Sorry, but are you serious with that first statement? I appreciate that you are maybe not a brilliant flyer, but that That is incredibly crass and genuninely hope no Virgin staff / crew are on these boards to read that. :brick::fork::dazzle:
I honestly dont know where to start with that comment, and I apologise, but for the first time in 10 years on these boards I'm going to have what will probably be a rant .
By that logic, people wouldn't fly with Virgin, and wouldn't fly on an A330 - which, if taking this on a UK/Irish Airline basis, rules out Monarch, Thomas Cook and AerLingus. That leaves Thomson (previously Air UK Leisure/Air2000/First Choice and Britannia) who operate the 767 and BA and the 777- and I think you'll find that both airlines / airplanes have had incidents of similar nature at one point or another.
As you mentioned there are a couple of variables.
As far as Virgin are concerned, few airlines have a safety record like them. The only other time since they started flying in '84 that a plane has landed and deployed slides was in '97 when one set of gear failed to lock in the fully down position. One other flight maybe in 05/06 time landed in Amsterdam after it stopped automatically switching fuel between tanks and had to be done manually.
Neither were due to lack of maintenance, they were technical faults.
Yesterday's flight on Beauty Queen (little over a year old, and done a lot of gatwick, manchester and especially glasgow flights) came up with the indicator to say fire detected in the rear hold. No proof either way whether there was or not yet. When you get that indication that plane has to land ASAP and when it does, especially when its full of fuel, and there is a lot of pressure on those rubber tyres, slides will be deployed. The only fire dealt with by the airport fire teams was that following the heat build up in the tyres affecting the undercarriage - no surprises in that.
What views you are posting probably aren't helped by reading the comments of the couple of cretins the BBC unfortunately chose to speak to. One who came out with this gem: "I knew something was wrong when we took off. "The plane was really wobbly. The cabin crew made things worse. They were all really panicked. "We weren't told anything other than we had to go back to Gatwick and make an emergency landing." Has to be a first time flyer considering all flights are largely wobbly in take off. In addition, if this was an indicator of a fire, but no actual fire, then that wasn't going to make the plane wobble.
Then there was the one who moaned that the crew member was panicking and screaming 'get off' repeatedly. Then he had the incredulous nerve to moan that people were lying in a heap at the bottom of the slide, yet still sending people down. Of course, it does state in the emergency card that you should run immediately when at the bottom of the slide.
better that than not getting off at all. Philistine. I was pleased to see Virgin briefing the media on how that evacutation was perfectly executed, and why it is standard practice to scream / shout. No doubt, as with the aftermath of the BA 777 landing at LHR a few years back people will complain about how they were spoken to, not realising of course how fortunate they are.
Unfortunately in these situations, one cant afford to be very British and calming say 'now, if you wouldnt mind awfully moving along and going down this slide'. In an emergency landing you're to get that plane emptied in 90 seconds. That is 300 people. How long does it take you to get off a plane normally? If any example is needed then this is it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Airlines_Flight_120
I think you'll find that nearly every airline, and certainly the UK ones, albeit in a former guise for the charters has had some kind of incident, although not all major. I remember being in Orlando a couple years ago when a TCX A330 had a moment to itself over Georgia or just before Sanford i think it was. Can't remember what the issue was, certainly not major.
The other factor is the aircraft, and this is where the media often hype things up. They will look at a plane incident and say its the xxx incident of that type - but then you have to think about how many thousand of that aircraft are flying daily around the world and the type of incident. Problems with a plane can occur for any number of reason - the Airbus that landed on the Hudson River - bird strike. But you could have a weather related issue, maintenance fault or a random technical fault - engine failure / loss of pressure. These can affect any airline and any plane, no matter how good their safety record is.
Further to the point I made at the startIf you were to look at every type of aircraft that flies to anywhere, but in this instance Orlando, be it internationally or domestically, which has had some technical fault, emergency landing or worse -
you wouldn't be flying at all.
What you dont realise how reliable aircraft are, and when you are on trans-oceanic flights they need to be. Take the A330 - has ETOPS of 240 minutes. That defines the time length that an aircraft is permitted to be from an emergency landing site in case of an engine failure. The 777 which BA fly to Orlando got its updated to 330 - longest of any twin engine plane - at the tail end of last year, having had only one incident - at LHR, and was a BA plane, with a fault determined to be an ice build up that couldn't have been discovered in production or testing. The 747 which Virgin operate, and 5 of which are some of the newest in the sky, can fly on if it loses a couple or three engines. That said, you won't be able to fly high or far for long on one engine but it has been done before.
As far as flying on Virgin goes, no one should be bothered for a nano second about that concern.
