Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804 • Hacker News Board

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#101

Post by lazide » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

llamaimperative wrote: post #64

brnt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Such are the mechanics of fascist dictatorships. Individuals are in no way empowered to think or act in ways not supporting the Great Leader. You being unsafe is the method of control. Take care, America.

Yeah people dictator-sympathizers seem to think the problem with strongman asshole leaders is that they're meanie heads (something Real Patriots can look past!). But no, it's that they actually yield failure in a society's most basic functions and at every level.

It often takes a degree of pain unimaginable to people to realize the true consequences of going down this road. Sometimes, that pain is so extreme people can never do it.

See post WW2 Germany, and all the folks who got caught with nazi memorabilia in their attics for decades afterwards.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#102

Post by croemer » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 1:56 PM UTC

gus_massa wrote: post #100

Why do they use pure oxygen tanks? Isn't it possible to use a mix of oxygen and nitrogen? Doesn't divers use a mix?

At high altitudes you need pure oxygen to get appropriate partial pressure of oxygen.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#103

Post by woliveirajr » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 2:01 PM UTC

eadmund wrote: post #95

qingcharles wrote: post #72

This is wild to me: "Even though passengers have been forbidden from smoking on airplanes for 25 years, the rules about smoking in the cockpit are less straightforward, and international regulations appear to invest the captain with the authority to decide whether smoking will be allowed or not."

Why is it surprising? There’s no danger from smoking on-board; banning it was never about safety.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_820

Yes, it was about safety.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#104

Post by aprilthird2021 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 2:27 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #90

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most democracies were founded as such and so the society and democracy were born at the same time

Nope, democracies are usually much younger than the underlying societies. For example, the vast majority of Europe is now democratic. 200 years ago, most of Europe was autocratic and even exceptions like the UK were at most very incomplete democracies with limited suffrage. But the constituent nations and ethnicities are very much the same, even though political boundaries have shifted; an English, Polish or Spanish…

But most democratic countries in the world are not in Europe. Most of them were born as democracies: India, Tanzania, Kenya, Nigeria, USA, etc.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#105

Post by protimewaster » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 2:32 PM UTC

woliveirajr wrote: post #103

eadmund wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it surprising? There’s no danger from smoking on-board; banning it was never about safety.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varig_Flight_820 Yes, it was about safety.

It feels pretty obvious that discouraging fire in a fully enclosed space would have safety as a motivating factor, so I'm surprised that multiple people here are arguing that there's no safety component.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#106

Post by aprilthird2021 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 2:51 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #98

eadmund wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the attitude towards "truth vs. face" is similar in Egyptian governmental institutions. My initial instinct when reading the prologue was to think about that, and be proud that we’re not like that. But then I reflected a bit more, and wondered. When folks say something we dislike, do we consider that it may be true, or do we shut down the conversation? I’m reminded of the response to any number of public cont…

This is a good observation, but as usual, everything comes in degrees of severity. To fabricate an implausible report about a plane crash which took more than 60 lives is a very deep institutional problem, let us hope that this won't become the planetary norm.

It's actually a shallow institutional problem. If the dictator wants the report to say one thing, it must, the end.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#107

Post by ec109685 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 3:04 PM UTC

ordu wrote: post #67

> if it was a coverup, then the EAAID gave away its own game by attaching the BEA’s comprehensive findings. I'd say, that EAAID had written the report in a way to make the coveraup unmistakable. I mean, the reasoning is not just bad, it contradicts to itself in a way, that to my mind one couldn't achieve without a deliberation. So it is possible that EAAID was forced to support the hypothesis but resisted it in the o…

Besides not agreeing with the EAAID, nothing in then BEA report makes Egypt look bad. It was a tragic accident and the crew acted admirably.

What was the motivation for Egypt to insist on a bomb detonation beyond them believing that is what happened?

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#108

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 3:05 PM UTC

ngneer wrote: post #13

A rather well-written piece. My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks. And that safety culture matters. One must not bend the facts to draw a desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or else recuse oneself.

[deleted]

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#109

Post by wat10000 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 3:31 PM UTC

eadmund wrote: post #95

qingcharles wrote: post #72

This is wild to me: "Even though passengers have been forbidden from smoking on airplanes for 25 years, the rules about smoking in the cockpit are less straightforward, and international regulations appear to invest the captain with the authority to decide whether smoking will be allowed or not."

Why is it surprising? There’s no danger from smoking on-board; banning it was never about safety.

You just read about dozens of people being killed by an on-board fire and you’re going to say there’s no danger from casually having a fire on the end of a stick? Even if this one wasn’t started by a cigarette, they certainly can cause fires.

Re: Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804

#110

Post by wat10000 » Wed, Dec 25, 2024, 3:45 PM UTC

FridayoLeary wrote: post #69

wk_end wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In commercial aviation the vast majority of tragedies are Swiss cheese failures, at this point. The system has worked very hard to optimize out the possibility of any one individual failure leading to catastrophe. But the explosion of potential combinations - along with the extremely low odds of them ever occurring - makes preparing for one of them much less feasible.

I'm surprised that a catastrophic runaway oxygen leak is possible on an aircraft in todays day and age. Aircraft design is dominated by strict safety regimes that take into account even far fetched scenarios. Putting one valve in the rubber hose sounds sub optimal. Gas station pumps, for example have a valve that closes if the hose gets torn away. (which does happen when people forget about the pump and drive off). F…

The article says that a risk analysis was done for the system and the risk was found to be “extremely improbable,” meaning between 1 in 100 million to 1 in a billion flight hours.

This flight may have been extremely unlucky, or the risk analysis may have been wrong. This is why the behavior of the Egyptian authorities is so frustrating; the purpose of the accident investigation is to see if there are problems that should be addressed.