Good Crews and Safe Skies

Large passenger engulfed in flames at Haneida Airport in Tokyo! Everyone survived! I call it a pleasant miracle; others prefer to give credit to the flight crew and passengers. Quick evacuation of the aircraft was indeed necessary; the aircraft's interior was fire retardent but not fireproof. Passengers followed directions, and correctly left their belongings onboard. What seems like an anomaly of good disciple to Americans is the expected response by the United States' Federal Aviation Administration. Evacuate a full aircraft in 90 seconds. Are we up to the task? The common Boeing 737 was first evaluated in the 1960's. Since then, passengers have become bigger, seats narrower, and no longer trained with military discipline. But didn't the 2009 landing of Flight 1549 on New York's Hudson River prove that we Americans could do the right thing? Kind of; this plane was on a "banker's run" between New York and the finance-driven city of Charlotte, North Carolina. Before videoconferencing hit its stride in 2020, businesspeople used to take weekly plane trips to routine meetings. So you had a lot of experience fliers who were not predispositioned to rock the norms. A bit different maker than a tourist flight to Orlando. I think, overall, that Japan Airlines Flight 516 is a wake-up to pay attention to maintaining standards of passenger safety.