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Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport
Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul crashed while landing at San Francisco Airport today. Early reports suggest the plane was unstable as it touched down, which led to the tail of the plane breaking off. There are no official casualty reports yet, but passengers were seen walking off the plane. Preliminary estimates say one or two dead and 75 being transported to area hospitals. (Others are reporting two dead and several dozen injured.) Eyewitness report: "You heard a pop and you immediately saw a large, brief fireball that came out from underneath the aircraft," Anthony Castorani said on CNN. "At that moment, you could see that that aircraft was again starting to lift and it began to cartwheel [Ed: he likely means spinning horizontally, like a top]. The wing broke off on the left hand side. You could see the tail immediately fly off of the aircraft. As the aircraft cartwheeled, it then landed down and the other wing had broken." The media has estimated about 290 people were on board the plane. The top of the cabin was aflame at one point, but it's not known yet whether that affected the passengers. "Federal sources told NBC News that there was no indication of terrorism." Some images from the news make it look like the plane may have tried to touch down too early, hitting the seawall just before the runway.
Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel...
I happened to check news just as this story was breaking. The word "cartwheel" came from the first eyewitness report. The next two eyewitnesses said it "spun". So I'm guessing that the guy who said "cartwheel" doesn't really know what the word means, and that instead it spun on its belly.
certainly did NOT cartwheel or bits would be scattered down the runway. It seems that all passengers and crew have been accounted for with no fatalities.
The term "cartwheel" has different meanings to different people. Unfortunately, just like with the Boston Bombing, CNN rushed a story out without getting its facts straight, though at least this time it was somewhat more substantial than pure speculation.
At this time, it appears the plane's air speed was too low on final approach, and the pilot may have over-corrected by throttling up and then (mistakenly) putting the nose further up as a panic measure; This resulted in a severe tail strike on the sea wall, and the plane would have become aerodynamically unstable immediately after.
Typically in these scenarios, the plane (appears) to shoot upwards briefly due to the sudden change in weight distribution, and comes down on angled heavily to one side (having lost any ability to control lateral movement). The wing will typically sheer off, as they're actually designed to break away from the fuselage in such an event, and the plane will roll onto its roof then (if speed is high enough) or the nose will take a digger, break off, and the whole thing will flip in the air and then promptly "face plant" in the dirt in one piece.
Either way, the plane did exactly what it was designed to do -- separate the flammables from the fuselage where the passengers were, and maintain integrity until all motion stops. The emergency crew's prompt response is what saved everyone's lives -- most people don't die due to the impact or fire, but rather smoke inhalation.
This is a text-book crash landing, and the investigation will now focus on whether a mechanical fault caused the plane to lose speed at the last moment (bird strike on engine is common), or whether the pilot neglected to flare correctly. Judging by the debris, it looks like it would have been a steep descent with flare at the end -- which results in a faster landing and is preferred at high-volume airports, over a shallower approach, with less flare. If the pilot is inexperienced, distracted, or any number of a dozen other things go wrong (one plane crash I know of was due to a circuit breaker trip-out which meant the captain did not have 'stick shake' or stall alarm warnings in this exact scenario) -- there's very little time to react, and even going to full power take off speed will not prevent disaster due to the steep descent angle, lack of altitude, and lack of speed.
Any airplane pilot knows the key to a successful crash landing is speed and altitude -- they add precious seconds to react to an emergency. This plane had neither.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
It means serious injuries or deaths. In military speak, which is where it comes from, it means a soldier hurt to the point they can't go back and fight. So someone who's dead: casualty. Someone who has a compound fracture in both legs: casualty. Someone who has a surface cut on their arm: not a casualty.
There's not as hard and fast a civilian definition, but it is just if the injury is serious. It is a useful number for determining how bad something is. Number of injuries period is irrelevant, number of fatalities while relevant doesn't tell the whole store. Number of fatalities and casualties gives a good idea of the human damage that happened in an incident.
TFA: ...there was no indication of terrorism..."
Why is this still included in any US media article about any aviation accident, or similar event, in the news?
As an ordinary citizen, the question of terrorism is not anywhere near the top of my list of questions regarding "how" or "why" an accident may have occurred. Not at all. Now, the question of "who screwed up? Maintenance, pilot, management, etc.?" is the kind of question that springs to mind.
Or, perhaps, maybe the problem is with me? Should I learn to be more afraid?
Repeat after me: "human factors"
Almost any accident can be prevent by a prescient pilot always making PERFECT decisions.
Passing accidents off as pilot error in all but the most egregious cases, is massively disingenuous, and something airlines and manufacturers like to do to shield themselves from all liability that they deserve.
Airlines trained pilots to do something stupid? Pilot error.
Airlines failed to train pilots on the new systems? Pilot error.
Counter-intuitive controls resulted in a pilot throttling down instead of up, and crashing? Pilot error.
Stall warning systems were non-functional, and the pilot wasn't fastidiously checking sensors? Pilot error.
Airline was juggling pilot schedules around, making them work with little sleep? Pilot error.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The always-pilot error belief is a mild form of conspiracy theory. People familiar with aircraft systems can tell you that aircraft are frightingly well-engineered precisely because the aircraft manufacturers, airlines and associated industries know fully well that their livelihoods live and die by the public perception of safety. There is a very strong motivation to getting the engineering right. That's why it literally takes almost a decade to bring a new aircraft to market.
It also turns out that an aircraft in flight is one of the most predictable engineering systems - it's a single self-contained structure where there are only two unknowns: weather and human factors. Outside of those, manufacturers develop good working models of their systems and then test them extensively until they find failure points. Considering the uncertain factors, weather was a major cause of accidents early in aviation before weather radar was a standard safety feature, and aviation forecasts were fine-tuned. Now that weather is largely an avoidable risk factor (excepting extremes such as flying into thunderstorms or freak clear air turbulence cells), it should hardly be surprising that the leading cause of accident is the one thing that is most difficult to design around. If you can find a way to make any complex system (aircraft, car, nuclear reactor, etc) idiot-proof without taking away control from the idiot then I have a prize for you.
But this is a conspiracy theory, so let's see if we can falsify it by testing specific consequences we might expect, if it were true. We would predict that there should not be events admitted to design fault that could not be pilot rectified, because then the manufacturers would be liable - the FAA/EASA/CASA/etc should bury any such case. These regulators would never stop aircraft from flying, since obviously no fault could be admitted to. Rather, a quick search shows a long history of documented design flaws: de Haviland Comet square windows, DC-10 cargo door, 787 battery fires, 747 cargo door electrical fault (AL182, PA103, UAL811, TWA800), 747 aft galley electrical bus being under refridgerator drip pan (QF2), many many engine failures (Delta 1288, QF32, CA786 to name a few). Not all of these flaws were fatal, but they are officially acknowledged as design and manufacturing flaws nonetheless. If the conspiracy were real, they should never have been owned up to. Instead, we see well-documented explanations of what the flaws are, and FAA directives on how they must be fixed. In fact, there have been many cases where the FAA has forbidden whole classes of aircraft from flying until design flaws are rectified - most recently with the 787 battery problem.
When you consider that there are 10s of thousands of aircraft in the air at any one time and the failure rate is so low, it's obviously that engineers have gone to great lengths to make the design-build-maintenance-operation process for modern aircraft very reliable. Obligatory car analogy: ask yourself how often cars crash because the driver messes up, and how often cars crash because of a design flaw. Again, you'll find human error completely dominates.
Like most conspiracy theories, a little research and a bit of common sense goes a long way to shooting down bogus claims.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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