Somebody's got to give us the reason or we're going to evacuate the aircraft. You got 60 seconds.

to the AA pilot for having the testicular fortitude to demand an explanation.

to the mental midgets who were orchestrating this latest terror-threat debacle.

ABC News: Irate Pilot Loses Patience After Terror-Threat Delay

Terror threats that delayed two airplanes at New York City's John F. Kennedy International Airport this week prompted an intense exchange between the irate American Airlines pilot and the control tower. ​

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"Yeah, well, they need to get off the phone and give me some information now," the pilot told the control tower. "OK. I'm the captain of this airliner and I need information pronto." ​

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The pilot lost patience Monday when the control tower insisted that the arriving plane needed to wait in the area where it was parked before unloading passengers. ​

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"OK. We're surrounded by emergency vehicles, there's a reason for this," the pilot is heard saying in the audio recording of the exchange. "Somebody's got to give us the reason or we're going to evacuate the aircraft. You got 60 seconds." ​

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"We have the information, can you possibly call [number blocked out]?" the control tower asked. ​

"Negative, I demand the information right now over a frequency," the pilot said. ​

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Authorities then told the pilot what they knew about the situation. ​

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The "terror threat" was that terrorists had stowed away in the wheels of the AA flight from San Francisco and also a Fin Air flight from Helsinki. The reaction of local authorities was nothing but theater at its finest.

Such stowaways almost always die long before the flights arrives due to lack of oxygen and -60 temperatures at high altitudes, if they're not first crushed when the landing gear retracts.

A prudent, intelligent response might have been to fly over the airfield and not drop the landing gear until the plane was above the runways to see what (if anything) fell out. Then circle around, land normally and quickly inspect the landing wheel wells.

If there was really a legitimate concern that explosives had been planted in the wheel whells by the now-disappeared terrorists, they should have evacuated the plane as soon as it was stopped on the runway: Easy Victor, easy Victor, easy Victor.

Unfortunately these bomb threats seem to be the latest fad for armchair terrorists, so we're probably so see a lot more of this and the inept response.

 

Standard day temperature at sea level is defined as 15 C/ 59 F. The formula to find standard day at altitude is to double the altitude minus 15. So for an airliner at 40,000 feet that would be 40+40-15 = -65 degrees C standard day. Of course actual temperatures will vary greatly between warm and cold seasons. I have seen very much colder temperatures in the arctic regions and very warm temperatures at altitude in the Mediterranean and equatorial regions. A person exposed to that kind of cold would result in certain death in a fairly short period of time.

For those who have not had the pleasure of taking a ride in a negative pressure chamber to simulate effects of altitude I can tell you my personal experiences. Once loaded in the chamber and on oxygen the chamber is taken to altitude. My training always stopped at 25,000 feet where at some point you go off oxygen, do some what seems silly skills test until lack of oxygen is apparent. When I was young I was well over 4 minutes before being ordered back on O2. Watching others it is clear that even at this relatively low altitude that impairment and eventual death will result.

Combine the cold of high altitude and lack of oxygen a person trying to make a flight in a wheel well of an airplane is not going to be functional on landing if they survive at all.

 

Your science confuses the want to be safe at all costs!! Thus prepare for many fingers stuck in ears while chanting 'la la la!"

In other words, watch the idiots stubbornly lap up the bulls* and claim 'they were doing their job.'

 

An evacuation on the tarmac would have been awesome. That would have been front page news.

 

John Ringo bodice rippers for men notwithstanding...

 

But not nearly as interesting at the JetBlue FA that bailed out with the beer.

 

Would have certainly made a bigger news splash and gotten the attention of the FAA.

 

And probably gotten the pilot arrested. I have no doubt that the Gestapo would make up a charge just to make an example.

 

On the other hand, it shows the pilot had ethics and wasn't afraid to do the right thing. There have been many incidents where civilians have been corralled in deadly situations. The pilot refused to be party to such human rights violations, and this is to his credit.

 

I doubt that, though he would've been standing tall before The Man in the Chief Pilot's Office. Even then, Aviate, Navigate, Communicate are the three pillars of airmanship, and withholding information from the PIC regarding the state of his aircraft is a major breakdown.

The only caveat is that people can get hurt going down the slides in an evacuation. Playing armchair quarterback , I would have declared an emergency and demand a couple sets of steps be brought out. Depending on which side was visible to the tower, I would have the FAs pop the slide on the 1L door, disarm the slides, on 1R and 2R and crack open the doors for the steps.

 

It's a piece of cake, any idiot can go down a slide.

In your scenario, people aren't going to wait & see what your grand scheme is. The moment passengers see a slide popped with fire trucks around them, they're going to be opening all the emergency exits & saying, "It's been real, man."

 

That's awesome, Mike! But in the 5 weeks of new hire training and 15 years of recurrent, I can count the number of times I've been down a slide on one hand. Even with all the padding on the floor, we still had people that found ways to get hurt.

One thing I always liked to do when delivering bad news over the PA during IRROPS is to stretch out the handset into the aisle so I could be seen, not just a disjointed voice. Personally, I've found that really makes a difference. So in this hypothetical I would tell everyone to sit tight while we pop a slide as a precaution until the steps show up in a moment. Uncommanded PAX evacuations usually result from scary looking misunderstood things like an engine torching during start. So with the absence of fire, smoke, smells and the guys on the fire trucks holding back, I would hope I could keep things under control. No guarantees with crowd dynamics, but I hope I could mitigate the chance of someone being injured.