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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

#181

Post by rootusrootus »

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…

> you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves

Huh? Try 51. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233827

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

#182

Post by bombcar »

ricardobeat wrote: post #142
Johnny555 wrote: post #120

I remember being on a 787 not long after they were introduced and after boarding, we had a 20 minute delay because of an equipment problem that required "rebooting the plane" (the pilot's words). They did a full power shutoff, the cabin lights went off for a few minutes (and the cabin quickly warmed up because the A/C was off and the electronic window shades turned clear), then about 20 minutes later the pilot said e…

The first versions of the Dreamliner had some kind of software bug that ended up generating a requirement of a hard reboot every X hours until it could be fixed. I don’t know if I would have the guts to board the plane after seeing that!

It was a timer that overflowed, I think, and nobody had left the plane "on" without shutting it down for whatever time it took to overflow.

https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/8548-reboot-...

To be fair, 248 days is quite a long time.

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

#183

Post by bombcar »

chrisbolt wrote: post #129
robmusial wrote: post #95

In the Air France flight 11 [0] situation the pilots thought they were having instrument and control issues, they had to go around, and there was much panic in the cockpit. It turned out the entire thing was pilot induced and the aircraft was fine. Because of Boeing's massive failures on the minds of everyone it'll be interesting to see if this was truly an instrumentation failure or something else. [0] https://simpl…

Reminiscent of AF447[0] which also involved pilots making conflicting inputs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447

At some point the systems are going to be so good that the second pilot is more of a liability than an asset.

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

#184

Post by rootusrootus »

Given that all we have is hearsay, and we've seen many incidents like this in the past that were caused by "clear air turbulence" ... I'm going to default to assuming it was not a mechanical defect in the plane until we know otherwise. It is by far the most likely answer.

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

#185

Post by breadwinner »

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:…

> They are complex machines, but they typically have so many redundancies

But Boeing reduced redundancies, presumably to cut costs. The 737 MAX planes that crashed only had one AoA sensor. Where else did they cut costs? Where else did they reduce redundancies? The public trust has been lost. Boeing needs to design a new plane from scratch, this time let engineers design the plane without interference from accountants.

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

#186

Post by usrusr »

avemg wrote: post #36
nop_slide wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how I acquired the "common" knowledge that a plane has never crashed before due to turbulence alone, but this looks like an example of such a case!

I think maybe you've misunderstood what the common knowledge said. Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude, so yea turbulence alone hasn't caused a crash. But anything near terrain is plenty risky (mountain waves, low-level wind shear). If the turbulence makes you drop a couple of hundred feet that's no big deal at 35,000 feet and no matter how bumpy it gets, the wings aren't going to break off. But if…

The good news is that very strong downdrafts, in absolute terms, simply can't happen close to the ground, because the air in question needs somewhere to go.

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

#188

Post by [deleted] »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #166
whatshisface wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#189

Post by ceejayoz »

rootusrootus wrote: post #181
weaksauce wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> you need to cycle the power on the planes every 3 days or else the reset themselves Huh? Try 51. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33233827

Some A350s needed a reboot every 149 hours (6 days) for a while.

https://gizmodo.com/turn-it-off-and-on-again-every-149-hours...

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

#190

Post by anigbrowl »

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…

50 injuries on a commercial flight is very unusual. The story is about half description of the incident and half background info on Boeing's ongoing woes. It doesn't seem reasonable to expect an engineering explainer on a breaking news story.

There are experts somewhere that can put events like this into context, but they're not cited and the story isn't written around that kind of analysis, so we're left to supply it ourselves. Human nature suggests that the blanks we'll fill in will be a disaster movie, because that's "fun" to think about.

That seems kinda patronizing, considering there's a first hand report describing the effect of the sudden drop:

“That’s when I opened my eyes and there was various individuals at the top of the plane. Just stuck to the roof and then they fell to the floor. And then I just realized I’m not in a movie, this is actually for real,” he told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

Are readers supposed to just ignore this, or the pilot's comment that the plane apparently rebooted and he lost all control of it?

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