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

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241–250 of 386 posts

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

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thrust reversers are more than just an assist on the runway. You can land without the reversers, but I'm pretty sure you'll have to go get the brakes replaced before it's ready to fly again. It'll also consume a dangerous amount of the runway. The reversers are no joke, especially when the aircraft is heavily laden.

An aircraft operating nominally is designed and intended to be able to land safely relying on just the brakes. Thrust reversers are also used because they decelerate the aircraft quicker and with less wear on the brakes, aka thrust reversers are used out of convenience and benefits. Thrust reversers may be used solely in an emergency that renders the brakes inoperable, but such situations are so exceptional they aren…

> An aircraft that can't land safely with just brakes would not be certified to fly.

Yes. That doesn't contradict what I wrote.

The thrust reversers also greatly reduce the stress on the tires, another critical and expensive item. There's also the enormous heat generated, which stresses the rest of the landing gear and the bearings.

One of the certification tests is the airliner is landed with flaps up, at max landing weight, and no thrust reversers.

The tires inevitably blow and catch fire, and the airplane literally grinds to a halt, with a raging fire on each truck. The firemen have to wait a specified amount of time before they can put the fire out.

While this is "landing safely", at minimum the landing gear is wrecked, and I suppose some of the fuselage panels.

The thrust reversers are an expensive piece of machinery, with a lot of engineering expended on them. They are not a "would be nice if" piece of equipment. The brakes are a backup system for the thrust reversers, not the other way around.

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

#242
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No, there is no "complete control of the media", IDK why people assume it to be the case. Broadcast federal tv has to be politically correct, but not too much beyond that. How do you recocile that with the journalists assassinated, arrested, and/or driven from the country?

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

#243
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they don't have proper specs, manufacturing equipment, materials, engineers, machinists, etc. they been trying to source parts from india, china, iran, etc.

You can get Chinese copies of almost any part for any car, a lot of them aren't very good but they are inexpensive and that's tempting for a lot of people who do their own repairs, or bottom-feeder shops. And sometimes they actually aren't too bad. A big reason this may not be true for aircraft parts is that in most countries buying unapproved aftermarket parts is illegal at least for commercial airlines. Not so for…

i know. i said trying. i didn't say succeeding. they also try to organize all kind of shell companies for illegal imports.

i read blog of some russian plane mechanic. he did write that they get parts of "whatever" origin to use on airbuses/boeings.

i think they also canned a lot of safety regulations with regards to airlines and airplane maintenance

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

#245
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…

>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 takeoff while avoiding "unnecessary" braking on landing by using the reversers instead.

The brake question is irrelevent. This will put unimaginable stress on the already taxed engines, which are orders of magnitude more expensive and complex to maintain. It's not something that is possibly sustainable at all. Typical magical thinking. "Well we can see the brake pads are running low, and we can't get any more. We can't see the fact that the engines are about to explode, so we'll just go with that."

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

#246
post #195
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…

The story looks like a penny dreadful of “Russia is doomed” series. 1. There’s no info on that Russian slide about actual planes flying without any breaks at all. There’s a manufacturer defined minimum equipment list that allows planes to have some breaks (actual number depends on the type of a plane) disabled for, let’s say, 10 days at the most. This is absolutely normal as planes cannot be serviced constantly (they…

About the foreign virtual cards, can you please give me a link where I can get one? Being searching for a long time, only found scam. All legitimate ones require proof of address.

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

#247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the aerospace version of the Check Engine Light. why does it use such a vague light. are they afraid one more specific light for "brake pad warning" lamp will just make the cockpit untenable?

Pilot can't go out and replace the brake pad on the tarmac. Technician busts out the ODB code-reader and says: "Huh, needs a new left brake pad"

Given this info, the pilot could prepare for brake failure.

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

#248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dist…

This would have made sense 12 months or even 9 months ago, but we're now 18 months into a war that Russia's government had otherwise been preparing domestically for. Again: what gives?

It's pretty clear that the war was planned under the assumption that they'd just march straight into Kiev, maybe shoot a few hardcases, scare the rest with how awesome they were, and basically be welcomed as liberators by most.

When that failed to work, they didn't seem to have any idea what to actually do next, besides claiming the attack on Kiev was always supposed to have been a feint and the real goal was always to grab a few chunks of eastern Ukraine.

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

#249
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a huge industry of leasing jet engines to avoid downtime since most shop time is spent waiting for engine repair. The lessors hot swap engines and avoid downtime for an entire jet just so an engine can get serviced. This is a perfectly normal practice in the aviation industry.

Leasing "thrust", not engines; there's a distinction that might not be obvious at first. Engines are leased at different thrust ratings depending on what the airline needs. Mostly fly out of long runway airports in fairly cool, low altitude (ie dense air) locales lots of thin, svelte passengers who have little luggage, on fairly short trips with not much fuel needed onboard? You can get away with a lot less thrust th…

You're telling me that there are devices built into civilian airplanes that are able to disable or hobble the engines based on the whims of _business agreements_? It seems beyond reason that a pilot would be denied an engine's full design thrust, especially in a contingency that requires as much performance as possible (terrain avoidance, wind shear, aerodynamic surface failures, engine flameouts, on-ground emergencies after takeoff decision speed, go-arounds, etc...) Can you expand a bit on how this system works? Do you know what prevents a mistyped lease expiry date from causing dangerous incidents?

I hope it's fully airgapped at the very least...!

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

#250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies Yet. You don't want to be in the first one that does. Planes have gone down for much stupider reasons. Even serious airlines like KLM (Cityhopper) and Air France have flown perfectly good aircraft into the ground. It doesn't have to be faulty, human confusion is enough. Going outside of normal procedures like this redu…

Oh, you may be surprised by the number of perfectly avoidable, not even cost-saving stupid things that cause train accidents around the world. The GP has a point. If the trip is necessary, planes are probably the safest way to do it. And as they become unsafe, the alternatives are prone to doing the same on an even quicker rate.

> And as they become unsafe, the alternatives are prone to doing the same on an even quicker rate.

russian railways isnt dependent like Aeroflot on EU/USA aircraft for their operations. maybe there will be more train travel until the indigenous industry supplies the necessary aircraft / spares?

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