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Armchair air crash investigator

momav.me

81–90 of 154 posts

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#81
post #67
post #29

NY Daily News is reporting that VASI was down as well ( http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/expert-runway-guida... ) Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash, so there's no particular reason to think VASI was down before the crash. I really don't think I'd trust SF city government to run an airport, even under FAA regulations. L…

The short version is there are multiple things on a runway that emit light and I think they're being confused. "Which appears to be due to someone incorrectly reading a post-crash NOTAM which is about the aids being gone due to the crash" OK first of all VASI has been obsolete since I was a kid in the 90s, its all PAPI now. (edited to add, in the USA) Much like people still call the AWOS an ATIS because it does about…

> I could imagine a plane running off the runway into the PAPI and that would be about the end of that PAPI, or at least it'll have to be aligned.

As best I can tell from the available photos, the reason the 28L PAPI is out is because the plane took out the three rightmost ones when it slid/bounced across the blast pad area.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#82
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some video of the crash - kind of looks like it was skimming the waves in ground effect trying to go around http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/us/2013/07/07/vo-plane-sf-p... I stand by the parent having some useful data and analysis, and the OP being totally speculation, and in many respects uninformed. - number 1, if you say 'loss of power', makes sense as a possible cause. if you say 'icing in the FOHE', it's like sa…

"- number 4, pilot error/bad approach, can't argue with that. the story is what's interesting" Pilot induced oscillation on a really big scale. Coming in way too hot, slam down, whoops way over corrected, now coming in too low, whoops ran outta air and time to correct. Coming in way too hot, now are you better off trying to salvage or go around and get fired? Different nations airlines have differing policies on this…

Do you really risk getting fired for a go around? I mean, I can see that happening if you do it way more than other pilots, but just doing it once?

(For the record, I have no idea how these things works, it's just very surprising)

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#83
post #22

Sorry to go offtopic here, but the images seem to be used without any credits. The first one was taken by David Eun ( https://path.com/p/1lwrZb )

Well, the whole blog design is very gray-area 'theft' of Medium's design.

I think that the lack of author information in the top left is sufficiently different to not even call it gray area. And the lack of paragraph-level comments.

The logo and typography seem very similar, even to my untrained eye, though.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#84
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this? Can they do a better (in terms of passenger comfort) job landing manually?

No, autoland is pretty good. But there are two factors that cause pilots to land manually most of the time: 1) pilots think they are better at handling last-minute unexpected contingencies like wind sheer or bird strikes (and they may well be right about that) and 2) pilots don't want to give the Powers that Be any additional data to suggest that they aren't actually needed to fly a plane at all. The fact of the matt…

> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security.

Two words: anomalous conditions.

As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions, and landing with minimal, mostly unskilled supervision.

We don't need pilots on planes... until something unexpected goes wrong, and we do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#85
post #7
post #4

Here is graphical comparison of safe landing and Asiana crash: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BOhIDCWCUAApHFV.jpg:large . Also it appears that runway was modified: http://metabunk.org/sk/HL7742_777_Crash%2C_Korean_Asiana_Air...

Interesting. I wonder what the Asiana's descent profile looks like compared to the average and some outliers of other safe 777 landings at SFO. Did you generate that image? If not, what was the source?

Poking around flighaware's website, I found data sources that could be used to make a better graph:

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130625/0...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130626/0...

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/history/20130706/0...

Nothing like URLs with obvious patterns!

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#86
Cellphone video shot by a guy, Fred Hayes, watching aircraft land yesterday at SFO shows the tail dragging in the water for quite a distance before striking the seawall.

http://statter911.com/2013/07/07/must-see-crash-of-asiana-fl...

I'm guessing that the pilot was praying for those engines to spool-up faster.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#87
post #84
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, autoland is pretty good. But there are two factors that cause pilots to land manually most of the time: 1) pilots think they are better at handling last-minute unexpected contingencies like wind sheer or bird strikes (and they may well be right about that) and 2) pilots don't want to give the Powers that Be any additional data to suggest that they aren't actually needed to fly a plane at all. The fact of the matt…

> The fact of the matter is that there are no technological barriers to making aircraft completely autonomous, but pilots want the world to remain in denial about this for as long as possible for the sake of their job security. Two words: anomalous conditions. As we both know, pilots aren't needed in the vast majority of commercial flights. The plane is perfectly capable of taking off, navigating, avoiding collisions…

Devil's-advocate: fine, OK, we still need pilots, for the time being. But do they actually need to be on the planes?

In the case of two recent crashes (AF447 and this one, assuming pilot error turns out to be the cause as seems likely), it's safe to say that a computer would've easily done a better job than the pilots.

Would be interesting to hear Capt. Sullenberger's take on the question.

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#89
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- number 4, pilot error/bad approach, can't argue with that. the story is what's interesting" Pilot induced oscillation on a really big scale. Coming in way too hot, slam down, whoops way over corrected, now coming in too low, whoops ran outta air and time to correct. Coming in way too hot, now are you better off trying to salvage or go around and get fired? Different nations airlines have differing policies on this…

Do you really risk getting fired for a go around? I mean, I can see that happening if you do it way more than other pilots, but just doing it once? (For the record, I have no idea how these things works, it's just very surprising)

I think you might get a call from a chief pilot for an anomalous approach, whether you salvage it at last minute or go around. If there's a pattern of things not going by the book, would guess you get sent for 'retraining' before you get fired... airline version of big data FTW I guess...

Re: Armchair air crash investigator

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They'll make a preliminary, primarily "factual" report within days, or weeks. This will be based on the FDR, Quick Access Recorder, statements by crew, passengers and witnesses to the NTSB investigators. Even though I'm a former pilot, I've not made any posts prior to this one, because I didn't want to speculate.

The recently released video (which I'm sure the NTSB already had) should be helpful as well (and appears to support the author's speculation).

GRAPHIC video of actual crash http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/07/07/vo...
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