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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

#161

Post by jurassicfoxy »

philip1209 wrote: post #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…

> and the gust triggered a short in some electronics that caused the screens to go blank

That is a hilariously complex first guess.

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

#162

Post by weaksauce »

tptacek wrote: post #76

If you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls prevent injuries or hull losses. It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share the popula…

I think it's worth reporting on because this particular issue is known to everyone... you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves. it's crazy that a modern plane needs to have that happen but it does. the most likely situation is that the plane didn't get shutdown and happened to occur at a level flying situation and the pilots probably freaked out and overflew the plane which got it into upset territory. the plane was trimmed and would have been fine if the pilots(likely) didn't do what they did.

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

#163

Post by thejazzman »

weaksauce wrote: post #162
tptacek wrote: post #76

If you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls prevent injuries or hull losses. It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share the popula…

I think it's worth reporting on because this particular issue is known to everyone... you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves. it's crazy that a modern plane needs to have that happen but it does. the most likely situation is that the plane didn't get shutdown and happened to occur at a level flying situation and the pilots probably freaked out and overflew the plane which…

Unless you're a pilot I'm not sure why anyone would expect that to be common knowledge.

And it's insane such a system would ever be authorized IMO. That sounds like a hack to fix a memory leak or similarly some bug they can't figure out

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

#164

Post by MadnessASAP »

weaksauce wrote: post #162
tptacek wrote: post #76

If you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls prevent injuries or hull losses. It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share the popula…

I think it's worth reporting on because this particular issue is known to everyone... you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves. it's crazy that a modern plane needs to have that happen but it does. the most likely situation is that the plane didn't get shutdown and happened to occur at a level flying situation and the pilots probably freaked out and overflew the plane which…

There was a mandatory patch for that in 2020.

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

#165

Post by bombcar »

_ea1k wrote: post #153
dynisor wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

74gear[1] on YouTube is a 747 Captain. It's a great aviation channel in general if anyone is interested in that stuff. He had mentioned two things that really illustrated to me your point a while back: A) Stuff breaks on planes. All the time. They are complex machines, but they typically have so many redundancies that unless there is a completely catastrophic failure, they are still perfectly safe to fly. An example:…

Regarding that last part, you'd be surprised at how many people at the FAA/DOT also haven't come to this realization.

The last part doesn't always work the way you'd like it to - most aviation disasters these days have very definite things the pilots could have done to save themselves and everyone, which they failed to do.

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

#166

Post by TremendousJudge »

whatshisface wrote: post #145
gopher_space wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to criticize a power structure your point of view depends on, so you get weird apologists for industry in general that pop up in conversations like these.

The funniest thing is that Boeing is barely industry, with all the two-way regulatory ties and of course the monopoly, it's like a nationalized company that just happens to be nominally owned by investors. The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system! :-)

>The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system!

Boeing is 100% a product of the American system. All the acquisitions, mergers, lobbying and loss of engineering culture in favor of short-term profit seeking that got it to where it is today happened under capitalism. Nothing resembling Boeing ever existed on the USSR, its airplane manufacturers worked very differently, with different incentives and under different constraints.

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

#167

Post by DinaCoder98 »

whatshisface wrote: post #145
gopher_space wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's hard to criticize a power structure your point of view depends on, so you get weird apologists for industry in general that pop up in conversations like these.

The funniest thing is that Boeing is barely industry, with all the two-way regulatory ties and of course the monopoly, it's like a nationalized company that just happens to be nominally owned by investors. The only ideology that Boeing makes look bad is the Soviet system! :-)

Seems sort of like the opposite—a lot of the regulation is done by people installed by lobbying, sort of like a privately owned and operated part of government.

Of course it's terrible for everyone but shareholders there isn't really any domestic competition.

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

#168

Post by mckn1ght »

_ea1k wrote: post #153
dynisor wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

74gear[1] on YouTube is a 747 Captain. It's a great aviation channel in general if anyone is interested in that stuff. He had mentioned two things that really illustrated to me your point a while back: A) Stuff breaks on planes. All the time. They are complex machines, but they typically have so many redundancies that unless there is a completely catastrophic failure, they are still perfectly safe to fly. An example:…

Regarding that last part, you'd be surprised at how many people at the FAA/DOT also haven't come to this realization.

They should be forced to read all the certification application material during test flights of the vehicles in question.

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

#169

Post by satellite2 »

dynisor wrote: post #126
tptacek wrote: post #76

If you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls prevent injuries or hull losses. It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share the popula…

74gear[1] on YouTube is a 747 Captain. It's a great aviation channel in general if anyone is interested in that stuff. He had mentioned two things that really illustrated to me your point a while back: A) Stuff breaks on planes. All the time. They are complex machines, but they typically have so many redundancies that unless there is a completely catastrophic failure, they are still perfectly safe to fly. An example:…

Yes but do the flight crew have the ability to tell if a plane is safe to fly?

Without a deep understanding of the design of the plane they rely a lot on the metrics that the plane manufacturer display and on the manufacturers manuals to interpret them.

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

#170

Post by bombcar »

nsguy wrote: post #144
avs733 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether time proves that out - and whether 'more than a narrative' (meaning..safety culture) is actually related to this incident matter and are independent of it emerging as a narrative. A very similar thing happened post Air France 447's crash into the Atlantic ocean. The reporting on it began to include any incident involving any airbus plane for quite a while until it was determined the crew was primarily at faul…

IIRC there were other Airbus incidents and concerns. It's been so long I don't recall the details but I remember being worried about flying Airbus.

Airbus has had any number of incidents (here's one: https://safetyfirst.airbus.com/landing-with-nosewheels-at-90... ) - and for awhile their approach to autopilots was widely argued back and forth (Airbus wouldn't let you put the plane outside of the envelope, basically), and there's some disagreement on how competing sticks should be handled.
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