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Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

theguardian.com

541–550 of 633 posts

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#541

A sad case. Once they find the data boxes and inspect the data and voice records of the crew they might arrive at an answer. Unlike the USA, India as well as China prioritise political aspects above facts. This leads to the danger of hidden facts that show any officer is at fault. They also have a rigid hierarchy so if a senior officer makes an error, a junior officer dares not correct him and cause the senior to los…

India has an aviation safety record the past 20 years nearly as good as USAs. Your comment isn’t helpful.

I do not agree

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#542
post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the deep irony of the GP comment is that, had all of these supposedly knowledgable people just read the original report from the WHO (~early 2020), they'd have realized many things about the virus (such as the extremely skewed age distribution of the seriously ill) that would have greatly mitigated the overall panic. It literally took years for the chattering class in medicine to understand basic information th…

A million Americans did die of it, the lost QALYs was... a lot. A lot of people died who had more than a decade, actuarially. That's a big deal. But it doesn't matter for what I'm saying: paying too much attention to the news about a weird new virus from China would have clued a person in that something big might be coming, on whatever dimension you care to measure it.

But would that have been actionable information for the average person? What would you have done differently on the first day, given perfect information?

The Covid pandemic lasted much longer than would have been reasonable to prepare for via hoarding of supplies etc.

In my view, that was the entire problem: Much of the world overreacted in the short term (hard lockdowns including fining people going for a walk by themselves etc.) and underreacted in the long term (limiting avoidable large indoor gatherings such as most office work, air filters etc.)

Many governments did as much as people would tolerate for as long as they could (which meant, for some, doing nothing at all), rather than focusing on doing effective things they could actually keep up as long as required.

Hindsight is of course 20/20, but I really hope that’s a lesson many learned from it.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#543
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, looks like the return of regular airline crashes. The 2010s will probably be the apogee of airline safety for some time to come.

Why though? What’s changing? With all the relevant data this would probably be a good problem for an LLM to “ponder”.

Hiring shortages, policies that favor less skilled applicants, aging infrastructure, high demand for air travel.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#544
post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pro tip from an absolute rando: don’t bother with any source of breaking news. Read a weekly paper that summarises the important stuff. If something is truly pressing, you’ll hear about it from friends or coworkers.

From the television era: Don't watch news channels; important news will be on all the channels.

I'm not convinced there is really any important news.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#545
post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, looks like the return of regular airline crashes. The 2010s will probably be the apogee of airline safety for some time to come.

Why though? What’s changing? With all the relevant data this would probably be a good problem for an LLM to “ponder”.

> Why though? What’s changing?

I can mostly only speak for my own industry (software engineering), but subjectively, it seems like we lost a lot of institutional knowledge as well as organizational structures through Covid that will take a while to rebuild.

Between people going into early retirement (I heard aviation was hit particularly hard by this), people changing careers and their replacements not having much in-office spin up time etc., and some industries/markets never returning to in-person work at all when it used to be common before, I have some theories on where we lost both.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#546

Gentle tip from a lifelong aviation enthusiast: wait one week before reading on causation. Exposing yourself to first-week speculation isn’t just unproductive, it’s often counterproductive since the actual findings can rhyme with the false speculation closely enough that you wind up muddling the two in your mind.

It depends. It also gives the spin doctors time to do their thing, remove tracks etc.

For example, when MH17 was shot down by the Russian-backed rebels, they posted celebratory posts to twitter (they thought it was a Ukrainian military transport). Also, pictures of the actual SAM battery were taken as it was rushed back to Russia in the coverup. A few hours later all that got deleted and the spin machine started. "No, there were no Russian SAMs there", "it was a Ukraine fighter jet that shot it down", etc. They even fabricated fake radar tracks. People saying it was a SAM were denounced as conspiracy theorists, stuff like that. Only a year or so later when the official investigation started finishing up, the truth was confirmed.

In that case (as the investigation later proved) the earliest information was the most accurate. This is especially the case when there are powerful interests that don't want the truth to come out. Even Boeing covered up the first 737MAX crash.

That's why I think it's not a bad idea to read all the speculation. But keeping in mind that there is no definitive answer until the official accident report comes out. Any of the speculation could be true. Or even none of it.

And really, getting it 100% accurate in my mind is not something that matters. I just read it as an aviation enthusiast (and ex-pilot). What matters is that the experts writing the report are accurate. And later admiral cloudberg who expertly translates all that into normal-people language :) Whether I have an accurate view of what exactly happened really does not matter in this world.

Also, in many cases it is already clear what happened, like that ATR recently that was in a flat spin. The part that isn't clear is how it got into that situation. But the "what happened" is also important and that is one of the things you can often read about early.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#547

There is a person on X who says he has left the plane before takeoff and has uploaded videos of non-functional entertainment panels: https://x.com/akku92/status/1933114664923148455

Who leaves a plane due to entertainment being down?

You there to watch a old movie in 720p or to go somewhere?

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#548

Why is it always foreign airlines that crash? The US flys significantly more than any country in the world and operates the most Boeing airplanes including the 737 and 737 Max, yet there hasn't been a single major accident like this and the Max crashes in the US. Are these planes not maintained to the same standards, are the pilots not trained on these types of planes as much as in the US?

> there hasn't been a single major accident like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 > American Airlines Flight 191 crashed shortly after lifting off the runway at Chicago O'Hare Airport [...] The accident was attributed to improper maintenance procedures. The crash resulted in the deaths of all 271 passengers and crew on board, as well as two people on the ground. https://en.wikipedia.org…

I'm not talking about accidents from 40 and 20 years ago. I'm talking about the recent 737 accidents both this one and the previous Max crashes.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find MentourPilot’s consultant persona grating and avoid his content, but in terms of sensationalism there are far worse.

He is actually really good. By far the best on YouTube. The quality is so high (because it's based on technical reports), you can learn something from it as a professional engineer. I really don't know what you are talking about.

I find his content over-produced. As in, he puts too much effort into the production instead of just dispensing the information. I like Kelsey from 74-Gear and Juan Browne for their down to earth delivery. But that's what makes YouTube great having so many choices.

Re: Air India flight to London crashes in Ahmedabad with more than 240 onboard

#550

Why is it always foreign airlines that crash? The US flys significantly more than any country in the world and operates the most Boeing airplanes including the 737 and 737 Max, yet there hasn't been a single major accident like this and the Max crashes in the US. Are these planes not maintained to the same standards, are the pilots not trained on these types of planes as much as in the US?

>Why is it always foreign airlines that crash? And why is it always Boeing planes?

I'm not sure, my guess is maybe foreign pilots are less fimilar with Boeing planes. The reason for the Max crashes from the past was due to the pilots not getting enough training on the new plane and made assumptions about it based on the previous generation plane. It wasn't the actual plane that was bad it was Boeing training wasn't good enough for pilots to understand the changes they made.
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