Yes, fair enough - in suggesting you had missed a nuance, I missed one myself, apologies.
And when the pilots who are the subject of this discussion were sleeping in the cockpit who was flying the plane?
Whether the pilots set up the automation is secondary to the fact that the plane in this case was physically flying without any further input from the pilots. If not for that automation it would be a very difficult process.
Nobody. The automation was doing whatever it was last programmed to do, which could have ended in several ways. Was it maintaining straight and level, sure. But the route or heading was no longer being monitored, which could have resulted in any number of issues.
Taking it as literally as possible, yes the automation was keeping the aircraft in the air for the time being. But making the generalization that the plane is “flying itself” is misleading, 99% incorrect and frankly stupid coming from a pilot. Why? Because it’s something that’s usually said by non-pilots (who don’t know any better) which perpetuates untruths about what pilots actually do, and in the end it’s disinformation which denigrates professionals.
This is why the sleeping pilots are going to face consequences. That flight was at risk. It’s true that there’s context around pilot fatigue, but the moment that plane was left unmonitored it meant nobody was flying it. That’s not a situation any regulator would tolerate, and cannot be rationalized by saying the plane was taking care of everything all on its lonesome.
I and others went to some lengths to keep it civil when you were rather obstinate and foolish about the 737 Max a while ago. I don’t generally participate in Pit threads about people, but I will do so if you continue to spout nonsense of this kind, even casually.
And that’s what I was talking about. I’m not sure why you’re so exercised over the reality that the plane continued to fly while they slept. Everybody knows that eventually it would have run out of fuel or would require other intervention. It doesn’t require a lecture to explain that planes are automated enough to maintain the last settings.
I suppose the issue here is what it means to “fly the plane”. Whether the pilot(s) are awake as they should be or asleep as they should not be, on a modern jet the computer is doing the steering. No debate there. But that’s about 5% of what it takes to fly at the professional level.
Pilots asleep, daydreaming or in the back making a sandwich or having sex with their crewmate are not flying at that point and neither is the computer. It’s steering. And that’s mindless grunt work far short of flying. In those circumstances nobody is flying.
On a ship you have a helmsman with the wheel in their hands and you have an officer who has the con who’s in moment-to-moment command of all aspects of the vessel. That is the difference between steering and flying.
That’s not what you said. You said, “Seriously though, they’re not flying the plane. it’s flying itself.”
That’s different because it’s the common shorthand used by people who are ignorant about airplanes. And they use that phrase often enough Patrick Smith felt it necessary to write that article.
That’s Patrick Smith, the professional pilot - which several of us here are, and you are definitely NOT. You’ve plainly demonstrated that a few times before, and I was polite enough to not point it out. So if you don’t want to be lectured, stop saying dumb things.
I hate it when this happens:
https://www.cnn.com/travel/horse-escapes-on-boeing-747/index.html
Moderating:
If you want to take something to the pit, just do it. Don’t threaten to do it in-thread.
Did you read the whole article? a South African pilot was forced to make an emergency landing in April after a deadly Cape cobra slithered up his shirt.
I didn’t want to create a new thread for this narrow topic, so I’m shoehorning it in here.
Over a year ago there was a light GA plane crash/fatality, and while there was a preliminary NTSB report made last year, it was very terse: essentially just listing the basic facts, not much more than what was reported in the press.
Isn’t this unusual? I’ll post some accident facts below, and folks are welcome to speculate (possibly a stall, but witnesses report not hearing the engine before the crash), but my main question is: isn’t the final NTSB report taking much longer than usual, particularly for a GA crash?
The incident:
N7329F on Sep 28 2022 in the Allentown PA area; the aircraft was a Piper PA-28; an instructor and student; the student was killed and the instructor suffered severe injuries. The aircraft had just departed Queen City XLL.
I’ll paste a bit from last year’s preliminary PDF (I can’t figure out how to reliably link directly to the NTSB’s relevant result page):
I did indeed. I hate it when that happens, too!
Not too unusual. Per the internet they try to complete them between 12 and 24 months. They probably had a good idea what happened but they have to be thorough.
It sounds like the engine quit if nobody on the ground could hear it. Unfortunately most Pipers just have 1 door on the right so it’s hard to extract the pilot in the left seat. A lot of them don’t have shoulder harnesses. I use to carry my headset in a soft case so I could use it in the event of an impact.
One of the things they’ll look for is a propeller that is bent in a spiral vs being bend straight back. If it’s in a spiral it shows it was spinning and they can probably tell if it was under power.
I would add “look for snakes” to the check list.
@Magiver nailed it.
For the vast majority of GA accidents the preliminary is just about all there is or ever will be. Some year+ afterwards they’ll simply republish almost the exact same 2- or 4-page summary as the final with just a couple paragraphs of narrative tacked on.
I note there were 6 lightplane accidents that same day. Taking them as a representative sample of a typical day for NTSB …
The 4 non-fatal accidents had their finals completed anywhere from last month to almost a year ago. The dockets (record of everything gathered, not just the final report) for each of them tends to be a couple pages of survivor, police, or witness statements, a bunch of photos of the wreckage as found, and that’s about it. There are no deep forensic investigations made of these sorts of accidents in general.
The two fatal accidents’ investigations are still outstanding. Absent federal government shutdowns you’d expect to see them within 6 months from today, and probably sooner.
This was Germany’s WW-II jet that was a generational leap in technology toward the end of the war. What I like about the video is that you can see the leading edge slats working independent of any pilot input. They automatically move in and out depending on the air speed and angle of the wing. They allow air to be captured and moved over the wing to generate more lift at slow speeds. The ME-109 had them and the ME-163 used slotted wings to do the same thing. In the video you can seem them pop out when the pilot rotates off the runway and you can see them moving in and out while the plane maneuvers.
I have an emotional response to the plane every time I see it. On one hand it’s a very beautiful plane and ahead of it’s time. On the other hand it killed more people enslaved in it’s construction than those killed in battle.
Thank you folks for weighing-in. It’s not a random accident, but one with a personal (albeit very minor, in perspective) impact.
I had gifted a granddaughter a “discovery flight”, and it was scheduled to take place about two weeks after this accident occurred (but originally scheduled before the accident), and from this very airport and in a similar plane. So, my daughter (the giftee’s mother) was, naturally, rather freaked out. As it turned out, there was inclement weather on the day the discovery flight was to occur, so it was rescheduled.
That was over a year ago. I just had a conversation with my daughter this evening, and for 15 times the discovery flight has been scheduled, and each time cancelled by the flight school due to weather. They are trying again for this month, but one begins to wonder: is the universe trying to tell us something about flying from there (asking rhetorically).
Very cool Me-262 video, Magiver. Thanks. I note there was a small German flag on the tail, not the swastika it would have had during WWII. I built a model of one when I was a kid, and always thought it was a beautiful aircraft; I agree with your last paragraph, though.
This is pretty neat:
Wow, yes!
The companion article is interesting as well:
Brian