HOW TO AVERT TRAGEDIES IN THE FUTURE...
How to avert tragedy
Reading the names of the TWA 800 flight dead, I don't know what angers me more--terrorists who would murder innocents, or the airline industry with its proclamations about the statistical safety of flying. The carnage must stop. I've said the following after Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie and it's high time that we are heard and action taken.
--Reduce the magnitude of the threat. No more checked passenger baggage. Only carry-ons that are screened, sniffed and placed in kevlar-lined cargo compartments that can blow-out and keep a plane flying to a safe landing. Reduce the opportunity to less than a dozen pounds of explosive. Sorry travelers, learn to live light. So far the airlines have refused to buy the cargo compartment liners since it would cut into their profits-----and this an outrage! We should boycott and protest them until these are installed.
--Alter take-off/landings to steep approaches as was done in Saigon during the war to reduce vulnerability to shoulder SAMs (surface to air missiles). If hit at a high altitude, it will require a ship mounted medium SAM. Make the waters off-shore clear of all boat traffic. Violators should be boarded seized and/or sunk. Put IR flares and chaff dispensers on international airliners. Beef up security like we did after Challenger.
--Boycott airlines until they make safe aircraft with fewer than 200 passengers--that are crash-worthy, have an in-flight escape system, that do not stand three stories off he ground--that can land if necessary in a farmer's field. Make parachute recovery of the entire passenger cabin a reality instead of crash landing in the event of Pilot, Engine or Airframe failure. "PEA" has failed and will continue to fail--the answer is another option, other than forward momentum to sustain lifts over the wings--95 years after the Wright brothers, it is time to improve. No more 600+ passenger jumbo jets for "super terrorism" to grab headlines. Heavier-than-air flight has proceeded with PEA for over 95 years now....its time for something more than PEA, the answer is something older than PEA itself: the parachute.
--Add airbag/belts with smoke hood to every airliner seat
The combination airbag to prevent bodily injury from impact belt offered by Godyear Aerospace is a great idea. We need to also have an integral smoke hood so passengers can breath long enough to escape through toxic smoke, too. The would don the belt and hood just prior to crash landing. The air bag would be deployed prior to the crash or upon impact.
--Make the U.S. Military wake up and do its job of defending the U.S. from external threats--like the airline industry. Make sure military men have aircraft escape systems, too. It's stuck in its own "business as usual" paradigm that is electronic gadgetizing "Desert Storm" when the world is not the same kind of Tofflerian "Third Wave" of information. Only a portion of the world is on the internet. It's an age wrought of materialistic/spiritual despair that creates desperate sub-national war groups out to destroy/attack the will of the people directly by avoiding conflict with organized armies that can defend themselves on easily understood rural battlefields.
We've forgotten physical mechanical advantage still runs reality, not "couch potatoes" behind computer screens. Couple information warfare with special mission units that can attack and destroy terrorist/sub-national groups before they strike using air-deliverable M8 AGS or M113A3 armored fighting vehicles, 106mm recoilless rifles, hand/bullet through grenades, hard body armor with rifle gunshields, folding extreme terrain bikes, visual/infrared camouflage--warriors that concentrate on victory, not "spit shines", efficiency reports or career advancement.
--Realize that each one of us is an unique human being made in God's image. That the death of any of us harms mankind. That 90,000 dead each year by POV and other accidents is too much. Statistics be damned. That 30-year-old planes wear out. That things go wrong and to think/plan ahead, not accept death if it strikes "someone else." That we have a greater mission--the exploration of space and re-engineering of life on earth in an ecologically beneficial way that intellectually pre-empts vain fighting over power amongst ourselves.
God expect us to overcome evil with good and to wage war only as the last resort, but then skillfully and with justice. Until the war that goes on in our hearts is fixed (we face death) and our Creator returns we must be vigilant and strong for upcoming natural disasters and fight, not make excuses for human darkness.
It's up to each generation to stand up and defend the evil of its day. Our time has come! It is today!... Stop what you are doing. Think. Those people did not die for nothing. We fight for mankind.
Crash-worthy Burnelli type aircraft have been available for decades----but coporate GREED and politics have continued to send thousands of people to their deaths!
Read about how we MUST have crash-worthy airliners!
Averting what could have been another public-transport disaster, the pilot of an AOM French Airlines plane successfully performed an emergency landing in Turkey today.
It is believed an explosion aboard the McDonnell Douglas MD 83 damaged the landing gear shortly after take-off.
After dumping fuel to reduce the risk of fire, the pilot then executed a near-perfect "wheels-up" landing. Despite a shower of sparks, there was no fire and none of the 163 passengers and crew were injured.
The MD 80 has its twin engines mounted on the rear fuselage, well clear of the ground, unlike many other modern passenger-jet aircraft which have them mounted under the wings. It is thought this may have played large part in preventing an explosion as the aircraft slid along the runway.
The pilot received a round of applause from relieved travelers and were returned to France on another aircraft.