How the Worst Airline Accident in History Was Avoided and More Airline Consolidation Coming

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About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. There were four planes on Charlie, but absent the warning he would have hit one or two of them, not all four. That’s apparent from the animation.

    Horrific to be sure, but would that still have been record-setting?

  2. So was this idiot who’d reported seeing planes on the “runway” actually going to land on top of those planes which he clearly saw? Hello? Please tell me that he is not still flying? Not only could he not distinguish the runway with it’s landing path lights from the taxiway, but apparently was going to land on top of planes he reported seeing!?

    This is the kind of incompetence they must weed out entirely if they think they’re going to keep preventable accidents from happening. They can only do so much (and have) with mechanical failures; the human factor needs to be winnowed down as much as possible and then error redundancy provided both mechanically and via planned oversight.

  3. Will whoever is in charge of universal truth and accuracy please get everyone to stop referring to Southwest as “low-cost?” It definitely is NOT low-cost.
    Southwest’s business model apparently is developed to serve cities largely abandoned by Legacy3 kleptocracy. Smart move Southwest. Good for you. I live in an inland city of one million where 85% of all our flights are now via Southwest. Delta, United and AA fly only to their hubs, usually with small planes at high prices. Unless you are connecting outside the US (oh please, yes!) the routings are often idiosyncratic and lengthy.
    Unless fliers want to go to Salt Lake City at 5AM to get to New Orleans by evening at a high price, Southwest offers the only reasonable alternative. Sometimes Southwest provides a bargain, or is marginally lower cost; sometimes the same, sometimes more. But, give it a rest: never “low-cost.”

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