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Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

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Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#71

Post by woodruffw »

anticodon wrote: post #61
parl_match wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, in America I don't think we have rules against reintroducing planes involved in deadly incidents, but are still airworthy. The shrine is a bit wild, though.

We have a word for US movies and books portraying Russia: "klukva" (cranberry). Because in every US made movie and US written book amount of lies and confabulations about Russian history and Russian culture is so high, that it deserves a special word. E.g. I was reading a book recently by John le Carré and had to stop after reading about 50 pages. I simply couldn't continue. E.g. there's a scene where Russian traitor…

I don't doubt for a minute that Western media is filled with all kinds of ridiculous apocrypha about Russia. At the same time, I've never encountered this kind of ridiculous sensitivity about a country's perception before.

Do you think every American drives a pickup truck and owns 12 guns? You probably don't, because you're not a fool; similarly, most Americans don't think that Russians live their lives swizzling vodka in Chechen restaurants. Le Carré is a novelist, not a biographer.

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#72

Post by anticodon »

mulmen wrote: post #29
anticodon wrote: post #27

[flagged]

I don’t speak russian, would you mind pointing out the relevant part of that article that inverts the claim of disabled brakes?

«Аэрофлот» предупредил пилотов о риске выкатывания за пределы ВПП на самолетах с деактивированным тормозом», — говорится в сообщении, разошедшемся по Telegram-каналам. Правда, даже после внимательного прочтения этих постов выясняется, что поводов для паники нет: ближе к концу читателей информируют, что тормозов у самолетов не один, а много, на каждой стойке шасси, и часть из них вполне может быть деактивирована в соответствии с перечнем минимального исправного оборудования (MEL) «Аэрофлота».

It says basically that airplane has several brake pads, so the memo says that the plane can fly for up to 10 days after seeing that some of the brake pads had worn out.

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#74

Post by woodruffw »

anticodon wrote: post #68
woodruffw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TFA quotes The Moscow Times[1]. Nobody said anything about drunkards. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buRP_2XAQys

The Moscow Times is a western propaganda source as well. It's main office is in Amsterdam, not in Moscow. The only difference is that it is directed mainly to the English speaking expats living in Russia. So amount of confabulations is probably 10-20% lower than in the Western domestic propaganda, because expats can see with their own eyes that we're not eating hedgehogs, for example.

Leaving out why they're in Amsterdam is a somewhat conspicuous omission: they were forced out of Russia[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moscow_Times#After_2014

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#75

Post by anticodon »

golergka wrote: post #37
anticodon wrote: post #27

[flagged]

gazeta.ru is media controlled by Russian state. Given their respective track records, I'd rather believe Bloomberg about bears but I would double check if Gazeta said that the sky is blue.

[flagged]

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#76

Post by lacrimacida »

keddad wrote: post #20
reacharavindh wrote: post #3

How in the world would any common Russian trust an airplane in this current sanctioned state in Russia and fly in one?! Are people that brainwashed to trust their leader to get on a plane that doesn’t have brakes?!

I flew from Moscow to Vladivastok recently, and it's a choice between 8 hour flight and a week in a train. The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies, and it's not like the trains can't fail (especially considering occasional train tracks sabotages). There are always risks, it's not that big of a deal.

The real choice was between 8 hours, one week and not making it there at all

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#77

Post by trefoiled »

wkat4242 wrote: post #54
trefoiled wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is just open racism

I think it's more directed to the regime not valuing citizen lives rather than racism against Russians?

It quite explicitly says "not in home"

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#78

Post by acyou »

zapdrive wrote: post #31

How hard is it to manufacture an airplane brake? Surely Russia does have the required precision machining equipment and expertise. Of course a lot of that is being devoted to mass manufacture of weapons and other military equipment. I'm sure they can (and maybe in due time, they will) reroute some of those resources towards airplane parts. In my opinion, Russia is sometimes a little slow to react, but once the shit h…

Yes, it's beyond belief that they can't make the required brake parts in Russia.

If Russia starts having "civilian aircraft incidents" due to NATO missiles, there will be also a convenient "well established precedent" that the Russian airplanes are falling out of the air anyways.

That perception of airplane safety may be (is) more relevant than the hard facts.

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#79

Post by woodruffw »

striking wrote: post #66
woodruffw wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters. I'm pretty sure a plane at V1 can't break using thrusters.

I believe this to be true (the article definitely states "Brakes are also necessary for aborting takeoffs", and V1 is the speed at which takeoff ~~occurs~~ edit: must be committed to), but this is only one instant of the journey. At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.

> At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.

This could be true; it's also not particularly reassuring as a passenger :-)

(Not doubting you specifically, but it'd be nice to have one of the many pilots on HN opine here. My understanding as a passenger is that commercial airliners use breaks because the margins are very narrow, especially in the presence of a tailwind or busy runway designed with breaks in mind.)

Re: Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust

#80

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

woodruffw wrote: post #49
krisoft wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be No. Not really. Russia has the means to produce brakes for their trains. They do not have the means to do the same for these airplanes. So the reality on the ground is that the trains have brakes while the airplanes don't (or they have breaks but with rapidly aging out of compliance parts.)

> No. Not really. Russia has the means to produce brakes for their trains. They do not have the means to do the same for these airplanes. I meant in terms of riders' perceptions of safety, not industrial capacity. That being said, it astounds me that Russia can't fabricate replacement breaks here: we're talking about a country with some of the best metallurgists in the world and a domestic aerospace industry; what gi…

No one ever said that they can't. But going from zero to being able to buy replacement Boeing (or whoever the OEM was) brakes off the shelf is a process of many months (in the optimistic case) or years, not weeks.

After all, even the simplest analysis for an aviation supplier has to be "can we make enough money selling these replacement brakes to cover the cost of setting up a manufacturing, quality control, and distribution system?"

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