131–140 of 295 posts
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The quotes are appropriate because only Congress, not executive action, can change the official name.
Congress has, through inaction, approved this
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> Heavy weather and an instrument approach or confounding factors? Not accurate imho. Then what are you supposed to do when your GPS craps out on approach in low visibility and heavy weather? Obviously the answer is "fly the airplane". Which means you look at your artificial horizon, set trim and power for max climb, get to a safe altitude and figure it out. If you're paying attention you already have your chart fold…
It's very easy to write this comment when you're not the one getting behind the plane in the middle of the night with multiple simultaneous challenges (speaking from experience; I can feel the anxiety writing this comment from similar "white knuckle" experience), and I agree, keep flying the plane. Systems fail, that is the point of investigating incidents to improve systems. Humans are always the weakest link. I agr…
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> General aviation (GA) is significantly less safe than commercial air travel Since I've been paying attention from the peanut gallery, watching Blancolirio videos, etc. I would never fly on a small private plane. Seems like once a week there is a crash of a small GA craft somewhere, often with fatalities, due to loss of control (i.e. nothing wrong with the aircraft). Pilots seem to become overconfident or complacent…
When I was training 20yr ago we practiced stalls, spin recovery, simulated random engine-out scenarios.. do they not do that anymore? I was pretty confident barring some catastrophic mechanical failure I could probably get it on the ground or into the water (or trees) in one piece. The big question remains though: what now? If you're knocked unconscious (likely--lap belt, big flat instrument panel at face height) the…
Garmin Is Automating In-Flight Emergencies (Autoland, Smart Glide, ESP) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48996106 - July 2026 (0 comments)
The accountability problem exposed by the first Garmin Autoland deployment - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793561 - January 2026 (0 comments)
Autoland saves King Air, everyone reported safe - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46346214 - December 2025 (185 comments)
(Garman SafeReturn is reliant on GPS though, so unsure how it would handle loss of GPS during autonomous operations, I presume silicon photonics for precision dead reckoning as a backup nav input are the future, or perhaps relying on jam-resistant GPS services and/or multiple GNSS providers simultaneously)
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Pilots complaining about automation: several Pilots unable to fly with all the bells and whistles and getting their ass handed to them when anything falls out of the ordinary: too many
Automation because of safety, latest recent example, Boeing MCAS, cost savings led to airliners crashing, pilots didn’t complain enough then nor had the proper safety because Boeing. You are not supposed to need all the “bells and whistles” to fly, a plane is a plane and a pilot is in left seat meaning to fly the plane. There are checklists and minimum equipment lists that state what is possible and how to handle fai…
But did you know for 'General Aviation' (small planes flown for recreation and suchlike) there are around 300 deaths per year in the US?
Missing from the article is that, once the pilots reported to ATC that GPS was inoperable, ATC was going to have them circle to the right and guide them along the ILS approach, which would've avoided the worst of the mountains. ATC also asked the military to stop GPS jamming, which they did for a brief while... and the pilots probably noticed GPS start working again... except... Instead, the pilots saw the airport vi…
He hinted at this when he mentioned that ATC was dealing with other flights complaining about loss of GPS and coordinating with white sands. ATC crew were probably just out of their depth and trying their best, same as the flight crew. I wonder what the experience level of the ATC crew was and how much pressure they were getting from white sands to keep the jamming up.
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No, pilots should ensure they're current at navigating without GPS because it can fail, just like pilots practice engine failure procedures and every other emergency / non-normal procedure. That doesn't mean it should be "randomly disabled" for the same reason that you don't test software in production or randomly turn off the engine of the plane. Obviously.
We don't know how it failed. Maybe it displayed their lat/long perfectly but at the wrong altitude. We think of failure as obvious, but it is often nearly impossible to tell unless you are looking for it.
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They’re going to eliminate windows?
The weather already does that on a regular basis... though they are doing their best to make the weather, on average (i.e. what you might call a climate), worse.
Is climate change going to make it more difficult to see outside?
Roswell.
Blaming GPS jaming and the military? What about the aliens?
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The weather already does that on a regular basis... though they are doing their best to make the weather, on average (i.e. what you might call a climate), worse.
Worse is a value judgement and, in context, the value would be "ability to fly by sight". Is climate change going to make it more difficult to see outside?
Yes, the change we are undergoing and that the current administration seems to be doing their best to accelerate includes an increase in heavy precipitation across north america.
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They deferred navigation to ATC instead of using their own capabilities such as VOR.
They requested navigation assistance ATC could not promptly provide. I strongly agree the pilot in command could've done better, but if ATC was overloaded, they should've promptly communicated that to manage expectations that immediate help was not forthcoming. An aircraft covers a lot of ground "in a couple of minutes." (assuming ~120-200 knots) https://www.airresearch.com/Pilots/AIM-08/Chap6/aim0602.html > a. Radar…
This gave me a smile. I've never heard of pattern matching being described as aggressive.