Sounds like a tough way to make a living...........Bill
Aircraft Disasters
- Thread starter davparlr
- Start date
It's a cut throat, cost cutting, ball busting jungle out there run by unsympathetic nonflying bean counters, unless you are onboard with with one of the high profile "legacy" major airlines with a strong pilots union. My girlfriend just retired from American, and over our careers we've known hundreds of airline pilots. Not one of them would encourage or allow their kids to pursue a career in aviation. It ain't what it used to be.
The truth of this is finally setting in, as there has developed a major pilot shortage at the airline level, and today's kids are too smart (or too lazy) to sign up for a life of hard work and economic bondage, no matter how "romantic" or "exciting" it's cracked up to be. "Cracked up" is the operative term here.
So, Bill, you nailed it precisely.
Cheers,
Wes
PS: The traditional pathway of "working your way up" to the airlines through General Aviation is much less feasible today than it used to be, as GA has shrunk and the first big step beyond flight instructing has become a much bigger leap. Entry level has become 1500 hours, an ATP, and a type rating in a commuter jet. Also the safety folks have become leery of GA pilots entering the airline world, as their early training is likely less standardized. So the answer has become aviation academies like Embry Riddle and American Flyers. Any seasoned captain can tell you horror stories of brand new ATP and type rated first officers who are so far behind the airplane their head has legal ATC separation from the aircraft. Kathleen says she'd rather have a 900 hour freight dog who's been flying cancelled checks at night in a Navajo than a newly minted 1500 hour academy graduate in her right seat heading into DCA on an icy windswept night after holding in freezing precip. It's a big jump from a Seminole or a Duchess to a Canadair 700.
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Still, I think commercial Airlines are the safest mode of travel considering passenger miles covered.
MIflyer
Major
"Since they didn't wear pressure-suits, how did they remain breathing after bailout?"
Nowadays our crews are equipped with Bailout Bottles, small O2 bottles about the size of a shave cream can. On ejection they automatically switch to using that. I recall seeing piles of those bottles at Tinker AFB after they failed inspection - they were arranged in a kind of a pyramid stack and all welded together. They also have walk around oxygen bottles, about the size of a milk jug, that enable them to unhook their mask from the airplane, plug it into the bottle and move around.
The organization I worked at at TAFB, OC-ALC, had responsibility for service engineering on all oxygen masks and regulators in the USAF. I recall a message from several years previously they had saved; it was rather lengthy and detailed. It described an incident where a B-52G lost pressurization. The Crew Chief was riding along, napping on the upper floor without his O2 mask on. Another crewman saw him and, realizing the man would die without oxygen, unplugged his mask - and without plugging into a walk-around bottle - went to put the mask on the Crew Chief - after which he passed out. Another crewman saw him and did the same thing - and passed out, falling from the upper to the lower level of the airplane. Then the two guys down there got into the act. Basically, other than the pilots, everybody else on the airplane passed out, at least one time, and some of them twice - all because it never occurred to them to plug into a a walk-around bottle. The 3 Stooges reinforced by the Keystone Cops could have not put on a better performance.
Nowadays our crews are equipped with Bailout Bottles, small O2 bottles about the size of a shave cream can. On ejection they automatically switch to using that. I recall seeing piles of those bottles at Tinker AFB after they failed inspection - they were arranged in a kind of a pyramid stack and all welded together. They also have walk around oxygen bottles, about the size of a milk jug, that enable them to unhook their mask from the airplane, plug it into the bottle and move around.
The organization I worked at at TAFB, OC-ALC, had responsibility for service engineering on all oxygen masks and regulators in the USAF. I recall a message from several years previously they had saved; it was rather lengthy and detailed. It described an incident where a B-52G lost pressurization. The Crew Chief was riding along, napping on the upper floor without his O2 mask on. Another crewman saw him and, realizing the man would die without oxygen, unplugged his mask - and without plugging into a walk-around bottle - went to put the mask on the Crew Chief - after which he passed out. Another crewman saw him and did the same thing - and passed out, falling from the upper to the lower level of the airplane. Then the two guys down there got into the act. Basically, other than the pilots, everybody else on the airplane passed out, at least one time, and some of them twice - all because it never occurred to them to plug into a a walk-around bottle. The 3 Stooges reinforced by the Keystone Cops could have not put on a better performance.
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And you're right, Bill. We all know how dangerous the highways are, and Amtrak and Greyhound aren't exactly pristine in the safety department either.
It's just that our expectations of airline safety are so much higher. Despite the issues and controversies, the airlines have done exceptionally well in the last couple years in the safety arena, but that has historically always been subject to "bunching" of accidents and incidents so don't expect it to continue indefinitely. The price of safety is eternal vigilance, and a period of "perfect safety" tends to result in a relaxing of said vigilance. Here's hoping it lasts.
Cheers,
Wes
The recent controversy/ scandal/ dispute with Ryanair and its pilots was a bit disturbing to me. There are always two sides to every argument but it seems that the head of the company considered his pilots to be little more than taxi or bus drivers. It sounded so complacent, as if he thought that because there hadn't been an accident he could push the working hours/working conditions envelope to its limits.
TRAINING??? DRILL?? STAN/EVAL? Is anybody on the ball here? USAF is supposed to be the most organized, procedural, and anal of the services; you're shakin' my faith, man!
Cheers,
Wes
The Basket
Senior Master Sergeant
- 3,712
- Jun 27, 2007
The Air New Zealand crash of an Airbus A320 gives me the scares.
The aircraft was allowed to stall but because the fly by wire systems had gone early doors the pilots didnt realise and was waiting for the A320 to recover and the A320 was having no part of it.
2 issues arise for me. Why did the pilots not do something instead of relying on the automation?. And why wasnt a big neon sign flashing with a big klaxon to say the aircraft is not happy? The actual error message was certainly not picked up and you would think it should have been better shown
The aircraft was allowed to stall but because the fly by wire systems had gone early doors the pilots didnt realise and was waiting for the A320 to recover and the A320 was having no part of it.
2 issues arise for me. Why did the pilots not do something instead of relying on the automation?. And why wasnt a big neon sign flashing with a big klaxon to say the aircraft is not happy? The actual error message was certainly not picked up and you would think it should have been better shown
There's the never-ending tension between cost control and safety, which has become more pronounced as airline management has transitioned from operations people to money people. In the US and worldwide this has been the inevitable result of deregulation. It's the infamous "race to the bottom".
"We spend millions to give pilots all this automation to ease their workload, and they complain they're tired and overworked! Ungrateful lazy bastards! I write their paychecks, and I expect them to fly when and where I say. They use safety as an excuse for laziness."
Cheers,
Wes
I don't know if that is a direct quote of Michael O'Leary but it certainly sounds like him. Of course in case of emergency he expects all pilots to do what Sullenberger and Skiles did putting an Airbus down in the Hudson.
Nope, don't know who Michael O'Leary is. That was a generic airline management gripe I hypothesized. Anyone who's been in the business has certainly heard it before.
Cheers,
Wes
It seems Michael O'Leary is the perfect generic CEO for an airline, you got him to a "T".
Michael O'Leary's 33 daftest quotes
That was early on in the evolution of the "Roboplane". The whole technology of the airplane second-guessing the pilots has its pitfalls, all of which have to be filled in one at a time. I'm glad my flying days were over before that came along. I want the airplane to do what I tell it to do, not override me with its control laws.
Cheers,
Wes
The pilots didn't do anything because quite likely they were brainwashed into faith in the technology, that it's smarter than they are, then confused by the plane's behaviour, then trapped by their low and slow predicament. Classic case of many small circumstances building into an unmanageable situation. If they'd been at altitude and had the time to work the problem they might have survived, but they were trying to accomplish "under the radar" flight maneuvers they'd been refused by ATC at altitude.
Static system moisture is an insidious problem that can catch even the most careful aviator. The fly-by-wire system had no way of knowing that 2/3 of the AOA sensor ports were frozen, so it discarded the (operative) input that disagreed with the other two, as it was programmed to do.
This is where humans enter the picture. An experienced pilot who knows the plane well can say: "That AOA indication just doesn't look right for this attitude, speed, power setting, and configuration. Check the raw data readings!" The FBW doesn't have that kind of intuition.
A human pilot would say: "Push the nose down and add power!" The FBW said: "I'm confused! I give up".
Cheers,
Wes
Of course! Aren't all airline pilots Supermen and super heroes?? They damn well better be, for what we pay them!
You don't actually stall an A320, at least not the way we do an "iron airplane". You fly it up to an incipient stall and then the FBW control laws take over and fly it out. If you actually succeed in driving it into a full stall, you're outside the certified flight envelope and you're a test pilot. Your insurance company will love that. The accident flight crew had almost certainly not ever actually flown an A320 out of an actual full stall manually. That just isn't how it's done.
Cheers,
Wes
The crash of flight AF 296 at Habsheim air show was caused by playing about with the fly by wire system. Not only was it the first commercial flight of a fly by wire aircraft it was the first flight of an A320 and the first time they had been shown to the public.
Air France Flight 296 - Wikipedia,
MIflyer
Major
The Air New Zealand crash off the coast of France I saw described on Air Disasters occurred with an airplane that has just undergone refurb after the completion of a lease with another airline in Europe They had repainted the airplane and then did a pressure washing of it. They had covered vulnerable spots during the painting but uncovered them before the pressure washing. Water was entrapped in the vane sensors, and at altitude it froze them immobile. They did a deliberate stall at high altitude to check out the flight control system. And the flight control system that was designed to prevent stalling the airplane - the very system that enabled Capt Scully to land on the Hudson River without fear of stall - prevented stall recovery (computer: You don't need to put the nose down! You are not stalling!). The airplane did not recover from the stall and went into the ocean nose first, straight down.
Now, the flight control system's anti-stall feature could have been overpowered by using the trim, but the flightcrew did not try that. Tragically, there were engineers and maintenance people on board who could have told them that - but they were seated in the cabin. Maybe post-refurb flight tests should require some of the engineers to be in the cockpit?
By the way, if y'all liked my post on oxygen systems, you'll never believe what I found out when I worked on G-suit valves. Probably should start a new thread on that if anyone is interested.
Now, the flight control system's anti-stall feature could have been overpowered by using the trim, but the flightcrew did not try that. Tragically, there were engineers and maintenance people on board who could have told them that - but they were seated in the cabin. Maybe post-refurb flight tests should require some of the engineers to be in the cockpit?
By the way, if y'all liked my post on oxygen systems, you'll never believe what I found out when I worked on G-suit valves. Probably should start a new thread on that if anyone is interested.
Do it man! Good stuff.
