Wings of Hope is raffling off a 1964 Piper PA-28-235 Cherokee for $100 per ticket (three for $275) starting September 9th.
I’ll buy a ticket, of course. God forbid I should win. I wouldn’t be able to afford a free airplane.
I enter a few of those raffles every year, most frequently the Alaska Airmen one. And yeah, every year and do the math and realize that free airplane would be like tossing me a free boat anchor.
I watched that video a number of times and it appears to take about 8 seconds for the seat to move it’s full length front to back. A great deal of travel is needed to get it back far enough for the pilot to get in and out. That means the incident started with the seat closer to the end of it’s forward travel. So maybe 3 seconds of movement. If the elevator column moves forward I can see the tray riding up the column and getting jammed into the yoke handles.
Two killed, one injured when Delta tire explodes while being removed in maintenance area
Some Reddit rumors about the tire accident:
I work here. Word is that it wasn’t as it was being removed from the plane, but while it was in the shop. Somehow the wheel hub was being separated before the tire had been deflated.
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That’s what I heard too
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I understand the energy from the tire, but does it just blow their heads off or cause internal damage to their organs from force?? I’m genuinely curious.
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If you split the wheel with the tire pressurized, I expect the wheel halves get launched in opposite directions at high speed. The resulting injuries would be blunt force trauma to what ever body parts were in the line of fire.
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My guess, the wheel halves were being unbolted for disassembly, with pressure still inside. Several bolts hold them together. Once so many were loosened, it created a stress imbalance in the wheel, causing a catastrophic failure of it. Aluminum shrapnel exploding everywhere. Repeat, I’m speculating.
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1f2j4sw/two_delta_employees_killed_and_another_injured/
I never worked the 787. But in general with Boeing seats and yokes, if you’re sitting where you belong versus the yoke, there’s very little space for a tray on your lap. A small slender person, e.g. me, can set the tray in their lap without backing the seat up from normal flying position. A plumper person, or one with relatively shorter arms, would have to slide the seat back some to fit a tray in there.
The point of that being that I’d not be surprised that once the pilot and tray are in the seat a typical adjustment while eating might only have 1/2" to 1" of gap between yoke & seat. Leading to needing very little forward seat movement before the tray is shoving the yoke forward and/or compressing the belly & hips of the pilot in the seat.
Split rims flying apart was my first assumption.
That’s one of those “trust everyone; always cut the cards” things.
No matter what the tag on the wheel / tire says, first you personally remove the valve core, or personally look down the valve stem and see that it’s absent. Then you start unbolting the wheel halves.
Poor bastards.
The 757 main tires are H40x14.5-19, which are 40" diameter, 14.5" wide, and have a 19" diameter inner rim. They’re inflated to 200-220 psi.
They have a somewhat square profile so I’ll approximate the volume as a 10.5"x14.5" rectangle moved through a \pi(40+19.5)/2 inch distance. That’s 14,230 in^3, or 0.233 m^3.
210 psi is 1450000 Pa. And the energy of a pressure vessel is just E=PV, so we have 338 kJ of energy. That’s significant. A stick of dynamite is 1000 kJ. And the tire is probably better able to couple its energy to the surrounding material (the tire and wheel).
On a lighter note:
Another interesting tidbit surfaces in the matter of the Alaskan Airways 737 door plug:
I guess if you’re the only person on the factory floor with any experience in a work process, you’re not allowed to take vacation. In a sane system, you’d have written procedures with checklists that any semi-trained ape could use to successfully complete a procedure, but I guess this way works too. Until it doesn’t
I had something similar with ATACMS missiles loading on a pre-positioned stock ships out in Concord, CA back in 1993ish. Last step is to verify the humidity indicators because it’s two years afloat before they get looked at again. New production missiles failed, a half dozen. The serial numbers were traced back to assembly - the individual who usually applied the sealant was off sick/vacation for about 10 days. His replacement took, “apply sparingly” a bit too seriously. We ginned up a Navy SOP with names and numbers changed, cleaned and redid the sealant … and no problems. You still need supervision for replacement workers regardless of detailed instructions.
Here’s a new one for flight delays - cobra / mongoose fight on the tarmac.
If only Samuel L Jackson reported this. 
Big fight
Cobra versus mongoose
Big fight, we can’t wait forever
Big fight
Cobra versus mongoose
Big fight, we can’t wait anymore
If anybody knows that reference, I’ll be very impressed.
if you ever need an example on how an overboarding social system is dangerous to all of us, well here you go …
/s
The Japanese band, Shonen Knife. Just a coincidence I know of them, though not too much of a coincidence as the band is fairly well known.
Yep; a thirty-year-old song from a Japanese punk band. Not the most obscure reference I’ll ever make, but far from common knowledge.
"Crash: Gazpromavia SU95 near Moscow on Jul 12th 2024, lost height coming out of maintenance
By Simon Hradecky, created Friday, Jul 12th 2024 14:08Z, last updated Friday, Aug 30th 2024 19:53Z
A Gazpromavia Sukhoi Superjet 100-95, registration RA-89049 performing ferry flight 4G-9608 from Lukhovitsy Airfield to Moscow Vnukovo (Russia) with 3 crew on board, was climbing through about 3000 feet out of Lukhovitsy’s runway 28 when the aircraft lost height and impacted ground amidst a forest near Apraksino/Kolomna (Russia), approximate position N54.98 E38.55 about 56nm southeast of Moscow Vnukovo, at about 14:58L (11:58Z) about 7 minutes after departure. All three crew perished in the crash.
The aircraft had been in maintenance in Lukhovitsy and was on its first flight following maintenance. The crew transmitted a distress signal."
Russia has released the preliminary report on the Superjet crash from July. It appears (at least superficially) to be similar to the Ethiopian 737 MAX accident.
– The aircraft on takeoff & ascent registered over 20 airspeed disagree alerts.
– two of the three AoA sensors reported values 7 degrees higher than actual.
– this caused the autotrim system to set the stabilizer nose down, unnoticed by the crew due to the autopilot.
– crew entered a climb from 5,000 to 10,000 feet, but the aircraft instead began to descend because of the stabilizer position.
– crew pulled the stick back to climb manually, which disengaged the autopilot and autothrottle.
– crew advanced the throttle to climb, but descent continued and accelerated, resulting in overspeed.
– aircraft overspeed protection deployed speed brakes and commanded pitch-up to slow down.
– AoA sensors recorded excessive pitch angle, which triggered AoA protection and commanded elevators nose down, even though the aircraft was already descending.
– pilots retracted speed brakes to try to recover, overspeed returned but AoA protection did not allow them to control the elevators.
– impact with terrain.
The root cause is suspected to be the two AoA sensors, but the protection automation logic is also being investigated.
Similar to the Indonesian 737 MAX accident, the AoA sensor errors had been documented in March, yet somehow were not corrected during two major maintenance periods.
Garbage In Garbage Out is a very hard problem to solve with computers.
Plane down near Troutdale Airport (near Portland, Or) w/ multiple homes w/heavy fire. No further details yet