21–30 of 142 posts
Reminds me a bit of the UPS Flight 6 that crashed in 2010. Wasn't the cause of the fire, but the fire heated up the co-pilots oxygen system to the point he couldn't wear it and eventually succumbed to smoke hypoxia. Due to smoke in the cabin the pilot couldn't see his flight deck readouts or out the window and eventually crashed into the ground.
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.
Describing them as "hacks" is weird. In most dictatorships, the concern is usually "What does the country's leadership want the official story to be" rather than "What actually happened". Take this quote from the article for example
> "In my opinion, the problem with the report is that it appears to treat the findings of the Triple Committee — the group appointed by the public prosecutor’s office — as the unquestioned truth, and fails to push back on any of its assertions, even the ones that they disagreed with. Instead, because the Triple Committee concluded that a bomb in the galley was the cause of the crash, the EAAID bent itself into a pretzel trying to make the evidence fit that theory. Unfortunately, we don’t know why the Triple Committee and the EAAID chose to die on this hill"
EgyptAir is a government owned enterprise. It's managed by the "Ministry of Civil Aviation" who's head is always some general or commander from the Air Force. If the EAAID investigators were allowed to say that there was a "faulty equipment" then a lot of questions would have had to be answered. A lot of questions that have the possibility of embarrassing people all the way up the chain (especially that as mentioned, that particular oxygen mask was reported faulty from another aircraft and removed for maintenance before, and the crew frequently reported that the pilot oxygen supply always decreases on every flight).
Saying "it was terrorists" is something that no one has to feel embarrassed about. In fact in 2016 the Egyptian government were in the midst of a lot of arrests and suspension of most freedoms to "curb terrorist activities". And such thing plays well into that narrative.
Are you an EAAID investigator who wants to say "it was a faulty oxygen mask"? Ok. How do you fancy you, your brother, cousin, and neighbor spending the next 15-30 years in jail pending investigation on conspiracy against the country?
On a somewhat related note, Egyptian science tends to suffer from a massive scientific misconduct (fraud) problem - see for example this paper by Egyptian authors, which covers the medical field: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.23286195v... Maybe the attitude towards "truth vs. face" is similar in Egyptian governmental institutions. Egypt in general is a low-trust society, scoring lower than India…
Those kinds of systems, where people are convinced their opinions and convictions don't matter, lead to problems like this
Does anyone know the author's background? All I see is 'analyzer of plane crashes'.
Tragedy from a Swiss cheese failure - several small holes/failures all line up. The issue of halon extinguishers versus oxygen-powered combustion producing many toxins while failing to extinguish is interesting - good that: > Halon fire extinguishers are scheduled to be phased out of most commercial aircraft by the end of 2025.
While it's not good to use halon in a semi contained space like an airplane, it is incredibly effective at killing fire. It really sucks the heat out of it. Thus in most cases the fire is killed quickly and not much toxins are produced. This is important too because fire itself produces a lot of lethal toxins too, most people in a fire don't burn to death but get poisoned by the smoke.
So it's a big loss imo. I understand why because it's one of the most potent ozone layer killers. But still.. you're not using the stuff unless you have no other choice. If you're not using it it doesn't end up in the environment.
In this case it didn't work because the cargo bay in question was not fitted with extinguishers if I remember correctly.
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.
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-crash-of-egyptair-fl...
Sufficient concentrations of oxygen can cause even steel to burn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance
There must be a reason they use pure oxygen, as regular compressed air, also breathable, would not have the same intense reactivity.
In all tests, the fire, propelled by the oxygen leak, produced a terrifying “blowtorch” effect, and the flames were literally white-hot. Sufficient concentrations of oxygen can cause even steel to burn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_lance There must be a reason they use pure oxygen, as regular compressed air, also breathable, would not have the same intense reactivity.
Not just thermal lances; oxy-acetylene cutting torches work by burning through steel, and you can buy one for not much money at almost any hardware store.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your answer is in fact the lazy one. The topics that are often beset with controversy and conspiracy are heavily technical. "You should do your own research" is fine when we're talking about the fall of Rome or aliens in space. It is dismissive and arrogant to say it when it comes to things like COVID or airline safety - areas where we must trust experts. Shrugging your shoulders at experts who lie about those sorts…
If you don’t have the background to understand the topic, then you are not an expert and have no obligation to do anything. The fact that the topics are hard to understand does not mean you can skip understanding and go straight to arguing about it.
Depends on the topic. If its about, say, policy, then yes, you absolutely can and should. Certainly being informed is important, and expertise lends some additional credibility to your POV, but 'trust the experts' is no panacea.
If we're talking about load bearing structures in the construction of a bridge, you're right! If we're talking about spending tax dollars on the construction of said bridge, you don't need to be an urban planner or a structural engineer to have a legitimate and worthy opinion.