I appreciate adding my comments to Garth Greenlee’s letter to the editor (Journal, July 29.) The subject was the recent choice of a new airline, one using single engine airplanes to serve the Cortez airport.
I write as a retired airline captain who was based in Denver, therefore quite familiar with the significant weather challenges created by the Rocky Mountains. Additionally I was an airline passenger safety expert who spent many years instituting passenger safety improvements, now found in today’s airliners.
In this latter role, the primary obstacle to increasing safety and accident survivability was always the cost. At one time in the 1980s the value of an airline passenger’s life was determined by the Department of Transportation to be around $350,000. If the cost of a safety improvement wouldn’t save more lives than its cost, based upon the number of the passenger lives to be saved, the improvement would be strongly resisted as “not being cost effective.”
We now have a decision made by the Cortez City Council to replace twin-engine airline service with single-engine airline service. This decision is apparently based only upon cost, not safety.
Please recognize that if a twin-engine airplane flying over the Rocky Mountains experiences an engine failure, that airplane will land at an airport. If a single-engine airplane experiences an engine failure in the same location, that airplane will land in close proximity to the point of engine failure.
On a nice clear day, the pilot of the single engine airplane may be able to find a straight piece of road or a plowed field to make a survivable emergency landing. At night or in bad weather, don’t expect the same results.
I understand the recently chosen single-engine airline underbid the current twin-engine airline by $20,000. Five thousand people fly commercially out of the Cortez airport each year. The simple math is that each passenger will save $4 by flying in a single-engine airliner versus flying in a twin engine airliner. When flying out of Cortez, I’d rather have a second engine than $4.
Roger Brooks
Mancos
