Coulson Fireliner 737 down in WA. Crew reported to be ok.
Ex Southwest Airlines 27 years old. Converted to firefighting following a 3 year mod program around 2019.
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They only recently were awarded the LAT contract by the Feds too.
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Wth is with all these plane incidents recently?
Probably a combination of things such as being in storage for the best part of two years then you have the fact that social media is a lot more prevalent and quick to report on the incidents. There has always been a stack of incidents in other years but we just never heard about them. Now we have a lot more data and apps available for amateur enthusiasts and media to trawl over just looking for a issue
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Any tips for nervous flyers?
Getting on a plane Wednesday.
Avoid flying through bushfires
Chile is grim ATM
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Just remember you have more chance of being involved in a car accident on the way to the airport. If you make it to the terminal unscathed you are home and hosed.
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Firefighting planes are always very risky, so probably discount that one.
The other issues I’m not sure
Don’t read this thread.
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Watch some people reviewing airlines and their experiences on them. I know a few nervous flyers and they have told me seeing the flight as a product/ service as opposed to a ‘flight’ itself takes away some of the mystique and nervousness of flying.
My father was a crop duster pilot and his company won the firefighting contract towards the end of his tenure there. He came down a couple of times in the crop duster but never crashed a firefighter. One pilot from his company was killed in a crash and a couple others in the industry died in a 12 month period and as my brothers were still very young I think it was my mother who hastened his retirement from the industry 
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That is the second Coulson Aviation fire bomber crash in Australia in 3 years too.
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Remember that you’re lessening your chance of being caught in a horrific earthquake.
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Nothing to worry about; I have been flying around the globe for over 50 years. Never had any incident. Have them every day driving my car; thogh I am a crap driver.
- odds for dying in a commerical flight are about one in eleven million
- odds of dying as a plane passenger at 1 in 205,552.
- odds of 1 in 4,050 for dying as a cyclist
- odds 1 in 1,086 for drowning
- odds 1 in 102 for a car crash
- one plane crash for approximately every 1.2 million flights.
- Qantas has never had a fatal jet airliner accident
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My wife’s uncle flew the Erickson Skycranes as water bombers all over the world. In fact he was here for the Back Saturday bushfires in 2009.
The number of crashes he’d been involved in over the years was simply ridiculous. He did say water bombing was less dangerous than other jobs he’d done over the years, like forestry work and power lines.
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I was and sometimes still suffer.
Strangely watching Airline disasters really helped. It taught me that most of the crashes happened over 20 years ago and the recent ones are usually something to do with the pilots.
It’s safer than ever.
- Turbulence is normal and expected through clouds.
- I wear noise cancelling headphones and tune out to all the cabin noise.
- And I try and sit up as close to the front as possible. Seat 5A is my favourite. It’s quieter and smoother.
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Those odds are made up numbers (I meaan one in eleven million what. For a car crash is that 1 in 102 crashes is fatal, 1 in 102 people who get in cars will die of a crash, 1 in 102 times you drive in a car you will die …), but the point is reasonable
The passenger aircraft design codes require a probability of failure (what that means though …) of 1E-10… Thats a pretty small number.
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