Air France crash

Air France crash 'a hell of a roller coaster'. :

"Olivier Dubos, who was sitting at the back of the plane, told CTV television the plane appeared to land 'extremely fast' after a 20-minute delay caused by storm conditions at the airport."

Olivier Dubois was on our radio news this morning and I must say the news got onto his very quickly. It was the most astounding thing I have heard and time and time again just lately, human beings are showing themselves to be amazingly flexible and wonderfully courageous. The newscaster kept calling Olivier "Olivia" and a bit of priming in foreign pronunciation wouldn't go astray. Never used to get that on the news!! But, the news was very efficient and extremely well handled because it was neither magnified, nor sensationalised and ,as incredible as this story was, it was unfolded without hype but with fact and I was listening and my mouth just dropped open. Last week we had a regional aircraft which had to crash land because the landing gear didn't come down. The passengers were shaken but all spoke up about the pilot and how his presence of mind and skill had saved their lives. For one thing he had the sense to fly around and burn off fuel before landing and in the meantime the airport could rally and organise all the safety services and personnel. That was a fantastic team effort led by a hugely competent pilot. So my first thought this morning was to the pilot or pilots who were flying that Air France plane through that disaster. They were not mentioned. Nor were they mentioned on tonight's news. All I can say is that the light plane was saved by an expert pilot and this Air France plane had to have been saved by the expertise flying the plane at the time. I am in awe of people who have such presence of mind, instinctual or cold, hard thinking, which can enable a plane and its passengers to survive. It has been said the plane was hit by lightning. Have we had planes hit by lightning before? Have they survived? When you read how the drivers near the crash site helped with lifts and mobiles you can see how well ordinary people get in there and manage a crisis , so I say again, if you want to know how to manage the field work of disaster, ask us. We do it well. The pilots had an unbelievable (I am running out of superlatives) capacity to manage this. Guiding it into a ravine is better than flying it into people. Why did it overshoot the runway? It was coming in too fast. Probably trying to avoid the lightning. Why was it being allowed to fly in a storm? Over here planes do not fly in bad weather. We sit and wait for storms, heavy rains, hail, fog, whatever and the patience of passengers is remarkable. I don't understand why and airliner was allowed to fly into a storm. All my questions will be answered in time. The passengers have been fantastic. But let's hear it for the pilots because I believe we have some people who have the skills to help us manage our topsy turvy world. We not only need to praise and thank them, we need to learn from them. I am just astounded.