A Runway Excursion Is Not a Crash: What Aviation Owes the Travelling Public
A Runway Excursion Is Not a Crash: What Aviation Owes the Travelling Public By Alexander Nwuba I have loved airplanes since I was a child. It is that love, long before any title or office, that brought me into aviation, and it is what still brings me to the airport. So, I have never been able to run an airline from behind a desk. As CEO, I spent more time at the airport than in the office: standing in the terminal, watching passengers, watching their experience, their anxieties, their small frustrations, and sometimes stepping in personally. One occasion has stayed with me for years. A crew, in a hurry to resolve a snag, informed passengers of a technical problem and then opened the engine cowling in full view of the cabin. For more than thirty minutes the passengers sat watching engineers work inside an open engine. When the work was done, and the aircraft declared serviceable, the passengers refused to go. I do not blame them. Nobody had translated what t...