[flybigjet]

Originally Posted by Alfisti

This is fascinating shit FBJ. have you ever had a situation on a commercial flight where you thought "I'm in trouble here".

Nope. The airlines (despite Boeing's best efforts lately) are AMAZINGLY safe and the maintenance on them is usually pretty spectacular. NOTHING is done without authorization/paper trail-- EVERYTHING has to be documented, and there's a procedure or a "you can/can not fly with this" list for pretty much every piece of equipment on the airplane.

I've been terrified in the jet..... but that was simply because my New Hire First Officer was having a bad day (and the solution there is to take over and then send them off for additional training before letting them near the jet again).

The military? A little bit of a different animal-- but that usually involved people who didn't much like me trying to either blow me out of the sky or shoot a bunch of holes in my jet. The other difference is that in the airlines, whenever you have an emergency the FAA/FAR's direct that you MUST "land at the nearest suitable airport in point of time". In the military, maybe not so much. I'm NOT going to land where the Bad Guys are if there's any possibility of another solution (besides, my jet had four engines-- losing one usually just meant that it was a Tuesday).

R.