Airline Crash in Sioux City

Notwithstanding Capt. Haynes’ admirable and extreme modesty, it would seem as if some credit for the extraordinary number of survivors of the crash is due to the safety regulations required by the FAA, and I’ll be interested to learn what its investigation reveals.

I think the media’s reporting about this crash has improved over reporting about similar disasters of the past, but there remains too often, it seems to me, a tendency to think of design and maintenance as two distinct things. I know from personal experience that they are regarded in the aircraft industry as being so interrelated that the connection even has a name: maintainability. Unless I’ve missed it, I haven’t even noticed the word being used.

As I understand it, the maintainability of an airplane relates to the fact that for the plane to be maintained properly, it has to be engineered with its maintenance in mind.

RONALD WEBSTER

Long Beach