Plane had just taken off & was trying to return. Hit power lines which caused a brush fire. 4 townhomes involved; both on the plane & one on the ground killed.
Some wild video of a fully involved home or two halfway down in this article
In other news …
Boeing has 4 777-9s built and flying in their on-again off-again test program. All of them have been found to have cracks in the engine thrust links: the mongo hunks of metal that tie the engine to the pylon and carry all the static and dynamic loads. Including the links on one jet that hadn’t flown much in the last couple years and has accumulated rather little total flying. Meaning that either the links are cracking while the plane is just sitting on the ground, or they’re cracking very very early in their operating lifespan.
Apparently it’s a part that Boeing designed that is made by a subcontractor.
Something is really wrong with that part. It remains to be seen what and more importantly why.
Is there a reason they don’t put a “turn off all the nanny guards and give me full manual control” button somewhere on the flight deck?
I know it wouldn’t solve everything. If the AOA sensors are sending faulty data for some reason, then the flight instruments would probably be showing some unusual readings. It’s just that he accident sequence you laid out just seems so over-complicated. The pilot has to figure out what the plane is actually doing, what the computer thinks the plane is doing, and why the computer is trying to fix an issue that may or may not exist. In a circumstance like that, my first instinct would be to simplify things. Show me altitude, attitude, and airspeed, and let me take it from there. I can’t guarantee I’ll figure things out, but that’s better than a computer flying the plane into the ground.
Good thinking overall.
What the MAX accidents demonstrated is that when you have “pilots” who can’t fly a plane, but can control an autopilot, bad things happen when the computers they are dependent on are totally confused. It’s hard to say for sure from the few details presented, but the Sukhoi accident may be more of the same.
OTOH …
As airplanes get more complicated, the idea of “Just show me altitude airspeed and I’ll take it from there” becomes increasingly difficult.
In the case of the 737, both MAX & NG, the airspeed indications all depend on AOA. Why? Because as the AOA increases, the pitot tubes are not aligned with the airflow. So they’ll “feel” a too-slow input pressure and hence speed. This is true in all the jet’s I’ve flown. The problem of course is that if the AOA input is wonky, the displayed airspeed will be corrected incorrectly and will be wonky too.
The standby airspeed typically has no AOA or other compensation. Near the middle of the envelope it’s 5-10 knots different from the primaries. Near stall or overspeed the difference might be 20+ knots.
I assume all commercial “airliners” can still be flown aerodynamically (by mere pilot input w/out computer) … aren’t there some Mil. planes that cant be flown without computer assistance, as they are more rockets than planes…unable to glide or so
(hope you understand my train of thought)
but then again, the mainstream planes populating our airports look pretty much the same for the past 60+ years …
The purely fly-by-wire airplanes are uncontrolled darts if they ever get down to zero functioning computers. Examples would be all Airbus products at/after the A320, the F-16, F-22, & F-35, and similar era non-US fighters.
So the question is which level of computer we’re talking about.
In normal failure-free cruise you’ve got a multi-way flow of data between aircraft state sensor computers (air data, AOA, attitude gyros, compasses, turn rate sensors, etc.), autopilot computers, and flight management / nav computers to eventually give left-right / up-down / fast-slow commands to the flight control computers and the engine control computers who are actually making physical things happen to implement all those other computers’ higher level desires.
IANA Airbus expert although @Richard_Pearse is.
Summarizing mightily, AIUI the Airbus flight control computer that implements the control of the no-kidding physical movement of the aerodynamic surfaces has a very simple back-up mode that disregards most of the higher level instrumentation and computer logic. In effect it becomes just a dumb set of “virtual control cables” directly and dumbly connecting stick and pedals to the actual ailerons, rudder, and horizontal tail. Which should enable real pilots with real pilot skill to keep the right side up and the airspeed somewhere between stall and overspeed in the complete absence of any/all reliable instrumentation as long as they can see outside.
The F-16 had/(still has?) a vaguely similar setup albeit with far less redundancy and rather fewer layers of indirection. And an ejection seat for the situations where even that lowest dumbest layer has quit working and the pilot is then riding a ballistic dart.
The latter quote is more-or-less what I was trying to suggest.
How many accidents have there been where the flight crew didn’t understand what problem they were facing until it was too late? Seems like there’s room for improvement in making things simpler when they need to be. The airspeed may not be exactly right at different angles of attack, but the situation would become more predictable.
On various software projects I’ve worked on, I’ve often pushed for simplicity rather than pushing new features that will make things more complicated. It’s an uphill battle.
I’d say that battle has been utterly, completely lost. I’ve just begun a new job in which I have to take attendance of the trainees I’m teaching. The software for doing this is capable of incredible data manipulation and is also hopelessly useless for doing basic tasks. I’m fairly computer savvy for a non-professional and I still haven’t been able to simply input who was there and who wasn’t, which should be its core goddam function.
Right now every gadget, tool, piece of software, phone and car is marketed on the basis of features, and the more the better. Maybe I’m now officially an old guy, but it sure seems like it’s harder and harder to use technology to accomplish simple goals. Which brings me to airplanes.
Among the planes I’ve flown was a very advanced bizjet with all the bells and whistles. It was a serious pain in the ass. Sure, some of the tech could be useful, when it was working properly. But we’ve all heard the (true) adage that with greater capability comes greater complexity. In my view, we are no longer striking a balance. That plane caused more problems for maintenance and pilots than any other jet I’ve flown. I later transitioned into a slightly older plane that was more basic, actually worked every day and I felt like a pilot again.
I want access to good information in the cockpit and a few tools and automation to help me. But I want that stuff to HELP, not do things for me without my asking. I’ve never flown an Airbus, but from what I understand I wouldn’t like it. I guess I feel the same way about cars - I welcome the day we get humans completely out of the business of driving. But right now, we’re in this middle period where we can’t quite decide who’s in charge. I think it’s happening with airplanes too and we have a choice to make - we can continue going down the automation road or we can have pilots keep actually flying. But I think this is a losing battle too, probably. Maybe full automation is the way to go, which would obviate the whole discussion.
About the only exception to this would be GPS systems. They are very intuitive and for non-commercial use they are an improvement by many orders of magnitude over previous navigation methods.
Google Maps on my phone has been pissing me off, lately. A few evenings ago I went out to eat, and afterwards I searched for an open grocery store. This was within a few miles of home, in an area that I know very well. A map of the results came up, and I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Then I realized it was oriented with east toward the top. WTF? No one puts east toward the top; and if you absolutely have to, put a damn compass rose on there so I know you’ve done it.
I’ve had other issues with it; could probably start a thread with the ways it is poorly designed. There are times I use it and discover that settings within the app have changed, and I didn’t change them.
Apparently Swiss International Air Lines is having to add what is essentially ballast to the back of some of their planes (They refer to it as a “balancing plate”). Their new first class suites (with walls and locking doors!) are heavier than their old first class seats, and meanwhile their new economy seats are lighter, so it’s making the planes nose heavy. So to correct the center of gravity they have to add extra weight to the back.
Now I’m no aerospace engineer, but using lighter economy seats only to add extra weight back to the plane seems very counterproductive.
Yup. But at least they’re real expensive coach seats! 
It certainly doesn’t make aircraft operational sense. It might well make marketing sense. 5 year old seats suck pond scum from a customer appeal POV.
That’s part of why tail-mounted fuel tanks are the rage on long-haul. Whether you burn it or just carry it, it’s far more useful, flexible, and cheap than rigid ballast.
I was thinking the same thing, except perhaps the new seats use less material so might intrude on the legroom less than the old ones, and every little bit helps. Plus, if they put lighter seats throughout coach, and offset it with a single weight as far aft as possible, that probably leads to lighter weight overall.
As long as that fuel is theoretically useable, that’s fine. If the plane absolutely must have ballast at the rear to stay within weight-and-balance limits, then having that ballast be something that can be pumped out with the flick of a switch sounds like a problem waiting to happen.
Yeah, the average lever arm is longer, so it takes less mass to achieve the same torque. Still kinda dumb, but not as bad as it sounds.
I would think they could toss another wheel in the rear belly or add to the fly-away kit.
I think it is plenty dumb. Reportedly, they will have to add up to 1.5 tons to counter the imbalance created by replacing the existing eigth first class seats with just three of the new design. https://skift.com/2024/09/04/swiss-adds-metal-weights-as-new-seats-are-too-heavy/.
Somehow, this was impossible to predict during the design process, even while “seat manufacturers are contractually obliged to meet strict weight limits.”
Those little luxury cabins can go for $20k a pop (or a lot more, once you get to the ultra-lux category with full-size beds, hot showers, etc.). You can only cut the mass so much before it starts feeling cheap. If the extra ballast allows them to sell those seats, it’s worth it.
1.5 tons to counterbalance 3 first-class seats. That means every first class passenger is accountable for an extra 1,000 pounds being carried by the aircraft. I assume that, in addition to the first-class fare, the airline will impose an unadvertised surcharge equivalent to 1,000 pounds of excess baggage.
It’s a business. Assuming the marketers aren’t nuts, the airplane makes more money with the heavy first class cabin-ettes and the ballast than it does without them. That is the only measure of merit that matters.
The rest is just process engineering to deliver the planned profit.
We may as well whine about the weight of wine bottles and hot towels they carry and how much more efficient the plane would be without that “excess baggage”.