Stuff: August 2008 Archives

Sometimes it's like a broken record: it doesn't matter how old an airliner is, but it does matter how well maintained` the craft is. We said that again to a local television station the other day about the MD80 class - one of which had crashed in Madrid on takeoff. The plane, a 1993-vintage MD82, was operated by SAS subsidiary Spanair, and we stressed again and again that it was unsafe and unwise to make assumptions about the MD80 fleets of American or Delta based on what may or may not have happened in Spain. We didn't want to speculate, but we quoted sister media group Flight International as saying that an engine may (or may not)have caught fir e for some reason as the plane rolled down the runway for takeoff. You can see the TV station's piece on the MD80 here.

A nod and a tip of the water bowl goes today to Pino, the long-serving K9 at the Saint Louis international airport, Lambert Field. The 13-year-old Belgian Malinois is also the oldest working dog out of more than 500 certified in the Transportation Security Administration's explosives detection canine team program. She arrived at Lambert in September of 1997 after graduating from the military working dog training course at Lackland Air Force Base near San Antonio, Texas. She is part of a 10-team K-9 force at Lambert focusing on explosives detection and other security details.

.