"It also means they can't plan the fuel loading of the aircraft accurately. They have to load too much, just in case the Large Luncheon Club all decide to take a trip together. "
Uh... actually, not necessarily. It could really mean that maybe they can't load as much fuel as they might otherwise like, because they have to provide some safety margin in case they have a particularly hefty load of pax and bags. Payload weight + fuel weight + zero fuel weight must come out less than maximum takeoff weight. Then that number minus the weight of fuel burned on the trip has to come out less than maximum landing weight.
They must have on board sufficient fuel to fly to the destination, and from the destination to the alternate at normal cruising speeds, plus 45 minutes reserve, and it all has to fall within the parameters I described above. Now if the payload weighs less than maximum takeoff weight minus zero fuel weight minus weight of fuel, and if there's space available in the tanks, it is sometimes advantageous to load more fuel, assuming that by doing so you won't cause yourself to arrive weighing more than maximum landing weight.
Why would they want to carry more fuel than they need, you ask? Because sometimes it makes economic sense to ferry fuel from a place where the fuel is cheaper to a place where fuel is more expensive. If the difference in fuel prices makes up for the increased fuel consumption caused by the increased drag caused by the increased weight of the extra fuel, then it makes sense to ferry fuel.
Obviously, there are times when you want to load less fuel for the opposite circumstance.
"And if you check your bags they get charged by weight as well, making it impossible to know how much the flight costs until you are actually on the plane. "
On your planet, are only airlines allowed to own scales?
P.S. -- there's also not a checklist for every possible emergency, and yes, pilots DO train for every possible emergency for which there is a checklist.
I'm not knocking the value of checklists, and cases like you're talking about do happen, but "don't ignore the stall warning horn" is not on any checklist I've seen.
Mostly, in an emergency, you go through the checklist AFTER you have the situation under control, to make sure you have not missed anything.
If an engine fails, you don't immediately whip out your checklist while your airplane flips over. You run a mental checklist, in which you push the throttles up, you hit your max rate of climb speed, then identify the dead engine (dead foot, dead engine), verify which engine is dead (pull its throttle back and watch for changes), and of course keep flying the airplane while you secure the dead engine. Once you're completely in control, THEN you run through your written checklist. Those first few steps have to be almost reflexive, especially if you're talking about engine failure on takeoff.
I've done this stuff IRL. I've had actual engine failures in IMC (yes, more than once), and I've done engine out instrument approaches. My point is that even if the iPads blow up, and the on-board computer blows up, and the laminated checklists in the cockpit blow out the window, its not the end of the world.
We can play "what if" all day:
What if the iPad's fail? What if laminated checklist is missing? What if the airplane is on fire? What if the fly-by-wire system pulls my nose up and won't let me push it back down? What if both engines ingest a bunch of birds? What if a loose rivet causes a section of the fuselage to peel off and blow away under pressure? What if all my electrical systems fail, and I have no lights, no radio, and I'm in the clouds over the mountains at night? What if I'm at 30,000 feet and I lose cabin pressure, and someone forgot to fill my oxygen tank?
At some point, the what if game leads to the conclusion: This is not your day. You're screwed.
'I'd still feel better if they had their emergency checklist on their lap to make sure that they follow all procedures and don't get so focused on shutting down the bad engine that they forgot to set the flaps appropriately and end up in a stall upon approach.'
Captain: "Oh dear, we've lost an engine as we approach to land!"
F/O: "Gracious, it appears I've spilled battery acid on the laminated emergency checklist, and it is now completely unreadable!"
Captain: "In an unfortunate coincidence, our two iPad's and our on-board computer with redundant everything all failed simultaneously! Without those, I have no idea how to fly this pig!"
F/O: "I have no clue what to do in this situation! Even though I've got 5,000 hours of flying experience, and have to do recurrent simulator emergency training dealing with situations just like this one every six months, I have no idea how to handle an engine failure unless another pilot reads me the steps from a list!"
Captain: "We're going to die! We're all going to die!"
1. Everyone needs to get this straight: The iPad is not being used as a nav device. Its a personal reference and a backup of the chart data that's already in the on-board GPS system on a modern airliner. For old, round-gauge style cockpits, OK, it would the primary source of data for approach info, BUT, it contains nothing that controllers on the ground can't help with in a pinch -- and we're not talking about those aircraft, anyway.
2. Everyone's aware that there are no airlines flying in the US with only one pilot, right? And you realize that each pilot has his own iPad? So there will be at least two iPad devices on each flight. And neither one of them is essential for safe operation.
3. Aircraft checklists on the 777 -- the only aircraft approved for this program so far -- are routinely accessed from the on-board computer. Nobody is going to reach for his iPad to run an engine failure checklist.
Its important to note that the iPad is not being used as an actual navigation device. Its just being used to replace paper books of charts, mostly approach plate books that are very bulky and heavy and require at least quarterly maintenance swapping out old plates with new plates, as well as airport information such as radio frequencies. The books that pilots had to carry before had information for every airport where they would possibly ever land, including in an emergency.
Thing is, in a real situation where for whatever reason the pilot does not have that information on board -- whether because the iPad died or because there's a hole in the airplane and all his approach plates are scattered all over Kansas -- all the information the pilots need is available from ATC.
Normally, a controller might clear a flight into Charlotte, NC from Atlanta, GA something like this:
"US 521, Charlotte Approach. Fly the Adena Three arrival, landing south, expect an ILS 18R approach to Charlotte". The pilot would refer to his STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival) charts for Charlotte, pull out the Adena Three arrival, and see that the arrival is to fly on the Atlanta VOR/DME 078 radial 120 miles to Greenwood VOR/DME at flight level 240, then on arrival at Greenwood VOR/DME, turn left to track the Greenwood 053 radial 19 miles to the JADOG intersection while descending to 11,000 feet, then along to a few other RNAV-defined intersections, descending along the way. Upon reaching CATAN intersection, he should be at 5,000 feet, and he'll get cleared something like "US 521, turn right heading 090, vectors for the localizer, you're cleared for the ILS 18R, maintain 5,000 until established. Contact tower on 133.35, good day." Then they'll turn right, intercept the localizer, pick up the glideslope, and fly the approach, probably on autopilot. There are altitude limitations on the way in, but as long as they have the glideslope, they don't have to worry about that, other than being aware of those limits in case the glideslope fails.
Now, if the crew has no STAR or approach plates, what's going to happen is something like this:
"Charlotte Approach, US 521 with you at flight level 240." "US 521, Charlotte Approach, fly the Adena Three arrival, landing south, expect an ILS 18R approach to Charlotte." "Charlotte Approach, US 521, we have no charts or approach plates, request vectors to land." "US 521, Charlotte Approach. Maintain flight level 240, fly heading 078 to Greenwood VOR, expect further vectors."
And from there, the approach controller will simply call vectors and altitudes to US 521 until they're established on the localizer, and they'll hand them off to the tower just like normal.
In short, losing the iPad or the approach plate books is really not even an urgent situation. Its just inconvenient, and a little added workload for the controller. And in reality, in a modern airliner, the STAR's and approach plates are programmed into the nav equipment anyway, and are presented visually on the screens built-in to the aircraft. What's on the iPad is just the pilot's personal copy for reference.
The downside is that you'd have a much less liquid market for equities, and wider spreads between bid and ask. Transaction costs would be higher, because brokerage houses would have to survive on much lower commission volume, so per-trade commissions would go up.
Like it or not, speculators provide liquidity and can even be a stabilizing influence. Imagine a stock that is affected by a negative rumour. Now imagine a bunch of weak players shitting their pants trying to get out of that stock, but there are no speculators in the market betting against the rumour. So they throw market orders out there, but the only buyers are at prices way below where they "should" be if there was more liquidity.
Now you have transactions going on the record at the lower price, and the stampede will really begin.
If I can't use a Kindle (not the Kindle Fire, the plain old Kinlde), then II want them to make everyone take the batteries out of their LCD watches, because they're emitting about the same radio noise as my Kindle.
This is not someone who just posted some conspiracy theory or made remarks against policy. This is a guy who threatened to cut off people's heads.
Yes, the police sometimes do overstep their bounds. They also sometimes fail to prevent crazy shit that they could have prevented. If they had information about this Marine's threats, failed to act, and the Marine had followed through on his threats, what would everyone be saying then?
I'm glad they didn't send a SWAT team in and kill him, and I'm glad he's getting some psychiatric attention. I'm not sure there's a much better outcome that anyone could have reasonably expected in this situation.
I'll bet he's not German, rather a Scientist from the Eighteenth Century, posting from a Machine of his own Invention, a marvelous Object of Wonder which allows the trained Operator to post to Slashdot across the vast Distance of the Centuries.
I've noticed that, unlike Americans, Colombians have no qualms about telling someone he looks fat. "Man, you've gained a lot of weight, buddy -- better hit the gym." Polite Americans would not do that.
I've also met very few fat Colombians and a whole lot of fat Americans. And don't get your panties in a twist -- I'm a fat American myself, but I'm working on it. Yes, I said "fat" -- not "big boned", "overweight", "thick", or any other euphemism for fat. Fat is fat.
Maybe some honesty about being fat would make some fat people get off their fat asses and do something about it.
On a different subject with the same theme: Have you ever met anyone who thinks she can sing, but she really has at best a mediocre voice? Know why? Its because all her life, her mommy and daddy told her she had a beautiful singing voice. Then every time she sang for her friends, they would reinforce that fiction. Now she leaps out of her seat at every possible opportunity to sing, and just makes everyone embarrassed. If nobody had lied to her all those years, she could just make a fool of herself at karaoke like the rest of us, but instead she has to make us all cringe at every occasion.
... I don't want to ever hear another word about how screwed up the US is for detaining and deporting those two British tourists who joked about digging up Marilyn Monroe and destroying the USA.
"But gold is also only valuable when people agree on its value."
Wrong. Whether we agree or not on what its value is, gold, like any commodity, has value regardless of whose face is stamped on it.
Metals have value independent of what any law has to say about them, and that's why gold and silver smuggling has always existed where governments try to artificially control their prices.
Slashdot Mirror
"It also means they can't plan the fuel loading of the aircraft accurately. They have to load too much, just in case the Large Luncheon Club all decide to take a trip together. "
Uh... actually, not necessarily. It could really mean that maybe they can't load as much fuel as they might otherwise like, because they have to provide some safety margin in case they have a particularly hefty load of pax and bags. Payload weight + fuel weight + zero fuel weight must come out less than maximum takeoff weight. Then that number minus the weight of fuel burned on the trip has to come out less than maximum landing weight.
They must have on board sufficient fuel to fly to the destination, and from the destination to the alternate at normal cruising speeds, plus 45 minutes reserve, and it all has to fall within the parameters I described above. Now if the payload weighs less than maximum takeoff weight minus zero fuel weight minus weight of fuel, and if there's space available in the tanks, it is sometimes advantageous to load more fuel, assuming that by doing so you won't cause yourself to arrive weighing more than maximum landing weight.
Why would they want to carry more fuel than they need, you ask? Because sometimes it makes economic sense to ferry fuel from a place where the fuel is cheaper to a place where fuel is more expensive. If the difference in fuel prices makes up for the increased fuel consumption caused by the increased drag caused by the increased weight of the extra fuel, then it makes sense to ferry fuel.
Obviously, there are times when you want to load less fuel for the opposite circumstance.
"And if you check your bags they get charged by weight as well, making it impossible to know how much the flight costs until you are actually on the plane. "
On your planet, are only airlines allowed to own scales?
P.S. -- there's also not a checklist for every possible emergency, and yes, pilots DO train for every possible emergency for which there is a checklist.
I'm not knocking the value of checklists, and cases like you're talking about do happen, but "don't ignore the stall warning horn" is not on any checklist I've seen.
Mostly, in an emergency, you go through the checklist AFTER you have the situation under control, to make sure you have not missed anything.
If an engine fails, you don't immediately whip out your checklist while your airplane flips over. You run a mental checklist, in which you push the throttles up, you hit your max rate of climb speed, then identify the dead engine (dead foot, dead engine), verify which engine is dead (pull its throttle back and watch for changes), and of course keep flying the airplane while you secure the dead engine. Once you're completely in control, THEN you run through your written checklist. Those first few steps have to be almost reflexive, especially if you're talking about engine failure on takeoff.
I've done this stuff IRL. I've had actual engine failures in IMC (yes, more than once), and I've done engine out instrument approaches. My point is that even if the iPads blow up, and the on-board computer blows up, and the laminated checklists in the cockpit blow out the window, its not the end of the world.
We can play "what if" all day:
What if the iPad's fail? What if laminated checklist is missing? What if the airplane is on fire? What if the fly-by-wire system pulls my nose up and won't let me push it back down? What if both engines ingest a bunch of birds? What if a loose rivet causes a section of the fuselage to peel off and blow away under pressure? What if all my electrical systems fail, and I have no lights, no radio, and I'm in the clouds over the mountains at night? What if I'm at 30,000 feet and I lose cabin pressure, and someone forgot to fill my oxygen tank?
At some point, the what if game leads to the conclusion: This is not your day. You're screwed.
'I'd still feel better if they had their emergency checklist on their lap to make sure that they follow all procedures and don't get so focused on shutting down the bad engine that they forgot to set the flaps appropriately and end up in a stall upon approach.'
Captain: "Oh dear, we've lost an engine as we approach to land!"
F/O: "Gracious, it appears I've spilled battery acid on the laminated emergency checklist, and it is now completely unreadable!"
Captain: "In an unfortunate coincidence, our two iPad's and our on-board computer with redundant everything all failed simultaneously! Without those, I have no idea how to fly this pig!"
F/O: "I have no clue what to do in this situation! Even though I've got 5,000 hours of flying experience, and have to do recurrent simulator emergency training dealing with situations just like this one every six months, I have no idea how to handle an engine failure unless another pilot reads me the steps from a list!"
Captain: "We're going to die! We're all going to die!"
You need at least halfway-decent graphics to display the approach plates. They're not just text data.
Here's an example of a category III ILS approach into Charlotte, NC: http://155.178.201.160/d-tpp/1209/00078I18RC3.PDF
Take a look at that, and ask yourself how it would look on a Kindle.
1. Everyone needs to get this straight: The iPad is not being used as a nav device. Its a personal reference and a backup of the chart data that's already in the on-board GPS system on a modern airliner. For old, round-gauge style cockpits, OK, it would the primary source of data for approach info, BUT, it contains nothing that controllers on the ground can't help with in a pinch -- and we're not talking about those aircraft, anyway.
2. Everyone's aware that there are no airlines flying in the US with only one pilot, right? And you realize that each pilot has his own iPad? So there will be at least two iPad devices on each flight. And neither one of them is essential for safe operation.
3. Aircraft checklists on the 777 -- the only aircraft approved for this program so far -- are routinely accessed from the on-board computer. Nobody is going to reach for his iPad to run an engine failure checklist.
Its important to note that the iPad is not being used as an actual navigation device. Its just being used to replace paper books of charts, mostly approach plate books that are very bulky and heavy and require at least quarterly maintenance swapping out old plates with new plates, as well as airport information such as radio frequencies. The books that pilots had to carry before had information for every airport where they would possibly ever land, including in an emergency.
Thing is, in a real situation where for whatever reason the pilot does not have that information on board -- whether because the iPad died or because there's a hole in the airplane and all his approach plates are scattered all over Kansas -- all the information the pilots need is available from ATC.
Normally, a controller might clear a flight into Charlotte, NC from Atlanta, GA something like this:
"US 521, Charlotte Approach. Fly the Adena Three arrival, landing south, expect an ILS 18R approach to Charlotte". The pilot would refer to his STAR (Standard Terminal Arrival) charts for Charlotte, pull out the Adena Three arrival, and see that the arrival is to fly on the Atlanta VOR/DME 078 radial 120 miles to Greenwood VOR/DME at flight level 240, then on arrival at Greenwood VOR/DME, turn left to track the Greenwood 053 radial 19 miles to the JADOG intersection while descending to 11,000 feet, then along to a few other RNAV-defined intersections, descending along the way. Upon reaching CATAN intersection, he should be at 5,000 feet, and he'll get cleared something like "US 521, turn right heading 090, vectors for the localizer, you're cleared for the ILS 18R, maintain 5,000 until established. Contact tower on 133.35, good day." Then they'll turn right, intercept the localizer, pick up the glideslope, and fly the approach, probably on autopilot. There are altitude limitations on the way in, but as long as they have the glideslope, they don't have to worry about that, other than being aware of those limits in case the glideslope fails.
Now, if the crew has no STAR or approach plates, what's going to happen is something like this:
"Charlotte Approach, US 521 with you at flight level 240."
"US 521, Charlotte Approach, fly the Adena Three arrival, landing south, expect an ILS 18R approach to Charlotte."
"Charlotte Approach, US 521, we have no charts or approach plates, request vectors to land."
"US 521, Charlotte Approach. Maintain flight level 240, fly heading 078 to Greenwood VOR, expect further vectors."
And from there, the approach controller will simply call vectors and altitudes to US 521 until they're established on the localizer, and they'll hand them off to the tower just like normal.
In short, losing the iPad or the approach plate books is really not even an urgent situation. Its just inconvenient, and a little added workload for the controller. And in reality, in a modern airliner, the STAR's and approach plates are programmed into the nav equipment anyway, and are presented visually on the screens built-in to the aircraft. What's on the iPad is just the pilot's personal copy for reference.
So it somehow bothers you that a major player in HFT, which you seem to be against, lost $440 million to other traders?
You understand that $440 million of value didn't just vanish from the economy, right?
The downside is that you'd have a much less liquid market for equities, and wider spreads between bid and ask. Transaction costs would be higher, because brokerage houses would have to survive on much lower commission volume, so per-trade commissions would go up.
Like it or not, speculators provide liquidity and can even be a stabilizing influence. Imagine a stock that is affected by a negative rumour. Now imagine a bunch of weak players shitting their pants trying to get out of that stock, but there are no speculators in the market betting against the rumour. So they throw market orders out there, but the only buyers are at prices way below where they "should" be if there was more liquidity.
Now you have transactions going on the record at the lower price, and the stampede will really begin.
Guess you've never heard of a hostile takeover.
Right on. The fact that its not widely adopted by the sheeple doesn't mean that its broken.
If I can't use a Kindle (not the Kindle Fire, the plain old Kinlde), then II want them to make everyone take the batteries out of their LCD watches, because they're emitting about the same radio noise as my Kindle.
Arithmetic much? Let's take the high number of 45 million devices:
45,000,000 * 10 = 450,000,000.
450,000,000 1,000,000,000
1,000,000,000 / 45,000,000 = 22.22 (rounded to two decimal places)
This is not someone who just posted some conspiracy theory or made remarks against policy. This is a guy who threatened to cut off people's heads.
Yes, the police sometimes do overstep their bounds. They also sometimes fail to prevent crazy shit that they could have prevented. If they had information about this Marine's threats, failed to act, and the Marine had followed through on his threats, what would everyone be saying then?
I'm glad they didn't send a SWAT team in and kill him, and I'm glad he's getting some psychiatric attention. I'm not sure there's a much better outcome that anyone could have reasonably expected in this situation.
Be happy to! We'll store it with the corn and wheat.
Darn it, Apple! Now I'll have to install Linux on my computer and pay only 1/3 as much!
WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO DESTROY MY LIFE, APPLE???
You forgot to throw the word "cloud" in there.
Meet the new boss,
Same as the old boss.
Step 1: Buy yourself something like this: http://www.aberdeeninc.com/abcatg/Stirling-X339.htm
Step 2: Install it
Step 3: rsync
Step 4: Go do something else -- this is going to take a while
I'll bet he's not German, rather a Scientist from the Eighteenth Century, posting from a Machine of his own Invention, a marvelous Object of Wonder which allows the trained Operator to post to Slashdot across the vast Distance of the Centuries.
"Often when the price tag on something seems to good to be true, it is."
Yeah, like offshored software development.
I've noticed that, unlike Americans, Colombians have no qualms about telling someone he looks fat. "Man, you've gained a lot of weight, buddy -- better hit the gym." Polite Americans would not do that.
I've also met very few fat Colombians and a whole lot of fat Americans. And don't get your panties in a twist -- I'm a fat American myself, but I'm working on it. Yes, I said "fat" -- not "big boned", "overweight", "thick", or any other euphemism for fat. Fat is fat.
Maybe some honesty about being fat would make some fat people get off their fat asses and do something about it.
On a different subject with the same theme: Have you ever met anyone who thinks she can sing, but she really has at best a mediocre voice? Know why? Its because all her life, her mommy and daddy told her she had a beautiful singing voice. Then every time she sang for her friends, they would reinforce that fiction. Now she leaps out of her seat at every possible opportunity to sing, and just makes everyone embarrassed. If nobody had lied to her all those years, she could just make a fool of herself at karaoke like the rest of us, but instead she has to make us all cringe at every occasion.
... I don't want to ever hear another word about how screwed up the US is for detaining and deporting those two British tourists who joked about digging up Marilyn Monroe and destroying the USA.
"But gold is also only valuable when people agree on its value."
Wrong. Whether we agree or not on what its value is, gold, like any commodity, has value regardless of whose face is stamped on it.
Metals have value independent of what any law has to say about them, and that's why gold and silver smuggling has always existed where governments try to artificially control their prices.