Japan and Japanese

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No, it was all over the news here. We just don't jump to conclusions and ground things until we have more info.

Think about it. If every Airbus or Boeing was grounded every time something happened, would any plane ever be allowed to fly?
 
So, what was the cause of the incident two days ago?
Can you say it has nothing to do with other Ospreys clearly?

Of course not. Can you say it was not a maintenance error? Can you say it was not a freak mechanical error?

Let me ask you again. If a Japan Airways Airbus A320 or Boeing 747 were to crash, would you ground all the world's A320s or 747s just because?
 
No, it was all over the news here. We just don't jump to conclusions and ground things until we have more info.

Think about it. If every Airbus or Boeing was grounded every time something happened, would any plane ever be allowed to fly?

The 737MAX series were all grounded when 2 out of the 387 then in service crashed.

According to Wiki (not the best of sources) 16 out of some 400 Ospreys built so far have crashed. Total planned production is 458, again according to Wiki. Even if the full 458 have been built that is one in every 57 29 have been written off which is somewhat higher than 1 in 183 for the 737MAX's.

Admittedly some Osprey crashes will no doubt be combat related but that is still not what most people consider a "safe" or "acceptable" accident rate.

And maintenance errors on 737 aircraft in general are as common as rocking horse droppings
 
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Yes but with the Max it was clear there was a safety of flight issue. With the Osprey it is not clear.
 

I'm pretty upset that the H60 replacement is a ridiculous tilt rotor. The Defiant was a better choice. I'm sure some people in high places got a fat paycheck.
 

A couple of those rates bear questioning

The C-20 (Gulfstream G-IV) has a great safety record in civil hands so why so bad in Navy hands?

The EA-6B was a mid 60s design that was kept in service until 2019. Old tech but presumably upgraded avionics but probably minimal engine and airframe upgrades plus mainly operated from carriers which is always going to provide higher accident rates than land based and VTOL aircraft inherently have.

The CH-53 is an early sixties design built nearly 60 years ago so is almost not relavant

The C-130 normally has a very low accident rate - why are Marine ones so accident prone?
 
I had not heard of the Defiant so had to look it up and I agree that it looked very promising and is probably a far better choice because of the relative mechanical simplicity. The V-280 looks like another mechanical nightmare. I do not like the technical issues that go with engines that have to operate continuously in both vertical and horizontal attitudes.

Basically the Defiant was a logical derivative of the Rotodyne concept moving the engines inboard to keep the drive train as short as practical and going pusher eliminates the wings and shaft torsion issues.
 

I don't think so. You have to remember that for the military a class A accident does not mean a plane crashed. It involves a fatality OR damage in excess of a certain amount. I think it was $1,000,000.

If you back a truck into the side of a parked aircraft it could technically become a Class A accident depending on what it damaged.

The CH-53 is not relevant?? What??? We are still building them. The CH-53K variant is being built by Sikorsky now. The 53 is still the mainstay heavy lift helicopter for the USMC, just like another 60 year old airframe, the CH-47 is still being built and the mainstay heavy lift helicopter for the US Army.

So how is the CH-53 almost not relevant?
 

100,000 flight hours means 274 years if a flight takes an hour everyday.
Even if there are 100 aircraft and ALL caused class-A mishaps within the period, the mishap rate is only 0.1% for an aircraft or only 10% for all 100 aircraft for 2.74 years at the worst case. Same calculation technique was applied for the B-29s to make the loss look lower during ww2.

Accident has happened in fact and that is all for the residents.
Responsible military person should not ignore their voices IMO.
 
Yes


Shinpachi hit the nail on the head.

If class A is, by today's standards, typical tarmac rash then it must be treated with the utmost caution.

The people who are concerned with its safety are far more concerned with the hull loss and life loss statistics which brings us back to one in every 28 - almost 4% - have been written off as hull losses. Even after you remove combat losses from that you are probably looking at maybe 3% and I doubt that many other types have that high a hull loss rate.
 
A lot of it comes down to one of those statistics things. You know the one - lies, damned lies, and statistics.

Accident means different things to different groups.

ICAO publishes what should be the international civil standard but many countries and companies have variations for mainly statistical reasons. Some want the statistics to reflect the whole picture and others want to be able to claim they are safe and have fewer accidents when that is not necessarily true.

The FAA is the only regulator I know of that adds to the ICAO definition and therefore creates a higher number of accidents and fatalities than other countries. By the FAA definition Qantas has had a large number of fatal accidents because every passenger DVT death is an aircraft accident under the US definition.

Many countries delete whole sections - like Australia which deletes aircraft accidents that take place on the ground.

When Qantas's first A330 was delivered it never made it to the hangar on arrival without damage to the #1 engine and cowls because the ground staff used the wrong towbar and were too busy gasbagging to notice the bar had separated and the aircraft was accelerating down the slope behind them until #1 engine rammed into the back of the tug. In the US and many other countries that is an aircraft accident. Not in Australia. Likewise a driver jumping into a tug without checking that there is no tow bar and/or aircraft attached and pulling the nose of the aircraft into the terminal building (yep it happened in Melbourne in the 90s) is an accident outside Australia but not inside Australia.

Likewise when Qantas was unloading the Korean Air MD-11 freighter in Sydney and emptied the front lockers first (unload rear first then front last is always correct to ensure there is always a positive foreward CG on a nose wheel aircraft) , and failed to pull all the cabin load forward each time they unloaded a pallet, the aircraft tipped on its tail and sat on the loading equipment that was just driving up to the rear locker. In the US and many other countries that is an aircraft accident. Again - not in Australia.



The Qantas 747 that overran the runway in Bangkok was economically a hull loss. Note #3 engine has separated from the wing, but Qantas rebuilt it at greater cost than replacing it because the company definition of an accident does not include any damage to aircraft so they call this accident, like the flap falling off in flight in Rome, etc, etc, etc, etc, incidents.

What is one of the biggest causes of accidents, regardless of industry? Complacency. Brainwashing your staff that you have never had an accident and calling accidents incidents is manufacturing complacency.



Only the captain can, or could at that time, initiate an evacuation on Qantas (ignoring the fact that the cockpit crew are first first to arrive on the scene of an accident and therefore the most likely to become mortified) and QF cabin training fails to cover the "check it is safe before opening an exit and deploying the escape slide" that other airlines do as shown above.

At most, if not all, other operators the cabin crew are expected to have the cabin empty within 90 seconds of the aircraft coming to rest and engines shutting down in case of fire.
From the official report.

 
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Mission impossible.

On December 1, according to a resident of Yakushima Island where an Osprey crashed, US Forces in Okinawa offered islanders to meet with the fishermen who helped the rescue and search for missing crew to interview on the detailed situation at the time as well as to express gratitude. On the next day, two personnels came but they could not speak Japanese. Yakushima islanders do not speak English either.


 

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