mario a. spinthiras

To those of you who know me in real life you will probably know about my obsession regarding aviation. I usually blabber about it sometimes with such enthusiasm to a point where I can bore airline pilots if I ever had the chance Going through endless documentaries , documents , websites , ebooks and what not I have finally reached a conclusion regarding this dream of taking the left seat in the sky as captain. Captain Spinthiras doesn’t sound too cool but if I am ever your pilot in an aircraft , you can just call me captain and it’s fine.

Lets face some bitter facts here. I am what most people usually call a computer geek. I spend time on computers , the Internet , networking , Linux , UNIX and just a tidbit of programming (though I hate coding but cannot live without it.).

I’m moving along a path that involves computer networks at it’s most with a tilt towards the engineering aspect of it all. I don’t really want to end up in the administrator’s seat to be honest, I’d like to progress a little further than that into something a little more of academics and research.

But then comes aviation and tries to pull me up to the skies with my feet hanging in mid air.

Face another true fact. How much do you know about aircrafts? Every time you take a trip how much do you know about the aluminium tincan that you just sat your rear end in waiting for it to take off in a swift thrust.

You probably know a little less than I do , and I know nothing right now.

Aviation comes down to economics at it’s most overseeing the aspect of science as much as it apparently can. This is because when planes are in the skies taking people from A to B , they are producing hard cold cash like they were meant to. When they are not , they are being maintained , serviced or in the rare case of an aircraft falling from the skies , they are trying to scrape the pieces from wherever it fell to possibly costing lives.

Over the past month or so , I have looked into aviation accidents which I find are most fascinating. The majority of these accidents resulted in deaths and injuries which could have been avoided. The two most disturbing factors that contribute to accidents in the skies are 1) Pilot errors and 2) Maintenance/Service errors while as other minor issues which have had their spotlight in sporadic occasions are 3) Ground Flight Control and 4) Aircraft design flaws.

Back in November I traveled to Germany with work for a few days. This was the first time I got on an aircraft since the tragic Helios accident in Greece three years ago. I felt rather uneasy since I was flying with airlines I had not flown with previously during the connection flight to Munich. Though rather restless and hepless in the skies in the case of a problem , nothing occured that put me in danger.

This being so I felt so proud that man managed to create a machine that put us in the sky taking us all around the globe. Months later when my obsession with aircrafts and aviation in general grew , little to my knowledge it was that aviation isn’t exactly as safe as you think it is. Aircrafts cost a number with many zeros followed for it to be built , maintained and kept safe in the skies doing serving it’s purpose. When an aircraft has issues it is usually the management of an airline company that starts moaning and groaning first. This because unplanned maintenance does not cost much money in labour or parts but it costs thousands in most currencies in losses due to lost flight time. This puts pressure on engineers to do many things in a hurry and for management to overlook serious reports that engineers make regarding aircraft. This is one of the main factors that put planes in a nose dive from 30+,000 ft at 32Gs straight into the ground. Wheather you like it or not has little to do with it , the point in it all is that aviation is about making money and casualities are acceptable within reasonable limits therefore I wouldn’t cry about it next time you board a plane ; simply prey it’s not your unlucky day mate.

Then comes the pilot errors which I did mention first above yet I do not wish to diminish the importance that the factor plays in aviation accidents. There had been cases where vertigo put a pilot completely out of orientation , decompression fiddling with the mental capacities of the captain and so much more. Then come the utter complete stupidities such as the Avianca accident where they ran out of fuel and the first officer was reulctant to tell the damn tower that he is declaring a fuel emergency. Of course in that case it didn’t help that the “experienced” captain couldn’t speak a word of English. It makes me wonder how you can standardize terminology in aviation choosing any other language except the English language. It makes sense to me. Its the most widely used language in the world. The flight did crash because it ran out of fuel and it cost 81 lives including a dozen children.

There is also another factor that has been a role player in accidents. Design flaws. I can assure you that the cost benefit analysis of an aircraft allows quite a safe bird to be built and let us not forget the experienced designers that design them. However people is the name , and mistakes is the game. In a Swiss Air 747 accident the aircraft experienced explosive decompression which ripped apart a section of the fuselage due to the bad hatches that the cargo bay door. They where made of aluminum for one thing and for another they had a faulty mechanism which did not cut off the power to the motors that turned them to lock the cargo bay once it had closed. A short circuit in the wiring caused the cargo bay door to open during mid flight. Thought this was back in 1989 it was the efforts of two parent’s son lost in the accident , ripped from the seat and sucked into the jet engine that made the FAA order a most immediate replacement of the hatchets. The FAA originally said “18 months” to replace them but pressure from the stirring of Lee’s parents forced them to do order all 747’s to change them within 30 days. Back to service and maintenance for a minute , it would be fair to mention that the door hatchets on the cargo bay doors require 10 hours to replace in total. Can you imagine the costs for an airlines that has dozens of 747s ?

I’d like to take a line here and extend my condolences to anyone that has lost a friend or member of their family in an aviation accident.

So why do I want to become a pilot? Well the truth is I don’t. What I really want to do is conquer the rather complex and wonderful machine that man has built that conquers the skies. A mixture of technology and man that makes the world quite smaller than it really is. Aerodynamic , jet engine powered monsters that travel at hundreds of miles per hour , requiring the experienced hands of a person that loves flying and feels a passion like no other for it. That sounds more like me. Luckily enough we are born in an age where there is so much to learn and so much to do. This makes me very happy to know and ignorance towards learning is almost sinful in my books.

So what do I really really want from aircrafts? First off , I want to understand everything about them. How they are built , how they fly , how they land , how they navigate and how they keep flying even in the case of problems. Then I want to fly one. To be honest I cannot wait to finish this post and go fly my a330 on the flight simulator. Smoking is allowed on my flight , and since I will be flighing the aircraft on the kitchen table with my laptop , you are more than welcome to see whats cooking for lunch too. To be honest for the fun of it , I stalled a 767 eariler this morning on the flight simulator and wiped out a whole forest

Back to reality though. I want to know the deep down secrets of aviation , join a highly respected group of people in society that master the art of feeling one with the machine that conquers the skies way above the clouds. Heres the ironic part. I never want to make flying a source of income to me. Though my career in computing and aviation might one day meet , in the meanwhile I have no intention of becoming an airline pilot but never the less I do intend to fly large commercial airliners somehow during my lifetime. This flame has been ignited and there will be no burn out on this one ever!

External Links

• http://www.bestaviation.net/art_how_to_become_a_pilot_jaa.asp
• http://www.airaffair.com/Library/start-airplanes.html