Well, if laptops had been banned on the plane, the pilots wouldn't have HAD their laptops with them, and they couldn't have been distracted.
In fact, we should ban anything that could be a safety hazard at all. What if a pilot is distracted because his shoelace comes loose, and decides to retie it during the final critical seconds of touchdown? That could be a serious distraction. Ban shoelaces. And don't get me started on the chances of a nonpolarized set of eyeglasses focusing the sun on the seat back magazine and starting a fire - what's a little squinting and bumping against walls and attempting to drive with no visibility for those of us who are very nearsighted compared to the risk of a small paper fire and the resulting scared three people?
I could also rip a strip out of my t-shirt, twist it really tight, and have a garrote. Tie my shoes to the end of it and I have a functioning bola. Oh, God, I could use a FINGER to push a button that releases the coffee pot from its fancy little holder and have a carafe of BOILING WATER at my disposal. Or if I'm allowed to keep my arm I might use it to open the front evacuation door while in flight.
The next terrorist attack will be performed by 12-15 Sumo-sized individuals who will get seats as far back in the plane as possible. Then, in the last 10 seconds of touchdown, they will all get out of their seats and run as fast as they can toward the front of the aircraft, making the plane nose-heavy and causing a crash.
Maybe we ought to just ban passengers. After all, explosive shoes don't blow up planes, PEOPLE with explosive shoes, err, try...
Could you imagine what would happen if you told every urbanite that they couldn't bring a bottle of Evian on the plane? Could you imagine what would happen if you told ever Mom that she couldn't bring a box of apple juice for her kid? Could you imagine what would happen if you told the guy with the fancy cowboy boots or the woman wearing Prada shoes that they have to come off and go through the scanner, and they have to walk through security on the icky floors wearing only socks/stockings?
Oh, wait, you don't have to. The sheeple just throw the stuff away they can't check, maybe bleat a little, and get baa-aa-aa-ck in line.
And don't think the problem will be isolated to blackberries and laptops carried by business folk. Helicopter-Soccer Mom and Socially Enabled 12-Year Old have cell phones and laptops, too, and those have Li-Ion batteries. Not to mention Electronic-Dependent Cannot Entertain Him/Herself for an hour Child and their ever-present array of Gaming Devices and/or DVD Players. PhotoAmateur Dad always carries his Digicamera or Camcorder. In fact, I think you'd be amazed at how many people DO NOT carry at least one Li-Ion battery in their carryon or on their person today.
$10 to change numbers? By any standard I've ever seen, that's a steal.
Seriously, look into doing the same with a local telephone service sometime. Some years back, the local telco issued me a home phone number that had previously been owned by a company that went Chapter 7. After a little under 2 weeks of constant phone calls at all hours of day and night (who makes collection calls at 3AM? Seriously?), I called the telco and asked. By the time I stopped talking to the rep and said "no, thanks" we were up somewhere north of $175 in fees, surcharges, and "because we're the goddamned phone company and we'll tack this little sucker on too and you'll bend over and like it, biyotch" charges. For a phone number that THEY had chosen and was in my possession for less than 2 weeks.
I picked a number not in my area back when Google Voice was GrandCentral and in beta, because no numbers were available here in the Hinterlands. I gladly paid $10 when a number became available with my correct area code, and if I could port my old Vonage number over I'd happily fork over another $10 and thank them. Given that I can use my free Gizmo line with an old Linksys PAP I have hanging around as my primary phone line now, I figure Google is saving me about $20 a month from my old 500-minute Vonage line, and loading me up with awesome features Vonage never dreamed of to boot. If I have to send then $10 every now and again, I'm still seriously ahead.
And, yeah, I've run into the "Voice Misrecognition Follies" with Google voice. Fortunately, none of the calls have been urgent, and I can tell that "Hi, versus Doctor Smith and your appointment is tomato at flower dirty" is good enough to save me the time of retrieving and listening to the audio, and make me laugh at the same time. And I can always listen to the original if they've completely messed it up. I've also had "Visual Voicemail" from Vonage and several other transcription services I've tried, and "guess what? It ain't that pretty at all." None of them do it any better. The whole technology is not ready for prime time, but it's good enough for me every time so far, and at least Google does it for free. Vonage charges a quarter per message.
I suppose if I was a pharmacist taking prescriptions, I wouldn't want to have it translate "Vicodin" when the doctor said "Viagara" or something, but for the kinds of calls I'm likely to get, the text has always allowed me to get the gist of what was being said (and I can always click a button on my Blackberry or on a website to listen to the original audio, but I've never had to).
So, remember, kids, next time you ask the cabin crew "can I keep the whole can please?" you're cutting down on weight on the cart. Weight that might just save your life. Think long and hard about that...
You learn how to pick the locks, I'll handle the landing part. After all, I can handle Cessna-152 and -172s, how hard could it be?
LOL!!!!
I think every private pilot has this fantasy running in their head that, if something goes wrong, they can just waltz up to the 'pit and get the plane on the ground to a heroes welcome. Thank goodness those fantasies almost never come true. Reality, after all, has a way of sucking.
The other aircraft would not only have had to be distracted, but terribly off course and/or altitude as well. Class A airspace is laid out a little like shipping lanes, where you go from point to point along your course, and very few of the lines cross at the same altitude.
Assuming we did have a possible midair, both planes would have been flying in a converging course for some time.
And at that point, the ATC dude would have started screaming into his mic, and asking pilots in surrounding areas to scream into as many frequencies are are available. Not to mention the AWS (Automated Warning System) that most commercial planes have - which are VERY HARD to ignore unless you're blind and deaf in addition to being distracted. Plus ATC would have scrambled the intercept jets a lot sooner, one set for each plane.
These pilots were distracted, meaning they claimed they could hear the chatter but didn't notice their flight number being called. I'd be willing to bet a collision squawk would have perked their ears up right quick.
According to what I read, ATC was concerned enough to put intercepts on standby, and made best-effort attempts to contact them on the frequencies they are likely to be on (the ATC frequency they should have signed off when they left San Diego airspace, etc). But the intercepts had not yet taken off. ATC did not see a danger, merely "something amiss".
What the pilots did was wrong, and I'll be VERY surprised if any of them gets back into passenger aviation any time in the near future. But there are enough safeguards in aviation that it would take a lot more before I'd consider the flight "unsafe" by any stretch of the imagination.
True, I read that in a separate article later. But a shootdown order was still VERY far away, and there were a lot of steps to follow before something like that happened.
I may be misunderstanding your wording, so we may be agreeing vehemently here..
Any alternate airport is not going to be a rural strip, this is a Part 115 flight which means they need a manned tower to legally land unless overriding safety concerns apply. "Alternate airport" does not mean "gotta get on the effing ground now where's a strip of tarmac or a long stretch of highway", it means another airport with sufficient capacity for a routine landing of the aircraft in question, including the ability to handle the passengers and sufficient emergency equipment to handle trouble. So the alternate is probably not terribly close to the main airport (though I don't know what they'd pick as an alternate on that flight), and the landing is going to be pretty routine (if in an inconvenient location for the passengers on board).
I've been diverted due to traffic (En Route Reserve exaustion), and basically it went like this: 1. Thunderstorm over destination airport (CVG), traffic backed up. 2. Entered pattern way the hell up in the air, started working down the stack. 3. Pilot used up "En Route" and "En Route Reserve" and started digging into "Contingency Fuel" due to heavy traffic (stacked pattern). Pilot announced that we needed to divert and started the clock on "Alternate Fuel" to get to the alternate airport. We were 15 minutes or so from getting landing clearance based on where we were in the pattern, BUT we were out of Contingency Fuel and En Route Reserve, and so we had to divert to Alternate because if we had been delayed any longer AND THEN had to go to Alternate we would have been deeply screwed. 4. Flew to Toledo, landed. Note that this was probably the CLOSEST alternate, and I'm sure we had a good chunk of Alternate fuel left. Airport looked different, but it was a normal landing. 5. Refueled. No one allowed off plane because we all wanted to get to CVG soonest and a deplane/replane would have cost time. 6. Waited an hour on the tarmac in Toledo for CVG traffic to normalize again. 7. Flew back to CVG, landed, taxiied to different gate since we were off schedule. 8. Thankfully I had a 2.5 hour layover and made my connector.
En-route Reserve and Contingency fuel are in addition to En Route and Alternate fuel. I don't have that section of the FAR/AIM in front of me at the moment and don't have time to look it up, but I think the International reserve is an international standard, and not just for international flights. However, let's assume it does not apply.
Assuming they picked their most distant alternate 1 hour away, and the flight is 3h 45m long (approximately what the Delta Flight Status page calls for).
En Route: about 4 hours, including a missed approach of 15 minutes. Alternate: 1 hour. Total 5 hours. En Route Reserve: 15% of 5 hours, 45 minutes. Since that's less than 90, we use that. Total is now 5:45. Contingency: For a busy airport, add an hour. Let's assume they added a ridiculously low 15 minutes to save fuel weight. Total is now 6:00
So we have an approximate 6 hours of fuel on board for a less-than-4-hour flight. Maybe 6:30 if #3 applied.
So assuming 15 minutes to discover their mistake and 15 minutes to fly back, Dumb and Dumber used 2/3 of their En Route Reserve, and didn't touch their Alternate or Contingency fuel levels at all. In other words, the flight was made within FAA fuel regs, if not within Delta CRM (Cockpit Resource Management) regs or within the boundaries of common sense.
And yes, they are all in the same fuel tank (grin). But you burn them for the purpose for which they are intended. If you are out of En Route Reserve and Contingency, then you NEED to head straight for your nearest practical (weather, traffic, and other factors considered) Alternate airport right now so you arrive with plenty of fuel to make a safe landing there.
No flares, no afterburners. Intercept procedures are well-established and are part of basic pilot training.
The intercepting aircraft will perform a closing pass, starting from one side and overtaking (generally on the left since this is where the senior pilot usually sits). If the intercepting craft cannot slow enough, it will make a crossing overtake pass in front of and below the intercepted aircraft (to avoid inducing turbulence on the intercepted craft), repeating as necessary until radio contact has been made or the intercepted aircraft waggles its wings to acknowledge presence (or eye contact is made between the two pilots if both aircraft can fly at the same speed).
A second intercept aircraft flies behind and above the intercepted craft, watching for wing waggle and/or any other signs the pilot of the intercepted craft may give. If you're going to be shot down, that's his job too. But to my knowledge that's never been done.
There is a clearly-established set of hand signals AND aircraft signals that may be used to indicate what the interceptor wants the intercepted pilot to do. The VERY first thing is to acknowledge to the interceptor that you see and are aware of them (waggle the wings), then the intercepted pilot gets on the emergency frequency at 121.5 and identifies himself as an intercepted aircraft, if a radio is available and working. From there, the interceptor has a series of very visible signals to indicate that you should follow them, or you are free to go about your business, or you are to land at the airport they are headed toward, or whatever they want you to do.
The AOPA does a big campaign to get these cards in the hands of every pilot several times a year. If you know a pilot and they don't carry one of these, print out one and glue it to their lapboard: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/intercept.pdf
The stall speed of an F-16 is around 120 knots. This would be a problem when intercepting a Cessna at cruise, because they can cruise comfortably at about 90 knots. But a passenger jet is going to be running at a minimum of 300 knots or so at cruise. Intercept would be absolutely no problem under these circumstances.
ATC would have guided them through maneuvers anyway, so I'm sure that's true. They would have had to receive and acknowledge a new course back to the airport control area, and a descent path to pattern.
But, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they had the aircraft execute a few turns first to make absolutely sure they had the correct aircraft and that the pilots could comprehend and execute instructions. I've never heard of the procedure, but I'm only a private pilot and the few times I've used flight following I've managed to keep positive radio contact at all times.
And the maneuvers served another purpose. Time building. After all, since this was probably their last flight the pilots might as well make the most of it and log as much PIC time as they can... and, hey, they know how to use the new scheduling system now, so they can clearly see that they don't have any flights coming up in the near future.
I just read a more thorough FAA report on the incident, and it seems they were out of contact for about an hour, and other pilots on other aircraft where assisting trying different frequencies. Pilots do lose contact with ATC from time to time when up in Class A airspace, but this one was probably VERY close to the point where they'd scramble a couple of fast intercept planes to go check things out.
Thanks. I wasn't sure of the movie. I only saw the end while channel surfing one day, where he landed a big plane in a teeny airstrip that was WAY too short for the aircraft and smashed up a bunch of Cessnas and Pipers in the process. I had no interest in watching the rest. I was laughing too hard at what I did see. LOL.
No. A shootdown would have been nearly impossible in this situation. This was stupid, and both pilots should and probably will be terminated over it, but the passengers were never in any real danger.
The initial theory at ATC on this was probably that they had a radio failure. Radios fail, so there are procedures to deal with it. 110 mile overshoot at aircraft speeds probably means they were out of radio contact for 15-20 minutes of flight time after passing their destination. ATC was probably still working down through their checklist while dealing with the rest of the radio traffic at the same time. The aircraft has lots of reserve fuel as per FAA regs, and the plane was following its assigned flight path (a little longer than scheduled, but it wasn't going whacko, so the assumption might have been that the crew had a radio or other mechanical issue and were trying to deal with it).
ATC obviously verified that their flight path was clear, which put a tad more load on them, but they were at cruising altitude and there's plenty of room up in Class A airspace. And if they had flown over something sensitive enough to have a restricted zone up at 37,000 feet (which would be exceptionally rare, most MOAs only extend up to class A airspace, not into it), the military would have scrambled a couple of fighters to pay them a visit. If they didn't notice the fighters themselves, I'm sure some passenger would alert a stewardess and the pilots would have jumped on the emergency band in a big fat effing hurry, or if they really had a radio out watched for the wings to waggle and followed them to a runway. It's hard to miss a fighter 20 feet off your nose, and those guys are pretty damned good at getting close enough to be noticed without inducing turbulence.
I imagine a few people at ATC were just starting to get worried, since it could also be crew incapacitation (fun facts to know and tell - if you lock the very reinforced flight door from the crew side and both crewmembers die or become incapacitated, you're pretty much screwed - no Patrick Swayze bad movie moments of private pilots landing the plane at their favorite airstrip causing fun and mayhem but saving lives - just simple fuel starvation and uncontrolled descent into terrain). I'm sure there was the sound of a few strained sphincters unclenching when Dumb and Dumber got on the horn and acknowledged that they were simply distracted.
This was incredibly dumb, and deserves termination or at least a very, VERY strong reprimand, but at no time were the passengers in any danger.
I gave up on using bars as soon as I discovered that, if I held the ALT key and pressed the NMLL keys in sequence on my Blackberry, I got signal loss in dB instead.
Correlating the signal loss to "bars" (by switching back and forth between the modes) has demonstrated to me that the range where I get "5 bars" of signal is pretty significant, and the lower bars each cover an increasingly small range. Anywhere north of about -80 is considered "full signal", and about -110 is "lost signal". It maintains "2 bars" down to about -100, which is just barely enough to make a call and a clear sign that the signal is almost gone. At "one bar", I'm at about -105 and I'd be lucky to be able to make a call at all.
So, yes, the "bar" system on AT&T seems to be inflated (and yes, I know I'm basing that statement on a single, older AT&T Blackberry 83xx Curve, but at least using actual signal strengths rather than random call drops). If I use the "bar" system, I'd really want to find an area with at least 3 of 5 bars to make a telephone call unless it was an urgent call. Much below "three bars" and you start getting noticeable static and other artifacts and you run a real risk of the call dropping.
However, a "missed call" can be caused by factors other than measured signal strength. Your local tower may have too much load to connect the call, there may be a glitch in your phone, etc. My mother-in-law had that problem with a new AT&T phone and they ended up swapping out the phone, after which everything worked perfectly.
I think the point is that the Blackberry shows arrows (completely independent of the application you happen to have in the foreground at the time) that show real-time network communication, and whether that communication is currently happening in a "slow" or "fast" network (which in the case of my older Blackberry means "GPRS" or "EDGE", since I don't have a 3G phone). So if I'm running my browser, I get "connecting", "transferring data", etc, but if the network indicators stop I know something is wrong (which may or may not have anything to do with getting a cell signal). So if I see "transferring data" but the network indicators stop, that means the site is probably slow and I can move on to something else while it finishes loading. The best analogy is the little network traffic indicators you get in Windows XP - "das blinkenlights" means you have some form of network traffic going on. It's not a HUGE difference, there's plenty of information available without it, but it's handy information to have.
I'm confused about your comment on Google Maps. Even with no network connectivity, it starts up just fine for me. It does show an error, and of course if I don't happen to have any local maps in the buffer it just shows placeholders, but I can fire up the GPS and track my location down to three meters on a grey featureless screen if I feel some compelling need. Of course, if I happen to have some map data in the buffer, GMaps will do its best to display what it's got. That may be a difference between the implementations of Google Maps on the various platforms - some may be more dependent on data signal than others (especially, of course, if GMaps isn't implemented as a "native application" but as some sort of web app).
OK, I can see that - where the government or the media are suppressing news having Twitter is better than having nothing.
Of course, since Google has a history of caving to government demands, I wonder - will they simply lock down the search results in the same way? Or, alternatively, will the first person and accurate reporting be lost in a sea of Twitter astroturfing?
I mean, some of them are going to be obvious. A few people take real pictures in Iran at the election protests, then suddenly we get 12 billion hits of Ahmadinejad being licked by fluffy puppies, then we have turfsign.
But a concerted, coordinated effort by a group with an axe to grind will end up creating some really effective astroturf, and in fact the very organizations that are trying to suppress the breaking news also have the resources, employees, and high-speed Internet connections to build a pretty deep layer of turf.
Twitter results valuable for real-time breaking news?
I can just see it now. I hear about a gas main explosion in Portland and do a search to find out more.
Search for: "explosion in portland maine"
Twitter: 100,000,000,000 duplicate results "OMFG did u reedz da n00z? Expl0zorz in P0rtlnd M@1nzorz!" Local news has some relatively detailed breaking news pages. Everyone else has regurgitated Reuters stories: "Gas main explosion takes out home in some hicktown in middle of frozen hinterlands, no one hurt. We assume that's because no one lives there"
I'd be VERY hard-pressed to imagine a circumstance where any original news would emanate from Twitter that would stand a chance of being original and accurate. I subscribe to several newsfeeds on it, but those are available via the regular newsfeeds that go to Google News as well, so Twitter is a "regurgitation channel" for those newsblurbs.
Actually, I think you added an extra letter. Since it does not, in fact, "Play for sure", but they got your money, I think the proper name for Microsoft's product is "PaysForSure".
If by DVD you mean "a physical medium upon which DVDs are sold", then no, this isn't a DVD killer. In fact, this format seems to INCLUDE DVD, but more importantly if given the choice between owning a CSS-encrypted DVD and a Frankensteinian monster like "Keychest", I'll choose DVD any day. Well, at least until the brilliant people behind DeCSS invent "SkeletonKey" and ensure me access to what I've paid a license for even when Disney loses interest in the model and discontinues it.
If by DVD you mean "a movie that is sold for home consumption", then, yes, this is a "DVD killer" for sure. If this is the only format purchase-for-home-use movies are available in, then my collection will stop growing immediately. Not that it grows a lot today...
I would guess the optimal male:female ratio to be best expressed by the term "divide by zero". In other words, all male or all female.
Actually, that doesn't express the problem sufficiently, because if you have an all-one-gender crew and discover you have three homosexuals on board, Houston, we have a problem. Love triangle alert.
The best way to express it would be six people, none of whom are sexually attracted to any one of the others, or three very stable couples, or some other dynamic that does not allow the buildup of sexual tension.
Woody Allen had it right. They can pick anyone they want for the crew as long as each person has an Orgasmotron(*) in their quarters.
(* not sure if I got the spelling right, and I ain't looking it up for fear of what I might find).
Right, to a point. Commercial airliners have a tiny dish for cup holders because that is what fits in a cramped cabin, and because professional pilots in large planes can avoid a lot of the lateral forces those aircraft are actually capable of. A good dose of turbulence ("Aviation's Potholes") will rapidly demonstrate the inadequacy of that solution, but the liquid's coming out of the cup anyway so what the hell.
I rarely, if ever, grip the steering wheel tightly. I don't think I've ever felt the need to use a steering wheel to hold my body in place while I'm steering. Even in a sudden sharp turn with all four limbs fully engaged (steering wheel, shifter, brake/accel, clutch) my bucket seat and seatbelt do a yeoman's job of keeping me located where I can continue positive control without putting a death grip on anything.
If you're that aggressive a driver, I'm sure you could get a strap to hold your right arm in place while driving, or you may want to consider a 5-point harness.
Keep in mind, though, that a fly-by-wire system is more likely to be used in a hyperefficient car to cut down on weight, or for someone to overcome a physical disability. I don't think you'll have to worry about it in your Veyron anytime soon. So you're safe.
Seriously, though, the term "joystick" does not accurately describe this type of control surface, if it's the same thing I've seen before. A "joystick" is a stick that moves in all directions freely, ending at a single point with a 2-axis position reader.
These controls are a little more analogous to a control yoke in a smaller aircraft - the stick is mounted on a cylinder that fits into a cylindrical socket. Push the stick forward or pull backward for speed (it's not a "tilt" motion, but a linear push-pull motion).
The cylinder also rotates for steering (there's a range of motion about a circle, not a stick ending in a two-axis joint).
There's some resistance to motion to cut down on the herky-jerky if you hit a bump, and your entire arm rests on a surface immediately behind the control to increase stability. There's little fatigue since your arm is at rest and when you drive down the highway it takes very little force for the small corrections necessary to keep you in-lane.
With a regular steering wheel, you have to switch arms frequently on long trips because either your arm is "hanging" off the wheel (meaning you have to grip the wheel) or your arm muscles have to hold your arm up. This is more of a "my remote control is on the arm of my la-z-boy and I have to push a button every now and then" kind of thing.
If you want to keep from having your entire body move around, remember your feet are free. Push against the floor so your back is jammed tighter into the bucket seat, and you ain't goin' nowhere. If this becomes a problem, I'm sure designers could add "kayak-like" foot braces, a 5-point harness, an "ohshit bar" for your left arm, or something.
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Well, if laptops had been banned on the plane, the pilots wouldn't have HAD their laptops with them, and they couldn't have been distracted.
In fact, we should ban anything that could be a safety hazard at all. What if a pilot is distracted because his shoelace comes loose, and decides to retie it during the final critical seconds of touchdown? That could be a serious distraction. Ban shoelaces. And don't get me started on the chances of a nonpolarized set of eyeglasses focusing the sun on the seat back magazine and starting a fire - what's a little squinting and bumping against walls and attempting to drive with no visibility for those of us who are very nearsighted compared to the risk of a small paper fire and the resulting scared three people?
I could also rip a strip out of my t-shirt, twist it really tight, and have a garrote. Tie my shoes to the end of it and I have a functioning bola. Oh, God, I could use a FINGER to push a button that releases the coffee pot from its fancy little holder and have a carafe of BOILING WATER at my disposal. Or if I'm allowed to keep my arm I might use it to open the front evacuation door while in flight.
The next terrorist attack will be performed by 12-15 Sumo-sized individuals who will get seats as far back in the plane as possible. Then, in the last 10 seconds of touchdown, they will all get out of their seats and run as fast as they can toward the front of the aircraft, making the plane nose-heavy and causing a crash.
Maybe we ought to just ban passengers. After all, explosive shoes don't blow up planes, PEOPLE with explosive shoes, err, try...
Could you imagine what would happen if you told every urbanite that they couldn't bring a bottle of Evian on the plane?
Could you imagine what would happen if you told ever Mom that she couldn't bring a box of apple juice for her kid?
Could you imagine what would happen if you told the guy with the fancy cowboy boots or the woman wearing Prada shoes that they have to come off and go through the scanner, and they have to walk through security on the icky floors wearing only socks/stockings?
Oh, wait, you don't have to. The sheeple just throw the stuff away they can't check, maybe bleat a little, and get baa-aa-aa-ck in line.
And don't think the problem will be isolated to blackberries and laptops carried by business folk. Helicopter-Soccer Mom and Socially Enabled 12-Year Old have cell phones and laptops, too, and those have Li-Ion batteries. Not to mention Electronic-Dependent Cannot Entertain Him/Herself for an hour Child and their ever-present array of Gaming Devices and/or DVD Players. PhotoAmateur Dad always carries his Digicamera or Camcorder. In fact, I think you'd be amazed at how many people DO NOT carry at least one Li-Ion battery in their carryon or on their person today.
$10 to change numbers? By any standard I've ever seen, that's a steal.
Seriously, look into doing the same with a local telephone service sometime. Some years back, the local telco issued me a home phone number that had previously been owned by a company that went Chapter 7. After a little under 2 weeks of constant phone calls at all hours of day and night (who makes collection calls at 3AM? Seriously?), I called the telco and asked. By the time I stopped talking to the rep and said "no, thanks" we were up somewhere north of $175 in fees, surcharges, and "because we're the goddamned phone company and we'll tack this little sucker on too and you'll bend over and like it, biyotch" charges. For a phone number that THEY had chosen and was in my possession for less than 2 weeks.
I picked a number not in my area back when Google Voice was GrandCentral and in beta, because no numbers were available here in the Hinterlands. I gladly paid $10 when a number became available with my correct area code, and if I could port my old Vonage number over I'd happily fork over another $10 and thank them. Given that I can use my free Gizmo line with an old Linksys PAP I have hanging around as my primary phone line now, I figure Google is saving me about $20 a month from my old 500-minute Vonage line, and loading me up with awesome features Vonage never dreamed of to boot. If I have to send then $10 every now and again, I'm still seriously ahead.
And, yeah, I've run into the "Voice Misrecognition Follies" with Google voice. Fortunately, none of the calls have been urgent, and I can tell that "Hi, versus Doctor Smith and your appointment is tomato at flower dirty" is good enough to save me the time of retrieving and listening to the audio, and make me laugh at the same time. And I can always listen to the original if they've completely messed it up. I've also had "Visual Voicemail" from Vonage and several other transcription services I've tried, and "guess what? It ain't that pretty at all." None of them do it any better. The whole technology is not ready for prime time, but it's good enough for me every time so far, and at least Google does it for free. Vonage charges a quarter per message.
I suppose if I was a pharmacist taking prescriptions, I wouldn't want to have it translate "Vicodin" when the doctor said "Viagara" or something, but for the kinds of calls I'm likely to get, the text has always allowed me to get the gist of what was being said (and I can always click a button on my Blackberry or on a website to listen to the original audio, but I've never had to).
Good to know, I guess. LOL.
So, remember, kids, next time you ask the cabin crew "can I keep the whole can please?" you're cutting down on weight on the cart. Weight that might just save your life. Think long and hard about that...
You learn how to pick the locks, I'll handle the landing part. After all, I can handle Cessna-152 and -172s, how hard could it be?
LOL!!!!
I think every private pilot has this fantasy running in their head that, if something goes wrong, they can just waltz up to the 'pit and get the plane on the ground to a heroes welcome. Thank goodness those fantasies almost never come true. Reality, after all, has a way of sucking.
Thanks. Good to hear from someone that might have counted, if it had come to that. Glad to know you folks are on the job.
Equally glad you could stay on the ground for this one, of course. :)
The other aircraft would not only have had to be distracted, but terribly off course and/or altitude as well. Class A airspace is laid out a little like shipping lanes, where you go from point to point along your course, and very few of the lines cross at the same altitude.
Assuming we did have a possible midair, both planes would have been flying in a converging course for some time.
And at that point, the ATC dude would have started screaming into his mic, and asking pilots in surrounding areas to scream into as many frequencies are are available. Not to mention the AWS (Automated Warning System) that most commercial planes have - which are VERY HARD to ignore unless you're blind and deaf in addition to being distracted. Plus ATC would have scrambled the intercept jets a lot sooner, one set for each plane.
These pilots were distracted, meaning they claimed they could hear the chatter but didn't notice their flight number being called. I'd be willing to bet a collision squawk would have perked their ears up right quick.
According to what I read, ATC was concerned enough to put intercepts on standby, and made best-effort attempts to contact them on the frequencies they are likely to be on (the ATC frequency they should have signed off when they left San Diego airspace, etc). But the intercepts had not yet taken off. ATC did not see a danger, merely "something amiss".
What the pilots did was wrong, and I'll be VERY surprised if any of them gets back into passenger aviation any time in the near future. But there are enough safeguards in aviation that it would take a lot more before I'd consider the flight "unsafe" by any stretch of the imagination.
"Unwise?" Abso-fraggin-lutely.
True, I read that in a separate article later. But a shootdown order was still VERY far away, and there were a lot of steps to follow before something like that happened.
I may be misunderstanding your wording, so we may be agreeing vehemently here..
Any alternate airport is not going to be a rural strip, this is a Part 115 flight which means they need a manned tower to legally land unless overriding safety concerns apply. "Alternate airport" does not mean "gotta get on the effing ground now where's a strip of tarmac or a long stretch of highway", it means another airport with sufficient capacity for a routine landing of the aircraft in question, including the ability to handle the passengers and sufficient emergency equipment to handle trouble. So the alternate is probably not terribly close to the main airport (though I don't know what they'd pick as an alternate on that flight), and the landing is going to be pretty routine (if in an inconvenient location for the passengers on board).
I've been diverted due to traffic (En Route Reserve exaustion), and basically it went like this:
1. Thunderstorm over destination airport (CVG), traffic backed up.
2. Entered pattern way the hell up in the air, started working down the stack.
3. Pilot used up "En Route" and "En Route Reserve" and started digging into "Contingency Fuel" due to heavy traffic (stacked pattern). Pilot announced that we needed to divert and started the clock on "Alternate Fuel" to get to the alternate airport. We were 15 minutes or so from getting landing clearance based on where we were in the pattern, BUT we were out of Contingency Fuel and En Route Reserve, and so we had to divert to Alternate because if we had been delayed any longer AND THEN had to go to Alternate we would have been deeply screwed.
4. Flew to Toledo, landed. Note that this was probably the CLOSEST alternate, and I'm sure we had a good chunk of Alternate fuel left. Airport looked different, but it was a normal landing.
5. Refueled. No one allowed off plane because we all wanted to get to CVG soonest and a deplane/replane would have cost time.
6. Waited an hour on the tarmac in Toledo for CVG traffic to normalize again.
7. Flew back to CVG, landed, taxiied to different gate since we were off schedule.
8. Thankfully I had a 2.5 hour layover and made my connector.
En-route Reserve and Contingency fuel are in addition to En Route and Alternate fuel. I don't have that section of the FAR/AIM in front of me at the moment and don't have time to look it up, but I think the International reserve is an international standard, and not just for international flights. However, let's assume it does not apply.
Assuming they picked their most distant alternate 1 hour away, and the flight is 3h 45m long (approximately what the Delta Flight Status page calls for).
En Route: about 4 hours, including a missed approach of 15 minutes.
Alternate: 1 hour. Total 5 hours.
En Route Reserve: 15% of 5 hours, 45 minutes. Since that's less than 90, we use that. Total is now 5:45.
Contingency: For a busy airport, add an hour. Let's assume they added a ridiculously low 15 minutes to save fuel weight. Total is now 6:00
So we have an approximate 6 hours of fuel on board for a less-than-4-hour flight. Maybe 6:30 if #3 applied.
So assuming 15 minutes to discover their mistake and 15 minutes to fly back, Dumb and Dumber used 2/3 of their En Route Reserve, and didn't touch their Alternate or Contingency fuel levels at all. In other words, the flight was made within FAA fuel regs, if not within Delta CRM (Cockpit Resource Management) regs or within the boundaries of common sense.
And yes, they are all in the same fuel tank (grin). But you burn them for the purpose for which they are intended. If you are out of En Route Reserve and Contingency, then you NEED to head straight for your nearest practical (weather, traffic, and other factors considered) Alternate airport right now so you arrive with plenty of fuel to make a safe landing there.
No flares, no afterburners. Intercept procedures are well-established and are part of basic pilot training.
The intercepting aircraft will perform a closing pass, starting from one side and overtaking (generally on the left since this is where the senior pilot usually sits). If the intercepting craft cannot slow enough, it will make a crossing overtake pass in front of and below the intercepted aircraft (to avoid inducing turbulence on the intercepted craft), repeating as necessary until radio contact has been made or the intercepted aircraft waggles its wings to acknowledge presence (or eye contact is made between the two pilots if both aircraft can fly at the same speed).
A second intercept aircraft flies behind and above the intercepted craft, watching for wing waggle and/or any other signs the pilot of the intercepted craft may give. If you're going to be shot down, that's his job too. But to my knowledge that's never been done.
There is a clearly-established set of hand signals AND aircraft signals that may be used to indicate what the interceptor wants the intercepted pilot to do. The VERY first thing is to acknowledge to the interceptor that you see and are aware of them (waggle the wings), then the intercepted pilot gets on the emergency frequency at 121.5 and identifies himself as an intercepted aircraft, if a radio is available and working. From there, the interceptor has a series of very visible signals to indicate that you should follow them, or you are free to go about your business, or you are to land at the airport they are headed toward, or whatever they want you to do.
The AOPA does a big campaign to get these cards in the hands of every pilot several times a year. If you know a pilot and they don't carry one of these, print out one and glue it to their lapboard: http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/intercept.pdf
The stall speed of an F-16 is around 120 knots. This would be a problem when intercepting a Cessna at cruise, because they can cruise comfortably at about 90 knots. But a passenger jet is going to be running at a minimum of 300 knots or so at cruise. Intercept would be absolutely no problem under these circumstances.
ATC would have guided them through maneuvers anyway, so I'm sure that's true. They would have had to receive and acknowledge a new course back to the airport control area, and a descent path to pattern.
But, yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they had the aircraft execute a few turns first to make absolutely sure they had the correct aircraft and that the pilots could comprehend and execute instructions. I've never heard of the procedure, but I'm only a private pilot and the few times I've used flight following I've managed to keep positive radio contact at all times.
And the maneuvers served another purpose. Time building. After all, since this was probably their last flight the pilots might as well make the most of it and log as much PIC time as they can... and, hey, they know how to use the new scheduling system now, so they can clearly see that they don't have any flights coming up in the near future.
I just read a more thorough FAA report on the incident, and it seems they were out of contact for about an hour, and other pilots on other aircraft where assisting trying different frequencies. Pilots do lose contact with ATC from time to time when up in Class A airspace, but this one was probably VERY close to the point where they'd scramble a couple of fast intercept planes to go check things out.
Thanks. I wasn't sure of the movie. I only saw the end while channel surfing one day, where he landed a big plane in a teeny airstrip that was WAY too short for the aircraft and smashed up a bunch of Cessnas and Pipers in the process. I had no interest in watching the rest. I was laughing too hard at what I did see. LOL.
No. A shootdown would have been nearly impossible in this situation. This was stupid, and both pilots should and probably will be terminated over it, but the passengers were never in any real danger.
The initial theory at ATC on this was probably that they had a radio failure. Radios fail, so there are procedures to deal with it. 110 mile overshoot at aircraft speeds probably means they were out of radio contact for 15-20 minutes of flight time after passing their destination. ATC was probably still working down through their checklist while dealing with the rest of the radio traffic at the same time. The aircraft has lots of reserve fuel as per FAA regs, and the plane was following its assigned flight path (a little longer than scheduled, but it wasn't going whacko, so the assumption might have been that the crew had a radio or other mechanical issue and were trying to deal with it).
ATC obviously verified that their flight path was clear, which put a tad more load on them, but they were at cruising altitude and there's plenty of room up in Class A airspace. And if they had flown over something sensitive enough to have a restricted zone up at 37,000 feet (which would be exceptionally rare, most MOAs only extend up to class A airspace, not into it), the military would have scrambled a couple of fighters to pay them a visit. If they didn't notice the fighters themselves, I'm sure some passenger would alert a stewardess and the pilots would have jumped on the emergency band in a big fat effing hurry, or if they really had a radio out watched for the wings to waggle and followed them to a runway. It's hard to miss a fighter 20 feet off your nose, and those guys are pretty damned good at getting close enough to be noticed without inducing turbulence.
I imagine a few people at ATC were just starting to get worried, since it could also be crew incapacitation (fun facts to know and tell - if you lock the very reinforced flight door from the crew side and both crewmembers die or become incapacitated, you're pretty much screwed - no Patrick Swayze bad movie moments of private pilots landing the plane at their favorite airstrip causing fun and mayhem but saving lives - just simple fuel starvation and uncontrolled descent into terrain). I'm sure there was the sound of a few strained sphincters unclenching when Dumb and Dumber got on the horn and acknowledged that they were simply distracted.
This was incredibly dumb, and deserves termination or at least a very, VERY strong reprimand, but at no time were the passengers in any danger.
(7) Profit.
I gave up on using bars as soon as I discovered that, if I held the ALT key and pressed the NMLL keys in sequence on my Blackberry, I got signal loss in dB instead.
Correlating the signal loss to "bars" (by switching back and forth between the modes) has demonstrated to me that the range where I get "5 bars" of signal is pretty significant, and the lower bars each cover an increasingly small range. Anywhere north of about -80 is considered "full signal", and about -110 is "lost signal". It maintains "2 bars" down to about -100, which is just barely enough to make a call and a clear sign that the signal is almost gone. At "one bar", I'm at about -105 and I'd be lucky to be able to make a call at all.
So, yes, the "bar" system on AT&T seems to be inflated (and yes, I know I'm basing that statement on a single, older AT&T Blackberry 83xx Curve, but at least using actual signal strengths rather than random call drops). If I use the "bar" system, I'd really want to find an area with at least 3 of 5 bars to make a telephone call unless it was an urgent call. Much below "three bars" and you start getting noticeable static and other artifacts and you run a real risk of the call dropping.
However, a "missed call" can be caused by factors other than measured signal strength. Your local tower may have too much load to connect the call, there may be a glitch in your phone, etc. My mother-in-law had that problem with a new AT&T phone and they ended up swapping out the phone, after which everything worked perfectly.
I think the point is that the Blackberry shows arrows (completely independent of the application you happen to have in the foreground at the time) that show real-time network communication, and whether that communication is currently happening in a "slow" or "fast" network (which in the case of my older Blackberry means "GPRS" or "EDGE", since I don't have a 3G phone). So if I'm running my browser, I get "connecting", "transferring data", etc, but if the network indicators stop I know something is wrong (which may or may not have anything to do with getting a cell signal). So if I see "transferring data" but the network indicators stop, that means the site is probably slow and I can move on to something else while it finishes loading. The best analogy is the little network traffic indicators you get in Windows XP - "das blinkenlights" means you have some form of network traffic going on. It's not a HUGE difference, there's plenty of information available without it, but it's handy information to have.
I'm confused about your comment on Google Maps. Even with no network connectivity, it starts up just fine for me. It does show an error, and of course if I don't happen to have any local maps in the buffer it just shows placeholders, but I can fire up the GPS and track my location down to three meters on a grey featureless screen if I feel some compelling need. Of course, if I happen to have some map data in the buffer, GMaps will do its best to display what it's got. That may be a difference between the implementations of Google Maps on the various platforms - some may be more dependent on data signal than others (especially, of course, if GMaps isn't implemented as a "native application" but as some sort of web app).
OK, I can see that - where the government or the media are suppressing news having Twitter is better than having nothing.
Of course, since Google has a history of caving to government demands, I wonder - will they simply lock down the search results in the same way? Or, alternatively, will the first person and accurate reporting be lost in a sea of Twitter astroturfing?
I mean, some of them are going to be obvious. A few people take real pictures in Iran at the election protests, then suddenly we get 12 billion hits of Ahmadinejad being licked by fluffy puppies, then we have turfsign.
But a concerted, coordinated effort by a group with an axe to grind will end up creating some really effective astroturf, and in fact the very organizations that are trying to suppress the breaking news also have the resources, employees, and high-speed Internet connections to build a pretty deep layer of turf.
Twitter results valuable for real-time breaking news?
I can just see it now. I hear about a gas main explosion in Portland and do a search to find out more.
Search for: "explosion in portland maine"
Twitter: 100,000,000,000 duplicate results "OMFG did u reedz da n00z? Expl0zorz in P0rtlnd M@1nzorz!"
Local news has some relatively detailed breaking news pages.
Everyone else has regurgitated Reuters stories: "Gas main explosion takes out home in some hicktown in middle of frozen hinterlands, no one hurt. We assume that's because no one lives there"
I'd be VERY hard-pressed to imagine a circumstance where any original news would emanate from Twitter that would stand a chance of being original and accurate. I subscribe to several newsfeeds on it, but those are available via the regular newsfeeds that go to Google News as well, so Twitter is a "regurgitation channel" for those newsblurbs.
That's why these experiments are critical.
Actually, I think you added an extra letter. Since it does not, in fact, "Play for sure", but they got your money, I think the proper name for Microsoft's product is "PaysForSure".
If by DVD you mean "a physical medium upon which DVDs are sold", then no, this isn't a DVD killer. In fact, this format seems to INCLUDE DVD, but more importantly if given the choice between owning a CSS-encrypted DVD and a Frankensteinian monster like "Keychest", I'll choose DVD any day. Well, at least until the brilliant people behind DeCSS invent "SkeletonKey" and ensure me access to what I've paid a license for even when Disney loses interest in the model and discontinues it.
If by DVD you mean "a movie that is sold for home consumption", then, yes, this is a "DVD killer" for sure. If this is the only format purchase-for-home-use movies are available in, then my collection will stop growing immediately. Not that it grows a lot today...
I would guess the optimal male:female ratio to be best expressed by the term "divide by zero". In other words, all male or all female.
Actually, that doesn't express the problem sufficiently, because if you have an all-one-gender crew and discover you have three homosexuals on board, Houston, we have a problem. Love triangle alert.
The best way to express it would be six people, none of whom are sexually attracted to any one of the others, or three very stable couples, or some other dynamic that does not allow the buildup of sexual tension.
Woody Allen had it right. They can pick anyone they want for the crew as long as each person has an Orgasmotron(*) in their quarters.
(* not sure if I got the spelling right, and I ain't looking it up for fear of what I might find).
Right, to a point. Commercial airliners have a tiny dish for cup holders because that is what fits in a cramped cabin, and because professional pilots in large planes can avoid a lot of the lateral forces those aircraft are actually capable of. A good dose of turbulence ("Aviation's Potholes") will rapidly demonstrate the inadequacy of that solution, but the liquid's coming out of the cup anyway so what the hell.
I rarely, if ever, grip the steering wheel tightly. I don't think I've ever felt the need to use a steering wheel to hold my body in place while I'm steering. Even in a sudden sharp turn with all four limbs fully engaged (steering wheel, shifter, brake/accel, clutch) my bucket seat and seatbelt do a yeoman's job of keeping me located where I can continue positive control without putting a death grip on anything.
If you're that aggressive a driver, I'm sure you could get a strap to hold your right arm in place while driving, or you may want to consider a 5-point harness.
Keep in mind, though, that a fly-by-wire system is more likely to be used in a hyperefficient car to cut down on weight, or for someone to overcome a physical disability. I don't think you'll have to worry about it in your Veyron anytime soon. So you're safe.
Seriously, though, the term "joystick" does not accurately describe this type of control surface, if it's the same thing I've seen before. A "joystick" is a stick that moves in all directions freely, ending at a single point with a 2-axis position reader.
These controls are a little more analogous to a control yoke in a smaller aircraft - the stick is mounted on a cylinder that fits into a cylindrical socket. Push the stick forward or pull backward for speed (it's not a "tilt" motion, but a linear push-pull motion).
The cylinder also rotates for steering (there's a range of motion about a circle, not a stick ending in a two-axis joint).
There's some resistance to motion to cut down on the herky-jerky if you hit a bump, and your entire arm rests on a surface immediately behind the control to increase stability. There's little fatigue since your arm is at rest and when you drive down the highway it takes very little force for the small corrections necessary to keep you in-lane.
With a regular steering wheel, you have to switch arms frequently on long trips because either your arm is "hanging" off the wheel (meaning you have to grip the wheel) or your arm muscles have to hold your arm up. This is more of a "my remote control is on the arm of my la-z-boy and I have to push a button every now and then" kind of thing.
If you want to keep from having your entire body move around, remember your feet are free. Push against the floor so your back is jammed tighter into the bucket seat, and you ain't goin' nowhere. If this becomes a problem, I'm sure designers could add "kayak-like" foot braces, a 5-point harness, an "ohshit bar" for your left arm, or something.
Of course not, silly. Remember, both feet are free!