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amarshan
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BC
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Criminal Culpability for Role in Gol 737 Disaster
from amarshan
wrote 2 years 5 days ago
That's the most ridiculous judgement I've ever heard in an aviation case. Does anyone know if other similar rulings have been made in Brazil? I get a strong sense here of governmental pressure being applied to the judiciary to avoid embarrassment to Brazilian aviation governance...
Lane Wallace, Contributing Editor
from amarshan
wrote 2 years 15 weeks ago
Lane, you are my favourite author at Flying ... the passion you have for aviation comes out in every article you write, and your prose is sheer magic! I read the magazine from cover to cover, but I am guilty of skipping forward to reading your column first ... keep up the great work! :-)
Stream Your Flight Data to the FAA?
from amarshan
wrote 1 year 36 weeks ago
An observation, based upon what I've seen with Transport Canada and the FAA: TC's objective is to improve aviation safety, while the FAA's appears to be to punish transgressions.
In Canada, a minor violation will typically be dealt with by having the pilot write an explanation of what happened, and how s/he will avoid a recurrence of the situation. Unless it was an egregious violation, or the pilot is a repeat offender, that will typically be the end of it. The FAA on the other hand...
I hold both Canadian and US licenses, and I must confess, I fear the consequences of a transgression in the US far more than in Canada!
It may be time for the FAA to reconsider its stance, and try to determine exactly what it is trying to achieve, and whether its current approach achieves those goals.
Now, I'm going to generalize beyond the FAA: the US does seem to have this rather puritanical fascination with punishment. Consider the following signs found in the corridor from Portland to Blaine, WA:
"Click-it or TICKET!"
"Litter and it WILL HURT!"
"Picking these flowers will incur a $2000 penalty"
... and so forth.
(By contrast, in Ireland I encountered the following sign: "Ladies and Gentlemen will not, and others must not, pick the flowers." Rather more genteel, don't you think?)
New Owners for Cirrus
from amarshan
wrote 2 years 11 weeks ago
@Hoku -
You are exactly right. The Chinese are acquiring Cirrus for the technology transfer.
It's sad, really. Manufacturing creates a lot of comparatively lower skilled jobs, which tend to be very price sensitive. Consequently, a lot of union jobs have evaporated from North America and made their way to lower priced regimes (China, Mexico, Brazil...)
However, America's strength comes from it's know how and technology - that's where the enormous value add occurs. Exporting these knowledge based jobs may look good as a short term strategy but, longer term, is a recipe for disaster as other countries catch up and leap frog North American industry ... and where will we be then? No manufacturing jobs, and no white collar jobs.
Still, this may be an irreversible trend. As a result of persistent current account deficits, China holds trillions of dollars of American debt ... and a great way for them to spend it is to acquire North American companies, technology and future.
New Owners for Cirrus
from amarshan
wrote 2 years 11 weeks ago
@reykjavik:
Don't be ridiculous. Chinese companies are capable of producing a product at any level of quality. The North American parent company specifies a price point, and implicitly a quality level, and the Chinese manufacturers respond accordingly. North American companies ranging from the very highest quality luxury goods to the cheapest mass market trash utilize Chinese manufacturing facilities.
It's a little ironic really: Demming was the father of quality control, and his lessons were largely ignored in North America and adopted wholeheartedly by the Japanese auto industry - and take a look at where that industry has wound up ... the Chinese have learned the quality lesson well.
Now with regards to Cirrus - the largest aviation market in the world is in the US. GA is virtually non-existent in China. In the near term, it's highly unlikely that the Chinese will make any changes in quality or location where the manufacturing is done. This acquisition is all about technology transfer...
In fact, I'll wager that with the capitalization that CAIC brings to the table, that the quality of the offering from Cirrus will *increase* over time, not decrease! This acquisition is a boon for the customer...
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