The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other) (Part 2)

Thank you for digging that up. Now we all know.

And even if you do, you won’t care for long.

Next time I fly, I’m not getting a window seat:

It’s Ryanair; apparently they must have an upcharge to stay IN the plane for the whole flight


…& damn you, Ninja! That’s what I was coming in to post.

When you’re hungry, you’re hungry.

Ironically, Breeze Airways was founded by the same guy who founded JetBlue, and on JetBlue you’re allowed to just help yourself to the snacks.

Regarding the passenger sucked out the window of the Ryanair flight, it sounds like the window was shattered by a fan blade from an uncontained engine failure.

A video posted on social media appeared to show an uncontained engine failure on the damaged Boeing 737, with fan blades missing.

https://www.reuters.com/business/ryanair-plane-makes-emergency-landing-greece-after-window-dislodged-2026-07-10/

In my student pilot days flying a Piper Cherokee (I think PA-28) it was remarkable (to me) how quickly I became confident setting up the approach and landing the thing, even in crosswinds. If my instructor had jumped out of the plane I would have found it more than a little disturbing, but would not have feared for my own safety.

Preliminary report is out:

The NTSB report also asserts that the jet’s right engine starter generator was “missing multiple screws from the outer housing.” Alan Diehl, a former NTSB investigator, said the jet’s problems likely stemmed from the missing screws and that the flight crew and air traffic controllers acted professionally with the information they had at the time.

“Sounds like the fuel lines, because of the vibration caused by the starter generator’s missing screws, initiated a whole series of cascading events that led to the emergency loss of power,” Diehl said.

Preliminary report at:

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/203191/pdf

A plane didn’t crash into the intersection of H Street and Harvey Road Sunday night, despite social media reports to the contrary. The reports, which are based on police scanner dialog, conveyed the details of a 911 call from a resident to the area who said a plane had crashed. Law enforcement responded to the call and found the caller had mental health issues, but no evidence of a crash.

That reminds me of a combined emergency services exercise in New Zealand in, perhaps, the late 1990s that involved a “crashed airliner”. Some media heard the radio chat and initially reported it as a real accident.

N4936T has added some parts of the USA that were missing from the original flight.

Imgur

A happy milestone for Boeing … for once.

The 737NG was built from 1997 to 2019 (setting aside a handful of military & BBJ derivatives still being produced). All told they sold 7,159 of them over a 22 year run.

The 737MAX, hiccups and all, has been produced since 2017, so 9 years so far. Total orders for the MAX have now surpassed the NG’s record, and stand at 7,206. MAX deliveries stand at about 2,400 as of now, so roughly 4,800 ordered but not yet built or delivered.

For sure orders are always a bit soft; I don’t know the historical percentage of airliner orders that later fall through. But there’s no doubt that over the next few years enough more fresh orders will come through to offset future cancellations and so ensure the delivered total of MAXes eventually exceeds the NG delivered total.

And amazingly, this has been done with the MAX sorta having one wing tied behind its tail. Between the accidents, the MCAS redesign, and the ongoing tribulations of certificating the -10 and -7 models, they’ve certainly had a heaping helping of obstacles that must have slowed down sales at least some. And yet here we / they are.


All of which is really a story of now much larger the total global airline industry is in the 2020s vs the 2000s. And how much bigger it’ll be in the 2030s and 2040s, barring cataclysm. Airbus is a similar story. Their NEO variants of the A320 series and the widebody A330 series are both rapidly closing on exceeding the earlier generation’s lifetime orders, while doing so in far fewer years.

Sad story here with a free link for about a week from now.

Some thoughts:

  • If they take more than a couple weeks to investigate the basics, this will probably kill the company. Revenue stops, most expenses continue, and existing near-term reservations all want refunds. A liquidity crisis quickly ensues.

  • I know nothing of the company, nor their maintenance practices. Might be great, might be half-assed. Two engine issues the same week are eye-catching but coincidences are real things too.

  • Cessna 402s and other piston twins really ought to be phased out of commercial air service worldwide. They aren’t that reliable, and they don’t have anywhere near the single engine performance to meet modern passenger expectations of safety. Something turbine powered like the single engine Cessna 208 Caravan - Wikipedia or the de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter - Wikipedia are orders of magnitude safer.

  • Island nations really need some sort of reliable air taxi service that serves the same role as intercity busses do for mainland nations. The problem is making that service affordable to the public. Who’re often kinda on the poor side. Government subsidies work, but that assumes the government isn’t kinda on the poor side themselves.

I did much of my private pilot training in a C150 that, while I don’t recall if it was specifically the Aerobat, was an up-strengthened wing and strut version that was rated for acro. My flight instructor took full advantage of that for fun and we spun and tossed that little thing all over like a cat toy, it was great fun. The door latches were indeed very flimsy and the doors would pop open on their own accord a few times. The instructor would just tell me “trust your seat belt, not your door” and laugh while we were spinning with the door flapping. I expect that it should have been an unflyable condition to have door latches that open on their own, but so it goes. Anyway, depending on the particular point of turn or maneuver, it would be quite easy to just bank or slip and tumble yourself right out the door with little effort, but in straight-level cruise it would take serious wedging and muscle to push against the airflow.

I wonder how much of the MAX’s success is simply do to the fact that the A320NEO family is the only real alternative, and I doubt Airbus has the capacity to meet the entire demand for narrowbody planes on their own. I mean, what are airlines gonna do, order Chinese planes?

Of course, there’s also the fact that many airlines flying 737s are committed to them for reasons of pilot experience, maintenance, investment in infrastructure like simulators, and other logistical reasons.

That said, Airbus couldn’t realistically support the entire global airline industry. They currently have 12,104 orders for the A320neo family, including the popular A321neo, of which 7,461 are backlogged. There are 7,769 orders for the A321neo alone, of which 5,606 are yet to be delivered.

I remember, many years ago, running across the fact that the 727 was the most successful jet airliner ever, with over 1,800 built. My, how things change. I just heard that Boeing is creating a new assembly line for the 737 at Everett; the first time that plane will be built outside of Renton.

I agree. I’ve been in a piston twin with an engine failure just after rotation. It took a pilot with 25,000 hrs of flight time skill to keep it in the air. I think the props may have hit some leaves as the plane cleared a line of trees. I could clearly see the prop wash on the leaves as we went over.

There just isn’t the power needed in an emergency with the smaller twin engine piston planes.

Just what is the minimum altitude in a Hornet to not blow sand & beach chairs around?

Preliminary report at

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/Aviation/ReportMain/GenerateNewestReport/199991/pdf