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My attachment and love for the aviation industry goes way back. I’m also a private pilot and the owner of RareAviation. So I tend to wake up and take notice when another airlines parks the craft for the last time, locks the doors and walks away.

The commercial airline industry seems like an impossible business to run. With escalating fuel prices and cutthroat pricing I can’t figure out how any airlines is making a profit. But that’s probably the entire in a nutshell, they aren’t.

Cheap Airline Tickets

In a couple of weeks I’m flying back to the U.S. from England and it is only costing me £120. I don’t know how an airlines can fly me that far for that little. But as long as they want to sell the ticket at that price, I’ll buy it. American Airlines wanted about $1,135 for a trip of similar length. Now if you want to see crazy air travel pricing look at the Ryanair website. For many destinations in Europe you can fly free and just pay the airport tax. I don’t know how they do it, but they do.

Even old U.S. Airways has some amazing deals. If I buy their first class transatlantic ticket online if costs about $4,000 but if I buy the cheapest coach ticket and then upgrade at the airport, it only costs $500 for the first row, lay flat beds. It might be a loophole, but I’m enjoying it.

Aloha Joins MAXjet

It was unfortunate that MAXjet went out of business on Christmas Eve and left people stranded. I’m still working with my credit card company on getting my money back from my bankrupted scheduled flights.

At least Aloha had the decency to not go bust on April Fools Day. Yeah, the MAXjet failure still stings since it was on December 24th.

When an airline goes out of business, it’s not just the passengers that get stranded, it’s the employes and vendors as well. Aloha Airlines had been around since 1946 and some people certainly made a lifetime of service their entire career. But for others, gone is their job and gone are their dreams.

I’d love to get some comments from any Aloha employee and hear how the loss of this airlines has impacted you.

Aloha Airlines Spectacular Disaster

On April 28, 1988, the aircraft, Queen Liliuokalani (registration number N73711) took off from Hilo International Airport at 13:25 HST bound for Honolulu. There were 90 passengers and five crew members on board. No unusual occurrences were reported during the take-off and climb.

Around 13:48, as the aircraft reached its normal flight altitude of 24,000 feet (7,300 m) about 23 nautical miles (43 km) south-southeast of Kahului, a small section on the left side of the roof ruptured. The resulting explosive decompression tore off a large section of the roof, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area.

Part of the design of the 737 was for stress to be alleviated by controlled area breakaway zones. The intent was to provide controlled depressurization that would maintain the integrity of the fuselage structure. The age of the plane and the condition of the fuselage (that had corroded away and stressed the rivets beyond their designed capacity) appear to have conspired to render the design a part of the problem; when that first controlled area broke away, according to the small rupture theory, the rapid sequence of events resulted in the failure sequence. This has been referred to as a “zipper effect.”

Aloha Airlines Loses TopFirst Officer Madeline “Mimi” Tompkins’ head was jerked back during the decompression, and she saw cabin insulation flying around the cockpit. Captain Robert Schornsteimer looked back and saw blue sky where the first class cabin’s roof had been. Tompkins immediately contacted Kahului Airport on Maui to declare an emergency.

At the time of the decompression, the chief flight attendant, Clarabell Lansing, was standing at seat row 5 collecting drink cups from passengers. According to passengers’ accounts, Lansing was ejected through a hole in the side of the airplane. On the side of the plane, investigators later found what looked like an imprint of a head with bloodstains on the side of the plane, which were supposedly from Clarabell Lansing. This is now known as the Ghost Imprint.

Flight attendant Michelle Honda, who was standing near rows #15 and #16, was thrown violently to the floor during the decompression. Despite her injuries, she was able to crawl up and down the aisle to assist and calm the terrified passengers. Flight attendant Jane Sato-Tomita, who was at the front of the plane, was seriously injured by flying debris, and was thrown to the floor. Passengers held onto her during the descent into Maui.

Before landing, passengers were instructed to don their lifejackets, in case the aircraft did not make it to Kahului. Some passengers inflated their lifejackets while the aircraft was still in flight (see photo), possibly reducing or eliminating some injuries. However in most cases inflating a life jacket while still inside the aircraft could trap the user in a sinking fuselage as the water level rises.

The crew performed an emergency landing on Kahului Airport’s runway 2 at 13:58. Upon landing, the crew deployed the aircraft’s emergency slide/rafts, and evacuated passengers from the aircraft quickly. In the photo provided, First Officer Mimi Tompkins can be seen assisting passengers down the evacuation slide/raft. In all, 65 people were reported injured, seven seriously.

At the time, Maui had no plan for a disaster of this type. The injured were taken to the hospital by the tour vans from Akamai Tours (now defunct) by office personnel and mechanics driving them since the Island only had a couple of ambulances. Air Traffic Control radioed Akamai and requested as many of their 15 passenger vans as they could spare to go to the airport (less than a mile away) to transport the injured. Two of the Akamai drivers were former medics and established a triage on the runway. The aircraft was a write-off. What could have been a major disaster ended with one crew death and no passenger deaths; the rest of the crew and passengers survived.

- Accident Description From Wikipedia

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Steve

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