Friday, December 16, 2005

Air Asia: How cheap it can to be safe?

Air Asia is certainly providing us a cheap way to travel via air especially for people who want to go from or to city on Borneo Island and peninsular Malaysia. After reading the tire burst incident in daily newspaper, I remembered back the one thing that I spot while taking a flight via Air Asia back to Kuala Lumpur.

Let me give you the scenario first. My knowledge in computer never limited to the software but also the hardware. If my computer operating software fails or crash, or infected by a nasty viruses I can easily fix it. It is the same with the hardware. I can do some diagnostic and test to determine why a computer wouldn’t start or why the monitor displays no picture. This is easy, as hardware fail, we tend to change to a new parts and then everything run as good as the new. I find out that tighten back all the screw back was not an enjoying thing to do. So I leave the casing cover on back to the computer casing without the screw in tighten the cover to its casing frame, and when my computer have some problem, I just open the cover and do the necessary repair. That is easy.

What I just describe look like a small thing. Leaving a computer cover without the screw is not as dangerous as you can imagine. Just think what will happen if you leave a couple of screw holes without a screw of an airplane casing and let the plane fly. What you all are going to think about that? Would you sit on a plane that you know that there are few screw hole are empty without a screw to cover it. As I saw this empty screw hole on the plane while it flies few thousand feet above the ground really make me worried. Luckily I have a digital camera on my side and able to took some of the photo as you can see below. I made an email complaint and they acknowledge it and I never heard from their respond again. That complaint was made 2 years ago.



Maybe it not looks as dangerous as I thought last time. It could turn to a dangerous because there are many reason a plane need that screw hole. I’m not an airplane engineer but I bet everyone know why plane need a lots of screw hole to tight all the screw to its frame. The empty screw hole also shows the inexperience and neglect of out plane service engineer. Safety of the passenger is not on their top priority and this can lead to a major problem as I saw in daily news recently. As again I watched on the Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel, an airplane disaster or any other big accident disaster was cause by a small neglect by either of their engineer or the company management who run it. I watch a documentary about a plane that almost crash because of the engineer chooses a wrong screw to the cockpit window.



Skidding over the runway and a tire burst during taxing seems to be a small problem that can easily solves and repair, but how many of this incident that we need to face until the main incident occurs. This might be an indication to something worst to happen and no one want it to happen. We might say that this is an unexpected faulty of the airplane but never we know that most of the major crashes of an airplane around the world can be avoided if the service engineers are doing the job more seriously. It might sound silly but it will not sound like it if something bad really happens later.

Link:
December 14, 2005 19:40 PM
Bernama: AirAsia Jet Makes Successful Landing Though Two Tyres Blow Out

2 comments:

LX said...

Well some say AirAsia isn't safe because the planes keep flying and there isn't a rest period long enough between the flights. But I am quite a frequent flyer with AirAsia and I find that it is just alright. Good leather seats, and now looking forward to their Airbuses. Not much difference compared to MAS. The fare also around the same. Nothing as cheap 'cos I fly with student fare using MAS. Oh one scary thing about AirAsia though.. I often see the Captain pilot suddenly comes out from the cockpit and walk all the way behind. I know it's on auto-pilot but still scares me quite a lot. LOL.

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