When is the emergency de-pressurisation of aircraft mentioned furthur up in the thread necessary? Wouldn’t be for putting out fires in the cabin, or is that just something I saw in Star Trek? 
Pushkin that is exactly what it was for…the C-141 was a cargo aircraft, and the “worst case” scenario was cargo in the middle of a pallet that caught fire. With no way to apply fire-fighting agent to it, the only way to stop the fire was to starve it of oxygen. The theory was that every crewmember put on an oxygen mask and then the airplane was rapidly de-pressurized, thus snuffing out the fire.
The Air Force lost a C-141 taking off out of Sigonella, Italy because of a cargo fire, so it was a high priority.
AFAIK, no airplane was ever “saved” by the new system, but several hatches were lost over the years.
Quick anecdote / hi-jack to debunk the notion that all news gets covered.
In the mid-nineties a bomb was detonated at the Citibank Champs-Elysées branch in Paris. I was working for Citibank in Paris at the time. As far as I know this got no news coverage - certainly no major coverage or I would have been getting all those terrified phone calls from family… Although most of the exterior damage was on a side street, and nobody was killed, you would still think this would rate a couple of paragraphs right ? Plus, as I recall police were looking at one of the 3 letter islamist extremist groups for it, so we’re not talking about a disgruntled client with a molotov.
A quick google today turns up 1 hit from a very much secondary source (I’m not too sure about their date for it either)
www.hri.org/docs/USSD-Terror/95/append-a.html
“Le Monde” (French ‘Times’) shows no matches
Another interesting point was how fast the street was cleaned up - a few hours later there was barely a trace unless you were looking for it - not hinting at a cover-up, I believe it’s just the same process whereby car wrecks dissappear so fast.
So - not a secret, but the only people who know about are those that were involved or present.
Sorry for the hi-jack, but at least it was about bombs…
Thank you.
I see, interesting. Thanks
Shouldn’t that be “slight skyjack”?
Oh shit, I probably just triggered something over at the NSA, huh.
Please send cig money to:
Peace,
mangeorge.
Bill H. wrote
Not to harp further on this, but when I sent the email above to KATU, the TV station who covered that airshow, I also sent a similar one to the company that actually put on the airshow. I just received their response this morning. Again, great news in that everything went very smoothly that weekend. A fortunate misunderstanding.
From Bill H. to Judy Willey, Oregon International Airshow
Her response:
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Some Guy Out Of A B-52 And Onto A Water Tower or something like that…
Here’s the scoop from the Air Boss at the Hillsboro Air Show:
“Your eyes did not deceive you but you apparently
missed the narration during the act. This was a
demonstration by the Knights of how a jumper handles a
failing parachute. The opening was normal and then
the jumper intentionally disabled some lines on the
chute to demonstrate a failure. They then disconnect
the first parachute and open the second. This jumper
has a third parachute as an additional safety measure
for this demonstration. It was part of the act, not
an actual problem.”
A college roommate’s father got blown out of a chopper in 'Nam at 800 feet. Broke most of the bones in his body and spent months and months in the hospital. Now the height may have been exagerated a bit but he had the right for special handicapped parking.
More amazing was the guy was physically a giant stud. Mr. Scripa was known as the “crunch monster” and I watched him set the world record for stomach crunches in 1983. IIRC something like 17,000 stomach crunches.
With regard to Bill H. and Duckster’s discussion, I have this to add:
I’ve been a skydiver since 1992 and over those years I’ve seen a number of instances where a jumper had a problem with his/her main canopy and had to cut it away (not literally). I’ll never forget the first time I witnessed this. It REALLY looked as if there were a person under the “garbage” and I was freaking out while everyone else stood around as if it were no big deal.
You would think you could easily spot the difference between a discarded canopy coming down by itself as opposed to a jumper coming down under garbage but to an untrained eye, they look surprisingly similar. I have no doubt whatsoever that you saw something which looked very much like a person coming down under a malfunctioned canopy, however, it sounds like what you were seeing was only the canopy itself. It’s the risers which connect the harness to the parachute lines that create this illusion.
Whilst you were in distress, the jumper was undoubtedly marveling at what an incredibly beautiful silhouette his reserve canopy made against the sky. After landing, he undoubtedly made a beeline toward the nearest liquor store to pick up the obligatory case of his rigger’s favorite beverage.
For what it’s worth, my reserve is baby blue and it’s the prettiest thing I’ve ever laid eyes on…and my rigger? Well he’s not pretty but I do owe him my life two times over. Hell I’d have even kissed him if he wasn’t so damned ugly.
**Man sucked out of B-52. **
Was he sucked out of Fred Schnieder or Kate Pearson?
sorry bout that…
SkyBum, isn’t it also true that the jumper community maintains pretty detailed statistics and incident reports on every jumping death? If I’d wondered about Duckster’s story, I’d be looking into those sources.
You’re absolutely correct CrankyAsAnOldMan.
Incidents involving death and/or injury are published in Skydiving Magazine as well as Parachutist, a USPA publication. The reports are very detailed and can be extremely helpful to the community by pointing out the sequence of events which may have contributed to an accident as well as bringing up concerns with equipment, procedures, and also offering practical advice. Here is a listof the 32 fatalities which occured in the U.S. during 2001 (please keep in mind that there were millions of sucessful jumps made during that period).
I’m not aware of a comprehensive, up to date list of incident reports available online, though I’m sure that it must exist out there somewhere. Once each year, a complete list of the year’s fatalities and injuries is published by the USPA with all incidents broken down by category. Parachute equipment itself is rarely indicated as a causal element.
If I can go off on a tangent slightly, something that never ceases to amaze me is just how inaccurately the news media reports these incidents. For example, they tend to say “A skydiver was killed today when his parachute failed to open” when in reality (more often than not) accurate reporting would have stated “A skydiver was killed today after he failed to deploy his parachute”. A very important distinction.
A surprising number of skydivers die each year having made no effort to deploy either parachute or having fixated their attention on a malfunctioned main when they could have simply jettisoned the main, deployed their reserve and been under canopy in seconds. The human mind is vastly more fallible than modern parachute equipment and the majority of skydiving incidents can easily be attributed to “user error”. Unfortunately, the media continues to portray the equipment as the villian even when the operator was clearly at fault.
Hmmmm.
The USPA website does have a comprehensive list of this years incident reports. I never noticed it before…
The media seems to do that to every aspect of aviation.
Not to mention, you only hear about the bad incidents, never the millions of good incidents where happy people make safe landings.
Never give a bore a Chance to ralk about himself:
Parts of this this thread reminds me of a thread I started about 1.5 years ago :
** Has anyone Ever Fallen from a Plane in Flight and Survived?**
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=114684
that would be “talk” about himself