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JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

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481–490 of 515 posts

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only reason hundreds of people are not dead is directly attributable to the Japanese being an overly polite and orderly culture. Contrast this to the South Korean ferry disaster [1] where hundreds of Koreans (inb4 someone pops me with "Japanese and Korean are completely different countries..." - yes, I am aware) died as a result of being orderly and compliant. It's just an interesting counterexample where peopl…

I would not call it a counterexample. In fact we saw similar behavior here. These people escaped death by the skin of their taints. In my opinion the crew should have initiated evacuation much sooner than they did. Despite this, the passengers' behavior also prevented chaos. Any further delay would have surely resulted in casualties. It's a bit of a paradox.

> In my opinion the crew should have initiated evacuation much sooner than they did

There are aircraft incidents where the evacuation led to deaths that wouldn't have happened otherwise (stuff like fire engines striking evacuees, parts falling off the airplane, fire, etc.). An evacuation is something always considered/discussed and not automatically undertaken.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

did airbus try to fight against the 90 second rule? What changes did they make to eventually do a successful evacuation with an 800 person cabin configuration?

Airbus tried to get the FAA to relax the requirement that every possible seat offered for sale be able to leave in 90 seconds - ie, just 600 instead of the fully rated 800. Then they asked to relax it to 120 seconds. Finally, they told the FAA that their models should be sufficient. The FAA (and eventually the European equivalent agencies) said no to these asks and made them do the full test with 800 people leaving t…

> and no carrier was ever able to fill that many seats on the A380 sustainably

Emirates would disagree. As per their CEO, and just one of those pairings, they have 6 daily flights London-Dubai, all full.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ground control wouldn't have cleared them to hold short, or to position and hold (US: "line up and wait"). That would have been the tower, not ground. Ground is only responsible for taxiways, not runways. The Coastguard plane was cleared to hold short at C2, but entered the runway instead from C2 as if cleared to position and hold (Edit: Or maybe they thought they were cleared to take off, but that's far less likely)…

Because I think you'd appreciate it, and no pedantry intended: "Line up and wait" is the international terminology, which the US was relatively late to adopt. https://www.faa.gov/airports/runway_safety/resources/luaw

Oh, thanks!

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#484
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pilots are accustomed to the immediacy of voice communication, which any electronic system will struggle to replicate. More sophisticated radio than simplex VHF has too many variables, and agreeing on an international standard would be challenging. There have been some developments of a replacement of, or at least a supplement to, simplex radio. But none are as cheap, quick and reliable as verbal communications with…

“We’ve always done it like this” will no longer be a good argument when one of the increasing number of near misses turns into an accident.

You seem to have a pretty strong but not necessarily very substantiated opinion about the topic. I really suggest you read a bit about it, if you're so inclined. E.g. Admiral Cloudberg has been mentioned in this thread, it's a very good resource of accident recaps and the impulses they give for regulations and developments.

In contrary to what you're implying, "we've always done it like this" is not a principle of aviation safety.

Indeed you'd be hard-pressed to find any other globally coordinated system that is so dedicated to and successful at the gargantuan task of continually improving itself, a trillion dollar industry, and regulatory bodies all over the world. A five decades long track record of drastically reducing fatalities in the face of rising passenger miles speaks for itself.

To put it a bit bluntly, I'm pretty sure they don't need to be told that it would be "just as simple as (...), because that works for an elevator".

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#485
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airbus tried to get the FAA to relax the requirement that every possible seat offered for sale be able to leave in 90 seconds - ie, just 600 instead of the fully rated 800. Then they asked to relax it to 120 seconds. Finally, they told the FAA that their models should be sufficient. The FAA (and eventually the European equivalent agencies) said no to these asks and made them do the full test with 800 people leaving t…

> and no carrier was ever able to fill that many seats on the A380 sustainably Emirates would disagree. As per their CEO, and just one of those pairings, they have 6 daily flights London-Dubai, all full.

Emirates is the carrier for the A380 with the bulk of the orders going there. They also have begged for more seats given that the 380 was prebuilt for a stretch. But even emirates has never been close to the full seat count on a baseline A380, and no other airline has found the A380 profitable to the point to consider significant follow on orders. The USA accounted for half of the world wide lift when the A380 program was going and none of the major carriers picked it up.there was little demand for a new build freighter build, so that program did and the 787 Balkanized the pacific the same way as the 757 and 767 fragmented Atlantic traffic which meant even the Japanese carriers didn’t really bite on the A380.

At the end of the day the A380 was airbus trying to out-America (bigger, faster) Boeing, while Boeing stole Airbus’s big twin strategy with the 777.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#486
post #281
post #169

Could the accident be linked to the clarity of radio instructions? I saw a discussion suggesting the DH aircraft might have been unsure about the correct runway to use, C1 or C5. My aim isn't to critique the English proficiency of non-native speakers, especially those from non-Proto-Indo-European linguistic backgrounds. As a non-native English speaker myself, I understand the challenges. However, I found it trully ha…

There is a ton of static too, why is that still tolerated?

That's just an artifact of the (probably amateur) pickup and recording of the signal. The audio quality in the cockpit and tower is surely much better.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#487
post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're maybe missing the point. My understanding would be something like: My chances of being killed by a shark is basically 0%. But, if I'm in a shark cage surrounded by sharks the idea that some global probability is 0% isn't relevant. Something like that?

If I'm in a shark cage then the probability that matters is conditional on being in a shark cage, sure. And it should certainly be higher than the global probability. But I don't see how this connects to saying that anything that can go two ways is 50-50? ("always 50% because he either lives or dies from that operation")

I think the 50% part should be ignored and the message is "when dealing with an individual sample, the general probability distribution isn't that useful?" I don't actually agree with that, just trying to steel man the point a bit. I do kind of see what he means

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#488

The fact that everyone made it out alive from A350 is a great testament to the design. Insane.

Eh, not really. Any passenger plane design is supposed to be able to evacuate in 90 seconds. They had several minutes (at least) to get off that plane before the fire spread to the cabin.

And passenger planes are supposed to not crash themselves in the ground, but the only other major passenger plane manufacturer couldn't even get that right. So planes working as expected and saving lives is a thing to be noted.

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#489

This is probably well-known to others but I am surprised to learn JAL uses big aircrafts to serve domestic flights, and I wonder how common this practice is. Is there somewhere I can query by input of "passenger flights of certain aircraft like A350 on a certain date", give me results of flights, ordered by distance in ascending order? Thought about Flightradar24 but they don't seem to offer API for personal usage

Iirc one of the biggest usages of A380s has been APAC island hopping.

Almost exclusively ANA with their Japan - Hawaii flights on their 3 A380s.

The other APAC A380 carriers like Singapore, Qantas, Thai use them for long haul routes, some of which may originate from islands (like Singapore).

Re: JAL A359 at Tokyo collided with Coast Guard DH8C on runway and burst into flames

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a dentist explain to me that my lip could go numb with a 50% chance after my wisdom teeth removal with that exact explanation just two minutes before the surgery. I was infuriated, turns out I was on the lucky side of her coin.

I could be wrong, but I really don’t think permanent loss of sensitivity is anywhere that high. Though it sounds low for temporary loss, but then it goes away after a couple of hours or so.

It can really depend on how badly impacted the wisdom teeth are. There's apparently a lot of nerve bundles around the back of the jaw bone. If they really need to dig in there to get it out there's a risk. I've had multiple dentists talk to me about my wisdom teeth and all have talked about there being some significant risks with mine.
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