On Tue, 23 Sep 2003 09:58:22 +0100, "Miss L. Toe"
wrote:

[ Snip ]

INSPASS. I have one; It's expired (although you wouldn't know it to
look at it) and it has the wrong passport on it.

It worked fine, but only saved a few minutes.

So do you still have to wait in the main line (queue) until you get to a
desk, I got the impression that you can bypass the whole queue (which
obviously varies in length/time).

Sure, you got to go to the machines for the immigration inspection,
but sometimes it would decide you needed to talk to a real inspector
(either because the machine wouldn't recognize your hand, or just as a
random check).

[ Snip ]

Does that mean he doesnt believe his own warning lights ?

How *do* you come up with this stuff?

Warning lights are just that, warnings. You want the warning system
to fail safe, so if a sensor fails you get a warning, rather than a
lack of warning when whatever the sensor is for triggers.

Pilots, being not very stupid, know which sensors are most likely to
fail (thus triggering the warning light), even when there's nothing
wrong... and moreover (again, being not very stupid) they know how to
read the rest of the instruments to see if the warning looks
plausible.

So if the pilot stated he was 100% confident, the instruments were
saying everything is OK, but the warning light was saying something
was out of range. Conclusion: the warning sensor is faulty.

I might agree with your comments had the pilot said he was 99% confident
there was nothing wrong with the aircraft.

Your arrogance at presuming you know better than an experienced pilot
is, umm, interesting.

The *fact* is that there are some warning lights whose validity you
can determine by other means. For example, consider the "ice!"
warnings that are built into some cars. Now, if you see an "Ice!"
warning light at noon in Death Valley during August, you can
*honestly* state that you are 100% certain that there's no problem.

And there are sensors on aircraft that you can double check by other
means; take a temperature sensor: if you get an "overtemp" warning and
the guage says the temperature is (a) fine and (b) moves when you
increase and decrease the throttle, you can authoritively state that
there's nothing wrong with the aircraft.

That's the facts. Your dumb attempts to second guess someone
notwithstanding.

Malc.