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| THIS IS HAPPENING A LITTLE TOO OFTEN WITH THOMAS COOK THIS YEAR | |
Zack Iddo   12th Jul 2012 17:01:41 | http://travel.aol.co.uk/2012/07/12/packed-thomas-cook-holiday-jet-emergency-landing-smoke-fills-cabin-manchester/ |
| Zack Iddo 27th Jul 2012 00:04:11 | well Thomas cook cant be held completely responsible I suppose but have a look :
http://travel.aol.co.uk/2012/07/26/RAF-fighter-jet=scrambled-Thomas-cook-passenger-plane-packed-tourists/?icid=maing-grid7%7Cuk%7Cdl10%7Csec1_lnk2%26pLid%3D119545 |
Joe Clifford   27th Jul 2012 17:36:27 | Having flown in and around the restricted and prohibited zone I can say that the controllers are deffinatly on form. You would sometimes find the controllers a little relaxed, polite ("Hello" "ByeBye" "Have A Nice Flight") not any more, they are doing it by the book, very professionally which I must say I like. You can sense that there is a lot of pressure on them, especially ATLAS control, only saying as much as they need to, consistently checking on aircraft.
I think that maybe its being blown out of proportion, say for instance this plane was under attack and was to be used against us, if the controller said, "well the chances are there's nothing wrong, just a technical problem" and then it crashes, he is going to be in deap and so will the country, scrambling the jet was a precautionary measure. Who knows, if they do need to be scrambled again however for a serious consern, the pilots have done it before, it's all well and good this practicing but the pilots are awear that it's practise and are not going to react the same as if it was real. It's done them a favour, ok, possibly scary for those on board but I would rather know that all the talk of "our sky will be monitored and kept safe" is actually true and not just some cover story to shut everyone up. Joe |
| Mick McG 27th Jul 2012 20:33:58 | I suspect this story made the news because the focus is on the Olympics and the associated heightened security measures that we have in force because of it.
The truth is that these "PLOCs" (Prolonged Loss of Contact) are a pretty regular occurrence. A missed r/t call won't create a problem but if, as in this case, a crew fails to acknowledge repeated attempts to contact them the controlling ATCC initiates a procedure that notifies the UK Air Defence network where a quick assessment is made on the nature of the likely threat this aircraft poses. (An aircraft that loses r/t on the west coast of Scotland tracking out towards the Atlantic is unlikely to cause the same amount of activity that an aircraft 12 miles off the coast of Dover within 15 minutes flying time of the Capital is likely to cause). If no contact is made with the crew the threat may be considered high enough to scramble the RAF Typhoons on "Quick Reaction Alert" (QRA) in order to intercept the "rogue" aircraft and establish contact that way. Most of the time a crew that has not heard anything on the radio for 10 minutes will realize they've turned the volume down by mistake and re-establish r/t contact before an RAF pilot pitches up alongside shaking his fist - in which case everyone goes back to watching skysports news, corrie, or the shopping channel depending on what's on. However, on the initial scramble the QRA crews will not know whether the threat is real or not - it makes no difference to them, their response is the same regardless, as it is for all those involved in the process. They will assume the threat is real until it can be confirmed otherwise. There is no question that anyone in the process treats it as a practice because when it happens it's a pain - there's a considerable amount to do and usually not much time to do it. The RAF have been doing it like this for the last 50 years. The Russians made regular (often daily) forays into UK airspace for most of those (and occasionally still do). Obviously since 9-11 the emphasis has changed somewhat but the RAFs role to defend UK airspace from any airborne threat remains the same and it's what they train for day in, day out. Normally RAF Northolt isn't used as a QRA base and Thomas Cook are not serial offenders but in every other aspect this was a pretty routine event - it's just that this one made the papers. M |
| Nathan Roberts 28th Jul 2012 13:31:16 | the captain said - oh no smoke in the cabin, whilst smoking on his cuban cigar.
On a serious note, sounds like they did the right thing and turned back. I'd rather they did that and turned back, than it turn out to be something more sinister or turn into an electrical fire causing more damage and or a disaster. If there is too many recurrence of these problems with electrical equipment or cooking facilities, maybe the airlines should consider no hot foods or some other ways to cater on shorter haul flights as a pose to needing fridges on and microwaves and cookers on at full works over the space of an hour. :) |
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