181–189 of 189 posts
No. You don’t get to build complex configurations that only work with supporting software and then BLAME THE USER when the software fails.
“Ah, but you didn’t follow rule 137 in the 2000-page manual that nobody reads because computers made it obsolete” is a deflection of responsibility from the owners to the operators
and it’s not okay.
This seems like mostly how it ought to work - * There were two unusual events in very short order * Someone quickly noticed and gave the order to go to ground stop * The problem was figured out quickly and a work-around was developed * Flights Resumed after successfully deploying the work around to the 'production process' * A patch was quickly developed and deployed once the underlying bug was uncovered. I think eve…
> Now, do I think telling pilots what thrust they should use to take off is wise? I dont know - I'm not a pilot, and I'd want pilots feelings on the matter before commenting further, but it feels to me like a loss of authority that would make me uncomfortable Pilot here :) the journalist got it a bit wrong, performance data isn't primarily about how much thrust to use. It is part of the calculations, but crews are fr…
> “Still, the mishaps point to the need for more vigilance by pilots in checking automated data.”
737-900s are notoriously tail-heavy. Some airlines require that they use tail stands when parked, and some airlines (like United) have taken measures to redistribute weight forward of the rear landing gear (by moving one of the economy lavatories so that it sits directly behind first class/in front of most economy seating).
Do 737s in the US still even have first class?. I'm surprised. I've never seen any in Europe in the last 15 years on short haul which is of course what a 737 is used for.
> Alaska’s Peyton said “several crews noticed the error and notified dispatch.”
> The pilot at American Airlines said “requesting manual data is not standard” and that if there’s a glitch, naturally some pilot somewhere is going to miss it.
> “Not everyone gets eight hours sleep the night before. Someone is going through a divorce. Someone is not so sharp that morning,” he said. “The sanity check isn’t perfect every day of the week.”
So they already knew (or should have known) about this glitch, and did nothing about it until it started causing damage to aircraft. I would have thought the pilots who reported it earlier would have also predicted the outcome and got it fixed then. From my lay perspective, it's obvious that if aircraft is heavier than the flight computer was told it is, then something bad is going to happen (e.g. could have been complete failure to take off and crash at the end of the runway).
Well, maybe such incidents where pilots do make the prediction, and get it fixed before it causes the problem they predicted, never make it to the news...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Who said anything about that? You're arguing against a straw man nobody has set up but yourself.. There's no such thing as perfect software, but there is definitely software that doesn't make up a false value if it can't work.
And if there is a bug in the logic that determines if it can or can’t work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like a slower rotation might be useful, to wait until you feel it leave the ground before aiming higher. I'm sure there are reasons for the procedure as is.
Trying to "force the airplane off the ground" by rotating prior to Vr has a few safety downsides. One of them is that it makes tailstrikes more likely, as you'll have to carefully moderate the angle before lift occurs. Another is that it removes loading from the wheels more quickly, which extends the "awkward zone" in which the airplane is still rolling on the ground but has so little weight on the wheels that it wil…
Then the problem here is trading safety for something - cost apparently.
BTW, in a small plane I found soft field takeoffs quite fun. Nose up early, wheels up early, fly in ground effect to gain speed. I suppose that is a safety tradeoff and might not want to do it in some conditions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The bug is in the weight of the payload of the plane. I don't believe pilots have any way to measure the actual weight of the payload of the plane, they rely on that sort of estimates to determine how much fuel they need, take-off speed, etc. It's not really a loss of authority. Bad weight estimates have resulted in crashes in the past.
I wonder if it would be possible to put a weighing pad at airports for a double-check. Like on the access ramp to the runway, meaning you'd only need a handful per airport and planes pass them naturally.
A few modern pickup trucks have a system for measuring how much weight is in the bed or being transferred through the tongue of a trailer because of how common it is for people to overload their trucks.
AFAIK these systems just use the same sorts of suspension height sensors that have been used for auto-levelling for years and are factory calibrated to know that if the rear end squats by X distance then there must be Y load in it.
Seems like something along those lines would be technically easy to retrofit to large aircraft, possibly even as a software update if they already have some relevant sensors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Now, do I think telling pilots what thrust they should use to take off is wise? I dont know - I'm not a pilot, and I'd want pilots feelings on the matter before commenting further, but it feels to me like a loss of authority that would make me uncomfortable Pilot here :) the journalist got it a bit wrong, performance data isn't primarily about how much thrust to use. It is part of the calculations, but crews are fr…
How do you feel about the pilots getting blamed for relying on the software? > “Still, the mishaps point to the need for more vigilance by pilots in checking automated data.”
In commercial aviation there can never be a single point of failure that could lead to catastrophic outcome. The performance calculations are such a thing, so there must be validation steps.
In many airlines for example if the performance calculations are done manually (or by an app based on manual input) they need to be done by both pilots independently and the results cross-checked. Otherwise a single typo could have a big impact.