Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff • Hacker News Board

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#281

Post by throwaway898989 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:14 AM UTC

azth wrote: post #230

quacked wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the country you're in: - Prioritizes "face" or "reputation" above literal accuracy - Has lower-level officials that accept bribes - Has had airlines and planes for fewer than 5 decades Assume any complex high-risk engineering system run by that culture will occasionally fail in major ways.

> - Has lower-level officials that accept bribes How many countries does that leave? And why only low level, why not also high level? Doesn't that rule out the US as well? > - Has had airlines and planes for fewer than 5 decades Also sounds arbitrary.

I am expat in south east asia and his comment is correct

low level officials taking bribes means you can do stuff like never wear a seatbelt, just pay the cop $20 USD if you get pulled over. get pulled up for smoking indoors? $20 USD. run over an illegal immigrant and kill them? USD 1000 to have their records completely erased. Sim card? $5 USD cash. rape? what? the police here hung up on my friend on a 911 call because they spoke english and not the 'national language' (police do speak english here).on a different note, it is legal to rape your wife here

low level corruption causes immense problems and injustices in society. here, everyone drink drives. driving a car while extremely drunk here is default behaviour.

ye high level official bribery will cause probelms, but the low level stuff is what completely craters the system and causes the catastrophic failures in complex engineering systems.

i am in the country of mh370

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#282

Post by GekkePrutser » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:15 AM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #94

sokoloff wrote: post #10

Pilot (piston engine, with only around 20 hours of light jet dual). As a pax on this flight, I might not have noticed much unless I was looking out the window. This seems like a fault of the crew (obviously), but probably more on the PNF (pilot not flying) than the PF (pilot flying). Article says 4 pilots were on board, but fails to mention that 2 of them (relief pilots) were likely not in the cockpit on the departur…

> My prediction is that almost every pax had no idea how close to dying they came until they read about it later. This is why you should keep the window shade open during taxi, takeoff and landing (a handful of airlines require this, but IME it’s the minority). In the event of a crash or other incident you also want to know what’s outside the plane. Maybe there is burning debris on your side, so you want to exit from…

All European airlines I've been on always required then up for takeoff and landing

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#283

Post by jackweirdy » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:16 AM UTC

nexuist wrote: post #263

jackweirdy wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bear in mind there are airports in the world at less than 0ft sea level. Very complicated to validate what a valid input actually is

While true, my understanding is that the altimeters automatically calibrate themselves to air pressure as well as use auxiliary readings from the radio altimeter to provide an altitude system where 0ft is sea level, always. However given that the pilots seemingly didn't follow the pre-flight checklist it's possible they did not calibrate the altimeter either.

Altimeters are only pilot calibrated to ensure planes travelling in various directions can trust their vertical separation is constant even amid rising or dropping temperatures and pressures. In that context an altimeter that calibrates itself is quite undesirable

There is the radio-altimeter which uses ground based radar but that is for spoken-aloud altitude readouts and terrain warnings and as far as I’m aware doesn’t factor in Boeing or airbus autopilot.

At least in the U.K., the lingo has us refer to this always as height (ie, above the ground) and not altitude (within the air above a hypothetical sea level)

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#284

Post by throwaway898989 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

azth wrote: post #230

quacked wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the country you're in: - Prioritizes "face" or "reputation" above literal accuracy - Has lower-level officials that accept bribes - Has had airlines and planes for fewer than 5 decades Assume any complex high-risk engineering system run by that culture will occasionally fail in major ways.

> - Has lower-level officials that accept bribes How many countries does that leave? And why only low level, why not also high level? Doesn't that rule out the US as well? > - Has had airlines and planes for fewer than 5 decades Also sounds arbitrary.

my frend catch lionair flight , indonesian borneo to jakarta

the plane acting funny on landing in jakarta, sort of jumping around, weird turbulence

when it land, he look outside and see that one of the major aileron has fuselage completely missing and had been replace with electrical tape

the plane was flying funny because one of the aileron was replaced with electrical tape from dollar store by international airline technician

importantly, if this plane crash, nobody will ever admit this, cctv record deleted, etc. they will just blame beooing

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#285

Post by JimBlackwood » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

carlmr wrote: post #253

throwawayboise wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would hope I would not drive into a lake or any other obvious hazard, but I have driven the wrong way onto a one-way portion of a street when I was following Google Maps.

My gf once asked me why I wouldn't just park on the street, it was night, it was Delft (Netherlands), it was very still standing water in one of the canals with leaves on top. It did look surprisingly like a street, but I knew I was in Delft.

This reminds me of a story when I was a kid.

We used to have a big pond in the frontyard. One day it was completely covered in duckweed (kroos in dutch) and one of my friends just walked straight into it, not aware of the water underneath.

Glad you didn’t try that out with your car!

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#286

Post by ThePowerOfFuet » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

dghlsakjg wrote: post #241

mardifoufs wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard Royal Air Maroc is pretty good when it comes to African carriers but I'm not sure. I know they have (or at least used to have) experienced crews and good airframes, but I don't know anything about their maintenance standards

Royal Air Maroc had a senior captain bounce an ATR-72 off the surface of the ocean through pure bad flying in 2018. Literally the belly of the plane scraped the ocean. Basically avoided killing 50 people by a few inches. Wasn’t gonna report it, but the damage gave him away. Look up air Maroc flight 439

That's wild. Thank you for sharing that with us!

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#287

Post by FabHK » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:19 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #24

So instead of telling the next crew to configure the system properly they are instructing the previous crew not to set it wrong? I really can't follow that. Of course it should be checked, every time.

But the next crew has been told to configure the system properly many many many times (training, checklists, recurrent training). Telling them once more won’t achieve anything. On the other hand, telling previous crews not to set it wrong might achieve something, removing one failure mode and adding another level of redundancy.

The ghastly Helios accident [1] was also triggered by a misconfiguration (by maintenance staff). Sure, you’ll tell the pilots again to actually run their checklists, but you’ll also tell the maintenance crew not to screw up the standard settings.

Counterpoint: if you have a checklist item, and it is always in the desired/expected configuration already, you might start to skip it (with the concomitant consequences if one day it isn’t).

Maybe flight crews/maintenance staff should configure the machine randomly after a flight/maintenance, so as to force the next crew to actually run the checklist carefully?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helios_Airways_Flight_522

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#288

Post by JimBlackwood » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:22 AM UTC

atonse wrote: post #188

op00to wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn’t. The pilots didn’t do their preflight checklist which would have caught a poorly set up flight computer.

Then I do fully support firing them. (If they didn’t follow the checklist) At first I saw they might have been fired and thought damn that is strict.

They are responsible for flying a plane full of passengers. Strict would be fair.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#289

Post by behringer » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:24 AM UTC

lovasoa wrote: post #273

teeray wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By my reading, auto pilot was not involved. Flight Directors are basically an overlay on the instruments showing where the pitch, roll, etc. of the plane needs to be to achieve the programmed navigational fixes.

Is there any situation when it would make sense to have the flight director set to an altitude of zero before takeoff ? If not, then maybe it shouldn't stay switched on and set to zero after landing when the crew leaves the cabin ? Couldn't it be reset automatically ?

That's what the memo the airline company put out said about this.

It's hard to say if it's a good thing or not, imagine an incorrect flight plan is entered but non 0, you could fly straight into another flight path or an obstacle, like a mountain.

Re: Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

#290

Post by EMM_386 » Sun, Jan 02, 2022, 2:27 AM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #204

EMM_386 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's unbelievable that the pilot's didn't realize they were doing 215 knots while still ON THE GROUND and only decided to pull back on the yoke once they were nearing the end of the runway. They should have at least seen the end of the runway coming up and wondered why they weren't airborne yet. The ends are colored in amber and red as it gets closer to the end, it should be pretty obvious something is wrong. Pull ba…

> How you get to this level of incompetence flying a 777 is far beyond my understanding. The article said--it's the smallest plane Emirates flies.

> The article said--it's the smallest plane Emirates flies.

What does that have to do with anything?

The 777 is a huge aircraft. It has a maximum passenger capacity of 550 people.

If you can have 550 people lives in your hands and are making mistakes like this, it doesn't matter if it's the smallest aircraft in their fleet.

And before anyone bothers to point it out, I know this particular airframe was not configured for 550. But being the smallest in the fleet means absolutely nothing.