# The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 1)
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
**Created:** [October 23, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499 "2011-10-23T02:17:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 324
### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6463 "2024-07-31T17:11:28Z")
> [@PastTense](#):
>
> So they picked a retired 64 year-old. Frankly it’s doubtful he will be CEO for more than a very short time.
This does look like a “turnaround hire”. His age is about 6 years older than the corporate average for Fortune 500 industrial corp CEO, and those 6 years correspond to his tenure at Rockwell Collins, so it appears he may be positioning to save Boeing and then turn the reins over to someone younger.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6464 "2024-07-31T18:43:52Z")
Recall the previous Boeing CEO was a “turnaround hire”. Boeing seems uncommonly hard to turn around.
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6465 "2024-07-31T19:02:19Z")
Calhoun? That guy was an insider the whole time, as a Boeing board member.
He wasn’t going to turn around the problems. He was part of the problems. If someone claimed he’d be a “turnaround CEO”, they were lying (or, at least, wildly and unjustifiably optimistic).
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### Author:  [@peccavi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/peccavi)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6466 "2024-07-31T19:41:58Z")
One of Augustine’s Laws states:
_Executives who do not produce successful results hold on to their jobs only about five years. Those who produce effective results hang on about half a decade._
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### Author:  [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6467 "2024-07-31T19:51:23Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#):
>
> Boeing seems uncommonly hard to turn around.
That’s why they have those guys on the tarmac with the lighted wands.
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### Author:  [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6468 "2024-07-31T20:14:36Z")
> [@Spiderman](#):
>
> That’s why they have those guys on the tarmac with the lighted wands.
I get this image in my head of the aircraft martial suddenly being menaced by a wasp.
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### Author:  [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)
#### Post date: [July 31, 2024, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6469 "2024-07-31T20:18:09Z")
Someone could ask the marshal where the [forklift](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5qpZZBlrq8) is
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6470 "2024-08-02T06:45:18Z")
> **[Japan Osprey crash caused by cracks in a gear and pilot’s decision to keep...](https://apnews.com/article/osprey-crash-japan-3b7b0951074334bec0f6a54da6309c31)**
>
> The Air Force says a deadly Osprey aircraft crash last November off Japan was caused by cracks in a metal gear and the pilot’s decision to keep flying instead of heeding multiple warnings that he should land.
Full report:
> **[Osprey](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25023504-osprey)**
>
> Air Force investigation report
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### Author:  [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 9:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6471 "2024-08-02T09:57:28Z")
Very interesting to hear about the chip burn system. I’d heard of metal chip _detectors_ before. But this one zaps them electrically! Of course, if the gearbox is slowly disintegrating, the burn system can only help so much. Incredible that the pilot failed to land after _six_ chip burn warnings in a day.
Scott Manley posted a few additional details on the system:
>
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### Author:  [@Llama\_Llogophile](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Llama_Llogophile)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6472 "2024-08-02T13:52:00Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#):
>
> Very interesting to hear about the chip burn system. I’d heard of metal chip _detectors_ before. But this one zaps them electrically! Of course, if the gearbox is slowly disintegrating, the burn system can only help so much. Incredible that the pilot failed to land after _six_ chip burn warnings in a day.
I don’t know anything about the Osprey, but I’d put a few bucks on the burn warning system throwing a lot of false positives. Get in the habit of ignoring those kinds of warnings and in you’re in for a bad day when the system detects a real one.
One of the bizjets I’ve flown had chip detectors installed in the early models that were notorious for false positives. The airplane proved to be robust enough that later models didn’t have the detectors. When I asked about this in training the instructors told me with obvious amusement, “The chip detectors kept detecting chips, so they got rid of them.”
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### Author:  [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6473 "2024-08-02T14:32:10Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#):
>
> I don’t know anything about the Osprey, but I’d put a few bucks on the burn warning system throwing a lot of false positives. Get in the habit of ignoring those kinds of warnings and in you’re in for a bad day when the system detects a real one.
I was wondering about this: was this a case of alert fatigue?
> **[Alarm fatigue](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue)**
>
> Alarm fatigue or alert fatigue describes how busy workers (in the case of health care, clinicians) become desensitized to safety alerts, and as a result ignore or fail to respond appropriately to such warnings. Alarm fatigue occurs in many fields, including construction and mining (where vehicle back-up alarms sound so frequently that they often become senseless background noise), healthcare (where electronic monitors tracking clinical information such as vital signs and blood glucos The constan...
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### Author:  [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6474 "2024-08-02T15:00:12Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#):
>
> Get in the habit of ignoring those kinds of warnings and in you’re in for a bad day when the system detects a real one.
The boy who cried “Chip!”
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6475 "2024-08-02T22:40:10Z")
> [@Llama\_Llogophile](#):
>
> One of the bizjets I’ve flown had chip detectors installed in the early models that were notorious for false positives. The airplane proved to be robust enough that later models didn’t have the detectors.
Yes but the Osprey has a history of transmission issues.
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### Author:  [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)
#### Post date: [August 2, 2024, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6476 "2024-08-02T22:41:44Z")
Either they lower the TBO on the failing parts or come up with a whole new system.
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6477 "2024-08-04T22:24:37Z")
I feel like this has been asked before but a cursory search didn’t turn it up:
Why do you never, ever, leave your wingman?
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6478 "2024-08-04T22:58:23Z")
If you do, then neither of you has any tail cover. Note what happens when someone does? They all get shot down.
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### Author:  [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6479 "2024-08-04T23:08:18Z")
As @silenus said. In more detail …
Two things:
Historically, like in WW-II, a single airplane (particularly a fighter-type) stood almost no chance of survival if spotted by an enemy. A pair has a vastly greater likelihood of getting home in the same circumstance.
A corollary to that is a single-engine airplane, fighter or otherwise, has very little redundancy. Either of equipment or of crew = pilot bandwidth. If anything goes wrong, you’re going down and may not have time or bandwidth to tell anyone where you are. If you even know where you are. Having a mate alongside who can alert rescue forces, remain on-scene for awhile at least, etc., it real valuable. It’s about mutual support.
The second major factor is psychological. The Army vows to leave no soldier behind. Which is comforting shit as you’re running into a firefight with your buddies nearby. Relatively speaking, airplane-based warfare is a very lonely business. Promising your mate to stick together until it’s impossible or obviously futile means a lot. Band of Brothers and all that.
[History lesson]
The paired wingman idea originated at the end of WW-I and was perfected in the interwar years. The lessons of early WW-II reinforced the idea. Which has held up until the present day. Largely based on the realities of short-range, forward-firing, dumb to semi-smart weapons. And eyeball-based target acquisition and eyeball-based acquisition of incoming threats.
The nature of modern sensor-fused network-centric computerized air warfare and modern 360 degree spherical coverage dogfight missiles and defensive sensors may, _may_, be changing that significantly. The mutual tail cover feature is in the process of being obsoleted, and the two airplanes might well be able to fight more effectively (or at least prosecute more targets, ideally without being targeted themselves) if spread out miles apart and operating autonomously vs the other. Coordination now occurs via network, rather than mutual sight and voice radio.
Or at least that’s the theory. I remain mostly skeptical but my experience predates all this push button warfare and talk of wonder weapons. Damned if I see the wonder in it. 😉
Everything else remains as valid as it ever was. The tools change. Warfare is as eternal as the human spirit.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 11:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6480 "2024-08-04T23:22:29Z")
Example from history:
> **[Thach Weave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thach_Weave)**
>
> The Thach weave (also known as a beam defense position) is an aerial combat tactic that was developed by naval aviator John S. Thach and named by James H. Flatley of the United States Navy soon after the United States' entry into World War II.
> It is a tactical formation maneuver in which two or more allied planes wove in regularly intersecting flight paths to lure an enemy into focusing on one plane, while the targeted pilot's wingman would come into position to attack the pursuer.
> Thach had he...
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### Author:  [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6481 "2024-08-04T23:43:39Z")
ISTM if you stick to your wingman and a plane is behind you then that plane has two targets.
Clearly having a wingman is better but I still don’t see it. Seems like two kills rather than one.
This is my ignorance…pilots know a lot more about this than I ever will.
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 4, 2024, 11:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-great-ongoing-aviation-thread-general-and-other-part-1/600499/6482 "2024-08-04T23:51:48Z")
- _Maverick flies up to the sun, blinding Hangman, who is after him_]
\*\* [Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1412974/?ref_=ttqu_qu): Shit! Phoenix, I can’t see him. How close am I? Phoenix?\*
\*\* [Lt. Natasha ‘Phoenix’ Trace](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm4834815/?ref_=ttqu_qu): I’m dead, dickhead!\*
\*\* [Lt. Robert ‘Bob’ Floyd](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm5730649/?ref_=ttqu_qu): See you in the afterlife, Bagman.\*
\*\* [Lt. Jake ‘Hangman’ Seresin](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1412974/?ref_=ttqu_qu): Where is he? Where is he?\*
\*\* [_Maverick soars from behind Hangman and paints him killed_]\*
\*\* [Maverick](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000129/?ref_=ttqu_qu): That’s a kill.\*
Extra eyes are always handy.
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