51–60 of 307 posts
The one thing which sticks out to me is the ECAM system including a baked corrective message of "open fuel transfer valves" due to the imbalance. That seems like an odd message to include in an emergency action system, which by definition is only active in unexpected situations. Is there really no system to confirm if a fuel leak is happening?
there are some crazy talented pilots out there who are able to perform under massive amounts of pressure, United Flight 232 is a more extreme version of this article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232 >Despite the fatalities, the accident is considered a good example of successful crew resource management. A majority of those aboard survived; experienced test pilots in simulators were unable to…
Errol Morris made an exceptional documentary about UA232. One of the pilots just looks into the camera and tells the story. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nf33RDu_D6M
> Meanwhile on the ground, events were taking an unexpected turn. On Batam Island in Indonesia, debris from the №2 engine plunged into a populated area shortly after the failure, resulting in surprise and alarm. Among the debris was a large portion of the failed IP turbine disk, which fell with such force that it cleaved straight through a building, razing a brick wall. Thankfully, no one on Batam was hurt by the deb…
One thing that jumped out at me was the narrow range of safe airspeeds on the landing approach--only three or four knots between stall and max speed not to overrun the runway. Quite a good piece of flying to get the plane down safely, not to mention all the other things the crew had to do.
Amazing article. So well written. Kudos to the Qantas flight team, especially the pilot - they know their stuff for sure. And also kudos to the Airbus engineering team, that was such an epic win for redundant systems.
(It was interesting to see how stopping calculations were improved as part of the post mortem, for one.)
I'm wondering why the tolerances for the oil pipe were so small in the first place. Why not make the pipe one or two mm thicker?
I'm wondering why the tolerances for the oil pipe were so small in the first place. Why not make the pipe one or two mm thicker?
That said it seems like did have a poor process where a part could be out of spec and they had no good way to check it. As they mentioned about Swiss cheese, you want as many layers as possible, and checks like that are needed.
I don't know about others, but I can't help but smile when I read the detailed series of events in aviation postmortems. To be able to zero in on what turned out to be a single faulty part and then trace the entire provenance and environment that led to that defective part entering service speaks to the robustness of the industry. I say that sincerely since mistakes are going to happen and in my view robustness has l…
However, I have been told by an insider that supply chain integrity is an underappreciated issue. Someone has been caught selling fake plane parts through an elaborate scheme, and there are other suspicious suppliers, which is a bit unsettling:
"Safran confirmed the fraudulent documentation, launching an investigation that found thousands of parts across at least 126 CFM56 engines were sold without a legitimate airworthiness certificate."
https://www.businessinsider.com/scammer-fooled-us-airlines-b...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
They needed to make a lot of real-time responses when coming in to land, as they had a very narrow window of viable speeds and limited control.
That seems to be correct. A partial mitigation of these issues could be high bandwidth / low latency networks just in take-off / landing corridors?
I don't know about others, but I can't help but smile when I read the detailed series of events in aviation postmortems. To be able to zero in on what turned out to be a single faulty part and then trace the entire provenance and environment that led to that defective part entering service speaks to the robustness of the industry. I say that sincerely since mistakes are going to happen and in my view robustness has l…
And to be able to reconstruct the chain of events after the components in question have exploded and been scattered throughout south-east Asia is incredible.