111–120 of 435 posts
In the early 1960s, a pilot mistook a WW2 airfield for Heathrow, and landed his 707 on it, barely stopping before the end of the runway. The runway being too short to lift a 707, mechanics stripped everything out of it they could to reduce the weight - seats, interiors, etc. They put barely enough gas in it to hop over to Heathrow, and managed to get it there safely. The pilot who landed there was cashiered.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Okay, but do military-grade systems use AM like this too? I imagine their needs aren't any less than those of civilians, and I imagine they've gotten their communication systems to work just fine. So what's the issue?
I don't understand what is so wrong with the transmission quality in that MP3. The issues I hear sound like they are simply due to trying to transmit from an extremely noisy environment (the cockpit of an airplane); they are mitigating the pilot's voice being entirely drowned in the background noise by placing the microphone right next to their mouth, but that then causes the sound of their breath to be extremely not…
In the early 1960s, a pilot mistook a WW2 airfield for Heathrow, and landed his 707 on it, barely stopping before the end of the runway. The runway being too short to lift a 707, mechanics stripped everything out of it they could to reduce the weight - seats, interiors, etc. They put barely enough gas in it to hop over to Heathrow, and managed to get it there safely. The pilot who landed there was cashiered.
“Cashiered”?
The moral of this story for me is: be that "another pilot." To be clear, "another pilot" of another aircraft. Not as clear as it could be just like the title of this article is ambiguous. The moral of this story for me is: call out immediately if you see something off. He's the real hero. Even if the ATC controller immediately saw the plane being misaligned at the same time - that feedback confirming another set of e…
Speaking up is a no-brainer.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a private pilot who has flown into SFO once, and flies over SFO on a regular basis (I'm based at Palo Alto airport). This is not being overblown. If you listen to the audio tape, the tower orders the go-around at the 33 second mark, and United 1 reports that "Air Canada flew directly over us" 16 seconds later. That is a breathtakingly close call. Safety margins are wide when pilots don't screw up. But this one di…
> Safety margins are wide when pilots don't screw up. But this one did. Royally. And the safety margin was wide enough to absorb that screw up. This is _why_ we have wide safety margins. So that one screw up doesn't absorb all of it. People will always screw up, and policy accounts for that fact.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, autolanding, or if the pilot was using ILS (Instrument Landing System), then this problem would almost never happen, as they would be aware there was a problem. However, most pilots eschew automation especially on short finals, and prefer the 'hand fly' the aircraft in so that they can maintain complete control over the aircraft. Not a bad thing, and pilots want to actually fly the plane at crucial times. When h…
I was going to ask about the ILS, which I assumed pilots always used for lining up their approach. I watched a friend of mine who was a pilot, punching in ILS codes on a training simulator and I remembered it myself years ago from Microsoft Flight Simulator 4. (now that I think about it, I think he even mentioned that he didn't often use ILS). It seems like a pretty critical system for lining up an approach on the ri…
(Also, would have loved SLEW MODE on the real thing, but that is a conversation for another time and dimension) :D
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like a design flaw. Do any taxiways have markings etc. to make them more distinguishable?
They do. They have different lighting systems/colours etc. to differentiate them. Taxiways generally have green lights along the centerline to guide aircraft rolling on the ground, but runways usually have white (bright) lights along the edges . There are times when even THAT causes confusion, because sometimes the taxiway centreline lights can look like the edge lights of the runway - especially if the light is refr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you! That raises the question, (a) why is there no kind of warning system for when you're about to land on the wrong runway (there's a GPS system in the aircraft that knows where you're going, right?) and (b) why is the pilot (or at least co-pilot) never looking at a map on final approach? Is it really that dangerous for anyone to take a quick glance?
When flying visually (VFR), taxiway lighting and runway lighting are visually very different. Taxiway lighting is almost always blue, whereas runway lighting is white (with any displaced threshold marked with red lights). In daylight, the markings on the runway are unmistakably different. I'm not instrument rated but my understanding is that with ILS, instrument approaches can handle multiple parallel runways precise…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This is why you want human pilots, instead of computers I actually believe the opposite is true. Systems like ACARS have managed to avoid the prevalence of air to air incidents that used to be almost an epidemic in the 60's and 70's. Autolanding technology has brought planes home safely where a pilot would have had to go around and find an alternate aerodrome.
Are you sure you're not thinking of TCAS? (ACARS is used for delivering clearances and other routine operational/maintenance messages. Basically text messaging for airplanes.)
There's an mp3 of the radio chatter here: https://forums.liveatc.net/atcaviation-audio-clips/7-july-ks... > Audio from the air traffic controller communication archived by a user on LiveATC.net and reviewed by this newspaper organization showed how a the confused Air Canada pilot asks if he’s clear to land on 28R because he sees lights on the runway. > “There’s no one on 28R but you,” the air controller responds. > A…
The "Where's this guy going" unidentified person on the channel prevented the worst accident in aviation history. Great Job! Give that guy a medal and a movie.
Even if not, the pilot would've probably aborted the landing since he saw the other aircrafts. So it was certainly a dangerous situation but I doubt that a crash would've happened without that pilot's comment (it was certainly helpful though).