The Great Ongoing Aviation Thread (general and other)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
8703

Agreed.

The crash was gonna happen and those on the plane were screwed no matter what.

My question is choosing to leave the airport and crashing into the city around it. I think it is better to crash within the airport.

To be clear, I am NOT blaming the pilots! They had seconds to deal with all of this. A near impossible task. I doubt there was any possibility of saving that plane. Even with hindsight we could not figure a “perfect” response from the pilots that was possible to save the plane and the people on it.

8704

When it mattered they probably didn’t understand the problem they were facing.

8705

I’ve often wondered why pilots can’t see what is happening on their wings. Seems it would be an easy (cheap) and basic problem solver.

8706

Flight and landing at La Guardia in a Cessna 150:

Brian

8707

A rolling takeoff with the power coming up as you’re finishing the alignment actually gets you faster closer to the approach end than does a standing start with held brakes.

In many cases, the brakes won’t hold the airplane at takeoff power. You can only push it up so far before you have to release brakes before you start sliding uncontrollably.

Every second you’re at high power and stationary those big vacuum cleaners out on the wings are trying to suck up debris. You’ll make engine failures more likely the more debris you suck up. That’s a losing statistical game.

All in all, there are times when it makes sense to perform a brief static run-up to high, but still partial, power while holding the brakes. But those times are rather rare.

8708

Thanks for this. Our – yours and my! – neighbors Drake and Carol (Cessna pilots who fly out of La Crosse Airport) will love this.

8709

This is from the Aviation 2/7 Facebook page:

The FAA has issued an urgent Airworthiness Directive (AD) for nearly 600 CRJ regional jets (including CRJ-550, -700, -900, and -1000 models) due to the risk of horizontal stabilizer failure. The directive, effective November 20, is based on reports—initially by Transport Canada—of missing or loose bolts on the horizontal stabilizer’s anti-yaw fitting block. According to the FAA, this hardware failure could lead to the loss of the stabilizer and consequent loss of control, especially when combined with a bird strike or gust loading. Operators must now perform detailed torque checks and replace any faulty hardware before the next flight, followed by repetitive inspections every 2,200 flight hours. The estimated compliance cost is about $510 per aircraft.

8710

Which reminds me of this ghastly mishap:

8711

That one was especially a bummer because the pilots turned a survivable problem into an impossible one, by (inadvertently, of course) breaking that jackscrew nut completely, from what had merely been a stuck position. The pilots did nothing wrong*, mind you – indeed, their decision to remain over water probably saved lives on the ground – but one can’t help but cringe at the moment they made the problem much worse.

*From the perspective of the training and procedures at that time.

8712

IIRC they had no clue what the real problem was and were working their checklist. They did everything right. When it all went to shit those two guys battled like hell to save the plane till the very last moment including flying upside down (<— read that again…they literally flew upside down for a bit and it worked but obviously not good and didn’t last long).

They are heroes in my book.

8713

Totally.

8714

Yeah. Over the umpteen years since the e.g. 1960s there has been a lot of movement in the industry towards not monkeying with something malfunctioning.

The John Wayne days of troubleshooting the malfunctioning DC-6 using the detailed knowledge in the books are over. Now the airplanes are vastly more complicated, the books are ever less detailed, and the conceptual advice is simpler:

    Turn it off if you can, leave it alone if you can’t, and go find a place to land with reasonable urgency. That is all.

This accident caused a definite increment in that direction.

8715

This puzzles me: the UPS jet just spent 6 weeks in maintenance where you would think lots of stuff would have been inspected. Why inspect the planes unless the FAA has a reasonable idea of what was broken–and no one here has mentioned what experts are thinking what was the exact failure mode.

8716

There are periodic organized maintenance checks of each airplane type. There might be 1000 items to check on a 6-week project like that. But nothing that’s not on the list of 1000 will be looked at. If somebody happens to spot something off the list while looking at something on the list, that discrepancy will be recorded and dealt with. But folks aren’t simply crawling all over the airplane looking at anything and everything ad lib.

The grounding order does generally describe what needs to be inspected. The AP article didn’t bother with that detail.

It is common that in situations like this the FAA issues an immediate order grounding the airplane until the inspection can be accomplished. While deferring to the manufacturer to actually develop the detailed inspection procedure and pass/fail criteria. Which the FAA will bless in a revision to the grounding order. Right now Boeing doesn’t have the inspection criteria done.

Here’s the FAA order itself: FAA Emergency Airworthiness Directive 2025-23-51.

The meat says:

That bit at the end about “using a method approved by the Manager” is FAA-speak for “using the method Boeing comes up with soon that we’ll then bless. Until then, sit tight.”

So the punchline here is NTSB is confident enough to tell FAA not only the engine fell off (tore off more like), but some or all of the pylon did too. Engines are supposed to be breakaway in extremis. Pylons are not.

Exactly which bolts, pins, nuts, wing structure, whatever needs to be inspected and how is all TBD at this point.

But the info in the EAD now is further support for the belief we’ve all had since the git-go that there was a lot more wing damage beyond a simple uncontained engine fire. Such that the airplane may have been unable to fly or unable to be controlled in flight.

8717

How would starting at a screen give them more information than what they got with the probable engine out warnings, the rapidly decreasing fuel quantity warnings, the engine fire warnings, the hydraulic system failure warnings, the flap and ailron command failure warnings (cautions, actually, but lots of blinking lights and alarms)?

There’s no time to process such footage and do anything about anything at all.

As for cheap and easy….lol. Ain’t no such thing in transport category aircraft, and the reliability you’d need for it to even keep functioning ina scenario like this would be extreme.

I’m leaning towards the cause more likely to be either poor maintenance practices (they forgot to put the bolts back in) or poor aging aircraft (14 CFR 26) compliance and undetected fatigue failure.

8718

From my standpoint as a simple-minded layman, the MD-11 is essentially a modernized DC-10, and those things had an unenviable track record especially in their early years. They were grounded for a couple of weeks in 1979 after the crash of American Airlines flight 191. I’m surprised they weren’t grounded when cargo doors kept blowing out.

8719

I think there is a world of difference between an alarm that engine #1 has a problem and looking at the wing and seeing engine #1 has literally fallen off the aircraft and taken a chunk of the wing with it.

And while incorporating a camera into the plane might cost more than we’d think digital cameras are dirt cheap. The tech is there and the cost is near nothing compared to the plane. Loads of YouTubers mount GoPro cameras to their planes and use the video in their posts. I do not see any reason Boeing or Airbus can’t figure it out.

8720

Nicely stated response.

8721

I’ll let the pilots address the usefulness of such a camera but the decisions at the moment are the same; try to stop or try to fly. The visual image won’t change much in this scenario.

And aviation grade cameras (with the image quality to be of any use on something the size of an aircraft wing) are not cheap at all. Nevermind whatever screen you are proposing to have in the cockpit (because surely there’s no time to pull out and boot up an iPad).

To even file the first form to approve such a project costs my company $500 USD. You’ll need an approved aircraft flight manual for this system, that’s $2000 more to get it approved as it’s not a delegated function (at least not in Canada). Haven’t charged you the Labour to file that paperwork yet.

You’ll need flight tests through various phases of flight; Google says an MD-11 charters at over $20k per hour. Experimental flight permits and additional insurance etc etc.

Now, consider the camera and monitor; D0-160 testing needs to be done, that can take weeks and are generally destructive tests. EMC testing for the system. Crew training.

Now pay the engineers to design it, the MROs to install it, and the delegate or government to approve it.

Oh, and you probably don’t want this on at all times, so if it needs to interface with weight on wheels sensors or flight management computers, you need to recertify that system function too. And if your FMS can’t interfere with your system? Hundreds of thousands of dollars for TSO and PMA approvals on those units.

This isn’t your standard go-pro.

Can it be done? Sure. Will anyone benefit? Doubtful.

Edit: camera mounted on fuselage or looking through means icing considerations, HIRF, drag count and noise assesments, supplemental maintenance and airworthiness limitations (also not delegated for major design changes) and fatigue tolerance and monitoring for Part 26 compliance.

Off the top of my head.

8722

In the past some planes had a camera mounted in the tail to let passengers watch on their screens as if they were riding on the tail.

There is nothing new here. It’s cheap and I see no reason why you’d need to deal with the FAA or any regulatory body. Pilots have LED displays now so just add a toggle to see the camera view. No need to retrofit planes. Just add them going forward from now.

I can’t imagine this would be difficult at all. I suspect the most difficult part would be figuring out how to mount it in the tail and properly angle the camera.

Will anyone benefit? If it prevents one lethal crash I think it is worthwhile. Planes have many safety features that are almost never needed but they are there because that one time they are needed makes them worth the effort.

A Boeing 737 Max 8 currently costs $121.5 million. I don’t think adding a GoPro will nudge that number.