Landing Aircraft "you be the judge" : RTE

Anyone going down to RTE news today will see how they've put a little "interactive" twist on the news that a flight from Lisbon almost crashed in Santry. A thumbnail picture accompanies the story http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0919/air.html of the hotel which is reported as being a 16 storey building at Santry Cross at night with the caption "you be the judge". Then you get to see another picture of the building during the day. Cool. You be the judge. Relax now.

You are presently at the controls of a DC 9-83 passenger jet with 4 other crew members and 112 passengers slowing down on your cruise speed of (504 mph, 811 km/h) beginning a standard descent of no more than 2% declination. Feel good? Confident? Skittish? Not worrying about the 72,600 kg weight you could wallop? Now do those lights which look like an airstrip on the big hotel just in front of hte airstrip confuse you??

The news is just at the fresh load of dung stage when professionals some with degrees in journalism take facts such as an industry preliminary report using the phrase "SERIOUS INCIDENT" and decide to allay peoples' fears & be funny.

here's the interim report -
http://www.aaiu.ie/upload/general/9702-0.pdf

We almost all know how to fly a plane. It's a piece of piss. You put a few coins in the slot and shoot at everything on the screen, or if in an emergency situation someone on the ground will phone you up and talk you through landing. Indeed it's such a doddle flying commercial passenger jet that it's a wonder we haven't dropped pilots as a profession and simply turned the whole thing into a kind of problem juvenile drug user rehabilitation therapy. But it is in fact very difficult to fly a plane at two important stages - (1) leaving the ground (2) landing. OK - let's presume you've seen through the silly charade of pretending that you can land an aircraft. We'll look @ the problem another way.

Imagine you are the guest of or worker in a 16 storey hotel in north Dublin who much inspired by the latest Irish Times "express yourself" crap, look forward to a city of highrise spires and skyscrapers. http://scripts.ireland.com/polls/head2head/index.cfm?fu...=7975 Now what is that you see in the twinkling night sky? Is it a red kite hawk dipped in flourescent paint? Is it a meteorite? Is it a Qassam rocket? Nope. It's a bloody big passenger aircraft & it's coming right at you. What do you do? Simple. Run up to the roof and put out the silly lights.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2007/0918/bre...2.htm
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/warning-after-p....html