Fred Hunt comments

Wow! Where was he from?

It's 28 hours per week, longer during holidays, I'm on a student visa here at the moment. Some companies do expect you to work longer, not really giving you the opportunity to say no. If you're not strong willed they'll convince you that it's normal and nobody will find out. Shame on ichiran, I'll not be taking my friends that visit Japan there anymore.

Small minority. Ignore, move on...

I can't believe people are suggesting up to $300 to climb mount Fuji. It's a mountain, not a theme park. Tourists bring in enough money for the local towns and the infrastructure set up to handle them. It's not free to get there (from outside and inside Japan), it's not free to park, it's not free to eat or drink food around there, tourists are already paying enough.

There is really nothing that can be done to control climbing, other than a booking system or scheduled climbs to prevent overcrowding on the path chokepoints. Other than that, they can widen paths, to increase capacity.

A very interesting and well written article, spoilt by a misleading title.

Shame.

This article was hard to read, was it translated by a machine?

APA hotels are not exactly aimed at Chinese tourists anyway...

I'm actually pretty appalled that people boil down this very talented married couple's work down to porn.

Well done for propping up the misinformation that the the world already has about Japan. Well done.

A one or two room "hotel" is to the detriment of everybody else?

My, how pretentious are you?

Which is why need to wait for a report before trying to claim his pilots license.

Even if it was deemed to be attributable to human error, there can be mitigating circumstances. Did he hear the RT clearly? Was there uncertainty about other traffic? Did he see something the local controller didn't?

Remains to be seen.

Cool. I'll just tear up my license. Thanks guys. I obviously chose the wrong career.

I was military air traffic for 11 years, I've been civil for ten. Trust me when I say that if a pilot wants to land and sees it as the safest option, no subsequent board of enquiry on the planet will question his choice if he knows exactly what to say.

We don't know all the facts; once replays are seen, transcripts are read and CCTV is analysed we can work out what happened, until then it's mere speculation.

I could tell you of many occasions where my executive control has been ignored, and in all cases the pilot was in a reasonable position to do so. Right the way up to Class A airspace.

The ultimate decision on whether to land or not resides with the pilot. If he/she feels that safety may be compromised by not landing then he can go ahead and land.

I'm an air trafficker and have been for 21 years. I kind of know my stuff.

Without knowing the outcome of the investigation that's quite a bold statement.

The Transocean pilot deemed that it was still safe to land and he did.

Ultimate decision on land/no land is with the captain of the aircraft, irrespective of what ATC say. That's a global thing.

Woo! There's common sense and decent debate here. I expected to be shot down in flames for not criticising Asiana instantly.

I'm an Air Traffic Control Engineer by the way, I know a little about aviation. :D

It may be the airport's fault, there are many factors involved in setting up an airfield for use by commercial airliners; navigation charts, obstruction lighting, approach patterns...

Suspending the route pending investigation is wise.

China invade a sovereign nation? You're as naive as those who think US presence is a must. They haven't invaded Taiwan yet, and they firmly believe it's theirs.

This isn't the twentieth century anymore...

I hope she is found soon and safe.

Geoff, you can't literally translate Japanese to English and expect it to make perfect sense. Literally that would mean "yakuza stop I humbly receive". You have to interpret it.

As for a former AKB48 star being a tough cop, I'm sure she's grown up a bit since being an idol. ;)