The plane carrying 51-year-old Vice President Saulos Chilima and nine others left the southern African nation’s capital, Lilongwe, at 9.17 a.m. and was expected to land 45 minutes later at Mzuzu International Airport.
To be fair the other recent one was a helicopter, which are death machines constantly at odds with gravity. I think the zeppelin is the only other worse mode of air transport. Much respect to rotary pilots, but you won’t catch me riding in a helicopter.
Well maintained, modern helicopters are generally pretty safe. I get that they stay aloft by beating the air into submission. You can land most helicopters even with an engine failure though. You should check out auto rotation. It’s wild, but you can make a pretty reasonable landing as long as there is some space to put it down.
I did helicopter accident investigation while in the Army. Got to ride a very cool research Blackhawk, one of the first UH-60Ms, and play with a huge full motion simulator. I’ll pass on the future helicopter rides, I got my fill while in the service. Autorotation is nifty, but I’ll take the much simpler gliding of fixed wing if I want to get high in the future. I don’t want my pilot trying to remember how best to autorotate the helicopter in current conditions, while also trying to figure out what’s happening, all with relatively low altitude to get it sorted in.
If anything I’ve learned you don’t want to stack the odds against you when it comes to aviation safety. Preferring fixed wing over rotary is part of my safety considerations.
Totally fair. Glide certainly gives more options, and much more time to assess the situation. Plus helicopters don’t really fill a transportation niche that most people need anyway. Fixed wing is dramatically more practical in the vast majority of scenarios.
To be fair the other recent one was a helicopter, which are death machines constantly at odds with gravity. I think the zeppelin is the only other worse mode of air transport. Much respect to rotary pilots, but you won’t catch me riding in a helicopter.
Well maintained, modern helicopters are generally pretty safe. I get that they stay aloft by beating the air into submission. You can land most helicopters even with an engine failure though. You should check out auto rotation. It’s wild, but you can make a pretty reasonable landing as long as there is some space to put it down.
I did helicopter accident investigation while in the Army. Got to ride a very cool research Blackhawk, one of the first UH-60Ms, and play with a huge full motion simulator. I’ll pass on the future helicopter rides, I got my fill while in the service. Autorotation is nifty, but I’ll take the much simpler gliding of fixed wing if I want to get high in the future. I don’t want my pilot trying to remember how best to autorotate the helicopter in current conditions, while also trying to figure out what’s happening, all with relatively low altitude to get it sorted in.
If anything I’ve learned you don’t want to stack the odds against you when it comes to aviation safety. Preferring fixed wing over rotary is part of my safety considerations.
Totally fair. Glide certainly gives more options, and much more time to assess the situation. Plus helicopters don’t really fill a transportation niche that most people need anyway. Fixed wing is dramatically more practical in the vast majority of scenarios.
Yeah, you’re right lol