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Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

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Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#171

Post by larrywright »

sandworm101 wrote: post #106
nl wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another pilot chimed in: "Only in LA." The SR71 radio speed check was in LA too. I heard a Cessna ask for a readout of its ground speed. '90 knots Center replied. Moments later,a Twin Beech required the same. '120 knots' Center answered. We weren’t the only ones proud of our ground speed that day as almost instantly an F-18 smugly transmitted: 'Ah, Center, Dusty 52 requests ground speed readout.' There was a slight…

That story is often told but is generally considered apocryphal. There is too much wrong with it procedurally. It's funny, but not likely a conversation that actually happened.

I thought it was apocryphal as well, but this is the pilot who did it. https://youtu.be/8AyHH9G9et0

Not saying it’s impossible that he made it up or embellished, but it seems likely that it actually happened.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#172

Post by hnlmorg »

mark-r wrote: post #135
hnlmorg wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be physically sat on the plane to emphasise with the severity of the situation. It's not like ATCs are willing pilots to die. And sometimes not being able to physically control the actions of the pilots can add to the stress.

I wasn't claiming that ATC isn't one of the most stressful jobs on the planet. Merely agreeing with GP that the pilot has more skin in the game.

The point of the conversation was about which is more stressful. Obviously having "more skin in the game" would directly increase the stress levels but yourself and others who posted like you completely miss the point that the ATCs are there to ensure safe travel and they very much are invested in that mission too. Comments like "well they're not going to die so why would they lose their cool" are just harsh and entirely miss the point of why the ATC are there in the first place.

The key reason for why ATC don't lose their cool has nothing to do with who is more stressed or has more "skin in the game" and everything to do with the fact that if ATC lose their cool then the pilot is more likely to die... and possibly other planes and their passengers and crew too. In order to save lives ATC have to keep their cool even when everyone else around them panics. That's the real crux of the matter.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#173

Post by ceejayoz »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #109
MattGaiser wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One would think that there would be higher fines for this sort of misbehavior.

As it turns out, you can't just make up laws just because someone did something unsafe for the purpose of punishing said person

You can absolutely pass laws to punish the next person who tries it, though.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#174

Post by tobib »

Johnny555 wrote: post #91

As amusing as this is, it highlights how fragile air travel is -- someone managed to fly a 200 lb payload within a couple hundred feet of an airliner on final approach. And apparently did so anonymously since there was no mention of who or exactly what it was. It wouldn't be hard to maneuver it right in front of the airliner and cause a collision. While the aircraft would likely survive an engine strike, at only a fe…

Very fragile. It always baffles me how close to the ground airplanes fly during take-off and landing and how there aren't lunatics messing with them more often. In the US there are places where it is legal for a regular Joe to stand underneath an airplane on approach, 200ft off the ground with the type of gun/rifle that could cause serious damage and bring it down.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#175

Post by OJFord »

CPLX wrote: post #159
sandworm101 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That story is often told but is generally considered apocryphal. There is too much wrong with it procedurally. It's funny, but not likely a conversation that actually happened.

What's the procedural problem with it? It's possibly a little too cute or maybe embellished, but there's nothing in it that sounds impossible or beyond plausibility. For reference I have a pilot's license.

The upthread-linked Reddit debunk [0] is A) SR71 would've been on a different frequency to both other planes; B) ATC computers at the time were capped at 990 knots; C) SR71s' speeds were classified, no way the crew would've asked or ATC responded with it.

Unfortunately.

https://np.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/8x5ndw/til_wh...

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#176

Post by defnotashton2 »

bewaretheirs wrote: post #142
natcombs wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are youtube videos of ATC recordings (with transcripts) of pilots losing their cool. You are right, I don't think any ATC lost their cool in any of the recordings I've listened to. This quote from the article made me smile: >> Another pilot chimed in: "Only in LA."

Not ATC but here's a classic viral recording of a frazzled ground controller herding cats at JFK airport in NY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BMDkwfkXv0

Absolutely lost it about a minute in when he goes "you guys can't.. Just do that.."

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#177

Post by Rochus »

shadowgovt wrote: post #125
Rochus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has less to do with coolness than with the fact that the controller will most likely not be able to see the guy on the ASR, and I would assume that the guy has no transponder either. You can only control the airspace if you can see who/what is around.

I imagine the radar signature of a wingsuiter is pretty small, even if they have an exhaust-belching rocket strapped on the thing. How well do those show up on radar?

Depending on the angle of incidence relative to the radar, the cross-section can be quite large. But the resolution of the radar is almost certainly not sufficient to see the small object near the aircraft.

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#179

Post by pjc50 »

achow wrote: post #124
ckocagil wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All sorts of transportation are very fragile. Everyone with a driver's license is trusted with operating tons of steel that can move at enormous speeds. Society's based on some amount of mutual trust. We can't lock everything down and treat every person as a potential criminal. That leads to an inefficient and dystopian country.

Well at the risk of sounding pedantic, things on rails - railways, metro/subway etc. are not in same category.

Wasn't there a guy who crashed the train he was driving because he'd been radicalised by Q nonsense?

Re: Airline pilots landing at LAX report “a guy in jetpack” flying alongside them

#180

Post by dehrmann »

masklinn wrote: post #132
achow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at the risk of sounding pedantic, things on rails - railways, metro/subway etc. are not in same category.

OTOH the fragility of the original comment was about wilfully disrupting transports. It's pretty easy to significantly distrust rail transportation. There are hundreds of rail suicides every year, and each and every time the line shuts down until everything's cleaned up. And of course you could destructively interfere with the train or railway, a rather common sabotage operation during WWII.

I can't seem to find a source, I heard about a culture (maybe Japanese?) where suicide by train is rare because of the inconvenience it causes others and the shame that brings your family.

When you go through the math on lost productivity due to train delays, you get some interesting conclusions. If a commuter train has 1,000 passengers making an average of $50 per hour who are, a delay is $833 per minute. That means it's more efficient (not going to touch on ethics or legality) to make minimal accommodations for disabled passengers and provide them point-to-point car service, instead.

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