built airplane. the airplane has not shown any likelihood of metal fatigue, so i don t believe that that will be an issue. there s certainly nothing in the fleet history to indicate that. so with the kind of history, extensive history that the a-320 has had and the maintenance being having been performed on schedule and routinely by airasia, i certainly this is something that the investigators will look at but this airplane has a good solid history, based on my experience with it as well well. indonesian officials believe the plane went down over the java sea. talk to me about this search zone and the sea floor and what kind of conditions they are experiencing there in their search. i think you hit on a really interesting point about the depth of the sea floor.
this case. shortly thereafter controllers lost contact with the plane. the flight was scheduled to land at 8:30 a.m. local. here now security expert and former commercial pilot an no any roman. thanks for being with us. you are in that situation. a lot of turbulence. you ask air traffic control, can we deviate, increase altitude, whatever, to get around what s in front of us. sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn t. you hit a situation where you may need to take evasive action. there is something with an airbus a-oh 320 that could be part of the way the particular pilots are getting feedback, if you will, from the equipment. that s true. there is a parameter called flight envelope protection which is basically a series of computers on the a-320. those computers naturally have software parameters. they interpret the pilot s flight control inputs. there have been cases where the
enjoyed my time as the captain on the airplane. we flew it in all weather. it is a very maneuverable airplane. it has absolute state of the art electronics, both weather radar and systems on the airplane. so the pilots of an a-320 are prepared as anybody in the sky to be able to deal with inclement weather. and pilots professional pilots deal with thunderstorms and inclement weather regularly. it s part of the experience that you gain as a pilot. so the deviation requests are absolutely normal. the altitude the airplane service ceiling is 39,000 feet. then the computers onboard will tell you at a push of a button what altitude capability you have for the specific weight and temperature that you are. so if they requested 38,000 feet that they know that they can get there safely with the profit margins. so other than the fact that there was not a call to air
what has come out of it is a slight rebalancing. i ve spoken to people very familiar with this deal. what they tell me is that they, the airlines can live with it and now it is all about execution. so here you ve spun me now. you re saying, your fares are going up but not sxs you think. here s the other thing. people complain about the planes them say this is a really old plane. they ve gotten gins and wings. they fly but they re not the night of thing on the planett and you tell me that here again, there is another side of the story. i m not going to sit here and do american airlines s pr for them. but they have put in the largest order for narrow bodied planes. 737s, a-320s. that is going on take its time over the next five or six years.
we turn next hertoew reporting tonight after we learned of a close call at the san francisco airport. a major disaster narrowly averted, an air canada passenger plane coming in for a landing, heading straight for a taxiway, where four other passenger planes were waiting to take off. up to 1,000 passengers on those planes. here s abc s david kerley. reporter: new details tonight on a disaster averted on this runway. an air canada pilot, confused on a night approach. tower, i just want to confirm. this is air canada 7-5-9 we see some lights on the runway there. air canada 759 confirmed, cleared to land 2-8 right. there is no one on 2-8 right but you. reporter: what the pilot of the a-320 was actually seeing friday night were four other jets, potentially carrying up to 1,000 people on the taxiway running parallel to the runway. a pilot on the ground sounding the alarm. where is this guy going? he is on the taxiway. reporter: less than ten seconds later, the pilot told to abort