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Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

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Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#151

Post by bumby »

fragmede wrote: post #117
Dalewyn wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manufacturing certifications, installation and maintenance inspections and certifications, auditing, etc. To put it into some relatable context, a simple electrical switch that you might grab for a few bucks at your local Home Depot would cost at least several hundreds of dollars because of all the red tape that must be satisfied for safety reasons. Safety isn't cheap.

Red tape isn't the phrase I'd use in this context since your point is that the switch will work 100% of the time even after being thru a literal hurricane, so the difference isn't merely the tape, but that there's been proper testing and engineering all the way down, which drives the cost way up.

Unfortunately, this is exactly how it's characterized in the aerospace industry. Often the requirements that are design to reduce/verify quality and safety requirements are talked about as "bureaucracy" and "just paperwork."

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#152

Post by mertd »

christophilus wrote: post #48

The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.

I was in a rejected take off. I collected my phone from the cockpit door after it flew there from my hand. Without the seatbelt, I would have flown too.

I never found out the reason. I thought they would have to report it and I could read it in av herald.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#153

Post by [deleted] »

cguess wrote: post #142
exmadscientist wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 99% is never enough 99% is absolutely reasonable for one layer of defense among many ! That is one of the best methods to achieve truly high reliability, as is needed in this case: stack many reliable systems in such a way that they all must fail to get an overall failure. It is not perfect, of course, and things can always cascade, but it is a powerful technique.

I'm guessing you've never worked in system-critical infrastructure? Airplanes are another level up from that. I'm not the one saying this, the FAA and NTSB are. Nothing is allowed to go wrong, ever.

[deleted]

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#154

Post by bumby »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #143
fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red tape isn't the phrase I'd use in this context since your point is that the switch will work 100% of the time even after being thru a literal hurricane, so the difference isn't merely the tape, but that there's been proper testing and engineering all the way down, which drives the cost way up.

Every strip of BS red adhesive has some flimsy pretext to justify it. Nobody is saying you can't pour theoretically meaningful pork into a traffic light in the form of QA and whatnot and get an indestructible traffic light that operates for a century without being touched in return. People are questioning whether that's actually necessary for a system that's already the Nth layer of redundancy.

I don't know how airport infrastructure requirements work, but for the actual airframes themselves, the requisite level of reliability/redundancy are strictly defined. I would imagine airport design is similar. If so, it's clear if it's necessary or not.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#155

Post by fragmede »

Dalewyn wrote: post #121
fragmede wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Red tape isn't the phrase I'd use in this context since your point is that the switch will work 100% of the time even after being thru a literal hurricane, so the difference isn't merely the tape, but that there's been proper testing and engineering all the way down, which drives the cost way up.

I admit my vocabulary is failing me at the moment in finding similarly concise words to describe it, but I'm happy if the meaning gets through one way or another.

one way to phrase it might be to change

> because of all the red tape that must be

to

because of all the rigoy testing and precise engineering that has to be

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#156

Post by throwaway675309 »

moloch-hai wrote: post #16
Nicksil wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I hate that they call this having a "near-collision" >They came close to having a collision What? >but there was nothing like any sort of collision Because "near"

No bad thing happened, except Delta cancelling its flight. The bad thing was prevented by quick action.

100% false. A runway incursion of this magnitude would absolutely be classified as a "bad thing". You're getting hung up on semantics.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#158

Post by bumby »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #148
gregmac wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this system fails when needed, every cent spent on it will be considered a waste. Nobody is going to say "sure, 300 people died and a couple $150m planes were destroyed.. but we saved a couple million dollars when it was installed 7 years ago".

It would be ideologically convenient for you if people died but statistically it's just gonna be another close call since close calls outnumber accidents in this field by a ton to one. If/when it happens the professionals who deal in this stuff will say something mundane like "this system prevented ten close calls before we actually had one slip through, that's pretty great". And they'll replace the $5 lightbulb and…

>close calls outnumber accidents in this field by a ton to one

The irony is that the reason the safety numbers are that good is because aerospace is one of the only 5+ sigma quality/safety industries.

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#159

Post by fn-mote »

Sharlin wrote: post #59
scyzoryk_xyz wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that there is a shit ton that is and always has been happening in this area. Air safety is the leading sector in standards for safety training. We are relying on checklists, procedures, surveillance tech, simulation training, certification, re-certification etc. etc. No other industry has put in as much thought into these problems. Except for maybe the military. Source: I had the opportunity to me…

The reason surgery is so far behind aeronautics is likely entirely due to the fact that when a surgery goes wrong, it usually doesn't kill hundreds of people at once in a massive fireball. Everything else being equal, rare but spectacular failures tend to garner more attention than more frequent but less dramatic ones.

> The reason surgery is so far behind aeronautics is likely entirely due to the fact that when a surgery goes wrong

Surgery is not a public performance. How do you even find out about the mistakes that occur? Fatal mistakes, sure, maybe...

You have a better bet of your dash cam showing what happened when your car is hit by another car, if something happens to you.

I think nobody's really going to know what mistakes were made while you were on the table. Certainly not in a near miss like this case.

Very interesting reference on improving healthcare and getting honest measurements: a 2004 article by Gawande on the treatment of cystic fibrosis. [1]

[1] Atul Gawande, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2004/12/06/the-bell-curve

Re: Friday night’s near-disaster at JFK airport

#160

Post by ClumsyPilot »

zmgsabst wrote: post #135
jahewson wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unreliable systems aren’t there when you need them.

Neither are nonexistent systems.

Imagine you are doing barrel roll and struggling to control a plane, and you have a parachute.

So you decide, scre the airplane, a will save my life, and jump out. Only it fails to open, it was an unreliable parachite, bought by someone like you. They thought,'better a 50/50 parachite then no parachute?

So now you are plummeting to you death, thinking, that if you did not have the confidence of 'I have a parachute' you woupd have never attemped the barrel roll in the first place. And you would have done your utmost to steady the plane, and probably would succeed. And you would not waste time packing it and fuel carrying it around with you.

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