agree with you that there are different departments. Unfortunately for the crew, they are the only ones that passengers see and interact with, so they are the only ones who we can talk to. They are also the face of the airline to the passengers, so I think if he’d said something a little kinder and gentler and less off the cuff and seemingly uncaring (from a passenger perspective), it would have been better.

Finally, I do agree that pilots have a very difficult job. I have often applauded when captains land planes smoothly or land planes not-so-smoothly in very rough weather. I am very open to giving them credit when due and even this particular captain deserves credit for his piloting skills. He could have likely saved the whole lot of us. I just take issue with his communication skills.

As an aviator I am writing this response as a rebuttal to your opinion based comments regarding your Air Jamaica flight. I am in no way affiliated with Air Jamaica nor have I ever flown on any of there flights.

“The captain announces that this happens sometimes. Much like a car, aircrafts need service. What?? How dare he even make the analogy?!”

“But the captain trying to make a lame excuse? That made me really mad.”

The way pilots speak to each other is quite different then the way they speak to the general public. It is often referred to as ’pilot lingo.’ Many people usually have trouble understanding what we are talking about and therefore we must offer analogies in order to get the point across. What the captain did was something every pilot does in order to offer a better understanding to his passengers.

“Well, first, you don’t find out you have to service an aircraft when you are in midair.”

Do you find that your power steering needs servicing when your sitting in a parking spot or when you are driving? The obvious answer is when you take the car for a spin. Well the same is for an airplane, some things we can only find out are broken once in-flight. And some things break while we are flying. Believe it or not it is perfectly legal to fly with broken items if certain measures are taken.

“Second, as an airline, you are PAID to make sure that aircrafts are serviced regularly – BEFORE there are issues.”

I think my statement immediately above answers part of this question. To the first part of the question, ‘the airline’ as you refer to consists of several groups as you probably know; pilots, cargo agents, maintenance personal, etc. We the pilots are not paid to service aircraft. We are paid to fly the airplane safely and efficiently to the best of our ability. Please, for future reference, do not affiliate the flight crew with maintenance issues, and do not blame maintenance issues, on every group associated with an airline.

I hope I have offered a better understanding to you as well as to all of your readers. The negativity we deal with on the job is unbelievable; next time, please demonstrate a little bit more sympathy for your captain. After all, he is the one that ensures your flight is a safe one.

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@ blr bytes – Thanks for sharing. What a coincidence! Glad your Doha landing ended well too.

@ bharath – Exactly. And thanks!

@ Gashwin – What great information – thanks *so* much for sharing! And don’t worry, no offense taken at all. Yes, I know that dumping fuel is the norm and in fact, dumping fuel makes you safer when you land and I thought that maybe the yelling brace position was protocol – but it was freaky none the less.

And thanks for the links – the flight tracker stuff is very cool! I was a few days too late to find this flight as an unregistered user – I am sure, since you are a flight buff, that you are registered

@ Dave – Actually it was to Grenada (with a brief stop in Barbados). And Grenada was quite wonderful, thanks

i’ve done a reasonable amount of travel in my day, but so far i’ve only had one *HARD* landing. about 10-15 years ago during a driving rainstorm on the east coast, we came down pretty fast and landed with a very big BUMP. a bit scary, but otherwise no bumps or bruises. kind of amazing no other major issues.

anyway, hope your trip to jamaica was a happy one after the rough start!

My point, if any, is that in most cases, there’s layers and layers of protocol that try to cover most unplanned in-flight emergencies. Obviously they don’t always work. But it’s one of the reasons the statistics on air travel are what they are.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to come across as giving a lecture or as patronizing. I’m sure this was a rather terrifying experience. Glad it ended safely. Best wishes.

PS: FWIW, emergency landings of this nature don’t even make the news, unless they’re spectaculr, like that Jet Blue nose-wheel incident from a little while back.
PPS: It may come as a surprise to how much data on commercial air travel is available publicly. For instance, at Flight Aware, I was able to find this flight, and deduced the date based on the data. The track log showed the airspeed, altitude and lat/lon for the aircraft from take off till the first landing!

I am glad everyone was safe in the end.

http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/04/18/the-miracle-of-flight/

This article followed yours in my feed reader and I *had* to share. I’ve been in an emergency landing once, in Doha. It’s scary, more so when the pilot dumped excess fuel out over the sea.

Glad it worked out well!