Egypt Air Flight 990
I'm having a hard time with all of this, about the possible suicide and stuff.
It seems to me, especially after that golfer's plane was in the news about the depressurization,
that the first thing a pilot has to do in the case of an emergency like depressurization,
is to decend very quickly to below 15000 feet. So here's a possible scenario...
- Cabin depressurization...
- Whoever's flying the plane realizes it...
- Turn off the autopilot so the plane can descend
- Descend quickly
- Oops, too quickly, better pull up, but we've got to get down fast, better push down,
turn on the speed brakes that will make us drop faster without moving forward so fast
- Still too fast, shut down the engines so we don't break up going too fast
- Level off... oops, we turned off the engines... (expletive deleted)...
- At some point in all of this I'd be saying
"God, get me the %&#* out of this @&*% and I'll do any %&#*(&^ thing, I'll even give up %&#*(&^ cussing, anything!"
Of course, I'm not Egyptian, so I'd be saying it in English, where he said something like that in Arabic,
or at least that's what it sounds like when I try to say what he said.
So I have a couple questions...
- Weren't there three pilots on this flight? I heard that there was the normal compliment of two,
plus a back up because it's a long flight.
- How come the other two pilots didn't stop this guy? Was it a Jim Jones thing?
- If one is pulling back on the controls, while the suicider is pushing forward, how come the other one isn't pulling on the suicider? or punching him? or choking him? or something?
- How come the other two aren't saying things like "Are you crazy?", "What do you think you're doing?", or
"Are you trying to kill us?!!"
Now, what
would make me think that it was really a suicide, or shear stupidity,
would be to hear something like "Hey! What's this button for?"
