Jeremy Hermanns dot org

Freelance writer Patrick Smith has written a piece for Salon about my experience onboard Alaska flight 536, in which he attempts to take me to task for my account of the experience:

I found Hermanns’ account of the incident, which he describes as “horrific,” and “the unthinkable,” to be luridly overblown. He confuses the smell of activated oxygen canisters as that of commercial jet fuel, which he wrongly identifies as “AV-gas” or “JP4″ (it is neither). Hermanns said repeatedly that he believed the fuselage hole was located at the back of the aircraft. Some news stations actually showed an MD-80 with graphics inexplicably pointing to the jet’s rear pressurization outflow valve as the purported hole — well aft, and on the opposite side, of the damage.

So essentially my mistake, in Patrick Smith’s eye, is honestly describing a situation where, regardless of my pilot’s experience, I was helpless to do anything, and unclear as to what was happening, as “horrific” or “unthinkable”. Oh, and he’s also pissy with me because I referenced an erroneous news report on the location of the hole in the plane.

And you know what–if I were a journalist reporting on the story, I would have been sure to go out and get all the details. I would have called to get official statements from the airline and the people at the airport in Seattle. But that’s where I get confused–I’m missing where in any way I gave the impression that’s what I was doing.

I provided a first-hand account of MY experience onboard the flight. An account which many people found captivating, and thus, I got a TON of traffic last week.

That’s where Patrick Smith comes in. Patrick has a site of his own, and a book where he shares with the world his air travel expertise as a licensed pilot (I’m told it’s a real page-turner). Patrick came to my site, offered some critical assessments of my choice of two words (those very same two he was SO aggravated by in the Salon piece) and then proceeded to fill my site with spamtastic links to his books and site. Not only was Patrick beating a dead horse (I’d been chided left-and-right throughout the comments for the very same things he was saying), he was filling my message board with spam-filled messages trying to boost his own site’s traffic and pagerank. But in Patrick’s world, any refusal to help him promote his products is obviously an attempt to manipulate the publicity for my own gain (which, in case you’re wondering, is still at a whopping $0).

I understand Patrick’s bitterness–after all, last week more people read my story than read his writing ALL of last year. But now to help his own cause, he’s decided to try and make himself part of the story. In order to do so, he’s had to distort our encounters (can you show me the “belligerent” email, Patrick?) and completely quote me out of context; while he says “Here, consolidated for clarity, is his reply:”, he’s really saying “consolidated to manipulate his statements in order to make ME part of the story”. (I’ve posted the full body of my email in the comments of this post)

But as much as having your words blatantly distorted by a “major” publication like Salon sucks, I understand that this is the fate of anyone who publicly shares their experiences, be it online or thru any other form of media. The unique thing I’ve learned about sharing your experiences in a blog (with comments) is that the conversation can develop really fast–and plenty of opportunists, like Patrick Smith, will gladly try to co-opt it, whether or not they have anything to actually contribute to the discussion.

Wanted to thank everyone for the vibrant discussion going on about my account of Flight #536’s depressurization/landing. I’ll try to keep the comments moderated as much as possible, to remove the ugly/dirty/off-topic ones. But bear with me–we’re getting bombarded right now.

In the meantime, it’s time to play a fun little game–it’s called ‘Guess Whose IP Address These Nasty Comments Originated From’ (I’ll give you a hint — it rhymes with Mawaska Bearlines):

While this maybe a private domain, please have the balls to post all comments. Not edit it to serve your own purpose as the public will read this site based on your comments to the media.

The truth is not always pleasant, but every one has a right to prove or disprove his comments. i.e. he’s not a licenced pilot, it’s jet-A not av gas, etc.

Ralph
Posted Dec 28, 11:45 AM
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You pussy!

Leave up all of the post! Every one has a right to read and write about what they think of your experiance!

Ralph
Posted Dec 28, 11:17 AM
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Jeremy

Did you edit some of the comments here on your board? Some of the comments seam to have gotten smaller in size and content? Hmm… Makes me wonder, do you not like all of the truth to come out?

Ralph
Posted Dec 28, 11:09 AM
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The smell you encountered was probably the Oxegen genarators firing above your head when you pulled the mask down.

As for the phone issue. They have caused problems with the cargo fire detetectors in the past, causing them to indicate smoke/fire in the pits on some aircraft. This problem has somewhat been solved, but no one is 100% sure. There is still some concern that they can cause problems with older navigation systems.

Jet
Posted Dec 28, 10:58 AM
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You come up with some very imaginative terms to describe the smell and what was happening. Can you explain to me, since when did jet liners start using AV gas? What was burning? YOu say and I quote “I knew something was terribly wrong. As the smell of acrid AV-gas and burning plastic filled the cabin”. Since the hole was far forward of the both the wings in which the fuel is stored and the engines for that matter, where did the smell of AV gas come from? No report of anything burnt was ever made, please explain the burning smell?

Do me one favore. I know you were involved in a terrible event, but don’t make more out of it than it was. Lieing about the smell of gas and burning anything in your blog only serves your own agenda.

john
Posted Dec 28, 7:58 AM
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(PLEASE NOTE — I didn’t edit these in any way–the bad spelling is all them.)

Like I said–these just originated from an IP address registered to them according to my Wordpress comment logs; I don’t know if they’re from actual Alaska employees, or maybe just hackers using Alaska’s IP address. But according to my server logs and a simple WHOIS lookup, they all came from an IP address registered to Alaska Airline, Inc..

Thanks again, Alaska. You guys are the best.

Boy, what a day. In what started as a typical flight home from a typical holiday weekend, changed drastically twenty minutes after take off. My fiancée and I were returning from a few days in Seattle when the unthinkable happened to us - our Alaska MD-80 Airplane tore a hole in it’s fuselage at 30K feet.

First of all, I’m just glad I’m here to write this post, to tell the tale of this horrifying incident - but the stupid circumstances by which it happened, are upsetting.

Nothing can describe the helpless feeling you go through during a time like this, when you are absent any control, you cannot breathe, and everyone around is stunned into fear. It all started with a loud bang - the cabin air began to swirl and the engine sound became deafening. As a GA-VFR pilot, I knew something was terribly wrong. As the smell of acrid AV-gas/JP4 and burning plastic filled the cabin, it created more fear in the eyes of the holiday passengers around me. We were all gripped in silence, surrounded by the white noise from the engines that eerily engulfed the plane into a surreal atmosphere. And as the oxygen masks deployed from the ceiling in a familiar, video-esque manner, we all grasped them in fear - trying to figure out how to breathe through the flimsy pieces of plastic. Parents were the most confused – as the masks were too large for their babies’ faces and were not easy to put on in such a panicked situation. The next few minutes passed like seconds – the plane started diving down to a lower level … and fast.

The first moment of some release was the pilot’s voice over the speaker. It had been more than 20 minutes since he last spoke, when he told us we had reached altitude. Now, he told us that we had leveled off at 10K feet and we were heading back to Sea-Tac airport. Again, since I am a pilot – I had many ideas on how and why this happened. This morning I found out that one of my assumptions was correct – there was a hole in the plane that caused the decompression. A hole that could have cost many lives, including my own. The enraging fact is that a non-union baggage handler ran into the side of the plane moments prior to take-off … and that it was never reported.

Thank god for the help of an amazing cabin crew and pilot. Without them, who knows what could have happened.

The worst part for me was the fact that my Fiancee and I were 4 rows apart and she was closer to the rear of the plane where the loud ‘bang’ and Engine noise was coming from; I couldn’t stop thinking of how she felt, and how terrified she must be all alone back there. But as you know Alaska Airlines often ‘oversells’ flights as usual, in an overbooked flight they couldn’t accomodate us.

Ugh…we’ll here are the photos of the incident as I could take them on my Treo 650, sorry about the resolution

Update: Some people have been looking “into” my Civil Aviation Information (Captain X), unfortunately it’s not listed under ‘Jeremy Hermanns’ - my nickname is ‘Jeremy’; but my legal name ‘Robert Jeremiah Hermanns’. For the record: Date of Issue of my FAA Private Pilot Certificate is April 26, 1999. Took my flight test at Van Nuys Airport in a Katana DA-20, and my written at John Wayne in Orange County. Also, I’m a previous AOPA member and Piper Cherokee 140 Owner.

P.S.: I am not editing any comments…the server is being overloaded and not resolving while I’m trying approve them all with this much traffic.