Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

nco.ncep.noaa.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 236 posts

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#51

Post by ericbarrett »

jcutrell wrote: post #10
chasd00 wrote: post #3

[flagged]

Things I use as a pilot of a single engine piston: - Temp dew point spread - Barometric pressure - TAF / forecast - Wind shear - Freezing level - Cloud tops - Cloud level AGL - visibility measured in actual distance All of these things can’t be measured easily by a human. Visibility is probably the easiest, but can you tell me what the dew point is easily? If I use it, imagine the critical importance for airliners.

Jets plug these numbers into the flight computer to determine landing speed (Vref), needed runway length, and sometimes configuration (flaps etc.). So without weather I'd expect commercial flights to simply stay on the ground.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#52

Post by advisedwang »

SamPatt wrote: post #15

Serious question: At what point does the failure of government services warrant the partial withholding of taxes? This isn't sufficient of course but when the FAA repeatedly demonstrates incompetence, when do we eventually just tell them no, you can't have any more of my money, you're obviously wasting it and making us worse off?

How does shutting down the FAA improve the situation? Then we would have no weather, NOTAM, ATC etc 24/7.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#54

Post by scrumper »

flandish wrote: post #47

Just gotta ask: Southwest, NOTAM, and now this… Is some group pen-testing?

Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, three times is enemy action.

It could be Russia, Iran, China, climate direct action groups (probably not y'all qaeda though). Or maybe it's just ancient software running on older hardware that's starting to fall over after a couple years of lighter loads and a sudden increase in complexity and weirdness. Everything is breaking at the moment.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#55

Post by SamPatt »

michaelmcdonald wrote: post #20
SamPatt wrote: post #15

Serious question: At what point does the failure of government services warrant the partial withholding of taxes? This isn't sufficient of course but when the FAA repeatedly demonstrates incompetence, when do we eventually just tell them no, you can't have any more of my money, you're obviously wasting it and making us worse off?

Is it them wasting money, or do they have a constrained budget with an ever growing number of responsibilities and scope? Do you think there are fewer planes in the air now then 30 years ago? 10 years ago?

I wish my budget was so constrained.

Have you looked at the numbers?

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#57

Post by victortroz »

bombcar wrote: post #27
jcutrell wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things I use as a pilot of a single engine piston: - Temp dew point spread - Barometric pressure - TAF / forecast - Wind shear - Freezing level - Cloud tops - Cloud level AGL - visibility measured in actual distance All of these things can’t be measured easily by a human. Visibility is probably the easiest, but can you tell me what the dew point is easily? If I use it, imagine the critical importance for airliners.

Isn't there a way to rough out the dew point from the cloud base altitude? I seem to remember that from ground school.

I remember being the other way around, you could estimate height of the cloud based on dew point and base altitude.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#58

Post by ceejayoz »

SamPatt wrote: post #48
shmatt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the conservative playbook. Cut funding until the entity can't run properly, then yell JEEZ GUYS YOU REALLY SUCK wHY DON'T WE SHUT YOU DOWN The previous president significantly cut the FAA's budget, maybe we're just seeing now how that affects us in the long term

I'm not a conversative. Presidents don't pass budgets. FAA funding has increased, not decreased. I can criticize my government all I want. You're turning this into a political party thing when it's a government service failure.

Presidents propose budgets (the CBO even uses the term "the President's budget"; https://www.cbo.gov/publication/58417), sign them into law, threaten Congress with vetos, and have significant influence over their party as a whole. Trump in particular was successful in drubbing opponents out of office; Liz Cheney went from #3 in House leadership to a pariah largely overnight.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

SamPatt wrote: post #55
michaelmcdonald wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it them wasting money, or do they have a constrained budget with an ever growing number of responsibilities and scope? Do you think there are fewer planes in the air now then 30 years ago? 10 years ago?

I wish my budget was so constrained. Have you looked at the numbers?

> Have you looked at the numbers?

Have you?

https://theblogbyjavier.com/2020/01/02/aviation-safety-evolu...

See the chart labeled "Evolution of accidents per million flights". Millions more flights, and a steady march towards zero deaths. We haven't had a commercial airliner crash in the US for over a decade.

The FAA's numbers look great.

Re: Nationwide FAA weather reporting outage

#60

Post by bitxbitxbitcoin »

wiz21c wrote: post #42
trollied wrote: post #6

Has anything happened regarding IT staffing at the FAA recently? There was the NOTAM outage last week [1], and now this! [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34337158

Maybe there's an ongoing cyber attack ? :-)

That isn’t being admitted to?
Post reply on HN