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Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

cnn.com

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Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#91

Post by throwaway0a5e »

thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

>Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may not have critical structural problems today, but in 5 to 10 years, you may have to reconsider your infrastructure. By doing shoddy work, you have a higher rate of catastrophic failure, larger carbon footprint and many other issues.

High labor costs in the western world drive construction techniques. We (try to) build stuff that never breaks because we can't afford to fix things if they break. Low labor costs mean structures can be replaced more often and built for a shorter lifetime. It's folly to pretend that those engineers designing shoddy Chinese apartment complexes that occasionally fall down during construction don't have the same formulas and simulation tools at their disposal. They just have different inputs and design constraints. They know that if they build 100 buildings and ten fall down it's still cheaper than 100 better buildings where none fall down. There's no point in building a 100yr building if it's gonna be bulldozed in ten.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#92

Post by ceejayoz »

tux1968 wrote: post #68
fredoralive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the lockout mechanism breaks and prevents a pilot from selecting gear down when the landing conditions are right? (I guess they could go for the gravity deployment backup mode, but that would be rather extreme option for a broken solonoid (or so on) on a control lever).

Anything can break in a plane which is why you design redundancy into the system. You could provide a manual override switch too.. but at least it would be a conscious act done by the pilot who is aware of the situation. I can't believe anyone is defending the current UI given we have an obvious example right in front of us of how it can fail.

> I can't believe anyone is defending the current UI given we have an obvious example right in front of us of how it can fail.

Well, it's also an example of the saying "when you make something foolproof, God invents a better fool". They made enough mistakes here it's clear these pilots were a ticking time bomb; the only way we're fully preventing that issue is to replace pilots entirely with an AI.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#93

Post by craftinator »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #79
sitic wrote: post #38

From the preliminary report: 'At 500 ft, the FDR indicates: landing gear retracted, slat/flap configuration 3, airspeed 220 knots IAS, descent rate 2000 ft/min. According to the FDR and CVR recordings several warnings and alerts such as over-speed, landing gear not down and ground proximity alerts were disregarded. The landing was undertaken with landing gears retracted. The aircraft touched the runway surface on its…

The fact that they where around 80 knots faster than they should have been probably helped a lot. That's a heck of a lot of excess energy.

The excessive speed helped? Can you explain, I would imagine that going faster would cause more engine damage while being dragged.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#94

Post by donarb »

tux1968 wrote: post #45

The fact that the landing gear lever was pushed down into the extended position, and then the plane decided not to deploy the landing gear because of the overspeed issue is a horrible UI. The lever should refuse to budge unless moving it will in fact deploy the landing gear. These pilots are horrible, but that doesn't mean we can't improve the controls still.

Where in the report does it say that it was the plane and not the pilots that retracted the landing gear? As far as I know, there is nothing in the flight software that automatically deploys/retracts the landing gear, it's under the pilots control.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#95

Post by throwaway0a5e »

awakeasleep wrote: post #81
thev4lley wrote: post #60

I don't think most people appreciate the level of regulation that ensures safety and quality of life in Western countries. Go to many countries outside of that spectrum and you may still see beautiful architecture and more. Now did the team that worked on that project have the necessary experience to drive a safe and long lasting solution? Does the concrete and steel used follow good standards? This means that it may…

I believe regulation is an essential tool for society, but it is not the whole story- morality plays as large a part. Once the regulation is set, it can easily be undermined. BPA was banned by regulation, so industry developed analogue chemicals with the same properties and began using them. Certain aspects of concrete & steel are regulated, so unethical effort goes into subverting the idea of the law while following…

You comment reminds me of a quip floating around the maintenance side of commercial aviation that's along the lines of "this industry is full of bean counters trying to find dumb corners to cut to save a penny because it's illegal to cut all the smart ones".

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#96

Post by VBprogrammer »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #79
sitic wrote: post #38

From the preliminary report: 'At 500 ft, the FDR indicates: landing gear retracted, slat/flap configuration 3, airspeed 220 knots IAS, descent rate 2000 ft/min. According to the FDR and CVR recordings several warnings and alerts such as over-speed, landing gear not down and ground proximity alerts were disregarded. The landing was undertaken with landing gears retracted. The aircraft touched the runway surface on its…

The fact that they where around 80 knots faster than they should have been probably helped a lot. That's a heck of a lot of excess energy.

From what I can find the Airbus also requires the weight on wheels and the wheels speed sensors to have spun up before it will apply reverse thrust. Obviously the brakes also only work when the wheels are down. Auto-spoilers wouldn't deploy automatically also.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#97

Post by acta_non_verba »

craftinator wrote: post #93
VBprogrammer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they where around 80 knots faster than they should have been probably helped a lot. That's a heck of a lot of excess energy.

The excessive speed helped? Can you explain, I would imagine that going faster would cause more engine damage while being dragged.

But would also mean there was more energy to be converted to lift when the plane increased its attitude to take off again :)

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#98

Post by edm0nd »

yingw787 wrote: post #21

Older article, but apparently Pakistan carts its nuclear weapons around in regular delivery vans: https://www.wired.com/2011/11/pakistan-nukes-delivery-vans/ I personally think this is a bad idea.

I mean their own Pakistani government is known for harboring terrorists and it is also where Bin Laden was found.

It's not the best of countries.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#99

Post by VBprogrammer »

craftinator wrote: post #93
VBprogrammer wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that they where around 80 knots faster than they should have been probably helped a lot. That's a heck of a lot of excess energy.

The excessive speed helped? Can you explain, I would imagine that going faster would cause more engine damage while being dragged.

Helped is probably the wrong word. I mean't that the aircraft had a lot of excess speed to get back into the air again, had it been at a normal approach speed you would probably have slowed down enough that it wouldn't have been possible to get it flying again.

Re: Almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, aviation minister says

#100

Post by polishdude20 »

tux1968 wrote: post #68
fredoralive wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if the lockout mechanism breaks and prevents a pilot from selecting gear down when the landing conditions are right? (I guess they could go for the gravity deployment backup mode, but that would be rather extreme option for a broken solonoid (or so on) on a control lever).

Anything can break in a plane which is why you design redundancy into the system. You could provide a manual override switch too.. but at least it would be a conscious act done by the pilot who is aware of the situation. I can't believe anyone is defending the current UI given we have an obvious example right in front of us of how it can fail.

Actually there is a gear override lever behind the copilot's seat in a hatch in the ground.
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