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Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

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Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#141

Post by wkat4242 »

philjohn wrote: post #58
robga wrote: post #9

Interesting that they call Lajes a “military airfield”. On the Azorean island of Terceira, Lajes (TER) is a mixed use airfield that is the commercial landing strip of the island since the 1930s, as well as having a multi-national military base on the other side since the 1940s. There is a picture in the story. The NTSB report called it a military airbase, and other reports say “Military air traffic controllers guided…

Sounds similar to Gibraltar airport, which is both a civilian airstrip, as well as a military one (the military base is opposite the passenger terminal). If you haven't looked into Gibraltar airport before, it's a fascinating thing - the land it's on is reclaimed using rock dug out from the siege tunnels, there's a level crossing on it as the only route into the town crosses the runway; if a plane is coming into land…

The level crossing has been moved underground a few years ago.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#142

Post by kyleee »

FabHK wrote: post #139
kyleee wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the host? There are apparently a few podcasts with this title and I am confused

Not GP, but pretty sure they’re referring to Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford (the “Undercover Economist”), which is gripping, informative, and entertaining. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/cautionary-tales

Thank you!

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#143

Post by jabl »

dalkvist wrote: post #67
noduerme wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, that's very cool. Makes me think of all kinds of NATO-level shit that's strewn around the world waiting to be uncovered ;) The thing with the road in Uruguay is that as you're driving, there's basically a yellow sign with a picture of an airplane and an arrow pointing up, and you're like "what the fuck did that mean?" And then suddenly you understand exactly what it meant because you're driving on a fucking runwa…

Sweden had/has roads onthe middle of nowhere/forest that has more free space on the sides and at each end of particularly strate and flat stretches, there are oversized parking spots. Supposedly so fighter planes could refuse and rearm from mobile crews

Finland has plenty of those too. Here's a video of an F-18 doing a landing and takeoff from such a stretch of road during some exercise:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj_eJxy8ojk

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#144

Post by dkarl »

kqr wrote: post #128
dkarl wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This reminds me of times in the first couple of years of my career, where me and some other junior people were terrified that we weren't going to get a project done on time. We would be wracking our brains for out-of-the-box ways to get it done, whispering to each other, having trouble sleeping, and then we would be amazed that the lead developer would simply go to our manager (while we were still desperately brainst…

"It's not management's fault because engineers should expect to and put up with managers treating them harshly (yelling, shaming) when they are doing the right thing"? Is this really the defense we're using?

No, the point is that employment security depends on your manager's incentives, your employment protections, and your ability to get a new job if you lose one. This has very little to do with how your manager treats people.

Somebody who has been in the industry for a while and seen people fired and laid off has learned that someone's job is no more or less safe with a friendly, empathetic manager. (Your personal stress levels are another question, and an important one, but complying with a toxic manager doesn't decrease your stress levels, so it isn't leverage to make you do or not do anything besides change jobs.)

That's why I mentioned aviation mechanics being unionized, and I wondered if a worker's history of safety infractions follows them. Those would seem to be very important factors. A safety-critical worker should be able to say, "Look boss, you're telling me if I don't break this rule I could lose this job, but 1) the union has my back, and 2) if I do break this rule I might not get my next job."

That's important, because threatening in a loud and obviously abusive way is not the only way to make someone afraid for their job. You could even say that it's the amateur hour way to manipulate an employee. If management wants to scare people into skimping on safety, they can do it without doing anything you could point at specifically as "abusive" behavior, so you need protections that don't rely on identifying obvious misbehavior by management.

EDIT: Edited to point out and clarify, I didn't say anything about the behavior of the manager in my story, and I don't remember the manager being angry or threatening. Actually I can barely remember his face, and I doubt it had anything to do with him. I think it's something that junior people bring with them, just like they're scared of disappointing teachers, scared of their high school principal, etc., in a way that's hard to understand when you're older.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#145

Post by philjohn »

wkat4242 wrote: post #141
philjohn wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds similar to Gibraltar airport, which is both a civilian airstrip, as well as a military one (the military base is opposite the passenger terminal). If you haven't looked into Gibraltar airport before, it's a fascinating thing - the land it's on is reclaimed using rock dug out from the siege tunnels, there's a level crossing on it as the only route into the town crosses the runway; if a plane is coming into land…

The level crossing has been moved underground a few years ago.

awww, that's a shame, haven't been for about 6 years, but that was always a favourite part.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#146

Post by wkat4242 »

philjohn wrote: post #145
wkat4242 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The level crossing has been moved underground a few years ago.

awww, that's a shame, haven't been for about 6 years, but that was always a favourite part.

True, it's kinda special aviation history. Like the Kai Tak approach. But I think that for security and traffic reasons (eg foreign debris) it would have had to change eventually.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#147

Post by IIsi50MHz »

Reason077 wrote: post #129
IIsi50MHz wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Er, at doing the inverse, for me. "Oh, you're watching a video on foo? Here's a list of video clickbait trash, with sometimes one more video on foo thrown in. "Oh, you either never open or always bail out of 'shorts'? Here are more of them!"

Are you actually signed in? I get all the trash if I'm using anonymous browsing or whatever, but not when it knows who I am. The "Shorts" section can be hidden pretty easily.

When I'm signed in, it's the same except that it also sometimes suggests somewhere in the list next to a video that's playing a single video that I watched a while ago.

For me, YouTube hasn't been able to suggest properly for years; ages ago, suggestions were all clearly related to the current video in some way. The old behaviour lead me to spend lots of time on YouTube.

When "Shorts" started appearing on the main page, it somehow seemed like I couldn't get rid of it. I somehow don't want to see it ever, on any computer so it being default is as evil to me as blinking ads.

The addition of forced-autoplay-unless-you-sign-in[1] is definitely a case of Making It Suck[2].

So, I increasingly use other clients, or exclude YouTube results from searches. This pretty well gets me away from clickbait rubbish like "$profession doesn't want you to know this!!", grossly exagerated faces/postures, and Shorts.

[1] Welll… actually I guess it's "default to autoplay whether signed in or not, and keep resetting it if you're not signed in".

[2] Meaning, moving people towards what another behaviour by making something else more difficult.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#148

Post by Reason077 »

IIsi50MHz wrote: post #147
Reason077 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you actually signed in? I get all the trash if I'm using anonymous browsing or whatever, but not when it knows who I am. The "Shorts" section can be hidden pretty easily.

When I'm signed in, it's the same except that it also sometimes suggests somewhere in the list next to a video that's playing a single video that I watched a while ago. For me, YouTube hasn't been able to suggest properly for years; ages ago, suggestions were all clearly related to the current video in some way. The old behaviour lead me to spend lots of time on YouTube. When "Shorts" started appearing on the main pa…

Maybe you aren't signed in enough for it to have learned your preferences? You can also click the "..." button on a video's thumbnail and select "not interested" or "don't recommend this channel" on content you don't like, which in my experience is very effective at improving future recommendations.

I also get annoyed by the Shorts section (they're almost pure clickbait/teasers, addictive but no real content, waste of my time!). But I can just click the "X" and it disappears for 30 days. If they didn't have the "close for 30 days" option, I agree, this would really suck.

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#149

Post by Piskvorrr »

pxmpxm wrote: post #140
Piskvorrr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that uncommon. The Czech motorway D1 can be converted to a military airstrip here: https://www.google.com/maps/@49.3870307,15.9211894,289m/data... See where the grass divider ends, and gets replaced by a jersey barrier for 2 km? That part is the runway - it would require some hours of preparation before it would be usable, it's not quite "declare mayday and dump the plane there."

Wrong spot, I'm pretty sure youre thinking of Vyškov https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2936699,17.0223332,1311m/dat...

And I'm absolutely sure I wasn't: two different spots, both near military airbases, this one is somewhat longer than the Vyškov one. Personally drove on both of them, many times. Can't find an English source though: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leti%C5%A1t%C4%9B_M%C4%9B%C5%9...

Re: Crisis over The Atlantic: The near crash of Air Transat flight 236

#150

Post by pxmpxm »

Piskvorrr wrote: post #149
pxmpxm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong spot, I'm pretty sure youre thinking of Vyškov https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2936699,17.0223332,1311m/dat...

And I'm absolutely sure I wasn't: two different spots, both near military airbases, this one is somewhat longer than the Vyškov one. Personally drove on both of them, many times. Can't find an English source though: https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leti%C5%A1t%C4%9B_M%C4%9B%C5%9...

Hmmm is that the one with the windmill rest stop thingy nearby?
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