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Boeing 777 departing Dubai nearly had a major incident after takeoff

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

#441
post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On that page, I have my concerns about EVs in general, who knows what the long-term health effects are for sitting on top of a HV battery and being surrounded by that electro-smog. Say what? Is this some kind of industry joke that I'm not getting?

All I'm saying is there's a possibility of discovering the power electronics affecting us in an adverse way. Similarly how we thought lead, asbesthos, radium were harmless at first.

I’d be less worried about long term effects and more worried about the fact that lithium-ion is very flammable. It’s bad enough that airlines ban lithium of quantities no more than a single smartphone from entering the cargo bay of a passenger airliner.

And then you have an entire car’s worth just strapped to the bottom of your chassis.

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

#442
post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Is there no functionality to reset the computer between flights? It seems insane that the first item in the checklist isn't "press the reset button". And the computer shouldn't let the aircraft take off if some required setting hasn't been set. Imagine if you were on an e-commerce website and you had to delete the previous customer's billing details before checking out!

This would take substantial time.

Would you manually reinstall and reconfigure your workstation every morning?

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

#443
post #287

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 s…

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?

This reminds me a little of Adam Langley's advice for keeping software protocol extensibility points well-oiled:

You might want to define and implement dummy extensions once a year or such, and retire old ones on a similar schedule. When extensions contain lists of values, define a range of values that clients insert at random. (https://www.imperialviolet.org/2016/05/16/agility.html)

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

#444

The memo from Emirates about not setting altitude in system to airport altitude is so weird. I really hope that's not the actual message Emirates is putting out there. It doesn't matter was in system. You run your checklists and configure for your own flight / your own departure etc. Memo should be to training / recruitment - where did you find these pilots to fly a 777? So they obviously didn't pre-flight the flight…

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…

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

#445
post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that's just very bad design keeping water at same level with street, I was under impression channels in Netherlands are always below ground level for many obvious reasons

It wasn't designed that way. In other locations in the city, street level is at least 150 cm above the water. But because of natural subsidence, ground water extraction, construction and peat oxidation, some parts of city's peat soil have subsided in the last few decades to only 25 cm above the water.

https://www.delft.com/routes/delft-waterways-and-the-compart...

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

#446
post #359
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The premise behind self driving cars that can handle most situations themselves relies on the assumption that a human operator is paying attention and can take over in situations the computer can't handle. I'm not a pilot, but it's likely that assumption can hold while flying at cruising altitude, but not so much when driving in various inconsistent road and traffic conditions.

>human operator is paying attention Think of how silly this is though. You offload driving to a car, then...demand passenger give absolute attention every second that car operates itself. For one, this is a pointless tool if you have to monitor it all the time. For another, it is impossible that humans will be able to focus their attentions fully when they aren't really doing anything to drive the car. The better sel…

My own experience is that I tend to snooze as a car passenger on a long trip while I do not when I am the one driving. No need for speculation, I know I would be incapable of taking over on a short notice if the car does something bad.

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

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just disabled Google assistant and all of its functions, it's beyond useless and probably the most frustrating thing I have ever used on my phone. And I don't mean just the voice controls, but all the "helpful" tips and suggestions are just bad and I can't stand them.

siri's worse than google's voice system... Siri understands what I'm saying, and then CHANGES the correct words into something stupid. I just risk a fine and use my hands for a short moment instead of spending 2 minutes being distracted by siri.

OK Google is awful for me, it repeats back exactly what I said but rarely interprets it, at all. "Don't know how to help with 'navigate home'", "'send a message'", "'find a supermarket'". Bleurgh. This is via Android Auto. Next minute it's reading me a text and asking if I want to reply by "SMS or WhatsApp".

None of these systems show you enough 'under the hood' to know why it's failing and so react. Clearly, here the voice recognition, tts are working well; some optional visual feedback would be great - like show on screen a list of responses:

- Keyword heard

- OK Google responding

- Voice1 recognised

- Input "navigate home"

- Input sent to maps

- Maps didn't understand

- Reporting failure

I guess Google know all this, at the time of the query, but as they don't know what I'm trying to do (though 'navigate home' is pretty clear, perhaps I was actually saying 'buy a gnome') ... doesn't seem like there's a proper feedback loop to help direct/correct the system?

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

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not a pilot either but I am shocked that there’s not some standard “reset” procedure so that each flight starts with the plane in a consistent clean slate. It seems bizarre for any process to rely on the previous flight coincidentally leaving the plane in a certain state.

It doesn't matter what the previous crew configured, because you reconfigure for the conditions and scenario you're about to fly. And this is all part of the preflight checklist. Even if something was missed, it's very strange to not realize that the plane is still on the ground when you can see the end of the runway, despite what the computers are saying. Usually pilots have trouble trusting the instruments over the…

Is there a reason for these checklists not to be automated? I would expect the pilot to set the plane in takeoff mode with destination and weight (if the plane cannot measure the weight itself) and the plane to run the checklist itself, calculate v1 and v2, check there is enough fuel to the destination, check all the control surface positions, etc.

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

#450

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…

> 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 departure. The 777-300ER has two jump-seats in the cockpit. I believe standard practice is for the "off duty" crew to be in the cockpit, in the jump-seats, for takeoff and landing (basically, any time the "sterile cockpit" rule would apply).

And apparently they were also fired. You don’t fire someone who isn’t even in the cockpit.
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