Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

avherald.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 469 posts

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#351

Post by njovin »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #336

It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport? Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together…

Most frequently the actions/evidence that lead to a crash would not be captured on airport-located cameras. The holes in the swiss cheese usually start lining up either in the maintenance hangar, en route, or in the briefing room, not on the runway.

The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.

If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation through the never-ending renovations going on at these airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras make sense.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#352

Post by WorldMaker »

Retric wrote: post #316
WorldMaker wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of water", especially because it is a river that moves relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids just downstream of Louisville. But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development you'd have to displace to even consider moving the airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and down s…

Tradeoffs. Physical land under the airport is lost either way, but land near the old airport becomes more useful where the river itself couldn’t have buildings in either situation. Thus moving it near a river or other large body of water is a long term net gain. As to a crash, ditching into an industrial area isn’t significantly worse for the passengers than ditching into a set of rapids, but the rapids are far bette…

To be fair to this specific airport, the industrial area South of the airport is almost entirely UPS Airlines facilities. The safety hazard posed by the UPS Airlines flight crash was primarily to UPS Airlines warehouses and warehouse workers. They made their own tradeoffs in this case of what they placed close to their own runways (including apparently they had a fuel recycling plant not far from the crash line that made firefighting more complicated). Sure it's still very different from a large body of water, but it's also certainly not like the land was entirely a general usage industrial area either.

Had the crash happened in a different direction there might be other complaints, sure, but even airports with large bodies of water neighboring them only generally neighbor a side or two.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#353

Post by renewiltord »

mh- wrote: post #345
renewiltord wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The Air India crash had a lot of that going on. The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by online commenters as because of “outsourced software engineers” and so on. But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding despite the…

The NTSB is completely independent from the FAA, by design. The history of how that came to be is worth a read and answers your question better than I could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safety...

Huh, wow, that actually did answer the question. Short version: the FAA did have this failing; the NTSB was created independently specifically to avoid that flaw. For the rest, he’s right, better to read it.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#354

Post by rogerrogerr »

kccqzy wrote: post #324
rogerrogerr wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I’m going somewhere in the continental US, my choices are to fly or drive. I’ll be traveling the same number of miles either way, so the relevant comparison is indeed per mile.

That doesn't explain anything. Specifically it doesn't explain why in our comparisons the destination is fixed. You could decide for this weekend trip we're going to budget a max of 3 hours on transportation. Should we take a three hour flight to a different state or should we drive for three hours to a closer destination?

This just isn’t how normal people behave. They are starting with a destination (relatives, national park, etc.) and then choosing how to get there.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#355

Post by avalys »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #336

It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights that take off and land at every airport? Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together…

Because aviation is already incredibly, ridiculously safe compared to essentially every other activity humanity undertakes, and adding additional cost, complexity and expense to the system would produce zero discernible benefit relative to the cost.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#356

Post by hopelite »

mikeyouse wrote: post #299
inejge wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame. Ordinarily yes, but in this case there are reports that the plane underwent a "heavy maintenance check" from Sep 3 to Oct 18, which may have included engine removal and overhaul (source: pprune.org, from a poster who's not given to flights of fancy.)

In the Reddit /r/aviation thread, there are people who spotted that specific plane at San Antonio International airport since it was apparently being serviced at a major service facility there. So yes to major service potentially at issue, and no to international work being at fault.

Have you ever heard of the phrase "a distinction without a difference"? The delta between "domestic" and "international" has basically been erased for all intents and purposes over the last 25 years. H1-B can and is used for Aviation Mechanics, not to mention that approximately 25 million of the official 60 million in the US that were not born American citizens have been granted citizenship in that period.

You seem to be trying to defend "international", but reality is "international" has become "domestic" as the USA turns into something other than the USA.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#357

Post by PrairieFire »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #129

I didn’t realize the MD-11 was still in use. It has had a difficult time in passenger aviation. Looks really nasty. It seems to have come down in an industrial area, which will significantly reduce casualties. I can’t even imagine this, in a residential area.

I think it's fair to say the MD11 has had a difficult time, but I would caveat that it performs well for an aircraft of its vintage, and is still an acceptably safe aircraft. There have been something in the neighborhood of 2.4 million successful missions completed with the MD11, and around 12 hull losses with fatalities, around 14 hull losses total, over the 35 years the MD11 has been flying. Yes, it's below average compared to modern wide bodies (a330, a350, newer 777/787) which are incredibly (truly incredible to me) safe.

I do expect this incident will accelerate the retirement of the balance of the fleet that is still flying and the MD11 will complete its disappearance from the skies in the US before the end of the decade.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#358

Post by ASalazarMX »

mikeyouse wrote: post #299
inejge wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame. Ordinarily yes, but in this case there are reports that the plane underwent a "heavy maintenance check" from Sep 3 to Oct 18, which may have included engine removal and overhaul (source: pprune.org, from a poster who's not given to flights of fancy.)

In the Reddit /r/aviation thread, there are people who spotted that specific plane at San Antonio International airport since it was apparently being serviced at a major service facility there. So yes to major service potentially at issue, and no to international work being at fault.

Despite the enshittification of Reddit, it is still unparalleled for situations like this. There is more friction for the Fediverse to have an equivalent community, but I hope more people realize the smoothness is not free.

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#359

Post by culi »

cjrp wrote: post #106

The AVHerald is usually the best source for these things, rather than MSM: https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=0 > Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before…

It'd be nice if they offered an RSS feed

Re: UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport

#360

Post by yard2010 »

mh- wrote: post #345
renewiltord wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The Air India crash had a lot of that going on. The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by online commenters as because of “outsourced software engineers” and so on. But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding despite the…

The NTSB is completely independent from the FAA, by design. The history of how that came to be is worth a read and answers your question better than I could. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safety...

You can't play with the NTSB. Just wait a few months and see, they will literally say the exact reason it happened and who's the one to blame in their report. These guys are the best at what they do. This is one of the government bodies other countries would dream to have.
Post reply on HN