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A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

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Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#81

Post by [deleted] »

MBCook wrote: post #73
gumby wrote: post #34

30 years ago I was in an emergency landing due to engine failure situation (flight attendants take away your shoes, practice crash position, rearrange the passengers etc) and the thing that stuck out the most for me was that everybody did as they were told. No self righteous people; it was clear to everyone why there are flight attendants aboard and that they were key to your survival. The evacuation was orderly, tho…

You’re not supposed to take anything on the slides. No luggage. No shoes. Just you. But it is ignored. Which is sad, people could really get hurt. Your right though the fact as many people comply as they do is kind of incredible given how people act in other situations.

[deleted]

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#82

Post by hugh-avherald »

sundvor wrote: post #54
pdonis wrote: post #31

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.

Yep, they were very heavy and needed to land essentially at stall speed - which they basically did seeing as the stall warning chimed in moments before touch down - in order to allow for as much space as possible to stop the plane. I took from the article that their calculations were kind of hacked together with a number of overrides, so I guess they erred on the side of caution in case any of the assumptions needed…

> especially the pilot

Worth noting that there was an unusual flight crew: 3 captains (one to check the captain's proficiency, and another to check the checker's proficiency) plus the first and second officers.

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#84

Post by MBCook »

lovemenot wrote: post #46
mkl wrote: post #43

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?

There are plenty of times the thing that happens and the bits that save the plane are in remote areas of up high.

They may still need help at landing, or by then it could be relatively normal.

But if you can’t provide that level of help everywhere (including over oceans) the design of the system is choosing to lose planes in a trade off for needing fewer human pilots.

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#85

Post by MBCook »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #17

I wonder if there is any correlation with having been in the Air Force and handling these high stress civilian airline near disasters. Both this captain and the Sullenberger of thMiraclenon the Hudson were Air Force (RAF and USAF respectively). Since, you will be going against an enemy who may damage your aircraft, there is likely more training on how to assess and recover from damage as well as how to handle these t…

From watching Air Disasters pilots with military training has helped out a number of times.

However such pilots being very authoritarian or having bad crew resource management and not listening/refusing to let the copilot help has caused a number of accidents (or been a contributing factor) numerous times too.

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#86

Post by MBCook »

wkipling wrote: post #48
RetroTechie wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes the environment the aircraft flies in, behaves predictable. Sometimes it does not. Turbulence is an obvious one. Downdrafts another. You can have a perfectly functional aircraft, but if the whole air column it's in goes down faster than the aircraft can climb, the aircraft will go down with the air column no matter what. Reminds me of an Air Crash Investigation episode: some volcano had erupted, ash was…

Today we have VA monitoring satellites and aircraft aren't routed through VA.

That flight is why, IIRC.

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#87

Post by dataflow »

MBCook wrote: post #73
gumby wrote: post #34

30 years ago I was in an emergency landing due to engine failure situation (flight attendants take away your shoes, practice crash position, rearrange the passengers etc) and the thing that stuck out the most for me was that everybody did as they were told. No self righteous people; it was clear to everyone why there are flight attendants aboard and that they were key to your survival. The evacuation was orderly, tho…

You’re not supposed to take anything on the slides. No luggage. No shoes. Just you. But it is ignored. Which is sad, people could really get hurt. Your right though the fact as many people comply as they do is kind of incredible given how people act in other situations.

Why in the world do you have to take your shoes off before going down the slides? I could understand jackets or jewelry, but shoes?

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#88

Post by MBCook »

tempestn wrote: post #75
RetroTechie wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the one! Engine after engine going out. Without (at first) any obvious cause. > From a complete loss of power to all engines to on the ground with zero deaths, zero injuries. That's exactly the kind of story I'm talking about that gives me such faith in flying! Understood (and agreed). But you missed my point: fate of that flight didn't result from safety engineering. It depended entirely upon the ash-lad…

> No amount of systems redundancy could have made it a safe flight. But it did! One obvious example being the redundancy that allowed the plane to fly safely despite one of the engines not restarting. The plane encountered an entirely unpredicted situation that caused damage, but thanks to its design was still able to land safely.

They got lucky because when they descended after the engines died, the engine cooling caused small physical size changes and the caked/burned ash just fell off the rotor bits allowing the engine to work again.

To RetroTechie’s point, they got lucky. No design decision saved them. Without that they’d have been a glider until they hit 0ft and it likely would have been far worse.

We’ve clearly gotten very good at flying, managing most weather conditions we’re likely to fly through, the mechanics/maintenance of the planes, and pilot training.

I’ve gained a ton of appreciation for how detailed our preparations are from watching Air Disasters. But we just can’t control everything, some danger is inherent.

Re: A Matter of Millimeters: The story of Qantas flight 32

#90

Post by [deleted] »

gumby wrote: post #34

30 years ago I was in an emergency landing due to engine failure situation (flight attendants take away your shoes, practice crash position, rearrange the passengers etc) and the thing that stuck out the most for me was that everybody did as they were told. No self righteous people; it was clear to everyone why there are flight attendants aboard and that they were key to your survival. The evacuation was orderly, tho…

[deleted]
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