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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

#91

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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…

> We always drink vodka together with substantial food

It's funny that you say this because one of the strongest memories I have of a former Russian co-worker was him telling me that "when you drink vodka, the food must be right there. You drink, then you eat right away. That is the only way to do it." And I tend to remember it as I'm taking a shot of vodka and it always makes me smile.

Alex, I'll have a drink for you tonight :-)

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

#92

Post by striking »

woodruffw wrote: post #79
striking wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pres…

There's definitely a difference between feasibility and what passengers should be guaranteed, yeah. Don't get me wrong, commercial airliners should have brakes.

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

#93

Post by mulmen »

windexh8er wrote: post #56
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.

Given the Max 8 debacle [0], I'd agree we don't seem to have many great rules around this. [0] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-max-crashes-faa-ea8fac0ad2...

The difference in this case is that when the Max-8s crashed they were no longer airworthy and were not re-flown.

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

#94

Post by 20after4 »

wmil wrote: post #45
woodruffw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be? After all, people can sabotage airfields and airplanes as well.

Trains are more vulnerable because they will always have long unguarded sections of track. A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters. I don't believe that you can engine break on a train to a comparable degree.

That's how train brakes work, actually. They short-circuit the electric motors through an array of resistors (with cooling fans to keep them from melting).. This is effectively engine braking on an electric motor. Electric cars do this too but they have batteries to absorb the energy instead of turning it all into heat.

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

#95

Post by dragonwriter »

woodruffw wrote: post #55
wmil wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trains are more vulnerable because they will always have long unguarded sections of track. A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters. I don't believe that you can engine break on a train to a comparable degree.

> 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.

Isn’t the issue more specifically that not having brakes to abort lowers V1, which is the speed at which abort is no longer an option?

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

#96

Post by nixass »

blibble wrote: post #69
closewith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to hide an airliner crash in this day and age. Certainly over land, anyway.

I'd agree if it was almost any other country meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media and 99% of the country's area is essentially empty

The way regular people take videos of destroyed bridges, damaged warships.. I wouldn't say so. The videos regular folks filmed on incident locations were perfect for damage assessment to us western folks. Russian government may control media in general but social media and messengers are full of uncontrollable stuff (for now)

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

#97

Post by dragonwriter »

blibble wrote: post #69
closewith wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to hide an airliner crash in this day and age. Certainly over land, anyway.

I'd agree if it was almost any other country meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media and 99% of the country's area is essentially empty

> meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media

Traditional mass media, sure, but there are a lot of people that have to know about a plane crash, and containing that information, even in Russia, is nontrivial.

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

#98

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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…

Of course they have the skills and equipment to make airplane brakes. But think it through a bit. First the airline has to see that they need brakes. Then they have to find a potential supplier, likely an outfit that's already making brakes for Russian airplanes. Now that supplier has to reverse engineer the brakes on the Boeing/Airbus airplanes since they need to be compatible with everything that interfaces to them. That in itself is a substantial task. Now they have to find suitable materials, assuming there aren't proprietary metallurgies or materials in the American brakes.

After that engineering is done, they have to set up a supply chain, a manufacturing line, a quality control system, installation instructions (if they're copying something this may not be needed), and an ordering system. By this point, we'd be well into the millions of dollars if this was done in the US.

And all of this has to be financially worthwhile over some time horizon, unless the airline is also going to foot the upfront cost of all this. And bear in mind that resources dedicated to this may have to be taken away from parts they're already building and making money on.

So with all that, how likely is it to happen? I don't know but it's an interesting question.

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

#99

Post by anticodon »

bartread wrote: post #65
anticodon wrote: post #27

[flagged]

Yes, but you'll note that the article you've shared doesn't unequivocally and unambiguously state that only some of the brakes are being disabled: they imply it, with some handwavey talk about redundancy of systems, but they don't specifically say that that's what's actually happening in this specific situation. Whereas when I look at specialist aviation sites, rather than mainstream news, it's clearly stated that wh…

> Yes, but you'll note that the article you've shared doesn't unequivocally and unambiguously state that only some of the brakes are being disabled: they imply it, with some handwavey talk about redundancy of systems, but they don't specifically say that that's what's actually happening in this specific situation. Whereas when I look at specialist aviation sites, rather than mainstream news, it's clearly stated that what's being talked about is complete disabling of all wheel braking systems.

Original article refers to "leaked memo". There's not a single proof that such memo exists, that it was circulating inside Aeroflot, that it was translated correctly either by the original site or Moscow Times. It could be created for propaganda reasons ("Ukraine has lost counteroffensive, but Russian airplanes will start falling out of the skies!") out of thin air.

> And, yes, aircraft can safely land without brakes (although they might be hard-pressed to safely abort a takeoff). But what happens after that 10-day permitted period the article discusses?

Brake pads would be replaced or the plane wouldn't be allowed to fly. It's not a big problem to buy replacements in China or UAE or some other country. We have no problems buying anything produced in US and EU, although for somewhat higher price than before.

Also, I'm pretty sure that we can produce brake pads domestically. We still have some remnants of the aircraft industry although West fought hard to kill it in the last 30 yars. And making brake pads is not a rocket science. It's pretty simple part even for an airplane.

> and I'm sure it's not beyond the wit of Russian industrial espionage to gain plans, or reverse-engineer (especially with the help of China), and manufacture locally sourced replacement parts

We are talking about brake pads here. It's not like you need to steal some plans to make them. It's basically a metal plate with some abrasive material attached to it. Probably the simplest part of the airplane.

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

#100

Post by thrway63245 »

bri3d wrote: post #28

I'm curious the actual mechanics of this operation. The main primary-source I found is a Telegram post of an Aeroflot pilot memo [0], but this only discusses the side-effects of reverser only braking, not the mechanics of "disabling the brakes." There is a possibility the brakes are still available and not worn through, and this is a preemptive measure to leave enough brake material to handle an emergency rejected ta…

Thank you for that link. In case anyone else is wondering, this is a Telegram chat with actual pilots in it. There is currently a lot of cursing in that thread about stupid sensational news on the topic, along with an actual explanation.

Aeroflot is disabling 1 out of 4 brakes, not all 4. Nobody is actually trying to stop a plane with just reverse thrusters.

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