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.

Comments

Wrong week . . .

[cashman73]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking!

Re:Wrong week . . .

[binarylarry]

Looks like I picked the wrong day to stop sniffing glue!

Re:Wrong week . . .

[Grog6]

Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit amphetamines

.

Re:Wrong week . . .

[Scarletdown]

The tower? The tower? Rapunzel!!!

Re:Wrong week . . .

[Virtucon]

[quote]
Get the best available man who won't crack under pressure...

How about Mr Rogers?

Get me Rex Kramer.
[/quote]

Re:Wrong week . . .

[Spottywot]

The tower? The tower? Rapunzel!!!

Surely you're not going to quote the entire film?

Re: Wrong week . . .

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes we will and don't call me Shirley.

Re:Wrong week . . .

[swalve]

I'm not. And don't call me Maebe.

Open airplanes

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.

Re:Open airplanes

[PolygamousRanchKid]

This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.

. . . and the plane could have been printed on an off the shelf 3D printer . . .

Re:Open airplanes

[Trepidity]

Wouldn't even have had to print the plane; just print the passengers at the destination.

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

Unfortunately, most airplane accidents and incidents are due to pilot error, ATC error and maintenance mechanic error (I think in this order). Problems with hardware or firmware that are unrecoverable in spite of following proper procedures are pretty damn rare. For example, AF447 was not directly caused by any hardware failing - it was due to the pilots not following procedures and good practice.

Re:Open airplanes

[Jodka]

This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.

. . . and the plane could have been printed on an off the shelf 3D printer . . .

. . .and from the MakerPlane website:
"MakerPlane is an open source aviation organization which will enable people to build and fly their own safe, high quality, reasonable cost plane using advanced personal manufacturing equipment such as...3D printers."

Re:Open airplanes

[osu-neko]

Yup. There are few things I trust less than computers, but humans are on the top of that list...

Re:Open airplanes

[evilviper]

Unfortunately, most airplane accidents and incidents are due to pilot error

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.

Re:Open airplanes

[Rich0]

Almost any accident can be prevent by a prescient pilot always making PERFECT decisions.

I tend to agree. Perhaps the biggest design defect in both cars and aircraft is allowing humans to directly manipulate their control surfaces. Imagine the carnage that would result if elevators had handles that could be used to directly manipulate the motors and brakes (as in, no handle, no brake).

For what we spend on wars and such, we could probably replace the entire highway infrastructure with automated cars, giving a free one to start out with to every person over the age of 16 in the USA.

Re:Open airplanes

[AK Marc]

By definition. The FAA exists, not to protect the flying public, but the flight industry. Perceptions of a design fault are not allowed, but a human error is allowed. Almost always, the problem is tracked down to a single human they can name and identify. This is to make us feel better about getting into an airplane.

My first guess, based on the crash description, is that they'll find the flaps were not in the proper position, and this will be blamed on pilot error. Go ahead, check me on this. I haven't seen anything that is related to the cause yet in the news. The pilot, with insufficient flaps, came it too fast, and too steep, pulled up too late, and the tail struck early. Maybe there'll be some mechanical fault found, that can be blamed on maintenance, but even then, they'll assert the pilot should have seen the excessive descent and high airspeed for the flap setting and should have modified his approach accordingly.

The crash was 100% pilot error, even if the cause was a design/maintenance issue that prevented proper flap deployment. Or at least the report will state. But now, I have to wait a long time to find the position of the flaps at touch down.

Re:Open airplanes

[AK Marc]

This will be pilot error. My guess is improper flap position. Even if the flaps failed, he should have made a safe landing. But trusting the flap indicator over the airspeed and altimeter will be called an error. Is it an error to trust one instrument over another? It is when you made them both. He *obviously* should have paid attention to the correct one. Or possibly, he was too tired after a long flight and royally screwed up. He should have been adding throttle at the end, not pulling up and letting off. But he was trying to land with no flaps on a flaps approach, rather than executing a missed approach and getting away from that ground to figure out why. If he had scrubbed 50 mph with the "flare" at the end and didn't touch tail, we likely would never have known.

The pilot will be fired, and the crew rotation will be reviewed, yet again. We'll be no safer, but we'll be told we are.

Re:Open airplanes

[Colonel Korn]

Unfortunately, most airplane accidents and incidents are due to pilot error, ATC error and maintenance mechanic error (I think in this order). Problems with hardware or firmware that are unrecoverable in spite of following proper procedures are pretty damn rare. For example, AF447 was not directly caused by any hardware failing - it was due to the pilots not following procedures and good practice.

If you read the black box transcript from AF447 the most notable single problem was that two of the three qualified pilots in the cockpit believed that the stick was being pushed forward, when in fact it was being pulled back.

When a plane stalls, a common panicked reaction is to pull back on the stick in an attempt to point the plane back into the sky. A lot of training goes into eliminating this instinct, because the solution is actually the opposite - point the noise toward the ground to regain speed. IIRC, the copilot was pulling back on the stick for the last several minutes even as the pilot and the alternate pilot (or a flight engineer or something, I forget) were saying things like, "we're pushing on the stick, why aren't we gaining airspeed?"

The communication problem was largely caused by an major Airbus design flaw: the sticks between the left and right seats aren't linked. In other planes, the pilot would have known the copilot had the stick pulled back because the action would make his own stick move back as well. On AF447, the pilot saw nothing other than the copilot's hand on the stick and assumed he was doing the right thing, and in the understandable confusion as they struggled to gain control of the plane the copilot never verbally corrected the misconception.

Certainly pilot error in response to some external factors that aren't that uncommon (like a pitot tube freezing) was the direct cause of the crash of AF447, but a more sensible flight control design would have likely prevented the pilot error.

Re:Open airplanes

[Kell Bengal]

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.

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

Not sure what information you have that leads to this conclusion. Improper landing configuration (flaps not set, gear not down) sounds a warning that cannot be silenced. The cause will be determined in due time. There may well have been pilot error, but there are parallels between this and BA38 in LHR that was attributed to fuel freezing in the fuel control.

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

The communication problem was largely caused by an major Airbus design flaw: the sticks between the left and right seats aren't linked. In other planes, the pilot would have known the copilot had the stick pulled back because the action would make his own stick move back as well. On AF447, the pilot saw nothing other than the copilot's hand on the stick and assumed he was doing the right thing, and in the understandable confusion as they struggled to gain control of the plane the copilot never verbally corrected the misconception.

Incorrect, there is no design flaw. As designed, if both pilots make a flight control input simultaneously, they will receive an aural warning: "Dual Input". They will know about it and either pilot can take priority over the other by pushing a button on the stick which will lock out the other.

Re:Open airplanes

[ColdWetDog]

You aren't married, I take it.

Re:Open airplanes

[SydShamino]

A few months ago, I spent my evening reading wikipedia's articles about air disasters that resulted in more than 50 fatalities, starting in the 1950s and working my way forward. It's not that hard to do using their navigation, and it was fascinating to read about the events that resulted, one by one, in the establishment of the processes (like Crew Resource Management or global use of English for air traffic communication or how to design a cargo door) that solved the identified problems.

As you point out, accidents due to faulty equipment were early and often, then rarer, appearing more often in crashes in foreign countries still flying the older planes. Lately they've been very rare, with crashes due to crew error the only remaining consistent factor.

If anyone else is similarly interested, I recommend it as good reading to see how an industry evolved and matured into one as safe as it is today.

Re:Open airplanes

[SydShamino]

From my reading experience, such excuses are rarely made, at least when the NTSB is involved in the accident investigation, as they will be for this crash as it occurred on US soil using a US-built aircraft. They're quite willing to lay blame on airlines' training, instrument design, warning systems, scheduling, as appropriate. This, at least, is based on my reading of NTSB report summaries from several dozen of the deadliest air crashes.

Re:Open airplanes

[DieByWire]

This will be pilot error.

Possible. Statistically speaking, you could say that about any crash without any evidence and you'd be right more often than wrong. But it's by no means guaranteed, and the evidence isn't in yet.

Remember BA at Heathrow?

My guess is improper flap position.

You will be shown to be wrong. Guaranteed.

But he was trying to land with no flaps on a flaps approach.

Really. Thank you for informing us of this fact. Amazing how the leading edge magically deployed itself after the crash.

The only other thing I guarantee right now is that this thread will spout uninformed, infuriating drivel like the AF447 articles did.

Single engine is AK is very different from airline and transpac flying. Please spare us your conclusions based on zero evidence or relevant experience. It's painful enough as it is without hearing such drivel.

Re:Open airplanes

[CohibaVancouver]

By definition. The FAA exists, not to protect the flying public, but the flight industry. Perceptions of a design fault are not allowed, but a human error is allowed.

Just curious: If this is the case, how do you explain the FAA's reaction to the 787 battery issue? Or the changes mandated after Air Canada Flight 797?

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

Look, I know that pilots in the U.S. are really paid peanuts and probably just want to unwind and don't care about anything when they are not flying. But it takes some professional integrity to try and understand what's going on. I'd hope, at least, that a commercial pilot on given type is very familiar with all publicly available accident reports. It seems that this alone would help, in spite of airlines trying to mess things up. Yes, there's a lot to be blamed on airlines, but ultimately the pilot is the one responsible for what he/she does while flying the damn plane (or not flying, as the case may be).

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

Airspeed and altimeter indications are kinda hard to quickly relate to whether the flaps are out. You only get easy to grok indications during the transient of the flaps coming out. I don't know how loud the 777 cockpit is, but I bet there's enough conducted acoustical noise from the usually noisy as hell actuators to know that something is turning when the flaps change command is issued. There's also the wind noise and seat-of-the-pants feeling of an upward push as the lift increases and there's a temporary change in vertical acceleration. Sure the flaps on a 777 are not binary up-down, there's a couple discrete settings, but man you do feel them.

For all I know, he was coming down with excessive vertical speed - that's what the publicly available flight profile indicates. IIRC there was no glideslope guidance on this runway at the time, so perhaps there were issues with execution of a visual approach.

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

There's this thing called vertical speed indicator. An approach with excessive vertical speed past a certain point should be considered unstabilized and calls for a go-around. The inertia of the plane doesn't care whether flaps are out or not, you can't flare out an arbitrarily high vertical speed without lots of training.

Re:Open airplanes

[ttucker]

Incorrect, there is no design flaw. As designed, if both pilots make a flight control input simultaneously, they will receive an aural warning: "Dual Input". They will know about it and either pilot can take priority over the other by pushing a button on the stick which will lock out the other.

Certainly this would have been the only alarm they were hearing or blinking light they were seeing, you know in a stalling aircraft.... A "Dual Input" light is just the kind of tired, stupid, shit, that an engineer would say is good enough, but really just is not.

Re:Open airplanes

[jythie]

Ah, so all those FAA reports that indicated various engineering problems were at fault are just figments of our imaginations?

Yeah, sometimes the pilot gets blamed. Sometimes maintenance issues get blamed. Sometimes engineering issues get blamed. Sometimes the weather gets blamed. Often it is a mix. Based off so little information, the probability of the eventual report saying '100% pilot error' is pretty low.

Re:Open airplanes

[rwa2]

You're not thinking like a lawyer. Manufacturers have pretty deep pockets. Just think about what would happen if people could sue them for bad decisions made by the software.

Hence, human operators. So the manufacturers have someone to blame. They still get sued every once in a while, sure. But they get to limit their liability and have a chance to offer some corrective actions.

Re:Open airplanes

[evilviper]

Hmm, just a few months ago batteries were on fire and customers were getting ready to bail out.
Another technical difficulty and customers won't just get ready.

The battery problem was on the 787.
The jet that just crash landed was a 777.

There's about two decades of difference.

Re:Open airplanes

[AK Marc]

Then what was it, the pilot just flat out missed the runway?

Re:Open airplanes

[Rich0]

Clearly this is a major problem with the current system - we'll only ever see automated cars/planes/etc if it is regulated and compliant companies are shielded from liability.

The car design flaw of having a steering wheel is a result of the legal design flaw of making a company that manufacturers cars that kill 10k people per year less liable than one that kills 10 people per year if the latter's cars lacked steering wheels. The simple legal solution is to create a regulatory framework where we set a maximum acceptable fatality/accident rate and require manufacturers to stay below it. Start it out at the status quo (not a very high bar), and reduce the limit annually until we get into the noise. Companies that violate the regs would be heavily fined, and companies that do not would have blanket immunity from suits from accident victims. The result of such a policy would be a lot fewer dead people.

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

Yes. Precisely that has happened many times, and I won't be surprised if this was a yet another case of, essentially, missing the runway. Remember that an airplane has a certain envelope of operation when you can still control it. On final if you run out of airspeed or you're sinking too fast, you're hitting the ground and it amounts to missing the runway in your parlance.

Re:Open airplanes

[tibit]

There's a bit of a process that's followed when writing avionics software :)

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

All the alarms and blinking lights are listed in the actual accident investigation report here:http://www.bea.aero/docspa/2009/f-cp090601.en/pdf/f-cp090601.en.pdf To sum up, they unwisely flew into an area of weather that they were painting on radar. Lost air data systems (not attitude or inertial info) that provided airspeed, vertical speed and altitude, the autopilot which relies on this info disconnected leaving the aircraft to be flown by the only entity capable- the pilots, who then allowed the aircraft to stall from which they never recovered.

Aircraft design is a collaborative effort that includes pilots among many others, not just engineers. Not sure what your point is. If you're suggesting that they were overwhelmed by warnings and such, I would concur. That is the point of training and systems knowledge. All ECAMs are prioritized to allow the pilots to deal with the most pressing emergency (as a user, I think it fails from being needlessly complicated and unintuitive). This notwithstanding the fact that one must "fly the airplane first" at all times. The parent's point that Airbus have design flaws because the sticks are independent, is as I said, incorrect. He could say he he has issues with design philosophy, but its not a flaw to have independent sticks, and no machine yet can make judgments on what info the pilots need about systems failures. Perhaps you are advocating aircraft have a neural connection to the pilot's brain- sadly that is only science fiction as yet.

Certainly this would have been the only alarm they were hearing or blinking light they were seeing, you know in a stalling aircraft

Yes I do know. I think I'm qualified to make the argument that this is not a "flaw", or make observations on the AF mishap. I have over 7700 hours on Airbus and over 14000 total flight time as a commercial pilot, including training in stall recovery in large swept wing aircraft, and I've heard this argument made many times.

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

Aircraft often earn nicknames. B777's are known as Bigfoot for the main gear (the aft two wheels on the truck pivot during turns). B787 has become known as "Sparky"- you can guess why.

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

We do indeed have access to and benefit from mishap reports. Procedure are often altered as a result of information obtained during investigations. AF447 resulted in a change to stall recovery requiring idle thrust and de-emphasizing altitude loss. I disagree, but that was Airbus' recommendation. In fact, at the end of every NTSB report, conclusions are made as well as recommendations to prevent further disasters. They are not always implemented. If medicine embraced the same philosophy, we'd lose fewer people to medical accidents.

Look, I know that pilots in the U.S. are really paid peanuts and probably just want to unwind and don't care about anything when they are not flying.

True dat. Yet here I am on /. talking aviation stuff on a day off.

Re:Open airplanes

[Hognoxious]

Ah. Faulty wetware in the carbon unit?

Re:Open airplanes

[drinkypoo]

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.

I presume you are counting avians as weather.

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.

So, you're assuming an incompetent conspiracy of idiots. Now, I'm not asserting that this conspiracy exists, I've never even thought about it and I'm still not, but obviously you'd have trouble covering up some flaws, so you'd admit to them, and you might admit to some minor flaws that won't get you in very much trouble as well, just to hide the fact that you're also hiding facts.

Obligatory car analogy: ask yourself how often cars crash because the driver messes up, and how often cars crash because of a design flaw.

Most cars really suck. They don't fail well; even low-speed collisions can impair their operation. And they don't handle idiots well, either, because they don't handle. Last-second maneuvers are ill-advised. So while the direct cause of most car accidents is some form of driver failure, perhaps more of them could be avoided if more care went into the design of more cars. Or at least, if the care were applied to making a better car, rather than a more profitable one.

Re:Open airplanes

[Reziac]

Oh, the old PEBKAC problem.

Re:Open airplanes

[swalve]

It seems like it actually is a design flaw, in that the overall design is flawed. What you are describing as a design flaw is more correctly an implementation flaw or an engineering mistake. If the system works as designed, then any flaws must be design flaws.

If a pilot is panicking to the point that he is flying wrong, he will be hitting the lockout button because he will think he is right. What happens when both pilots hit the lockout button? Do they just fight back and forth? It is almost by definition a problem of lack of communication when two pilots are making competing inputs to the aircraft. So designing a system that requires communication to solve in that situation is a design flaw.

Re:Open airplanes

[Hognoxious]

the pilot just flat out missed the runway

Pretty much all crashes boil down to that.

Re: Open airplanes

[Hognoxious]

Aural schmaural. You're really going to hear it with everybody going "OMFG OMFG OMFG we're all going to DIEEEEeleventyone!!!!

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

If a pilot is panicking to the point that he is flying wrong, he will be hitting the lockout button because he will think he is right.

Look, I'm not arguing that pilots, humans, aren't capable of panicking and melting like butter. But the profession is not meant to resemble the movie Airplane. Nothing stops the scenario you describe from occurring in a Boeing with the yokes fixed to one another, with both pilots overcome like knuckleheads, pulling in opposite directions. This is why you want well trained and experienced pilots at the helm. Again its not a flaw, its a philosophical choice. Either way, the humans need to be trained to operate the machine.

Re: Open airplanes

[Solandri]

It's both an aural warning and an indicator light. But they ignored about 70 aural stall warnings; they probably ignored the dual input warnings too. Remember, the pilots didn't know they were suffering an instrumentation failure due to iced up pitot tubes. All they knew was that they were getting inconsistent, contradictory, and in some cases impossible readings from their instruments. While trying to figure out what the hell was going on, they got the plane into a high angle of attack, low speed configuration which caused the stall warnings to stop (even though the plane was still in a stall) due to the computer being programed to discount aerodynamic data as unreliable in that state.

When the pilot then gave the plane the correct input (nose down), the plane picked up speed and the stall warnings began again. Completely the opposite of what's actually going on, and probably confused the hell out of the pilots. At that point they probably guessed they were experiencing an electronic/computer problem, and probably began disregarding all the alarms they were hearing.

It's tempting to blame the accident on how easy it is to miss the "dual input" warning during a confusing and dangerous situation where all sorts of warnings are going off, and say that a force-feedback system like Boeing uses is superior. But with Boeing's system, one pilot slumped over or deliberately pushing his control column to crash the plane would hinder the other pilot from controlling the aircraft, possibly causing an accident. With Airbus' system, the conscious pilot just pushes a button and he has complete control. It's not that one method is better than the others, they're just different, and vulnerable to different failure modes. AF447 just happened to hit upon a failure mode of the Airbus system.

It's also worth pointing out that the other two major crashes caused by disorientation following instrument failure were 757s. So while the dual inputs probably added to the confusion, it's still highly likely AF447 would have crashed anyway even without the dual input problem. The overwhelming cause of the accident was spatial disorientation coupled with reluctance to believe the instruments after a systemic failure (the airspeed inputs feed into multiple other systems that update the pilots on the state of the plane).

Re:Open airplanes

[MiG82au]

Wow, that's as bad speculative bullshit as I've even seen in Youtube and Facebook comments. I didn't think I'd see it on /.

As an aside, AoA indicators would make such an error fairly obvious. I still can't figure out why it's not a standard instrument.

Re:Open airplanes

[robbak]

The FAA almost never comes out with flat 'pilot error' as a cause. They always go as far as they can to answer the next why - Why did the pilot make this decision, and why did the craft respond so poorly to the sub-optimal inputs. And then why those issues happened, etc. They will often start the process at the human error and try to find the design and corporate failures that caused it.

Re:Open airplanes

[dywolf]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elevator_operator

Re:Open airplanes

[dywolf]

and if the copilot making the wrong input presses the button?
sorry, that's a design flaw. an engineer thinking "that's good enough" and ignoring the human factor.
linked sticks negate the entire above design issue.

Re:Open airplanes

[ttucker]

You make a good point that it was not a design flaw insofar as an actual failure or oversight would have been. They took some deliberate action to allow for the pilots to know what was happening, and the override buttons to attempt to remedy the situation. You make another good point when you say that AF447 was pilot error, and no amount of blaming the controls will change that.

Reading the BEA report, it really makes me wonder if the pilots were really that ill prepared for the situation, or if the critical information relating to the flight situation of the aircraft was being withheld by the "smart" cockpit. If the former is true, what airline should I be flying on? Probably not Air France? A major things stand out in the report regarding information to the pilots, namely the lack of any angle of attack gauge, a stall warning that does not sound when the airplane is so stalled as to be falling from the sky, and the lack of something making an enormous deal about the switch from normal law to alternative law flight mode.

Regarding the dual sticks with a dual input light, the key problem is this: when would averaging the joystick inputs actually be desirable? Do both pilots frequently fly at the same time and average it out? What happens when both pilots press the override button, do the inputs average again? The correct outcome for this situation is for the pilots to communicate and reach some census regarding what to do, and instead of forcing them to do so, this system delicately implores them to. There is not any problem when in normal flight, when the dual input buzzer is the most pressing concern, but exactly when the pilots need the most help from the control systems, they provide the least. From a control standpoint, the very best thing would be for the flightsticks themselves to emit some direct feedback to each pilot... something to the effect of having each stick vibrate (in addition to the existing system) when there is a dual input situation. Having direct physical feedback is more meaningful than a light somewhere else because it would be instantly recognized and impossible to ignore. Think, "you are touching the joystick, but it is vibrating, so you are accomplishing nothing."

Re:Open airplanes

[ttucker]

The design does not require the pilots to do anything at all like that.

Re:Open airplanes

[ttucker]

In the Boeing design, at least the pilots will know their control inputs are doing nothing.

Re:Open airplanes

[matfud]

Try C Stross, Glasshouse

Re:Open airplanes

[swalve]

Exactly. When things go tits up, simple and unambiguous is the only "design philosophy" that isn't flawed. You can't have an airplane asserting Crew Resource Management rules to a confused crew that doesn't know what direction the plane needs to go. You can't have an airplane that is so unreliable that pilots are conditioned to ignore stall warnings.

Re:Open airplanes

[ttucker]

Have you read about the whole normal law/alternative law flight mode thing yet? It is obscene.

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

I'll do this one at a time. The incident lasted roughly 4 1/2 minutes. They had no visual reference to the horizon (IMC) and it was night time- these initial conditions made for a greater degree of difficulty in general. Their first mistake was in failing to avoid the weather by a wide enough margin. The second was in stall recovery. I can attest to the difficulty in recovering from stall in a heavy, swept wing aircraft at high altitude from my sim training. It takes patience and airspeed- the air is very thin. The less experienced pilot (PF) raised the nose at one point to beyond 10 degrees up which greatly reduced their energy state. Setting pitch attitude is distinctly complimented by vertical speed indications which were absent. Level pitch would be 2.5 degrees. He had total time of less than 3000 hours- low from my perspective but enough to be qualified.

the critical information relating to the flight situation of the aircraft was being withheld by the "smart" cockpit

The pilots were challenged by degraded systems: no air data meant they had no information about airspeed, vertical speed or altitude. It was attitude only during night IMC. No information was "withheld", per say, some simply wasn't available to them. They were all trained to standards, including stalls, and alternate law. Alternate law means that most protections are lost: pitch and roll limits, overspeed and stall prevention- you cannot stall newer Airbus in normal law, it won't let you. The aircraft still "flies" the same way. Boeing's cockpits are smart too, but are most definatley not immune to failures and connected yokes is not Here's a summary of Airbus flight control laws: http://www.airbusdriver.net/airbus_fltlaws.htm

If the former is true, what airline should I be flying on?

Like picking a surgeon or hospital, pick an airline that has quality training and experienced pilots. I would suspect that AirFrance has revisited their stall training for the better. Low pilot pay usually indicates low experience and poor training. High paid executives is a meaningless metric.

...the lack of any angle of attack gauge, a stall warning that does not sound when the airplane is so stalled as to be falling from the sky, and the lack of something making an enormous deal about the switch from normal law to alternative law flight mode.

Boeing doesn't present AOA either- it is not deemed relevant anymore with advanced flight display systems. Stall warnings (derived from AOA) are considered relevant and they did receive stall warnings: "At around 2 h 11 min 42, the Captain re-entered the cockpit. During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped, after having sounded continuously for 54 seconds." As for alternate law, I suspect your view of it is overly complicated. Direct law, however, is much like flying a paper airplane. The pilots will always be advised of what flight law the aircraft is operating in. Nonetheless, to get into that state requires multiple failures of redundant systems. With out any electrical power, the airplane cannot be flown- battery only is a greater emergency than fire.

Regarding the dual sticks with a dual input light, the key problem is this: when would averaging the joystick inputs actually be desirable?

Never. Its meant to be one stick at a time- just as pilots are trained on yokes. If the other pilot is fighting me on a yoke, I am the aural warning: 'I have the controls". In an Airbus the computer is the warning. We still must communicate on either plane.

Do both pilots frequently fly at the same time and average it out?

Never intentionally. That's why the system alerts them aurally and with a red warning light which can't be canceled and won't go away until the dual input is resolved. Few th

Re:Open airplanes

[jbwolfe]

You make it sound as though every contingency can be eliminated by engineers, by picking the obviously perfect design. I think you're ready for pilot-less commercial transport.

Read my other posts, no need to repeat my self.

Re: Open airplanes

[matfud]

As far as anyone knows flight 990 crashed deliberatly. The voice recorder does hint that it was not accidental. Still it was a pile of wreakage at the bottom of the atlantic so years later there was no conclusive decision.

Even a simple failure in pitio tubes can be fatal. Hence an unfortunate incident. When the aircraft provides incorrect information it confuses the pilots.

Re:Open airplanes

[Rich0]

Elevator operators were trained professionals, just like airline pilots (though not quite so highly trained owing to the much simpler equipment). Elevators requiring them were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are now as well. If they did still exist, I'm sure that the accident rate would be higher than with automated elevators. Unfortunately I can't find any records of accident rates online to cite, but if you have any demonstrating that fatality rates per passenger-floor haven't gone down with automation I'd be interested in them.

Photo

[Black Parrot]

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/SFO_crash-e1373139561971.png

Shows it upright, with at least one wing still attached.

Re:Photo

[Trepidity]

My favorite part of the reporting this evening was when CNN had text on-screen quoting the words of a caller who said the plane had lost both wings. In the background behind the text was helicopter footage of the plane, with both wings quite clearly still attached...

Re:Photo

[AmiMoJo]

I remember when they said Fukushima was "worse than Hiroshima". It was quite funny until I realized that my mum might be reading it and thinking I was going to die of radiation poisoning.

Re:Photo

[Hognoxious]

Whatever they are, they ought to be shot. In an emergency evac you don't take your fucking bags, especially ones that are too goddam big for carry-on anyway.

Except

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't cartwheel, it spun around like a top.

Re:Except

[White Flame]

Listening to the audio clip of the witness who originally said that (third video on the first-linked page), I believe he meant that the airplane began to roll left, not that it actually completed a tumble in any particular direction. The left wing hit the ground during that "beginning to cartwheel" event, then the wheels all touched down and it came to a stop.

Re:Except

[Deadstick]

A better term would have been "pirouette".

Re:Except

[PNutts]

Or since it's an aircraft how about "rotated around it's yaw axis".

Re:Except

[osu-neko]

Or since it's an aircraft how about "rotated around it's yaw axis".

That works for this site. Your average CNN viewer isn't enough of a geek to know what "yaw" means. Heck, the majority of them will get "axis" wrong if you ask them to define it in their own words...

Re:Except

[I'm New Around Here]

No, they'd know that's the thing that holds the wheels on.

Oh wait,...

Re:Except

[bill_mcgonigle]

Heck, the majority of them will get "axis" wrong if you ask them to define it in their own words...

"My sister always axis me if she can borrow my car."

Re:Except

[ceoyoyo]

Then maybe they'd go look it up on Wikipedia.

Re:Except

[Doh!]

Raw video of the crash: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEDZerwU7uE

I think "began to cartwheel" is not a bad description. It's pretty incredible so many people walked away.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[sarysa]

Just to elaborate, the headline made me think 7/6 would be to Silicon Valley what 9/11 is to New York.

Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

The cause of death in the overwhelming majority of crash landings is the combustible fuel burning the passengers and very has very little to do with impacts.

Re:Fire

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that we need to replace the dangerous fuel with something that won't burn.

Ok, put water in them.

But what if they drown?

Don't be silly. What it really means: If some genius can come up with a technological solution preventing combustion on impact or "prove" it can be done, there would be a paradigm shift in our perception in what it means to survive a plane crash, besides the obvious in the amount of lives it would save.

An extreme example would be: If non-combustion had existed before the World Trade Center, the damage to all of the buildings, including the Pentagon, would have been next to nothing (relativity speaking) and some of the people would have actually lived; perhaps more so in the Pennsylvanian fields.

Re:Fire

[JWSmythe]

The overwhelming majority of crashes involve unintended intersection of the aircraft and the terrain. Once you eliminate eliminate that, you're doing fine.

Re:Fire

[rally2xs]

Just as soon as we can store enough energy in batteries or supercapacitors to run electric motors turning propellers, we can fly maybe 400 mph on electricity and not have to use flammable fuel.

No Cartwheeling

[Ganty]

Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it 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.

Ganty

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Anonymous Coward]

At least 2 dead, which is quite amazing: http://www.ktvu.com/news/news/local/boeing-777-crashes-while-landing-sfo/nYfcx/

Re:No Cartwheeling

[sribe]

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.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[girlintraining]

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.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[sribe]

I'll bet it was the adrenalin talking.

Yes, it occurred to me that he knows perfectly well what "cartwheel" means, and in the excitement of the moment made an imprecise word choice.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Deadstick]

Yes, a cartwheel in an airplane that big is catastrophic. But how do you deal with people who don't know what "yaw" means?

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Twinbee]

Perhaps the first eye witness was looking at the plane with his head side-on, and that the ground was actually a wall.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Solandri]

Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel or bits would be scattered down the runway.

There are actually bits of debris on the runway starting almost with the rocks separating the runway from the bay. The integrity of the fuselage says it did not cartwheel (objects this big don't move in one piece like the movies - they'll disintegrate with just moderate lateral forces). But the debris trail and missing tail suggest it came down at a high angle of attack hitting tail-first possibly from a stall (in a regular landing you hit landing gear-first), then hit the ground hard enough to collapse its landing gear and skid off the runway. The jagged yellow partial dome you see at the tail end of the fuselage is the plane's aft pressure bulkhead - the end of the pressurized section of the fuselage. So nobody was in the tail portion which broke off.

The high AOA suggests the pilot was pulling up trying to gain altitude (or at least decrease the rate he was losing it). Possible reasons are an engine problem (with inadequate thrust, pilot was trying desperately to glide a little further to make the runway) or some failure of the flaps (if they retract, they increase the plane's stall speed possibly causing the plane to drop out of the air). Or wind shear (sudden tailwind deprives the plane of lift and pilot pulls up to try to maintain altitude - unlikely given the weather). Or pilot error (was coming in too high and tried to bleed altitude too quickly, instead of declaring a missed approach and trying again), though the tail striking short of the runway makes this unlikely unless the pilot accidentally put the plane into a stall.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[wonkey_monkey]

It's amazing that at least two are dead?

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

Eyewitness reports are typically very unreliable, people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw. As a result, what they think they saw and what actually happened are often two very different things. I have seen people swear they saw or heard X even when vidoetape and computer event logs clearly show X did not happen.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[dgatwood]

If the tail broke off, the back of the plane would go up, causing one wing (randomly) to dive into the ground, followed shortly thereafter by the nose before coming to rest. Then, the plane came back down on its gear and/or belly. Depending on the angle the person was viewing the accident from, it's pretty easy to see how someone could describe that as a cartwheel, albeit an unsuccessful partial one where the gymnast ended up in a faceplant.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[PNutts]

I'll bet it was the adrenalin talking. People in these kinds of situations tend to say things like "it sounded like a bomb going off", "it was like in a movie or sumthin", or the ever-popular "it happened so fast".

Q. What did the turtle say when he ran into a snail?
A. It happened so fast.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[osu-neko]

But how do you deal with people who don't know what "yaw" means?

First, you ask them which axis it rotated around while avoiding the terms they're unfamiliar with, like "roll" (in the technical sense), "pitch" and "yaw". When they respond with obvious confusion, you go on to explain what an "axis" is and what "axis of rotation" means. If they haven't wandered away by that point but are still standing in front of you making apparent eye-contact, wave your hands to verify that they are in fact too dazed to wander off on their own and call over a paramedic.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[osu-neko]

...people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw.

The mistake some people make is in assuming the latter is even possible without doing the former. Optical illusions are possible because even the most immediate mental image of what's before you eyes at the very moment is an interpretation in your mind of what you think your eyes are telling you. Perception necessarily involves interpretation.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[rwyoder]

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.

The aviation term for such a rotation is "ground loop": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_loop_(aviation)

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Deadstick]

There aren't enough paramedics.

My wife suggested calling it "pirouetting", which might have helped.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Colonel Korn]

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.

The top priority of most news outlets is to get a story published before competitors get the scoop. Now that someone flipped a switch and news sources officially believe any claim made anonymously on Twitter, this is resulting in a lot of misinformation. When I hear people in the industry discussing the way technology has altered news reporting I'm struck by the disconnect between what the reporters want and what the public wants.

Reporters want countable readers and somewhere to direct blame if the story ends up being false. In other words, they want to be the first to break a story and are happy with anonymous or unverified sources. The public (or at least the people I know) don't care at all whether they hear about the details of this plane crash now, tomorrow, or Monday - they want accurate information, not prompt misinformation.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[rasmusbr]

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.

If they were coming in too slow AFAIK the proper thing to do is to go around, i.e. go full throttle, pull back on the flight controls and climb. My understanding is that going around would normally not be a mistake even if they're slow enough that they knew they would touch down on the runway (on the landing gear) and bounce up again. The idea is that it's usually a lot safer to take off and go around for a second landing attempt than to attempt to complete a landing that seems to be going wrong. As long as your engines are working properly there shouldn't be a problem.

One possibility that comes to mind is that something prevented them from getting the thrust they needed to go around.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[AK Marc]

They saw the optical illusion. You can't expect people to report better than the resolution of their senses.

What people do that's "wrong" is use previous and future information to change the memory. I've seen one of the classroom tricks where a lone gunman robs a store, and the teacher asks lots of questions and at the end, most of the class thinks there were two gunmen. Your brain fills in story around memory. That story may or may not have relevance. The back-fill was always "good enough" in the stone age (eat red flower= die, eat flower=die, eat unknown plant = bad, whatever, the details weren't as important as the general idea). But for eye witnessing something, the brain will "tell" the user that it "knows" something, when it's just a guess, and a bad guess at that.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[DieByWire]

The wing will typically sheer off, as they're actually designed to break away from the fuselage in such an event...

Boy, that's sure going to come as a surprise to a lot of Boeing engineers.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[DerekLyons]

The term "cartwheel" has different meanings to different people

If by that you mean that uneducated or ignorant people it has different meanings, I'll agree with you. But to educated people, it means just one thing.
 

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.

You'd be half right at best - today's approach was steep, the normal pattern is much shallower.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[AK Marc]

My vote was for flaps. Most of the issues that could cause it, leveling out with full throttle at the sign of problems and executing a missed approach would be the best action (instincts say to pull up, but training should indicate leveling out, as stalls near the ground are often unrecoverable), but pilots are trained to do that and told to do the opposite, so it's rarely done. Missed approaches are considered by passengers to be "near crashes" and many airport stack them so tight, that a reasonable rate of misses would result in serious delays by the end of the day.

If there was a better emphasis on encouraging missed approaches, there would be fewer such incidents.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[houghi]

CNN rushed a story out without getting its facts straight

News needs to be fast, not accurate. That is why electronic voting exists.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Slayer]

The report has been updated and now also shows two people killed and several in critical condition.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Registered Coward v2]

...people interpret what they see; rather than just say what they saw.

The mistake some people make is in assuming the latter is even possible without doing the former. Optical illusions are possible because even the most immediate mental image of what's before you eyes at the very moment is an interpretation in your mind of what you think your eyes are telling you. Perception necessarily involves interpretation.

The problem is not that the mind must interpret what the eye saw but that the person then provides their interpretation of what they saw rather than what they actually saw. For example, rather than say "I saw a streak of light" they say "I saw a missile" and thus add their view point as factual when it they never actually saw a missile. How questions are asked can also lead people to draw conclusions rather than simply state facts. Eyewitness reports, while useful, are not always reliable despite people placing confidence in them.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[drinkypoo]

The term "cartwheel" has different meanings to different people.

I don't know about you, but I've just never seen a cart rolling along on a wall. They function optimally in the upright orientation, perpendicular to the ground. Let's not unnecessarily add meanings to words. The guy can be excused for being excited, or for misusing a word for that matter, but that's still what happened.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[TClevenger]

If they were coming in too slow AFAIK the proper thing to do is to go around, i.e. go full throttle, pull back on the flight controls and climb. My understanding is that going around would normally not be a mistake even if they're slow enough that they knew they would touch down on the runway (on the landing gear) and bounce up again. The idea is that it's usually a lot safer to take off and go around for a second landing attempt than to attempt to complete a landing that seems to be going wrong.

That isn't always the best idea.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[jamesh]

Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it 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.

Ganty

That's what I would have thought, but it turns out someone had a camera pointed in that direction at the time of the crash, and even if it wasn't strictly a cartwheel, it is completely reasonable for a witness to describe it that way as it does look like it spun on at least a 45 degree angle. Could just be the angle the camera though (An animated version of the events shows no such thing).

It's also possible that the footage is from a completely different crash. Wouldn't be the first time.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[Hognoxious]

The iron triangle of news reporting: speed, accuracy, analysis.

Choose one.

Re:No Cartwheeling

[MiG82au]

You'd think that having done wing design on Airbus aircraft for 7 years I would have heard of this wing fuse concept, but I haven't.
You're talking out of your arse. And it's shear, not sheer. There is no separation of flammables because that would result in the inner fuel tanks draining all over and around the aircraft. There is only one crash criterion for wings and that is no fracturing of the wing box under moderate crash accelerations, so that fuel doesn't piss out everywhere in an otherwise minor crash.

Having also been an aviation buff for my whole life and recently a glider pilot, I also have no idea about these steep and fast landings that you speak of. Airliners follow what's almost always a 3 to 4 deg glide path. That's a shallow approach which requires thrust to follow in the landing configuration. Deliberately steep approaches beyond the glideslope do not exist in airliner operations. Find me an example of these high volume airports which prefer riskier approaches.

I see you arguing a lot here on /. and I've wondered whether you really know what you're talking about. I think I have my answer.

I figured it out

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to go on record saying that hitting the sea-wall first instead of the runway had something to do with it. You know, physics, and all that shit.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[sarysa]

Just to elaborate even more (edit function please), anyone who lives around SF and flies knows that the airport is 10 miles south of the city. So an airplane crashing within city limits would be extremely bizarre. Very little air traffic is actually routed through the city...in fact I think most planes that fly overhead are ads for car insurance companies and tires during baseball games.

Survivor Story

[XiaoMing]

Samsun Exec. David Eun survives, posts pic. Then proceeds to teach CNN some manners.

Re:Survivor Story

[XiaoMing]

Then proceeds to teach CNN some manners

They wanted to talk to him about the crash and he said he didn't want to divert attention away from the crash. I'm not even sure what that means.

If you've watched any of what passes for "news" at all today, it's full of talking heads speculating on every possible thing, from the myriad of ways people could have died (ranging from blunt trauma to smoke inhalation because gee fucking golly, the plane carries so many people it must have taken forever to get everyone off and who knows what happens to your lungs in that type of environment!) to just who's fault it could have been that it went down in the first place. And that's all from aerial helicopter footage and an interview with an idiot who used to in some way work with traffic control.

Now can you just imagine what would happen if they got even the slightest tidbit of first-hand information? Oh wait you don't have to, there are half a dozen 5-star "informative" threads on here already discussing just why the plane's wing was or wasn't sheared off while doing some kind of barrel roll a-la Starfox64.

So yeah, when this guy posts as much information as he feels confident doing, including a very uplifting and hopeful picture immediately after the crash showing survivors leaving what looks to be a mostly intact plane, and then doesn't feed the media's desperate attempt to capitalize on the situation any more than they already have been, I am kinda grateful.

Re:Survivor Story

[wonkey_monkey]

If you've watched any of what passes for "news" at all in the past fifteen years, it's full of talking heads speculating on every possible thing

FTFY.

Re:Survivor Story

[Trepidity]

it's full of talking heads speculating on every possible thing

My favorite bit of talking-head speculation, which managed to veer from the merely inane to the entirely idiotic, was when the CNN anchors were dramatically playing up that they could not yet confirm whether there were passengers aboard the plane. Because Asiana just randomly flies empty plans ICN-SFO for fun.

Re:Survivor Story

[kaliann]

Not empty, just not carrying passengers.

Initial speculation included the possibility that it was a cargo run, as many trans-pacific airlines have cargo flights. Asiana has a cargo center in SFO. There was hope - particularly among the emergency response community - that the flight was cargo, with fewer people at risk, all in the relative safety of the front of the plane. The last crash Asiana had was a cargo flight.
However, I can't find any indication that Asiana flies the 777 into SFO as a freighter; all I see are 747s.

Re:Survivor Story

[mjwx]

If you've watched any of what passes for "news" from US news agencies at all in the past fifteen years, it's full of talking heads speculating on every possible thing

FTFY.

Fixed that FTFY for you.

Re:Survivor Story

[wonkey_monkey]

They should call me Mario because I just got 1UP'd.

Re:Not geek news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this counts under the "Stuff that matters" category.

Re:news for nerds

[geekymachoman]

So, news for nerds is strictly about computers, mathematics and shit ? Nerds/Geeks are limited to a point that nothing else interests them ?
Or are you just looking for some mod points ? Because opinion like that...on a site like this - should get you some.
You should look at the whole thing from a slightly different perspective. Nerds news site, that doesn't exclude 'relevant' information even if the same is not nerdy.

Although, when they start talking about Kardashians and Beaver.. I mean, Bieber, I and some others might agree with you.

silly eyewitness

[__aablib8664]

" The wing broke off on the left hand side." Yeah but it didn't....both wings intact in all photos....

Re:silly eyewitness

[interval1066]

The tips are clearly damaged. I guess he meant the tips or something becuase you are clearly correct. Except for the tips.

Re:silly eyewitness

[msauve]

He said "cartwheel" when he meant "spin." I suspect he meant "rudder" when he said "tail," and "elevator" when he said "wing."

Re:silly eyewitness

[Deadstick]

At least one aileron separated. An untrained witness could easily see that as a "wing".

Re:silly eyewitness

[Deadstick]

Uninformed, not silly.

He said "cartwheel" when he meant "spin."

The formally correct term is "groundloop", although "violent yaw" would be valid too. A spin in an airplane is quite something else, and it doesn't happen on the ground.

Re:silly eyewitness

[msauve]

It's news for an ordinary audience, not pilots. "Spin" is an entirely appropriate term for laymen in this case - it implies exactly what is meant. If you say the plane groundlooped, they're going to think something more like a cartwheel.

Re:silly eyewitness

[MichaelSmith]

In my hang gliding days a groundloop was when a gust of wind pushes your glider over backwards, usually before takeoff.

Re:silly eyewitness

[iggymanz]

you mean a total ignoramus? Forty years ago children learned the control surfaces of airplanes in school (yes, I did), has public education deteriorated so badly since?

Re:silly eyewitness

[Deadstick]

has public education deteriorated so badly since?

Yes.

Re:Not geek news...

[gl4ss]

I think this counts under the "Stuff that matters" category.

not all plane crashes hit it though.
it's probably because it happened in SF and not Malaysia or somewhere.. it's on other "tech culture" sites as well. some samsungs exec was on it.

No, the wings didn't break off

[Animats]

The tail broke off, not the wings. And the aircraft didn't "cartwheel". There are many good pictures of the wreckage. The wreckage is sitting on the ground alongside the runway, right side up, wings intact, on its belly. The tail assembly is completely detached from the plane. Much fire damage to the top of the fuselage, which is puzzling.

There are pictures of the passengers evacuating, including, inevitably, one of the passengers who just evacuated taking pictures of the plane.

Too early to discuss causes. Reports indicate the plane landed short in an nose-up attitude, but it's too early to say why.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[gl4ss]

the fire damage seems post immediate crash time. there's an early pic from when people were getting out of the plane where the roof doesn't seem burnt through.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[Coditor]

It looks like the pilot came in too steep and managed to slap the tail on the end of the jetty which likely broke it off and this would have made the rest of the landing uncontrollable. I always wondered what might happen if a plane came in short on that runway.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[jimicus]

But why? Training error? Instrument error? How the hell did this pilot ever get out of flight school error?

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Are there any major airports in the US that don't have cameras recording the runways?

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[tibit]

Much fire damage to the top of the fuselage, which is puzzling.

Why puzzling? The hot air rises. Try lighting the inside bottom of a toilet paper tube. It'll look eerily like the plane if you wait a bit and then extinguish.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[MichaelSmith]

My bet is engine failure, similar to BA38.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[PNutts]

The FDR and CVR data and will be interesting. (Black box flight data and recorded cockpit conversation since there seems to be a debate going on regarding pilot lingo vs. general public).

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[Tailhook]

Are there any major airports in the US that don't have cameras recording the runways?

There is no general requirement or expectation that airports visually record all runway events. Commercial airliners are permitted to autoland with essentially zero visibility (SFO CAT III landing, for instance) and VFR landings take place with as little as one mile visibility. One SFO runway is 2.25 miles long and there are 4 independent runways. I'm guessing you would need at least 32 costly all-weather cameras lining the runways to have a chance at capturing most, but still not all, runway activity, and this is not done; airports have better things to spend those tens of millions on.

Between the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, approach radar and physical evidence there will be absolutely no doubt about precisely what happened to this airliner. The only thing lost for lack of video is the attention of gawkers.

Re:No, the wings didn't break off

[RivenAleem]

There are pictures of the passengers evacuating, including, inevitably, one of the passengers who just evacuated taking pictures of the plane.

Too early to discuss causes. Reports indicate the plane landed short in an nose-up attitude, but it's too early to say why.

The cause is right there. There's no way someone could have turned on their phone that quick to have taken the picture, unless the phone was already on during landing! We need to find the owner of that camera-phone and arrest them for reckless endangerment. This, folks, is exactly why you turn off all electronic devices during take-off and landing, the plane's tail may fall off and it'll spin around on the landing strip.

No Casualties

[JavaBear]

http://avherald.com/h?article=464ef64f&opt=0

The aircraft burst into flames and burned out, all occupants were able to evacuate the aircraft in time and are alive. There are reports of a number of injuries, mainly burns, the majority of occupants escaped without injuries.

Emergency services reported all occupants have been accounted for and are alive.

Re:No Casualties

[JavaBear]

The reports are conflicting. According to the link I gave, Emergency services refute the claim of casualties. Confusion is only natural in these cases.

Re:No Casualties

[Black Parrot]

We should have learned by now not to get to fixated on early reports.

And the media will lose interest before the story is pinned down accurately.

Re:No Casualties

[petsounds]

NBC is currently reporting two confirmed deaths, 10 people airlifted in critical condition, dozens of others injured.

Re:No Casualties

[mysidia]

The reports are conflicting. According to the link I gave, Emergency services refute the claim of casualties. Confusion is only natural in these cases.

Why is it natural? If you don't have definitive evidence of casualties, then you don't report casualties.

Re:No Casualties

[JWSmythe]

Because they'll always get someone who doesn't know all the information to say something. If they get the janitor to say "I think they're all alive", that becomes the "official" statement until they can get something better.

At quite a few places I've worked, we were carefully taught, "Don't say anything about anything to the media." It's not to hide any truth. It's simply to make sure the right information is conveyed. Not everyone remembers that training, and they'll convey the wrong message, thinking they're doing something good.

Really, if there's some wild conspiracy behind hidden, someone's going to leak it sooner or later. In this case, I'm sure no one is intentionally giving out false information. The news accounts will have stable numbers soon enough. Part of that will depend on if everyone hospitalized does ok.

Re:news for nerds

[JavaBear]

Samsung VP David Eun was on that plane, that makes it our business.

Re:Not geek news...

[sarysa]

Considering how much of the geek community resides near SFO (and flies SFO), it's perfectly justified. I can't think of anywhere with a greater concentration of slashdotters.

Re:Pilot error?

[beelsebob]

I'll be willing to bet that in fact this is another incidence of uncommanded engine rollback, as caused the heathrow crash just short of the runway. Unfortnately, I have no buttcoins to bet with you though.

Re:Not geek news...

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I can't think of anywhere with a greater concentration of slashdotters.

. . . and how do you know where we all live . . . ? Have you been dipping into our meta-data, or something . . . ?

Re:news for nerds

[LiquidPaper]

Thay have now !!

Not terrorism...

[oobayly]

No shit, how the hell have we gotten to the point where every accident report is accompanied with that phrase.

Re:Not terrorism...

[Anonymous Psychopath]

No shit, how the hell have we gotten to the point where every accident report is accompanied with that phrase.

Because, in the hours between when a thing happens and when something is actually known about what happened, the talking head in the news room has to keep talking. Even if what they say is completely inane.

Re:Not terrorism...

[jamesh]

No shit, how the hell have we gotten to the point where every accident report is accompanied with that phrase.

Stop and think about what the media will report when the authorities don't mention that they don't believe the incident is related to terrorism...

Re:Not terrorism...

[MichaelSmith]

> Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

Ah good point. I wonder if a bird strike could explain this crash?

Re:Not terrorism...

[osu-neko]

Wait a moment... they haven't denied it was aliens yet... :o

Re:Not terrorism...

[Charliemopps]

Who the fuck cares? Let the media report the wrong thing over and over... they already do that anyway. Then they wonder why their ratings are shit now.

Never trust eyewitnesses.

[Dcnjoe60]

Never trust eyewitness, because from the actual photos that are online the wings seem very much attached to the plane. The tail is missing and the top is burned out, though.

Re:Never trust eyewitnesses.

[Trepidity]

Indeed, eyewitness misidentification plays a role in a large number of erroneous convictions.

Re:Not geek news...

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Or Kuro5hin, remember that? Haha! Ah no I am getting mildly annoyed at /. Here's what you do: Take the juiciest stuff from Ars Technica, Discovery News, Geek.com, Gizmag, Livescience.com, Techcrunch, and Wired and let the brain trust hereabouts kick it around. That is all.

Re:surely...

[techno-vampire]

If you're going to do that line, you should at least get the setup right: "But doctor, surely you must be joking?"
"I'm not joking, and don't call me Shirley."

Re:Pilot error?

[ericloewe]

The vast majority of landings is not automated - they are flown manually so that pilots have some experience actually flying aircraft instead of pressing buttons and turning knobs.

Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[McGruber]

Some interesting photos and data have shown up on twitter today. First, here is (I think) the original source of that photo taken by a passenger: https://twitter.com/Eunner

Second, here is a photo, taken across a small bay, showing the plane crashing: https://twitter.com/stefanielaine/status/353591123958173696/photo/1

And, most interesting, a comparison of flightpath data (from flightaware.com) of yesterday's flight against today's flight: https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208/photo/1

While I am no expert, it looks like it hit the ground short of the runway, like the previous crash of a 777 (BA 34).

Re:Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[PPH]

https://twitter.com/sbaker/status/353611787750494208/photo/1

Looks like it came in high and over compensated to get back on to the glide path.

Re:Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[PNutts]

Sorry I don't have any more mod points. Well done and a well deserved 5!

Re:Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[Rich0]

Not sure what the resolution on that data is, but seems like he was a bit high, then dove for the runway and ended up being too low. If you're above the glide path that close to the runway you're really supposed to just go around.

The smoothness of the successful glide path is likely the result of using ILS. The runway had neither ILS nor PAPI during this approach, so the pilot was just going by eye looking at the shape of the runway. That shouldn't be a problem for somebody flying a 777, but certainly it will be less accurate. The bigger issue was probably continuing an approach that should have been aborted.

Re:Interesting Photos & Data on Twitter

[jrumney]

Or, was a bit high and descending quickly, reduced the descent rate shortly before landing, but stalled just after.

Re: Pilot error?

[Anonymous Coward]

Landings are always done by a pilot during the final moments, past the decision height.Sure, the plane wikl guide itself during most of the glidescope path, but the pilot must take control before touchdown. Unless the plane is operating in an airport with an ILS CAT III and has a certified autoland system.

Similar to Heathrow crash in 2008?

[Dzimas]

Another 777 landed short of the runway at Heathrow in 2008 after losing engine power because of ice in the fuel lines. I wonder if something similar happened here? The preliminary report that the aircraft "seemed unstable" could have been because the pilot was flying just above stall speed in a desperate attempt to maintain altitude in a power loss situation. That could also explain the tail damage; the aircraft would have been in an extremely nose-high attitude as the pilot attempted to maximize lift to avoid hitting the water.

Re:Similar to Heathrow crash in 2008?

[Dzimas]

Just checked the 6 hr forecast for SFO, and it's reporting -58 degrees F at 39,000 ft. The aircraft had been at altitude for 10 hours, so you can't automatically rule out a temperature-related anomaly simply because it's a nice day on the ground.

Re:Similar to Heathrow crash in 2008?

[p_trekkie]

Obviously something worth investigating, however, the temperatures for BA 38 were -70 C = -94 F, which is decidedly more chilly than the -58 F for the ariana flight.

Re:Similar to Heathrow crash in 2008?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weather reporter for 39,000 ft up has to be the worst job ever.
Be sure to wear your shorts, It's a balmy -60 today!

Re:Similar to Heathrow crash in 2008?

[MichaelSmith]

Though my recollection of that event was that the cold temperature had been rejected as a cause of the rollback early in the analysis of the event, but investigators went back to it as a cause because they rejected everything else.

Re:Pilot error?

[girlintraining]

I'll be willing to bet a Bitcoin that the pilot was trying to land the airplane instead of just letting the computer do it.

You obviously don't know much about aviation safety and procedures then. The most dangerous parts of flight are (as with any mechanical device) during changes of state. For a plane, the most severe emergencies happen during take off, and landing. "auto pilot" is typically only used once the plane reaches target altitude, and its primary function is to make minute and rapid corrections to the flight profile to enhance stability (passenger comfort) and reduce drag (improve fuel efficiency). It is not used during take off or landing, and although either could be handled by computer, I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system. All of them are on the drawing board.

Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer. Although, for some aircraft, there is no flight engineer position as that position is increasingly being replaced by sophisticated electronics. The reason for two pilots is in case one of them becomes incapacitated. This is actually an infrequent occurrance -- it's all too easy to become disoriented, especially during a night flight with turbulence. Considerable training is given to identifying these situations and providing smooth hand-off of control. Although injurous to one's pride, a captain should never feel obligated to continue flight operations if he feels disoriented or uncomfortable -- and airlines should never punish a pilot for indicating such incapacitation at any point during the flight to the crew. Sorry, getting preachy... I'll shut up now. ;)

Cabin Baggage?

[CohibaVancouver]

If I ever have to do an emergency evacuation and the guy in front of me has his cabin baggage with him (like we see in some of those pictures) I'm gonna throw it into the fire.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[mpoulton]

You never know what's in that baggage. Some of the most valuable cargo is transported as carry-on, personally supervised baggage. Some things are worth saving, either due to extreme economic value or personal or cultural significance.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[levork]

My wife is a diabetic and travels with her insulin supplies in her cabin baggage. You throw that into the fire and I'm punching you in the face.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[MichaelSmith]

No baggage is more important than me, sorry.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[MichaelSmith]

She could keep it in a little bag though. No need to lug a suitcase around. And after many crashes she won't have any opportunity to grab her bags so she is going to be reliant on medical staff on the ground anyway. Since she can always get her insulin from a hospital in SF, is her bag really more important than the child burning to death behind her?

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[osu-neko]

If I ever have to do an emergency evacuation and the guy in front of me has his cabin baggage with him (like we see in some of those pictures) I'm gonna throw it into the fire.

I do hope the widow/children/survivors of the guy whose life-saving medicine you threw in the fire manage to get a substantial reward from the court. I'd hope for at least a criminal manslaughter charge, too, but that might be more difficult to get. With any luck, you'll die before this situation comes up and no one will have to be harmed by how obviously huge an asshole you are...

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[osu-neko]

She could keep it in a little bag though. No need to lug a suitcase around. And after many crashes she won't have any opportunity to grab her bags so she is going to be reliant on medical staff on the ground anyway. Since she can always get her insulin from a hospital in SF, is her bag really more important than the child burning to death behind her?

In the absence of burning children, the idiot who throws her bag into the fire without knowing whether it contains commonly found, easy to obtain insulin or something rare and possibly irreplaceable on short notice ought to be thrown into the fire before he actually kills someone with his rage instead of causing a minor inconvenience for this guy's wife. This guy's wife is probably being slightly unwise in an emergency. The guy who throws her bag in the fire is a dangerous psychopath, or at least has both extremely serious anger-management issues and poor judgement -- not a good combination.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[CohibaVancouver]

My wife is a diabetic and travels with her insulin supplies in her cabin baggage. You throw that into the fire and I'm punching you in the face.

If we've crashed in the Amazon I might cut you some slack. But San Francisco? I'm pretty sure they've got insulin. Now leave your bag behind and get the f*ck off the plane.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[dsmurf]

That it's worth saving to someone doesn't mean that their slowing down the emergency disembarkment is worth the lives of the people killed by that selfish act. Which is why on every flight anywhere, everyone is explicitly instructed not to take any items with them at evacuation. I'm with GP.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[rtfa-troll]

There is a very specific command in the evacuation instructions to leave your hand baggage behind. There are extremely good reasons for this; if, for example a strap catches on a seat and your bag ends up blocking the exit it may be almost impossible to remove due to the pressure of people. IMHO that means it is never acceptable to carry off a bag since you are putting other people's lives at risk.

If your item has sufficient value that it would be worth endangering the lives of tens of people then it should be on its own separate guarded flight, possibly in a special crash survivable container. If you choose to take it on the flight then you are accepting the limited risk of it being destroyed in the event of an aircraft accident.

Re:Cabin Baggage?

[drinkypoo]

If I ever have to do an emergency evacuation and the guy in front of me has his cabin baggage with him (like we see in some of those pictures) I'm gonna throw it into the fire.

If I'm with you, and his baggage isn't holding anything up, you're going in on top of it.

Re:Not geek news...

[Will.Woodhull]

It is justified. If only because the underlying tech that brought so many images of the crash so fast from smart phones and whatnot give evidence of the degree that new tech is influencing news.

Also of techie interest is that so many of the passengers survived such a destructive crash. Planes today are a lot more crashworthy than the last generation.

I grant that the babes among us who have never learned to use a sliderule and probably most of them have never even touched one might not recognize the techie aspects of this. But the old geezers among us-- you know, the ancient ones who made the Internet and the digital cameras and cell phones and things like that-- appreciate this story and others like it. It helps us see just what kind of benefits our work has brought to society.

Now get off my damn lawn.

Re:news for nerds

[S.O.B.]

As soon as something leaks from one of them I'm sure.

FTFY

Re:Not geek news...

[hedwards]

The real news here is that this happened today and we're reading about it today. I would have expected to have to wait at least a fortnight for the initial report to show up here. Followed by a week of dupes.

Re:news for nerds

[ShanghaiBill]

Samsung VP David Eun was on that plane, that makes it our business.

He posted a picture of the crash: https://path.com/p/1lwrZb. His post says "most everyone" is fine, but that is selection bias. For crashes like this, the injured/dead are usually in one section, and those are NOT the people you see walking away.

Re:news for nerds

[Smivs]

How long till kardashians invade?

The Cardassians? I didn't know they had expanded out of the Alpha Quadrant!

Re:Fuel Icing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a known problem with Pratt & Whitney FADECs actually.
The engine controller inexplicably refused to increase thrust despite the ice blockage having passed.

Why Rolls Royce was forced to include a FADEC made by their main rivals is a mystery.

Re:Pilot error?

[whoever57]

The vast majority of landings is not automated - they are flown manually so that pilots have some experience actually flying aircraft instead of pressing buttons and turning knobs.

The pilots have to manually land most long-haul flights or they won't do enough landings to remain certified. I think a lot more short-haul flights are automated.

The Proof

[Skiron]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3894355&cid=44078875

Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[Sycraft-fu]

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.

Re:Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[Sir Holo]

Good point about the etymology of the word, but further explanation is needed.

That is, many words have their roots in something seemingly unrelated. Also, word usage in different realms differs, as the parent post implies. An original meaning of a word in a different context, however, has no bearing upon its meaning in a new context. Neither meaning is uniquely "correct." Language evolves.

Specifically, the way that newspapers use the term "casualty" is not explicitly bound to the manner in which the military uses the term "casualty."

Re:Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[Trepidity]

Newspapers seem to seem the term in a somewhat mixed way. My guess is that they are quite aware of both the narrower and wider meanings, and sort of bounce between them as convenient.

Re:Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[osu-neko]

Specifically, the way that newspapers use the term "casualty" is not explicitly bound to the manner in which the military uses the term "casualty."

Nor bound to any other specific definition. Hence, confusion...

Re:Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[Alomex]

In military speak, which is where it comes from, it means a soldier hurt to the point they can't go back and fight

Actually in military speak it used to mean someone killed. Then at some point the US military switched to current usage.

I ran into this while researching war casualties going back nearly two hundred years. One has to be very careful when comparing casualty figures across wars, because very old and/or European records use casualty to mean deaths, while more modern records (particularly American ones) use it to mean death and wounded.

Re:Casualties doesn't mean fatalities

[Hognoxious]

Until about 100 years ago the difference was just timing. Wounded, (with a few exceptions) meant not dead yet, but will soon be wishing he was..

Re:news for nerds

[gandhi_2]

I heard the NSA shot it down.

Re:Pilot error?

[amorsen]

Most passenger jets can (category 3) auto-land these days. It is frequently used.

Re:Pilot error?

[msauve]

Except the uncommanded engine rollback problem was traced to an issue with Rolls-Royce Trent 895 engines.

This plane had Pratt & Whitney PW4090 engines.

Re:Pilot error?

[tibit]

It's a different engine - this one has P&W as far as I know, not RR.

Re:Pilot error?

[tibit]

I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system.

Well, that's your problem, then, since autoland has been around for a while and I have been through a zero visibility autoland landing all the way down to the runway. On exiting the plane, I've asked the first officer if they did it manually or using autoland, she said autoland. It was a by-the-book landing, by the way, as far as I could tell. Very smooth.I could tell it was a bit of a crab landing since the nose swayed right as soon as the main gear touched down. So, it was autoland with side wind, too.

Re:news for nerds

[wonkey_monkey]

No, that's the other grey skinned lizard-necked race of inhuman freaks.

Re:surely...

[wonkey_monkey]

What does it matter if the guy's a butt doctor or not?

Why always mention "terrorism?"

[Sir Holo]

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?

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[osu-neko]

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...

The words following the comma in the above sentence demonstrate that the words before the comma are false.

Or, perhaps, maybe the problem is with me? Should I learn to be more afraid?

Oh, no, there's no problem with you. But that, in an of itself, would make you far from ordinary... and is probably untrue. What I should have more accurately said was, "the problem [referring specifically to this one] isn't with you". Doubtless you're as screwed up as the rest of us, just in ways that aren't relevant to the topic at hand.

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[JWSmythe]

I suspect when they called DHS, the response was probably "are you fucking kidding me?"

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[kamapuaa]

The last commercial airline crash in the US this large was caused by terrorists, so it seems reasonable to at least discuss it. Why be willfully ignorant?

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[Zarhan]

No it wasn't, 9/11 held that title for about two months:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587

265 dead (all onboard + 5 on ground), so if anything, this one was even larger.

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[juancnuno]

Thank you for writing this. I don't know what made me sadder, the fact that two people died, or the mention of terrorism.

Re:Why always mention "terrorism?"

[RivenAleem]

Because in the fallout of the Snowden leaks, the US people need constant reminders that they are under threat from terrorism at any time and that what the NSA does is acceptable as a result.

Re:Pilot error?

[ericloewe]

Flight engineer? Good luck finding one. Even FedEx and UPS got rid of theirs on their DC-10s by converting them to MD-10s.

Also, any recent aircraft can do auto-landings, that option is just very rarely used.

Re:Not geek news...

[budgenator]

Considering how much of the geek community resides near SFO (and flies SFO), it's perfectly justified. I can't think of anywhere with a greater concentration of slashdotters.

Boston, Austin, Ann Arbor, Seattle all would surprise you.

Re:adjuster's estimate

[PPH]

That'll buff out.

Re:Not geek news...

[Mitreya]

I would have expected to have to wait at least a fortnight for the initial report to show up here. Followed by a week of dupes.

It was an accident. The editors responsible were already sacked

We will still see the traditional dupes in days to come.

Re:Pilot error?

[TubeSteak]

It is not used during take off or landing, and although either could be handled by computer, I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system. All of them are on the drawing board.

Autoland systems were developed in the 40s and perfected in the 60s by the Brits.
Developed for military purposes and then perfected for commercial purposes because England had endless problems with zero visibility due to their fog + pollution.

Autoland systems are so accurate that a fudge factor was added in, since multiple aircraft will all land on the exact same patch of runway and destroy the surface.
I can't say why you're "not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#Special_CAT_II_and_CAT_III_operations

Re:surely...

[techno-vampire]

-1 Whoosh!

The point is that phrasing it this way, as was done in the movie, makes it sound as though they're calling the character Doctor Shirley, making the reply fit better than if they'd said, "But surely, doctor..."

Re:777...

[Anonymous Coward]

Screw you, the triple-6 is a hell of an aircraft.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[HairyNevus]

"Crash-landed" would have been most specific, I suppose.

Re:Irish pilot

[Registered Coward v2]

I just heard this joke the other day. An Irish/Polish/{insert chosen nationality of stupid as decided by your own culture} lands the plane, and slams on the brakes sending all the passengers into the seats in front. He turns to his copilot and says, "Damn, that's the shortest runway I ever landed on." Then he looks left and right out of the window and says,

"Sure is wide, though."

Sounds like the airport at Texas A&M. Pilot must have been an Aggie...

Re:news for nerds

[HairyNevus]

"Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send us the scoop!"

CNN reports at least 450 dead

[Anonymous Coward]

and about 700 more shuttled to hospitals around the state. They also found nine other uncrashed planes in the vicinity.

Re:Not geek news...

[Randle_Revar]

I think there are more suitable sources than Wired or Discovery News. Geek.com, Gizmag and Techcrunch I don't have enough info.

Re:Not geek news...

[PNutts]

Considering how much of the geek community resides near SFO (and flies SFO), it's perfectly justified. I can't think of anywhere with a greater concentration of slashdotters.

Boston, Austin, Ann Arbor, Seattle all would surprise you.

Seattle doesn't have many basements but I'll give you Ann Arbor.

Re:news for nerds

[PPH]

He posted a picture of the crash:

We warned you: Turn off the damned phone!

Re:Pilot error?

[MichaelSmith]

There was a lot of hand waving in that analysis. For a start it contradicted statements from experts right after the crash. Based on established procedures at the time of the crash the fuel never got cold enough for freezing to be an issue.

Re:Irish pilot

[Deadstick]

I just heard this joke the other day.

Well, that puts you about forty years behind me...

Re:"Crashes in"?

[osu-neko]

For anyone confused by this comment, the original title of this article (before an editor stepped in and fixed it) read "Boeing 777 Crashes In San Francisco". The current title (at the time I'm posting this comment), "Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport", is a much better description of the event without taking the mind in some horrific directions before giving the important details.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[tlambert]

edit function please

What a brilliant idea! Then we could moderate you up to 5, and you could switch out the content for a goatse link instead!

Re:news for nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

Why wouldn't Kardashians be news here? They're UFP members after all.

Re:Fuel Icing

[MichaelSmith]

But this one was in summer on a southerly trajectory. Higher temperatures. Investigators may have to look deeper at the hardware and software which controls the engines.

Re:news for nerds

[osu-neko]

So, news for nerds is strictly about computers, mathematics and shit ?

Aerospace engineers and aviation geeks are apparently resented by computer geeks because they were never as uncool... :p

Re:Not geek news...

[hawguy]

This doesn't really sound like geek news.

One rumor I heard was that ILS (or some portion of it) wasn't functioning on the runway the plane was landing on (28L) so the pilot was making a manual approach without the automated glidepath alerts he'd normally have. If this is true, then this gives the story a technology/geek tie-in, and touches on issues like whether or not humans (pilots in particular) have become too reliant on machines and when the machines fail, humans don't have enough experience without them to be an adequate back up.

Though I haven't seen the ILS issue reported in any official reports, so maybe it's not true.

Re:Pilot error?

[AJWM]

Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer.

The 1960s called, wanting their commercial flight ops back. Planes haven't had flight engineers in decades (unless the plane itself is that old). Likewise commercial jets have had autoland for decades. It's standard procedure for airports which often have low visibility (like Heathrow). Heck, the autoland is so good that -- again, decades ago -- they introduced a bit of dither into the system to avoid excessive runway wear from heavies (747 etc) always landing on the exact same spot.

Re:news for nerds

[nospam007]

"So, news for nerds is strictly about computers, mathematics and shit ? Nerds/Geeks are limited to a point that nothing else interests them ?"

We read that in the 25 normal news sites that we're following.

What we want here, is not the 253th car with a 'stuck gas on the freeway', nor every hard landing by a plane, nor the 7834th new battery type, that's coming Real Soon Now. We also know, that tens of thousands of iPads are stolen by the TSA, no need to report another one. We don't like them either, so don't bother with yet another anecdote how bad/dumb/corrupt they are. We are also aware that you can create bitcoins with your PI-Toaster or washing machine as well.
Also refrain from giving us solar panel power boosts articles or 3d-printed dildos and beerbottle openers or other such stuff.
We 2D print new stuff that's never been printed every single day for decades, an additional dimension doesn't freak us out. We'll survive if somebody 3d prints a halfmoon shaped banana container and we'll never get to know.
Self-driving cars, only if you can buy them at the dealer.
"Facebook sucks" and "Paypal are a bunch of crooks" are not newsworthy items either, now that we have your attention.

Something 'new' would be nice now and then and if it's for nerds, that would be great.

Naturally if a plane crashes because the pilot couldn't start a checklist on his iPad or somebody with a Gorilla Antenna on his phone crashes it, we want to know.:-)

Re:Pilot error?

[AJWM]

I am a pilot.

You're wrong.

Re:Not geek news...

[baegucb]

from http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/518568-asiana-flight-crash-san-francisco-4.html#post7925947
"I went into SFO r28L last week, no glide slope, and no papis visual approach only and the DME doesn't read 0dme at the threshols!

Very easy to undershoot or overshoot without vertical guidance! Espesecially as this crew probably hadn't done a visual approach for a long time! "

Also: aeronav.faa.gov/content/aeronav/acfstatus/Presentations/13-01_AAUP_Approach_Status.pdf

Re:"Crashes in"?

[Alomex]

Right because we couldn't possibly have a system in which if you edit your post your post loses all it's earned mod points. I'm glad you found such an insurmountable difficulty. I don't know what we would do without your deft insights. /sarcasm

If you think about it giving away your earned mod points for editing would be almost always a moot point, since typically one notices errors within minutes of postings, well before any mod points are earned. Secondly, if the error/addendum is legit and substantial enough to warrant the change being made, one would recover the mod points in no time whatsoever.

At this time there is no valid excuse for lack of edit function.

Re:Pilot error?

[Anaerin]

The pilot HAD to manual land, the ILS system and PAPI glidepath height assistance for runway 28L (and 28R) at SFO is down, as reported in the current NOTAMs(Check for SFO)

!SFO 06/005 (KSFO A1056/13) SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359
!SFO 07/046 (KSFO A1326/13) SFO RWY 28L PAPI OTS WEF 1307062219

That means he was relying on nav beacons and glidepath estimates to come in. Given that SFO's beacons are approx 1.2 miles apart, if he picked the wrong beacon to guild his descent he would have been too high, dropped steeper than usual to get down once he noticed the discrepancy, and didn't have the necessary power to flare and ascend at the end of the runway, so he tailstruck. That makes it pilot error, but confounded and mitigated by most (if not all) the regular guidance and assistance systems they rely on being out of commission.

We're all Bozos on this bus

[seguecharlie]

Between taking the time to take your carry-on off that plane and the timely Google ad (pic.twitter.com/WhbmXZc1Hh), let me off this bus. We're all Bozos.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[drawfour]

Any reason an edit function couldn't reset the moderations and give the mod points back to the original modders, optionally with a notification to the original modders that the content changed so they could moderate it again?

Re:Pilot error?

[MichaelSmith]

dither

Yeah over Indonesia some years ago I noticed a different aircraft directly under us, going the other way. Obviously flying on autopilot, at the correct location down to the metre. It looks dangerous working that way so I asked a relative of mine who is a commercial pilot. He says he always offsets his trajectory by a mile or so away from the one given by ATC. Still well within the corridor he has to fly within, but far enough away from the center that there won't be a collision if somebody else gets their altitude wrong.

Re:my comment

[MichaelSmith]

A landing in the water might have been preferable. The airframe might have remained more intact and there would be less mechanical damage, resulting in a smaller chance of a fire.

The Landed Short

[theshowmecanuck]

It is very apparent from pictures of the end of the runway where they landed, that they actually landed short. There is a rock retaining wall coming out of the ocean and you can see significant damage and scrape marks to the retaining wall continuing onto the runway and the beginning of the wreckage trails showing that the landing gear at least, touched down short of the runway. From the way it looked it is easy to see how the tail could have smacked into the runway either at that time or just after and then breaking free.

Re:Pilot error?

[xaxa]

Autoland systems were developed in the 40s and perfected in the 60s by the Brits.

Yeah, and it wasn't until the 90s that passenger jets started rolling off the lines with them;

That's not what the Wiki page says. It says British Airways had it on their Trident aircraft in the 1970s, and it implies it was regularly used in foggy NW Europe -- 12 equipped runways just in Britain back then!

"In 2006 most airlines operating into Heathrow already had autoland-equipped aircraft" (and that's airport's a mix of everything, full-service long and short, and budget long and short-haul).

Europe / not America might not be relevant for yesterday's crash, but it certainly is if you're talking in general.

Ryanair (budget, short-haul) pilots write on forums that they have autoland on their planes, and use it when necessary or to keep the plane certified for it (~monthly).

Re:news for nerds

[quenda]

I heard the NSA shot it down.

Another false lead on Snowden then?

Re:Pilot error?

[dgatwood]

Except that right now, there's little to no ILS at SFO, as a result of government-mandated construction work to shift the landing zone inland (ironically, to prevent this exact situation), requiring the antennas to be relocated.

Re:news for nerds

[osu-neko]

... For crashes like this, the injured/dead are usually in one section, and those are NOT the people you see walking away.

Or if you do see them walking away, you have bigger problems to deal with than an airplane crash...

Re:Pilot error?

[baegucb]

ILS was out due to construction. And Korean airlines are notorious for poor training at hand flying landings without aids.

Impossible Physics?

[runningduck]

People being interviewed who were on the plane keep says that passengers hit their heads on the ceiling during the crash. Being this crash was during the landing how was this possible. People should be have been fastened in their seat. Did the seat belts fail? Did the fuselage flex that far? Did the overhead bins flex down? The news media has been repeating this "fact." What are people's thoughts on this mystery?

Re:Impossible Physics?

[JWSmythe]

Judging by people I've seen and heard unbuckling their belts when the plane gets near the airport, I'd be willing to bet they were getting ready to deplane. All I can ever think is, "Really? Wait til you get to the gate. What are you going to do, grab your carry-on and sprint down to the gate?"

The same goes for everyone else trying to get off the plane before the freakin' door is even open. I don't even get ready to move until 3 rows ahead of me start moving. It's not hard. Carry-on is under the seat. Unbuckle, stand, grab my bag, and walk. If I'm being particularly lazy, I wait for everyone else to get off the damned plane, since we'll all be waiting at baggage claim together anyways.

At baggage claim, I have my secrets to get out quick too.. When I see my bag, trip the slower ones, shove grandma away from the belt, grab my bag, and walk away. None of you people can decide on what your bags are anyways. If you could, you wouldn't be checking the tags on absolutely every bag that passes. Really, do you need to check tags on every different colored bag? Don't you even remember what you checked? It's not like you checked it last year. Maybe mine is too distinctive with "NOT A BOMB" written on all sides, and always ends up wrapped in TSA inspection tape.

Re:Pilot error?

[PPH]

Too early to tell. They had good visibility, but there's talk on a pilot's board that this runway had inoperative ILS glideslope and PAPI equipment. Pilots too dependent on these aids could have come in too low or high and over compensated.

For those who understand NOTAMS:

Q) KZOA/QLPAS/IV/BO/A/000/999/3737N12223W005
B) FROM: 13/07/06 22:19C) TO: 13/07/08 22:19 EST
E) RWY 28L PAPI U/S

Q) KZOA/QIGAS/I/NBO/A/000/999/3737N12223W005
B) FROM: 13/06/01 14:00C) TO: 13/08/22 23:59
E) ILS RWY 28L GP U/S

Similar accident same plane in 2009

[GoodnaGuy]

Interestingly there was a similar accident in 2009. In that case a BA flight landed short of the runway at Heathrow. They decided in that case that it was due to a blocked fuel filter which had led to a sudden loss of power on the final approach. They fixed the problem for the future by redesigning the filter. Possibilities that come to find are 1. They haven't applied the repair to this plane 2. The crash investigators were mistaken about the cause of the accident and it was actually due to something else.

Re:Not geek news...

[dgatwood]

One rumor I heard was that ILS (or some portion of it) wasn't functioning on the runway the plane was landing on (28L) so the pilot was making a manual approach without the automated glidepath alerts he'd normally have.

Not a rumor. Go read the NOTAM (notice to airmen) list. It has been down for a month, and is expected to be down until August 22.

Re:news for nerds

[couchslug]

"How long till kardashians invade?"

They are already here, on staff.

Re:If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going

[ZorinLynx]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549

Airbus A320.

Both companies are AWESOME. I'm partial to Boeing because it's a US company and that's where I live, but dissing Airbus isn't called for either. :)

Re:Pilot error?

[bill_mcgonigle]

well, if that isn't the law of unintended consequences. There's no antenna redundancy in that system?

Re:Not geek news...

[JWSmythe]

    There are a few. They don't generally advertise it, since they don't need 1/2 million desperate nerds constantly bothering them.

Re:news for nerds

[AK Marc]

You mean Republicans?

Re:Not geek news...

[aaarrrgggh]

It is true; the NOTAMs list the systems as inoperative; I am not sure exactly which components were off, or if everything was, but the landing was visual.

Re:Not geek news...

[Colonel Korn]

One rumor I heard was that ILS (or some portion of it) wasn't functioning on the runway the plane was landing on (28L) so the pilot was making a manual approach without the automated glidepath alerts he'd normally have. If this is true, then this gives the story a technology/geek tie-in, and touches on issues like whether or not humans (pilots in particular) have become too reliant on machines and when the machines fail, humans don't have enough experience without them to be an adequate back up.

I don't think we need extra excuses to talk about this here. The plane itself is more impressive technology than the entire field of computer programming.

Re:Pilot error?

[Myopic]

Is he wrong about the 'every landing is an auto landing' or the 'don't just push a button' or both?

Re:Not geek news...

[AK Marc]

I seem to see a disproportionate number of aircraft-related items here. But then, geeks also overlap well with people interested in flight.

Re:Pilot error?

[thegarbz]

Except that right now, there's little to no ILS at SFO, as a result of government-mandated construction work to shift the landing zone inland (ironically, to prevent this exact situation), requiring the antennas to be relocated.

{citation required}

Current airport data book lists SFO as having a Cat IIIb ILS system. If it were actually out of commission it would need to be published, and I can't find any evidence of that.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[sarysa]

For anyone confused by this comment, the original title of this article (before an editor stepped in and fixed it) read "Boeing 777 Crashes In San Francisco". The current title (at the time I'm posting this comment), "Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport", is a much better description of the event without taking the mind in some horrific directions before giving the important details.

This. My original post looks pretty ridiculous now, but I'm glad someone changed it. (I don't see that often)

Re:Pilot error?

[dgatwood]

Citation: takeoffaviationweather.com. The relevant bits:

KSFO

28 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28L Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
28 NAVAID Localizer Type Directional Aid Runway 28R Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
28 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
23 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Inner Marker out of service until Aug 22 23:59
20 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Category 2/3 Not Authorized started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month

Emphasis mine.

Re:Not geek news...

[PNutts]

It is true; the NOTAMs list the systems as inoperative; I am not sure exactly which components were off, or if everything was, but the landing was visual.

Yikes. I've listened to the ATC recording but the clip started around the time of the crash. I would like to hear the clearance and instructions given to Asiana 214.

Re:Pilot error?

[jbwolfe]

Mr Gatwood, I commend you for your insight. I suspect that the lack of glideslope information will become an important factor during the accident investigation. BTW, how did you know this. Navaid outages would normally be disseminated via NOTAMs and are not generally known by non-flying public. I received this information only within the last two weeks from my company and union about the impending construction.

BTW, in addition to inop GS, they also did not have any visual approach path indicators as the PAPI is out of service: ILS RWY 28R LOCALIZER/DME U/S RWY 28L ILS LLZ/DME U/S RWY 10L/28R CLSD RWY 10R/28L CLSD RWY 28L PAPI U/S

Re: "Crashes in"?

[ttucker]

It is so you can not drive by troll someone, and then cowardly delete you turd comments.

Re: "Crashes in"?

[Alomex]

Yet more BS. Only signed comments can be edited, hence it would be easy to punish people who abuse the editing feature (for example, disallow any change whose edit distance to the original post is too high).

To further prove my point the main web forum software in use currently, namely, Disquss, allows you to edit your posts and it works just fine.

Re:Pilot error?

[DieByWire]

You're not a pilot, you're a passenger, and an arrogant one at that. The "auto landing" they were referring to was probably the ILS -- it's a beacon that is positioned at the start of the runway and allows for instrument landings. Every landing is an "auto" landing on a passenger craft because they're flying instrument flight rules.

They do not just push a button in the cockpit and then nip off for a bit of tea while the plane magically lands.

girlintraining, let's give you a little more training, since you obviously need it.

The ILS ( Instrument Landing System ) provides vertical and lateral guidance to the touch down zone of the runway. 'Beacon' is usually used to refer to an NDB (Non-Directional Beacon).

The pilot may follow ILS guidance manually, or he may 'couple' the autopilot to the ILS and have the autopilot fly the approach. Typically they disconnect the autopilot at low altitude and land manually.

Most airliners built since the 80's have 'autoland' capability. That means that in addition to flying the approach, the autopilots have the ability to complete the flare, landing and rollout without intervention of the pilots. When the visibility goes below certain minimums autoland is the only way you can legally or practically land the aircraft. Pilots (and the aircraft itself) monitor autolands very closely for signs of failure.

They do not just push a button in the cockpit and then nip off for a bit of tea while the plane magically lands.

Correct, there are multiple buttons, for multiple redundant autopilots. And you're correct, no tea. We're already pretty wired at this point.

For the others confusing 'fly-by-wire' with autoland, fly-by-wire refers to pilots control inputs feeding a computer which in turn commands the flight controls to move. Airbus A320 and later and Boeing 777 and later use fly-by-wire.

In earlier aircraft, there is no computer intermediary between the pilots controls and the control surfaces. Essentially, it's just cables and hydraulics between the two.

Autolands are routinely accomplished by both fly-by-wire and conventionally controlled airliners.

Re:news for nerds

[R3d M3rcury]

Damn. Apple is really getting desperate.

What? Too soon?

Re: "Crashes in"?

[ttucker]

No, people do exactly that with disquss. They spew toxic shit, then edit it later to look like the good guy. It is disingenuous. Write what you actually mean the first time, then stfu. Slashdot is worth a million shitty disquss threads.

80 missing in Canada

[Frans Faase]

In the other news: 80 people missing in Canada after train exploded. Why is it that plain crashes always get so much attention, while it has been for a long time one of the safests means of transportation?

Re:80 missing in Canada

[xaxa]

Trains should also be very safe, which may well make the Canadian accident the more interesting story.

I read some of the RAIB (British railway accident investigation) reports, as they're published. They're usually things done during maintenance (workers putting a trolley on the wrong track that's still in use; letting a piece of rail-wheeled equipment runaway) and rarely about normal freight or passenger trains -- the routine stuff is very safe.

http://raib.gov.uk/publications/current_investigations_register.cfm

Re:If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going

[KZigurs]

Always been a fan of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tE_5eiYn0D0 recording. Coolness of pilots just about to ditch it down is rather impressive.

"We're unable. We may end up in the Hudson."

Re:Pilot error?

[jrumney]

It is not used during take off or landing, and although either could be handled by computer, I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system. All of them are on the drawing board.

A lot of A320 flights land on autopilot. The pilots have to do a certain number of manual landings to maintain their license, which makes it not really an option for trans-pacific flights, but when the pilot is flying backwards and forwards between two close airports 4 times a day, and the airports are major enough to have the necessary equipment for completely auto landings, quite a few are landed on autopilot. The telltale signs are when the plane makes quite a steep descent and if you have a window seat you brace yourself for a big bump that never comes, as the computer puts on the power at just the right time so you hardly feel the wheels touch the ground.

Re:Pilot error?

[jrumney]

and it is very expensive, so a lot of airlines, especially budget airlines, don't have category 3 landing systems...

In my experience with budget airlines Easyjet (in Europe) and AirAsia (in South East Asia), they more likely to use autoland systems than the bigger airlines, since they fly mostly short-haul services with quick turnarounds, and pilots are making more trips. The aircraft they fly, while basically appointed inside the cabin with no-frills service you have to pay extra for, are more modern than a lot of major full-service airlines, as the budget airlines are a lot more sensitive to fuel economy and don't have any underutilization to cater for the unscheduled maintenance that would come with an older fleet. Maybe US budget airlines are doing things differently in this respect.

Re:Pilot error?

[jrumney]

Europe / not America might not be relevant for yesterday's crash, but it certainly is if you're talking in general.

We're talking an intercontinental flight here. I don't think Asiana keeps two separate fleets, one for flights to America and one for Europe.

Re:Pilot error?

[Alioth]

Autoland has been available since the Hawker Siddeley Trident III (the first aircraft to have it) in the early 1970s.

Re:Pilot error?

[AK Marc]

And I'm going with improper flap position, though no guess as to whether it's pilot or mechanical in nature.

I always end up in a window just behind the wing. I wish when stuff like that happened, someone like me was in my usual spot. I'd be telling the investigators and media what the flap position was and engine speed. The pilots generally stay quiet until the black box comes out, for liability reasons. And most of the people on the flight wouldn't pay attention or know what to pay attention to.

Re: "Crashes in"?

[tlambert]

Write what you actually mean the first time, then stfu.

Right, ask people to write perfect the very first time. It is perfectly realistic. What could be wrong with that? /sarcasm

I bet you are the type of idiot who designs software without dead-man switches and other such fail safe mechanisms.

I kind of do. But I am the type of person who includes consequences in the designs.

Just my 2 cents

[kennycoder]

More professional points of view: http://avherald.com/h?article=464ef64f&opt=0

Re:Pilot error?

[John.Banister]

If it's that accurate, I wonder if it could somehow be used for power generation. That'd be a lot of kinetic energy to collect.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[jones_supa]

Any reason an edit function couldn't reset the moderations and give the mod points back to the original modders, optionally with a notification to the original modders that the content changed so they could moderate it again?

Heck, have also full edit history if you want to get it right.

But I'm not sure if the edit function would just add unnecessary complexity. Just take a breath and think your message thoroughly before sending it.

Re:Pilot error?

[thegarbz]

Cheers.

Re:Pilot error?

[ericloewe]

I did see that. "increasingly replaced by sophisticated electronics" is not the same as "With nearly no exceptions, no commercial airliner has a flight engineer".

Re:Pilot error?

[hort_wort]

It's a tough crowd, a crowd she pleases more often than not. I can't make a reasonable comment at all on this. I just got a new joystick in preparation of Star Citizen coming out. Every ounce of my being screams at me to play a flight sim every time someone mentions fly-by-wire, autopilot, stick shake, autoland, or anything else plane-y. Should I have spent the extra money to get force feedback? Argh. This will possibly be one of the biggest regrets of my life.

Re:Pilot error?

[bill_mcgonigle]

if he picked the wrong beacon to guild his descent he would have been too high, dropped steeper than usual to get down once he noticed the discrepancy, and didn't have the necessary power to flare and ascend at the end of the runway, so he tailstruck.

Another comment links to a data visualization of the approach and that's just what it looks like.

That makes it pilot error, but confounded and mitigated by most (if not all) the regular guidance and assistance systems they rely on being out of commission.

Regulators are saying months to years to figure out what happened. I'm plunking down a dollar on your analysis here and hope to link back to it when the final report comes out.

Re:Pilot error?

[dgatwood]

BTW, how did you know this. Navaid outages would normally be disseminated via NOTAMs and are not generally known by non-flying public.

The second I heard about this, I went over to PPRuNe. Several of the pilots there mentioned it in the discussion thread about the accident.

Possible pilot error?

[MtViewGuy]

It appears that the plane had a VERY hard landing for one reason: the flight crew did not follow correct procedures on the final descent.

From reports of survivors on the plane sitting in the window seats, it appears the plane was descending towards the runway threshold at an unusually steep angle, but when the flight crew realized this and tried to apply engine power to level the plane off, it was too late and the plane hit the end of the runway at a fairly high angle of attack (AOA). In my humble opinion, this tells me the flight crew attempted a completely visual flight rule landing and not following landing procedures correctly. One wonders if this 777-200ER had a high-accuracy three-axis GPS system, which if programmed properly would have allowed a completely automatic landing based on "listening" to at minimum six GPS satellites to get very high position accuracy for latitude, longitude and altitude.

With the "black boxes" now recovered from the plane, we should soon get an idea if my supposition is right.

PAPI was NOT out of service.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong, they had the PAPI. It wasn't marked as out of service until the crash.

Re: Not geek news...

[catchblue22]

Our plane landed at SFO last year and according to the pilot the ILS was not functioning. Difficult approach too with 500 foot ceiling...as soon as the pilot saw the runway we made a substantial course correction. I'm sure the pilot had a VFR beacon to guide the approach direction approximately but there was likely no electronic glide slope. I would like to hear whether or not the ILS was functioning during the crash. I also find the flightaware data in another post showing the glide slope for this plane interesting. Apparently the plane was coming in at a fairly steep angle. In my mind this nudges it towards a bad approach by the pilot. We'll see.

Re:Pilot error?

[MtViewGuy]

What bothers me even more is whether the plane could do automatic landings based on data from a three-axis (latitude, longitude and altitude) commercial-airplane quality GPS receiver, which should be able to position a plane within 20 feet accuracy anywhere on Earth. If the flight crew of Asiana Flight 214 had access to this technology and programmed it into the computers on board the plane, the 777 could have brought the plane down on the right glide path and on the right landing spot within 20 feet of the centerline of the runway.

Re:"Crashes in"?

[Hognoxious]

Landing: everyone walks away afterwards.
Crash: nobody walks away afterwards.
Crash-landing: anything in between.

Re:Fuel Icing

[Optali]

Uuuuh, bad mojo! I flew back to Holland in one of these a few months ago. Nice plane BTW, and the food and crew were excellent too, very different from our Dutch personal on the old and shabby KLM 747 that flew us to Seoul. Had I know about this ice bug I would have taken the bus!!

Re:"Crashes in"?

[unregistered.coward]

That was relevant

Re: "Crashes in"?

[Meski]

Or you could display revisions.

The ILS glide slope was NOT operating

[catchblue22]

According to this Guardian article, the Instrument Landing System glide slope system was not operating at the time of the crash.

Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor in the crash. Hersman confirmed that a part of the airport's instrument-landing system was offline on Saturday but cautioned against drawing conclusions from that, noting that the so-called glide slope system was not essential to safe operations in good weather. She said it was a clear day with good visibility.

I am fairly sure this means that the automated landing systems on airplanes will not work. Thus, the landing by the pilots would have been a fully manual approach. According to the article, the airplane came in too slow:

A stall warning sounded four seconds before impact, and the crew tried to abort the landing and initiate what's known as a "go around" manoeuvre just 1.5 seconds before crashing, Hersman said.

"Air speed was significantly below the target airspeed," she said.

From where I am sitting, this looks like full-on pilot error.

I am not a pilot but I used to be able to land the big iron planes fairly reliably on flight simulators. The simple principle is that you control your descent rate with engines and your airspeed with your angle of attack. You are at your slowest before touchdown when you nose up, and your angle of attack reaches its maximum. It sounds to me like the pilot had too large a descent rate and lost too much altitude before the runway. They probably started their flare too soon, and were not watching their airspeed. The fact that the stall alarm went on (indicating too low an airspeed and to large an angle of attack) supports this hypothesis. Their late effort to decrease their descent rate by throttling up the engines failed because it came too late (though likely saved lives by preventing the plane from nosing into the seawall).

The stall hypothesis is also supported by witness accounts of the plane looking "out of control". An airplane that is stalling might look out of control because it is in essence falling. Just google "Bagram 747 crash" to see what happens when a plane stalls. Also, the apparent fact that the pilot was able to throttle up the engines in the end indicates that the engines were functioning properly. The fundamental pilot error here was likely that the pilot did not throttle up the engines sooner to slow his descent rate.

This then leads to a discussion of the fact that many landings pilots make are automated, made possible by Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) on the ground and autopilots on the plane. How many pilots are in fact out of practice when manually landing airplanes? Did the lack of an ILS glide slope signal play a significant role in this crash? It shouldn't have, since the visibility on approach was unobstructed. Were the pilots out of practice? Was there something about the instrument data displays on the 777 that makes such a botched approach more likely?

Re:news for nerds

[cfsops]

... or 3d-printed dildos ...

wait... what?

Re:source of fire in the forward cabin?

[cfsops]

It appears to me that the plane rotated clockwise as it skid across the ground. As you noted, such a rotation would cause the right engine to get "stuck" in the area it's found, at the wing root on the right side and the temperature at the back end of the motor will likely be around 1,500 Fahrenheit. From the picture I saw of the right side of the plane, there appeared to be a burn-through just forward of the wing root, next to where the back of the engine was resting. Also, the tail impacting the ground caused the mains to slam into the ground with enough force to break them off. That may have caused a fuel tank breach, or at least a leak. I think a fire may have started in the cargo hold, maybe fed by a small amount of fuel.

Re:You should have retracted thsi by now...

[cfsops]

Korean pilots augur ...

Fascinating. The pilots were ancient Roman religious officials who foretell the future? Seems like they messed that one up.

Oh, wait. I guess you meant "auger". Maybe you could take some time off from writing headlines and give Korean flight crews some remedial training in hand-flying approaches in B777's? Whadda ya say?

Re:Pilot error?

[girlintraining]

Further proof that Slashdot has gone completely to the dogs; vindication. There was no "auto landing". It was pilot error. It was the exact scenario I posted earlier... and I get modded down while the trolls and shit heads take +5s...

Re:Pilot error?

[Hognoxious]

Yeah, but which was he aiming for?

Re:Pilot error?

[Hognoxious]

I'm the English language. You're wrong.

Having an instrument to help you != automation.

Re:my comment

[MichaelSmith]

It might not be as lumpy as that sea wall though.

Re:Pilot error?

[MiG82au]

You should get modded down because you're way out of your depth and refuse to see it. If you don't know what CATIII autoland is, you shouldn't be commenting about landing procedures.
The fact this approach was a hand flown visual approach does not vindicate you.

Re: "Crashes in"?

[RaceProUK]

I bet you are the type of idiot who designs software without dead-man switches and other such fail safe mechanisms.

So, where's the dead-man's switch in Firefox?

Details on KSFO

[Globalair]

http://www.globalair.com/airport/airport.aspx?AptCode=SFO

Re: "Crashes in"?

[RaceProUK]

Kill-switches guarantee a kill, the close button doesn't. So it's not a kill-switch.

Re:Pilot error?

[amorsen]

You cannot autoland all the time. Well you could, but the pilots would lose their ability to handle the aircraft by hand. It is almost certain that Asiana Flight 214 could have auto-landed, and that would have saved at least 2 lives. How many lives would it cost if pilots never did any flying except in emergencies?

One day that trade-off is probably going to swing towards not letting the pilots do anything useful...

Re:Pilot error?

[JamesRing]

Your emphasis is on the wrong runway. He was on runway 28L, the glide path component of the ILS was out of service, thus he would have been flying a visual approach. The PAPI lighting (giving a visual cue about the glide slope) was working at the time. Even if the ILS was working I'm sure many pilots would have opted for a visual approach given the perfect weather conditions.

Re:Pilot error?

[JamesRing]

Correcting myself: there are other non-visual approaches (GPS for example) that could have been flown with the ILS out, but these require more work and given the weather conditions a visual approach would be chosen by most pilots.

Re:Pilot error?

[JamesRing]

Look at the date on the PAPI NOTAM: it is after the crash. The plane took out the PAPI lights.

Re:surely...

[techno-vampire]

And yet, in the film's trailer at IMDB, it uses the line as I quoted it. And, my form makes it sound as though they're talking to Doctor Shirley.

Punked

[nsaspook]

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvspy/epic-ktvu-fail-anchor-reports-pilot-names-including-sum-ting-wong-and-wi-tu-lo_b97368
       

the station claimed it had just learned the names of the 4 pilots on board Asiana flight 214 which crashed last Saturday