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Those numbers are outrageous on their own. But what's even more amazing is that not all emergencies result in crashes. Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel hal

Those numbers are outrageous on their own. But what's even more amazing is that not all emergencies result in crashes. Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel halfway into the journey and there were no fatalities! They literally glided to a motor track. That's so incredible a modern movie would have trouble getting its audience to suspend disbelief for it.

jalgos_eminator 8y ago
Eh, I think most people can understand gliding pretty easily. What would really mess with their heads is a helicopter losing its engine and autorotating down to safety.
- PopeDotNinja 8y ago
  Helicopters are often easier to land than planes. Landing a helicopter without power is part of learning how to fly a helicopter in the first place... https://youtu.be/pL1-QH7eQAY https://youtu.be/pL1-QH7eQAY Landing a 767 without power, not so much... https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA
  - Dangeranger 8y ago
    While true, it's worth noting that mandatory auto-rotation training is due to the fact that helicopters are inherently unstable aircraft whose turbine engines have the habit of stalling at the worst possible moment. > "The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot and why, in general, airplane pilots are open, clear eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know that if something bad has not happened, it is about to." -Harry Reasoner
    - Theodores 8y ago
      Then there is the Harrier Jump Jet. Then there is the challenge of landing a Harrier Jump Jet on an aircraft carrier. Then there is the challenge of landing a Harrier Jump Jet on an aircraft carrier that happens to be postage stamp sized and in the South Atlantic high seas during an actual war, the Falklands War.
    - dingaling 8y ago
      > whose turbine engines have the habit of stalling at the worst possible moment Helicopter turbine engines operate on exactly the same principles at the 90,000lb thrust turbofan under the wing of a 777. They are incomprehensibly reliable. Things that lead to helicopter autororation are usually mechanical failure of the transmission.
  - Shorel 8y ago
    Now I want a video where this happens instead of just someone talking over some pictures. This still seems amazing and unbelievable to me.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      Google “helicopter autorotation” and have your pick. Here’s one with an outside view, which I think is easier to grasp for non-pilots: https://youtu.be/twGid07JR9s https://youtu.be/twGid07JR9s Basically, the helicopter “falls” down and slightly forward, driving the main rotor disc (potential energy turning into disc rotational energy), then the pilot flares the helo, slowing the forward speed and taking energy from the rotor disc to slow the vertical descent, finally resulting in the aircraft settling to the Earth at a slow speed. Just like gliding an airplane, it’s a one-shot kind of a thing (except in training where you generally keep the engine running and available). Note that the rotor disc is connected to the engine via a one-way clutch, so the engine can drive the rotor but not vice-versa. Otherwise, a seized engine would result in a rotor disc stoppage (and an uncontrolled descent).
    - komodo 8y ago
      Here's a Smarter Every Day video on the topic. Live demonstration starts at 6min mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTqu9iMiPIU&feature=youtu.be&t=142 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTqu9iMiPIU&feature=youtu.be...
  - nopzor 8y ago
    practicing how to land an airplane without power is part of a basic private pilots license.
  - inferiorhuman 8y ago
    Landing a 767 without power, not so much... https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA That's a bit misleading. The Gimli Glider landed without thrust but almost certainly had electrical and hydraulic power. Same deal with the British Airways 777 that crashed at Heathrow. Meanwhile, LATAM landed a 777 with no electrical power[1] not that long ago. That's a whole different ballgame. 1: http://avherald.com/h?article=4c1cc3f6&opt=0 http://avherald.com/h?article=4c1cc3f6&opt=0
- axaxs 8y ago
  While definitely a cool factor, I'm not sure it would be so mindblowing. As a kid, we always called maple seeds 'helicopters', and their descent is a similar concept.
- lainga 8y ago
  Yes, including several people who worked on game engines and whom I have frequently cursed out...
pbourke 8y ago
It helped that the Captain (I believe) was ex-military and an expert glider pilot. They landed at a mothballed RCAF base that was being used for drag racing. Amazing story.
- rpeden 8y ago
  In addition to the captain's glider experience, the first officer just happened to have served at the RCAF station where they eventually landed. So they had at least a couple of extra things working in the favour that day.
Tistel 8y ago
The Gimli Glider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider the pilots were initially punished (which is outrageous), then lauded, for their skills.
- peeters 8y ago
  Why is it outrageous that they were punished? Yes they saved the day but they had a very important role in allowing the mistake to happen in the first place.
  - ohazi 8y ago
    The FAA has a tendency to punish deliberate acts or serious lack of judgement, i.e. "I'll fly under this bridge, it'll be awesome." When mistakes happen by accident, they tend to give people lots of slack to encourage honest accounts so that they and the rest of the community can learn from the mistake. This is the reason behind things like the NASA form, which is sometimes seen as a "get out of jail free" card. You write a detailed account of what happened after certain kinds of accidents/incidents, and if they conclude that you weren't being too stupid, or it wasn't a repeat issue that you should have learned from, they'll skip certain minor enforcement actions against you.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Because pilots are humans, and humans make these types of human-mistakes generally. If your safety protocol relies on humans being perfect, you better resign yourself to a decent number of crashes. Better to build a system where openness around unintentional mistakes is encouraged, and then design that system to be redundant even in the face of human error.
    - peeters 8y ago
      I agree, but in this case the automatic systems to avoid human error were the primary systems, and the humans knew they were malfunctioning before takeoff, and yet failed to double check for human error and flew the flight despite it being illegal to do so with the automated system malfunctioning. So yes you want to design your system to limit the impact of human error, but the human pilots also bear a very large responsibility too. Not as much as the airline for sure, but I could see why the initial verdict would lean toward negligence from the sheer number of lapses in judgement that were made.
peeters 8y ago
The cause analysis of how they ended up with half a tank of fuel is crazy. The crew loading the fuel mistook lbs for kg. The plane's fuel indicators were faulty and required a manual procedure before takeoff. The engineer communicated that to a pilot and the pilot misunderstood. That pilot relayed his misunderstanding to the next pilot and that next pilot misunderstood the misunderstanding. And then that next pilot misunderstood the checklist indicating whether it was legal to fly with the non-functioning fuel gauge. And the flight engineer didn't catch the lbs/kg mistake. Then during a brief stopover in Ottawa, the captain thought to re-measure the fuel with the floatstick, but still used the incorrect conversion factor.
- YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
  damn
- eterm 8y ago
  I wonder how many lives are lost each year (not just in aviation but globally) because the US refuses to convert to the metric system.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    Or spacecraft lost: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
    - rzimmerman 8y ago
      The loss of MCO is actually a very interesting story about both engineering culture (engineers noticed a problem but the organization didn’t respond to investigate/fix it) and the conversion to metric. The root came from NASA deciding to use metric on this project and a contractor using the wrong units. But it’s the kind of thing that the process should be able to catch and handle. It bugs me to dismiss this failure as “haha why doesn’t NASA use metric” because not only is it a direct result of NASA switching to metric, there are really good engineering lessons that get ignored.
highace 8y ago
Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA
- sm4rk0 8y ago
  They are reading the Wikipedia article, without attribution.
908087 8y ago
Planes gliding to a safe landing after losing power isn't something anyone should be harboring disbelief of to begin with. I've experienced it twice myself. The surprising part of that story was the seemingly endless string of fuck-ups that resulted in them running out of fuel mid-flight.
- magduf 8y ago
  >Planes gliding to a safe landing after losing power isn't something anyone should be harboring disbelief of to begin with. I've experienced it twice myself. You must have been really lucky. Sure, planes are perfectly capable of gliding to a safe landing after losing power. The problem is that there usually isn't a safe place nearby on the ground to land them at. So instead of a smooth, safe landing on some tarmac, they have a horrible crash-landing onto some kind of ground, if they're lucky. If they're not lucky, there's only mountains around and they just crash into them. The nice thing about helicopters losing power is that a helicopter only needs a very small patch of level ground to land safely. Airplanes need an airstrip of some kind, and big airplanes need really long ones. Usually, if they're lucky, there's a decently straight highway close by.
manigandham 8y ago
Good recent video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA

jalgos_eminator 8y ago

Eh, I think most people can understand gliding pretty easily. What would really mess with their heads is a helicopter losing its engine and autorotating down to safety.

PopeDotNinja 8y ago
Helicopters are often easier to land than planes. Landing a helicopter without power is part of learning how to fly a helicopter in the first place... https://youtu.be/pL1-QH7eQAY https://youtu.be/pL1-QH7eQAY Landing a 767 without power, not so much... https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA
- Dangeranger 8y ago
  While true, it's worth noting that mandatory auto-rotation training is due to the fact that helicopters are inherently unstable aircraft whose turbine engines have the habit of stalling at the worst possible moment. > "The thing is, helicopters are different from planes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or by a deliberately incompetent pilot, it will fly. A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying immediately and disastrously. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. This is why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot and why, in general, airplane pilots are open, clear eyed, buoyant extroverts, and helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble. They know that if something bad has not happened, it is about to." -Harry Reasoner
  - Theodores 8y ago
    Then there is the Harrier Jump Jet. Then there is the challenge of landing a Harrier Jump Jet on an aircraft carrier. Then there is the challenge of landing a Harrier Jump Jet on an aircraft carrier that happens to be postage stamp sized and in the South Atlantic high seas during an actual war, the Falklands War.
  - dingaling 8y ago
    > whose turbine engines have the habit of stalling at the worst possible moment Helicopter turbine engines operate on exactly the same principles at the 90,000lb thrust turbofan under the wing of a 777. They are incomprehensibly reliable. Things that lead to helicopter autororation are usually mechanical failure of the transmission.
- Shorel 8y ago
  Now I want a video where this happens instead of just someone talking over some pictures. This still seems amazing and unbelievable to me.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    Google “helicopter autorotation” and have your pick. Here’s one with an outside view, which I think is easier to grasp for non-pilots: https://youtu.be/twGid07JR9s https://youtu.be/twGid07JR9s Basically, the helicopter “falls” down and slightly forward, driving the main rotor disc (potential energy turning into disc rotational energy), then the pilot flares the helo, slowing the forward speed and taking energy from the rotor disc to slow the vertical descent, finally resulting in the aircraft settling to the Earth at a slow speed. Just like gliding an airplane, it’s a one-shot kind of a thing (except in training where you generally keep the engine running and available). Note that the rotor disc is connected to the engine via a one-way clutch, so the engine can drive the rotor but not vice-versa. Otherwise, a seized engine would result in a rotor disc stoppage (and an uncontrolled descent).
  - komodo 8y ago
    Here's a Smarter Every Day video on the topic. Live demonstration starts at 6min mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTqu9iMiPIU&feature=youtu.be&t=142 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTqu9iMiPIU&feature=youtu.be...
- nopzor 8y ago
  practicing how to land an airplane without power is part of a basic private pilots license.
- inferiorhuman 8y ago
  Landing a 767 without power, not so much... https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA https://youtu.be/GlkCofOyxUA That's a bit misleading. The Gimli Glider landed without thrust but almost certainly had electrical and hydraulic power. Same deal with the British Airways 777 that crashed at Heathrow. Meanwhile, LATAM landed a 777 with no electrical power[1] not that long ago. That's a whole different ballgame. 1: http://avherald.com/h?article=4c1cc3f6&opt=0 http://avherald.com/h?article=4c1cc3f6&opt=0
axaxs 8y ago
While definitely a cool factor, I'm not sure it would be so mindblowing. As a kid, we always called maple seeds 'helicopters', and their descent is a similar concept.
lainga 8y ago
Yes, including several people who worked on game engines and whom I have frequently cursed out...

pbourke 8y ago

It helped that the Captain (I believe) was ex-military and an expert glider pilot. They landed at a mothballed RCAF base that was being used for drag racing. Amazing story.

rpeden 8y ago
In addition to the captain's glider experience, the first officer just happened to have served at the RCAF station where they eventually landed. So they had at least a couple of extra things working in the favour that day.

Tistel 8y ago

The Gimli Glider: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider the pilots were initially punished (which is outrageous), then lauded, for their skills.

peeters 8y ago
Why is it outrageous that they were punished? Yes they saved the day but they had a very important role in allowing the mistake to happen in the first place.
- ohazi 8y ago
  The FAA has a tendency to punish deliberate acts or serious lack of judgement, i.e. "I'll fly under this bridge, it'll be awesome." When mistakes happen by accident, they tend to give people lots of slack to encourage honest accounts so that they and the rest of the community can learn from the mistake. This is the reason behind things like the NASA form, which is sometimes seen as a "get out of jail free" card. You write a detailed account of what happened after certain kinds of accidents/incidents, and if they conclude that you weren't being too stupid, or it wasn't a repeat issue that you should have learned from, they'll skip certain minor enforcement actions against you.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Because pilots are humans, and humans make these types of human-mistakes generally. If your safety protocol relies on humans being perfect, you better resign yourself to a decent number of crashes. Better to build a system where openness around unintentional mistakes is encouraged, and then design that system to be redundant even in the face of human error.
  - peeters 8y ago
    I agree, but in this case the automatic systems to avoid human error were the primary systems, and the humans knew they were malfunctioning before takeoff, and yet failed to double check for human error and flew the flight despite it being illegal to do so with the automated system malfunctioning. So yes you want to design your system to limit the impact of human error, but the human pilots also bear a very large responsibility too. Not as much as the airline for sure, but I could see why the initial verdict would lean toward negligence from the sheer number of lapses in judgement that were made.

peeters 8y ago

The cause analysis of how they ended up with half a tank of fuel is crazy. The crew loading the fuel mistook lbs for kg. The plane's fuel indicators were faulty and required a manual procedure before takeoff. The engineer communicated that to a pilot and the pilot misunderstood. That pilot relayed his misunderstanding to the next pilot and that next pilot misunderstood the misunderstanding. And then that next pilot misunderstood the checklist indicating whether it was legal to fly with the non-functioning fuel gauge. And the flight engineer didn't catch the lbs/kg mistake. Then during a brief stopover in Ottawa, the captain thought to re-measure the fuel with the floatstick, but still used the incorrect conversion factor.

YeahSureWhyNot 8y ago
damn
eterm 8y ago
I wonder how many lives are lost each year (not just in aviation but globally) because the US refuses to convert to the metric system.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  Or spacecraft lost: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
  - rzimmerman 8y ago
    The loss of MCO is actually a very interesting story about both engineering culture (engineers noticed a problem but the organization didn’t respond to investigate/fix it) and the conversion to metric. The root came from NASA deciding to use metric on this project and a contractor using the wrong units. But it’s the kind of thing that the process should be able to catch and handle. It bugs me to dismiss this failure as “haha why doesn’t NASA use metric” because not only is it a direct result of NASA switching to metric, there are really good engineering lessons that get ignored.

highace 8y ago

Relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA

sm4rk0 8y ago
They are reading the Wikipedia article, without attribution.

908087 8y ago

Planes gliding to a safe landing after losing power isn't something anyone should be harboring disbelief of to begin with. I've experienced it twice myself. The surprising part of that story was the seemingly endless string of fuck-ups that resulted in them running out of fuel mid-flight.

magduf 8y ago
>Planes gliding to a safe landing after losing power isn't something anyone should be harboring disbelief of to begin with. I've experienced it twice myself. You must have been really lucky. Sure, planes are perfectly capable of gliding to a safe landing after losing power. The problem is that there usually isn't a safe place nearby on the ground to land them at. So instead of a smooth, safe landing on some tarmac, they have a horrible crash-landing onto some kind of ground, if they're lucky. If they're not lucky, there's only mountains around and they just crash into them. The nice thing about helicopters losing power is that a helicopter only needs a very small patch of level ground to land safely. Airplanes need an airstrip of some kind, and big airplanes need really long ones. Usually, if they're lucky, there's a decently straight highway close by.

manigandham 8y ago

Good recent video about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlkCofOyxUA