People in that state are not thinking or listening. They’re just doing. Totally hyperfocused on themselves and whatever they think is most important. Which for many is luggage.
We’d need a hydraulic ram running down the aisle like in a garbage truck’s compactor to push bodies along to break these jams up.
Oh yeah, forgot to mention. The folks not retrieving their luggage are mostly busy video-ing each other, not evacuating.
Your fellow humans are morons in a crisis. Dangerous morons. Get used to it.
If the industry were serious about enforcing the FAA’s overweening approach to cabin safety, the bin locks would be connected to the seatbelt sign. And folks would learn, through repetition on normal flights, that getting up while the sign is on to get something from the overhead is pointless. They’d be locked during an evacuation because they were locked for the taxi, takeoff, or landing that was in progress before things went awry.
I’d far rather we go the other way and get the FAA’s “certificated or prohibited” mentality out of our customer service. In my chosen world, the seatbelt sign is my advice to you. By law, you’re under no obligation to take my advice.
OTOH, by law you also waive all rights to sue me or my employer or anyone else if you get hurt unbelted with the sign on and also explicitly assume full obligations for anyone you hurt when your body bounces off the ceiling and lands on some innocent belted passenger while the sign is on. You get rights. And you get the corresponding responsibilities. Both or neither; your choice. But not rights without responsibilities.
New cylinders sometimes? New sheet metal after hail damage? New wingtips when they crack? Being picky about maintaining matched parts is asking too much, I think. It’s not a classic car.
Sheet metal. Pretty much anything that isn’t a mechanical item. I don’t remember specifically what the deal was but I thought cowlings were mentioned. I don’t even remember what the program was about. Not really discussion worthy at this point.
Just another late night/early morning emergency when a single engine plane made an emergency landing on I-70 just east of Kansas City, except for two things.
The pilot was drunk, and
The plane ran out of gas 19 minutes after takeoff
I thought planes landing had a minimum decision height where they need to have the runway in sight or they do a go-around. I am not sure where that decision height is but I have a sense it is 300-500 feet above the ground.
But, the video below shows a 787 landing and not seeing the runway until about 40-50 feet. Is that normal? (there is a bunch of junk in the overall video, the link below is queued to the correct spot and the whole segment is maybe 30 seconds)
I’ll spoil any suspense. The plane lands just fine. No problems at all.
Minimums on instrument approaches depend on a number of factors: terrain, equipment on the ground and in the aircraft, weather, pilot training, etc.
A typical minimum on a “precision” approach is 200’ above ground level. But again, that can vary. However, in the linked video the title says “Cat III approach”, which allows crews with the right equipment and training to go lower. Without looking it up, I believe under Category III-A they don’t even need to see the runway - it’s full auto-land. That’s not a common procedure because most planes / crews are not equipped for it.
Edit: I just completed my 6-month recurrent training in the simulator this past week. We do many approaches as part of that curriculum, and the mininma varied from 200’ up to over a thousand for a night circling approach. The bizjet I fly is not equipped for Cat II or III, so I’ve never had that sort of training.
Cat IIIa approach is “fail passive” which means if there’s a failure in the system, the airplane won’t do anything crazy, but it won’t be capable of completing the approach. Cat IIIb approach is “fail operational” which means a failure in the system will be backed up by redundancy and the approach can still be completed. Cat IIIb basically means everything is working, two autopilots, two auto-thrust systems, etc. If there’s a failure you might be able to continue Cat IIIa. You can do a Cat IIIa approach with a failed engine.
Cat IIIa for us is 50’ decision height and you need to be able to see the touchdown zone. Cat IIIb, there’s no decision height and no required visual reference. You do need to have an RVR, runway visual range, of 75 m at the touchdown zone for Cat IIIb, but once you get there there’s no requirement to see anything.
How common it is depends on the circles you get around in I guess. Any major airline flying into airports prone to fog will most likely have approval for Cat III.
Patrick Smith of “Ask the Pilot” estimates that “auto-lands” comprise less than 1% of landings, but I don’t know how he arrived at that number. We’ve linked to his article on this before, but here it is again.
