I think you were typing too fast there, there's a digit missing in front of the 5. Probably an 8 or even a 9, I would say. Next time, before clicking "Submit", make sure to read the preview first.
You could just add an extra sunday. What's so bad about a week with 8 days, two of which are sunday? And jews can call the first of those two sundays a saturday if they prefer.
If we just all agree to start work at 9:00 UTC and end at 17:00 UTC, there's no problem. OK, so what if most of your day is in the dark? Since the advent of electricity, that should no longer be a problem. We solved that issue well over a century ago, why do so many people insist on living in the past?
Real pudding from a vending machine? Surely you're joking. It will have as little as possible of anything commonly considered to be bad for you (fat, energy,...) or expensive (real eggs, milk,...) and lots of the cheap replacement stuff that's actually bad for you.
Exactly. If I were to be refused a product from a vending machine because the software thinks I'm not an adult... at the very least there would be some banging of buttons during the second try, maybe some kicking, perhaps even a broken camera. And I'm not even a violent person. That's simply the kind of thing that makes my blood boil, some machine making the wrong decision against the wishes of a human being, didn't anyone write a law about that?
If the wind changes quickly, airspeed changes immediately while ground speed stays the same due to inertia. Ever seen an airspeed indicator during heavy turbulence? Ever heard of wind shear? I guess not.
Yes, exactly. If it wasn't for all the hype around the subject, I would never even have come up with the idea of making those viruses in my basement. And I would never have contracted that nasty cough that I don't seem to be able to get rid of. Well, at least I'll have some great results to publish.
You're quite right that it would be very unlikely for all of the flight control computers to fail simultaneously, and none of them to come back online after a reset. In fact I'm less worried about them failing and more worried about what they do when they haven't (officially) failed.
No, the airspeed temporarily increased due to severe turbulence, not due to any error of the pilots. If tailwind suddenly decreases, or headwind increases, your airspeed immediately jumps up. And we're often dealing with winds in excess of 200 km/h.
At altitude, there's not that much margin between minimum and maximum speed, so there's not much you can do except descend to a lower level where you have more margin on the speed. But then you'll be burning more fuel, and there may be traffic below as well so it may not even be possible right away. And anyway, you often only know about the turbulence when you're already in it, not everything is forecast and it may be in totally clear air.
Flying airplanes is not always as simple as it looks.
Well, you can't just go to an airline to apply as a pilot and then go "I want to fly this airplane but not that one". And airbuses have some strong points as well, automation has prevented its fair share of human error accidents from happening so on the whole it's probably safer than the previous generation of aircraft. It's just that the problems that do happen are of the "duh! what idiot designed that?" variety rather than the "something exploded" or "pilot flew into mountain" kind. That's what makes it annoying: somebody behind a desk actually designed them to be this way. They thought about it, really hard, taking a lot of time and lots of meetings, and then they came up with... that.
If I could, I'd mod you +5 funny. I first wanted to reply something serious (the other plane would not get the same change in airspeed), then got the mental image of a stack of airbuses all going up in unison and couldn't help laughing:-)
The computers didn't even think the plane was descending, there was no problem with the altitude indication. The computers have just been programmed "if airspeed goes too far above maximum, pull the nose up no matter what the pilot's input is". Even if the plane is level.
If I had written VMO or MMO instead of "maximum airspeed", you wouldn't have understood what I wrote. Airplanes do have a maximum airspeed (airspeed being the speed relative to the air, as opposed to ground speed). Go too far above VMO, and the plane starts buffeting (a kind of vibration). Go a bit further, and you may lose control completely due to high speed stall, mach tuck, control reversal, etc...
Airbuses do indeed have autothrottles, but engines react rather slowly so, while indeed reducing thrust, the flight control systems pull the nose up as well. They have in one recent incident in my current company, and this had already happened before in several other companies. In one case, there was another plane 1000 feet above and the pilots managed to stop the climb after 700 feet.
There are many possible reasons for a sudden increase in airspeed. Most of the time, it's due to a change in wind. If a 100 knot tailwind suddenly drops to 70 knots, you've just gained 30 knots of airspeed. But the true airspeed doesn't even have to change: in a recent incident in my company, the outside temperature changed by more than 10 degrees in a very short time which increased the mach number above MMO (because the speed of sound changes with temperature). The autopilot immediately disconnected and the flight control computers started a rather violent climb which the pilots could only recover from after climbing more than 500 feet.
So, you say you're a rocket surgeon? What kind of operations have you performed on them?
As an airbus pilot, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I have yet to meet a pilot who thinks it's a good idea. But hey, it saved quite a few bucks! Same thing for the throttles, by the way. The autopilot may reduce the engines to idle without anyone noticing, because the levers don't move. Airbuses have some pretty amazing and glaring design errors in them.
The side sticks do have a button to take complete control (control being given to whoever pushed the button last, so it could go back and forth multiple times if both pilots want control) but very often pilots will forget to push the button when taking over in a critical situation (for example an instructor taking over from a student during a bad landing), resulting in double inputs and very erratic recovery of the airplane.
Exactly, I'm always baffled when I'm flying as a passenger and as soon as the Fasten Seatbelts sign goes off, I hear "click click click click" everywhere around me from people who have no intention of getting up. What the hell is so bad about having a seatbelt fastened on your lap while you're seated that you absolutely have to get rid of it as soon as you possibly can? While sitting in a tube suspended by wings in an airflow that might become turbulent unexpectedly at any time?
Completely untrue. When the avionics 'crash', the flight system progresses through 'alternate' to 'direct' law where the pilot has direct control of the plane.
Even in direct law, the plane is still being flown by computers. It's just a more basic control law (x percent sidestick deflection means x percent flight control surface deflection, no more protections against stalling, overspeed, g-forces, etc.) but it's still computed and transmitted electronically. If all of the flight control computers fail, the only available flight controls are the rudder and the elevator trim, which makes it extremely difficult to perform a safe landing. In fact, pilots are not even trained to do it, it is only meant as a temporary backup to maintain a limited amount of control long enough to reset the computers.
Airbus' still have a analouge actuator control (Electronic) in them
I'm not sure what you mean by "analouge actuator control (Electronic)", but for what it's worth, the rudder in an A330 still has a mechanical hydraulic link while the ailerons and elevators are 100% electronically controlled by flight control computers without any mechanical link.
Airspeed would help, but jets have very long throttle lag.
Also, extra throttle on an airplane with engines mounted below the wing will actually tend to push the nose up and increase the angle of attack, making matters worse. We are now taught to first bring the nose down and then gently add throttle, not all at once.
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And he didn't even need computers or mathematical formulas! Wow, we have a genius in our midst!
Why can't they have two consecutive Sabbaths? Surely the Lord would be mightlily pleased if he were to be celebrated two days in a row?
I think you were typing too fast there, there's a digit missing in front of the 5. Probably an 8 or even a 9, I would say. Next time, before clicking "Submit", make sure to read the preview first.
Not to mention mathematical formulas. They used computer programs and mathematical formulas, surely it has to be better.
You're right, that makes it MUCH easier to remember. Thanks!
You could just add an extra sunday. What's so bad about a week with 8 days, two of which are sunday? And jews can call the first of those two sundays a saturday if they prefer.
If we just all agree to start work at 9:00 UTC and end at 17:00 UTC, there's no problem. OK, so what if most of your day is in the dark? Since the advent of electricity, that should no longer be a problem. We solved that issue well over a century ago, why do so many people insist on living in the past?
One might even say it's a vegetable.
I would. Just to beat the system :-)
Real pudding from a vending machine? Surely you're joking. It will have as little as possible of anything commonly considered to be bad for you (fat, energy,...) or expensive (real eggs, milk,...) and lots of the cheap replacement stuff that's actually bad for you.
Exactly. If I were to be refused a product from a vending machine because the software thinks I'm not an adult... at the very least there would be some banging of buttons during the second try, maybe some kicking, perhaps even a broken camera. And I'm not even a violent person. That's simply the kind of thing that makes my blood boil, some machine making the wrong decision against the wishes of a human being, didn't anyone write a law about that?
Ever seen a steak before it's cooked? Plenty of blood in there, I would say.
If the wind changes quickly, airspeed changes immediately while ground speed stays the same due to inertia. Ever seen an airspeed indicator during heavy turbulence? Ever heard of wind shear? I guess not.
Yes, exactly. If it wasn't for all the hype around the subject, I would never even have come up with the idea of making those viruses in my basement. And I would never have contracted that nasty cough that I don't seem to be able to get rid of. Well, at least I'll have some great results to publish.
You're quite right that it would be very unlikely for all of the flight control computers to fail simultaneously, and none of them to come back online after a reset. In fact I'm less worried about them failing and more worried about what they do when they haven't (officially) failed.
No, the airspeed temporarily increased due to severe turbulence, not due to any error of the pilots. If tailwind suddenly decreases, or headwind increases, your airspeed immediately jumps up. And we're often dealing with winds in excess of 200 km/h.
At altitude, there's not that much margin between minimum and maximum speed, so there's not much you can do except descend to a lower level where you have more margin on the speed. But then you'll be burning more fuel, and there may be traffic below as well so it may not even be possible right away. And anyway, you often only know about the turbulence when you're already in it, not everything is forecast and it may be in totally clear air.
Flying airplanes is not always as simple as it looks.
Well, you can't just go to an airline to apply as a pilot and then go "I want to fly this airplane but not that one". And airbuses have some strong points as well, automation has prevented its fair share of human error accidents from happening so on the whole it's probably safer than the previous generation of aircraft. It's just that the problems that do happen are of the "duh! what idiot designed that?" variety rather than the "something exploded" or "pilot flew into mountain" kind. That's what makes it annoying: somebody behind a desk actually designed them to be this way. They thought about it, really hard, taking a lot of time and lots of meetings, and then they came up with... that.
If I could, I'd mod you +5 funny. I first wanted to reply something serious (the other plane would not get the same change in airspeed), then got the mental image of a stack of airbuses all going up in unison and couldn't help laughing :-)
The computers didn't even think the plane was descending, there was no problem with the altitude indication. The computers have just been programmed "if airspeed goes too far above maximum, pull the nose up no matter what the pilot's input is". Even if the plane is level.
If I had written VMO or MMO instead of "maximum airspeed", you wouldn't have understood what I wrote. Airplanes do have a maximum airspeed (airspeed being the speed relative to the air, as opposed to ground speed). Go too far above VMO, and the plane starts buffeting (a kind of vibration). Go a bit further, and you may lose control completely due to high speed stall, mach tuck, control reversal, etc...
Airbuses do indeed have autothrottles, but engines react rather slowly so, while indeed reducing thrust, the flight control systems pull the nose up as well. They have in one recent incident in my current company, and this had already happened before in several other companies. In one case, there was another plane 1000 feet above and the pilots managed to stop the climb after 700 feet.
There are many possible reasons for a sudden increase in airspeed. Most of the time, it's due to a change in wind. If a 100 knot tailwind suddenly drops to 70 knots, you've just gained 30 knots of airspeed. But the true airspeed doesn't even have to change: in a recent incident in my company, the outside temperature changed by more than 10 degrees in a very short time which increased the mach number above MMO (because the speed of sound changes with temperature). The autopilot immediately disconnected and the flight control computers started a rather violent climb which the pilots could only recover from after climbing more than 500 feet.
So, you say you're a rocket surgeon? What kind of operations have you performed on them?
As an airbus pilot, I couldn't agree more. In fact, I have yet to meet a pilot who thinks it's a good idea. But hey, it saved quite a few bucks! Same thing for the throttles, by the way. The autopilot may reduce the engines to idle without anyone noticing, because the levers don't move. Airbuses have some pretty amazing and glaring design errors in them.
The side sticks do have a button to take complete control (control being given to whoever pushed the button last, so it could go back and forth multiple times if both pilots want control) but very often pilots will forget to push the button when taking over in a critical situation (for example an instructor taking over from a student during a bad landing), resulting in double inputs and very erratic recovery of the airplane.
Exactly, I'm always baffled when I'm flying as a passenger and as soon as the Fasten Seatbelts sign goes off, I hear "click click click click" everywhere around me from people who have no intention of getting up. What the hell is so bad about having a seatbelt fastened on your lap while you're seated that you absolutely have to get rid of it as soon as you possibly can? While sitting in a tube suspended by wings in an airflow that might become turbulent unexpectedly at any time?
Completely untrue. When the avionics 'crash', the flight system progresses through 'alternate' to 'direct' law where the pilot has direct control of the plane.
Even in direct law, the plane is still being flown by computers. It's just a more basic control law (x percent sidestick deflection means x percent flight control surface deflection, no more protections against stalling, overspeed, g-forces, etc.) but it's still computed and transmitted electronically. If all of the flight control computers fail, the only available flight controls are the rudder and the elevator trim, which makes it extremely difficult to perform a safe landing. In fact, pilots are not even trained to do it, it is only meant as a temporary backup to maintain a limited amount of control long enough to reset the computers.
Airbus' still have a analouge actuator control (Electronic) in them
I'm not sure what you mean by "analouge actuator control (Electronic)", but for what it's worth, the rudder in an A330 still has a mechanical hydraulic link while the ailerons and elevators are 100% electronically controlled by flight control computers without any mechanical link.
Airspeed would help, but jets have very long throttle lag.
Also, extra throttle on an airplane with engines mounted below the wing will actually tend to push the nose up and increase the angle of attack, making matters worse. We are now taught to first bring the nose down and then gently add throttle, not all at once.