http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=7276236
It’s seems this past year and so far this year have been bad for Trains with dealing with people getting killed or accidents. But that won’t stop me from riding them. It’s more safer to ride a Train, then riding a Plane or Jet since 9/11 happened. Do people agree with me?
I personally hate airlines. I have had my baggage lost or misplaced on 5 out of 9 flights I have made thus far in my life. US Airways was the culprit in most of those losses, and refused to replace the contents of my sea-bag, and my sea-bag each time, and told me that spending 2 months underway on a submarine with only one set of uniforms and a weeks worth of socks and skivvies was nothing to complain about.
One flight sticks out in my mind as the worst: the pilot would not shut up on the PA for the entire flight, and kept going on and on about how great it was to have a female pilot “for a change” and how much “better” the flight was going to be.
Aside from some turbulence, the flight itself was decent, but the landing was truly scary.
During the first landing approach, we ended up going the length of the runway, and the co-pilot kept telling the pilot to engage the thrust reversers, and ended up getting hit by the pilot when he attempted to do so. Due to the pilot keeping the PA key held down somehow, we got to hear the argument in the cabin.
Near the end of the runway, the co-pilot said that he was going to abort the landing and took control himself, which led to the pilot making a number of outbursts along the lines of how the co-pilot was a “chauvinistic pig” several times over.
After we looped around, the pilot claimed that she had the landing, and for the co-pilot to keep his hands off the control.
Rear wheels touched down…I looked out the window, and before the nose gear touched down, the pilot engaged the thrust reversers and WHAM! the nose gear came down, then pitched up again, and WHAM! a second time, harder than the first time.
Due to the fact that it was around 10 at night, those with a window seat could see a shower of sparks coming from the front of the plane. The fact that the nose was pitching down with the plane on the ground caused some people in the cabin to scream.
When the plane ground to a stop, some people wanted ou
I’m not sure how much money it would take to bribe me to get on a flight, but I’m sure it’s well in to 5 figures.
Now if there was only a train to Hawaii…
Your story sounds unbelievable. If your luck is that bad, it must give your shipmates lots of confidence.
I am not afraid to fly and I am not afraid of terrorists.
I quit using the airlines when they took that right turn and jumped into the deep end of the paranoia pool. I refuse to submit to the TSA Gestapo at the airport. If they ever begin to apply that offensive procedure at the train stations I will quit using trains as well. The current level of security at train stations is not offensive. There are uniform officers, some with dogs, patrolling the terminal. If the dog does not take a sudden interest in your carry on, no one will ever look into it. The gate agent checks your ticket and photo ID as you walk through the door to the platform and in general everyone is treated with the dignity that is expected of law enforcement officers in a free society.
blue streak 1 :
I, too, am a pilot. I am a retired police pilot. It is the police officer in me that is so offended by TSA. That is NOT the way we were taught to treat the citizens we served. Police are there to protect citizens, not to intimidate and control them. Intimidation and control is reserved for the bad guys.
The criminals who committed the crimes of 9/11 were able to do what they did because in the past the best way to insure the safety of passengers and crew was to comply with the hijacker and take him where he wanted to go. The difference between the plane that crashed in PA and the others was that the passengers knew what was going to happen so they fought back.
Now that people know what the hijackers plan to do, you couldn’t hijack an airliner with a hand grenade, much less with box cutters. The passengers wouldn’t sit still for it.
Sky Marshals are the answer, not that paranoid foolishness at the airport.
I prefer freedom to the illusion of safety.
That said, I am done with this conversation.
I have only two questions:
[tup][bow][bow][tup]
On 4 out of those 5 flights, the baggage got misplaced. Basically, go to the pick-up area, wait for the bags, and find that my baggage has either been put onto another flight (happened 3x), or it somehow got sent to the wrong baggage pick up area, despite most of the rest of the flight’s bags making it to the right pick up area (happened once).
Never was it that my baggage was the only one lost or misplaced. One of the worst was when 3 of my buddies bags and mine got sent to Missouri, while we flew to Rome, en route to meet our ship. That took two months for our bags to catch up to us.
Pretty much everyone’s bags were real hard to get back for a while after the “incident” with the landing gear, so that was just not a “just me” thing.
US Airways has a rather bad reputation regarding how they handle (and lose) sailor’s baggage up here. When one has to fly out on orders they are told to not leave anything important in their baggage, and to have a week’s worth of supplies in their carry on baggage, due to the number of lost/missing sea bags.
Part of it is how often the TSA insists on pulling apart our sea bags, even if we are traveling on orders, and the difficulty in getting them repacked by them in time for the flight.
This is the last thing ACES needs. I hope they didn’t lose much money on that locomotive. They run an electric unit on one end for the NEC leg and a diesel for the ACL leg. The article isn’t very specific but it mentions “exhaust” so who knows why the diesel would be catching fire in electric territory.
And, amazingly, 1,400 feet of downed catenary? How is this reasonably possible? Did it hit lines that were already down?
Yes I am wondering also. even if all four tracks and it may have been because all tracks because nothing through there for four hrs. That still is at least 350 ft CAT each track. Fire may have burned through the cross wire support cables allowing all CAT to sag?
Yeah, really, 350 times four is 1,400.
Sounds about right, but wow, ACES is predictably not meeting expectations. For comfort and punctuality at all hours it sure beats the jitney. At $75 a seat I think it’s a good cost for Atlantic City goers.
This incident just reinforces the need for AMTRAK to have a two unit standby diesel locomotive set in PHL. They could have attached the diesels to the front of any train pulled the train through the disabled CAT section, uncoupled in Trenton, Coupled back up to pull another train to PHL, and repeat the process.