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Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

cnn.com

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Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#2
This sounds more worrying now. When I heard it originally it sounded like a mountain wave. Those are extremely powerful natural downdrafts (or up!) and common in South New Zealand.. They've crashed flights before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911 though that was at mount Fuji in Japan.

But if the plane did this by itself.. wow. The 787 is fly by wire. Worrying. And very bad timing for Boeing.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#3
A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable.

The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#4

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Yea I have the same question. Objectively it appears that Boeing is having some really serious safety issues. Things that absolutely do not jive with what we’ve been taught our entire lives about how safe airline travel is. But I’m open to the idea that 5-10 “major” incidents a year is maybe within the normal range and we just don’t ever hear about them.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#5

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

More plausible than hearsay from Boeing or LATAM

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#6
I'm skeptical of this account - Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion. Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum - that would have needed to be a stall, a change in trim, or an external weather event such as a downdraft. A stall would have been accompanied by a stall recovery procedure involving attitude + thrust changes, and nobody seems to be reporting that in the article.

I'm no professional, but if I had to guess - the plane got hit by a hard gust, and the gust triggered a short in some electronics that caused the screens to go blank. (So, the opposite direction of causality).

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#7

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Given the stories reported about the safety culture at Boeing I expect there are other quality issues. The instances where those quality issues are so apparent that customers experience them, like the door blowout, are unlikely to be unique.

John Oliver did a report on Boeing recently that is pretty damning.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#9

I'm skeptical of this account - Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion. Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum - that would have needed to be a stall, a change in trim, or an external weather event such as a downdraft. A stall would have been accompanied by a stall recovery procedure involving attitude + thrust changes, and nobody seems to be reporting that in the…

If passengers were touching the ceiling, it would have required either a very powerful downdraft or control surface inputs leading to greater-than gravity acceleration downwards. Very interested to hear the investigation into this.

Re: Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure

#10

A blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.

Even with zero controls, and even if one or more of the various computers decided spontaneously to restart, I would expect the plane to continue flying the way it did before the incident rather than going into an (apparently) uncommanded descent? I mean, we had that with the 737 MAX, so I wouldn't rule it out, but it sounds suspiciously like the pilot messed up and is trying to blame the airplane. However I'm no specialist, so it's probably best to wait until further details emerge...
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