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I think the very cool thing with this show is that it really illustrates how crashes are virtually never the byproduct of a single failure. The most fascinatin

by 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago

I think the very cool thing with this show is that it really illustrates how crashes are virtually never the byproduct of a single failure. The most fascinating ones to me are the ones where there is a completely survivable mechanical failure, combined with human failures that lead to crashes. The one that comes to mind there is the plane where the engine was leaking fuel, so the tanks were not equal so the pilots engaged the cross-feed valve, causing BOTH tanks to drain leading to an out-of-fuel situation. If they hadn't done that, they could have easily made it to their ETOPS airport with minimal issues. Also, that show makes me sound smarter than I am. I've had conversations with pilots, who will ask if I'm a pilot. Its great fun for parties when you run into pilots (GA and commercial).

sitharus 10y ago
You're thinking of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236, another Canadian flight. In this case the pilots followed standard procedure for a fuel imbalance, which is the alert they got.
- 464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
  The fuel imbalance check-sheet also points out to make sure that the fuel imbalance isn't the result of a leak, and they did (somewhat -- it was dark outside) try to check for a leak. They could also have looked at the rate of fuel consumption across both tanks to determine that the fuel consumption on the right tank was way higher than the engine could consume, but that was not SOP at the time (it is now, and the A330 [and probably other planes] now compute that information and alarm on it). Its all layers, planes, with minimal exception, really don't crash from a single failure.
FabHK 10y ago
> how crashes are virtually never the byproduct of a single failure There is the wonderfully named "Swiss Cheese model of accident causation" [1] elaborating on that. An accident happens when all the holes in the cheese line up... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model

sitharus 10y ago

You're thinking of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236, another Canadian flight. In this case the pilots followed standard procedure for a fuel imbalance, which is the alert they got.

464192002d7fe1c 10y ago
The fuel imbalance check-sheet also points out to make sure that the fuel imbalance isn't the result of a leak, and they did (somewhat -- it was dark outside) try to check for a leak. They could also have looked at the rate of fuel consumption across both tanks to determine that the fuel consumption on the right tank was way higher than the engine could consume, but that was not SOP at the time (it is now, and the A330 [and probably other planes] now compute that information and alarm on it). Its all layers, planes, with minimal exception, really don't crash from a single failure.

FabHK 10y ago

> how crashes are virtually never the byproduct of a single failure There is the wonderfully named "Swiss Cheese model of accident causation" [1] elaborating on that. An accident happens when all the holes in the cheese line up... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_cheese_model