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I’m at a point where I just opt for carriers with Airbus fleets. I do not trust modern day American corporations nor the oversight bodies. There are too many
by deeblering4 6y ago
I’m at a point where I just opt for carriers with Airbus fleets.
I do not trust modern day American corporations nor the oversight bodies. There are too many financial incentives to cut corners.
- js2 6y agoFor years after AF447 I was nervous flying airbus. In reality, it's extremely unlikely that you'll die flying. (I'd be nervous flying a Max too, but it's not rational.)
- lbriner 6y agoThe difference with AF447 was that the aircraft at no point was defective, it was purely confusion on part of the flight crew and the issue with two pilots "in control" which the Captain absolutely should have dealt with.
- detritus 6y agoI thought the pitot tube 'failed' by getting iced up? I'm not sure of that's a common thing to happen though. Obviously the subsequent decisions were what ultimately led to the disaster.
- js2 6y agoThe pitot tubes had iced-over and it wasn't the first time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Pitot_tubes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Pitot_tu... But that's not what made me nervous about Airbus. Rather, that's when I learned that Airbuses are flown by side-sticks that aren't mechanically linked while Boeings are flown by yokes which are. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Side-stick_control_issue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447#Side-sti... The idea that two pilots can provide conflicting inputs without realizing it bothers me from a design standpoint.
- pirocks 6y agoPitot tubes icing over is common on all planes not just Airbus planes. It's more or less expected and planned for.
- js2 6y agoI’m not a pilot. I’ve just read the Wikipedia page on this crash and the final report. I don’t know what is common or expected and planned for but I take your characterization to mean that you think that it’s not a significant problem. There’s three pitot tubes. There were ADs issued over them icing over. Airbus replaced them multiple times with tubes from different vendors. In the final report, the first major issue is “Temporary inconsistency between the measured speeds, likely as a result of the obstruction of the pitot tubes by ice crystals, caused autopilot disconnection and reconfiguration to alternate law.” Icing over of pitot tubes seems more significant to me than I think you’re making it out to be.
- temp667 6y agoIt really highlights how terribly trained the pilots involved are - temporary inconsistency in measured speeds (there are still plenty of reasonable speed sources) in almost all other planes does not result in the plane crashing. Heck, my GPS can do groundspeed easily enough and you have basic pitch and power settings. How did they not notice their altitude was climbing as they pulled the plane up - they got into a CLIMB rate of 7,000 feet per minute - that's STUPID! WHY climb like that? This has nothing to do with airspeed. The stall alarm goes off 75 times! They reduce power to idle for a bit?? It's total nonsense, anyone who has flown a single engine cessna for 200 hours or more would have been able to get out of this easily just based on stall buffet and stall alarms.
- dxdm 6y agoOr you underestimate the complexity of the situation and overestimate how a 200-hour Cessna pilot would have performed in that cockpit that night.
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- kirykl 6y agoThe stall warning stopped when the plane was too far into a stall to consider the data valid. I’d say that’s a malfunction for usability. It caused the pilot to keep pulling back because that stopped the warning.
- iso1631 6y agoI won't fly Air France, not just because of AF447, but also the time they diverted into an airport in the middle of a civil war and had a whip round in first class to pay for the gas to get out of there. https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-news/air-france-has-whip-around-among-passengers-to-pay-for-fuel-after-emergency-stop-in-syria-26887990.html https://www.independent.ie/life/travel/travel-news/air-franc...
- jedberg 6y agoI won't fly Air France because they cost me 500 euros for nothing. I was in Paris and set to leave and they went on strike. I waited in line for hours to try and get on any flight out, and they said there was no chance I would leave that day, and I should book a hotel. So we booked the cheapest thing we could find that would work with our baby, and it was 500 euros for the night. Two hours later they called us and told us to get to the airport right away if we wanted to leave France in less than a week. So we left France on small plane, and couldn't get a refund on the hotel because it was less than 24. All because they couldn't figure out how to get us on that flight two hours earlier when I was at their customer service desk.
- ethbr0 6y agoYour misconception was assuming people in Paris cared about you. It is my experience that they barely care about other Parisians, and effectively negatively about anyone else.
- hourislate 6y agoI can understand why but a part of me is left thinking, what an adventure that could have been. Sitting around over a drink and telling your story of the time you got caught up in the Syrian Civil War.
- knaq 6y agoIt sure looks defective to me: It was controlled more by pressure than movement, using joysticks instead of the traditional huge yoke. When one person was screwing up, the other could not observe this. On a Boeing, each person would feel the other person's force because the controls are physically linked. The stall warning was designed for mild stalls, not severe stalls, and would turn off if the stall was really bad. They got into that state. Every time they reduced the stall, they would get back into the range in which the warning would alert. This caused them to go back into the worse condition, in which the stall warning just gave up. The pitot tubes, used to sense speed, were prone to clogging with ice. Better equipment is expected on a large passenger plane. That's all the aircraft itself. If you want to blame the pilots for any of that, then Boeing can rightly say the same for 737 troubles.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoNotice how 5/6 reasons the accident report contains are "crew screwed up"
- js2 6y agoThat's a "you're holding it wrong" argument. There are always human factors, no matter how well trained. So while the errors these pilots made shouldn't have happened if they were better trained, at least one of the errors, fighting over who was controlling the plane w/o realizing it, is impossible in a Boeing cockpit.
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoNo its not. The point of these reports is to get to the "primary causes" of the accident and include design decisions that contribute to an accident. These are trained pilots who did not follow their training. They didn't follow procedures that were in place for these types of events. They did not follow cockpit management procedures. They didnt know how to properly deal with stall conditions, a fundamental piloting skill. They managed to crash a airplane that was flying perfectly fine. I don't understand the fixation on the sidestick. Its not like they just tossed it in there. Thousands of engineer hours were spent creating the systems to manage control inputs. It may have been a contributing factor, but the sidestick isn't even mentioned in the proposed improvements section. This was pilot failure.
- salex89 6y agoAlmost all airline accidents in modern days are "freak" accidents, but I personally consider AF447 one of the freakiest of the freaks. The long wait to figure out what was wrong probably amplifies the feeling.
- AniseAbyss 6y agoI'm not an expert but I do watch aircrash investigation and many of the accidents are caused by mistakes from pilots, airtraffic controllers and or mechanics. Thats why this crash bothers me. A design flaw in a production aircraft is not something you expect in the modern age.
- salex89 6y agoMaybe you should re-watch the episode :) . This was much more than a "design flaw". There was an issue with the pitot tube design, but it was enough to bring the airliner down like a rock. A combination of route planning, misunderstanding of what is happening, CRM, poor UX, and at the end, incompetence were also a factor.
- ProAm 6y ago> it's extremely unlikely that you'll die flying It's usually the not-flying that kills you
- ravi-delia 6y agoGiven airplane safety statistics, you actually probably are more likely to die flying than not flying as long as you're in a plane.
- schoolornot 6y agoWhat about the statistic of dying while flying on a Max?
- js2 6y ago> you actually probably are more likely to die flying than not flying as long as you're in a plane You're more likely to die from natural causes on a plane than from the plane crashing. Some quick googling: "287 fatalities on commercial aircraft in 2019." [1] "Deaths on board are far rarer: one for every 7.74 million passengers." [2] 4543 million passengers globally in 2019. [3] 4543 / 7.74 = 516. 516 > 287. And 2019 had relatively high deaths from crashes (down from 561 in 2018, but higher than the 59 in 2017.) (Of course, natural cause deaths depend upon your demographic. Planes don't care who is on them when they crash.) [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2020/01/02/aviation-safety-in-2019-fewer-deaths-but-more-fatal-accidents/?sh=20611d7c4ceb https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelgoldstein/2020/01/02/avi... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/well/live/death-airplane-flight-emergency-medial-sick.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/18/well/live/death-airplane-... [3] https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-passenger-traffic-globally/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/564717/airline-industry-...
- ravi-delia 6y agoI figured as much, thanks for actually pulling in the stats to prove it.
- gnu8 6y ago
- mandeepj 6y ago> In reality, it's extremely unlikely that you'll die flying Ironically, hundreds and hundreds of people have died, and that's what caused a ban on 737MAX
- marcosdumay 6y agoThe Max doesn't have the safety levels normal airplanes have. There haven't been enough flights to get confidence on an exact amount, but it's near the level of urban transportation, not of airline planes.
- laurent92 6y agoAirbus’ problem is overinvesting on the A380 and getting rid of it. Boeing’s problem is having integrated a company who was repeatedly found to have FAA collusion, and having repeated their schemes, resulting in their 2013 airframes and in their Max 8 engineering based on broken FAA supervision. Comac’s problem is being the young inexperienced incumbent, but worth noticing with its Asian future.
- tboyd47 6y agoYes, same. Too bad we cannot control which airplane we fly on; it's totally up to the airline and they can switch it at any time.
- iso1631 6y agoBA are not going to be putting me on a a narrow body Boeing aircraft
- bigmattystyles 6y agoThis is the natural conclusion to decades of corporate lobbying, revolving door political appointments with overt conflicts of interests and regulatory capture. Those with financial incentives get control or massive sway over oversight. In the short run, I'm sure it's to a corporation's advantage, other corporations follow suit because, hey CorpX is doing it. Before you know it, and often suddenly, no one trusts anything. Oversight and regulation sucks when the process feels onerous on you but they have a place in society.
- bird_monster 6y agoWhat carriers are they?
- iso1631 6y agoIf it's Boeing, I ain't going
- ethbr0 6y ago> If it's Boeing, I ain't going You're not going to fly one of the statistically safest [0] planes on the planet in the 737-6/7/8/900? [0] http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm http://www.airsafe.com/events/models/rate_mod.htm
- jedberg 6y agoWhich domestic US airline flies Airbus?
- abrowne 6y agoI believed I've flown Delta Airbus planes, but they have Boeing planes too.
- selectodude 6y agoSpirit, Frontier, American, United, Delta, JetBlue; i'm sure I'm forgetting a couple. The only airlines that are exclusively Boeing are Alaska Airlines and Southwest.
- koenigdavidmj 6y agoAlaska isn’t exclusively Boeing ever since they bought out Virgin America and its A320 fleet.
- vinay427 6y agoMost legacy carriers globally have ended up with some of both Boeing and Airbus. Just anecdotally (and I expect this doesn't hold statistically), I don't even notice a difference in manufacturer distribution between these US and EU airlines.
- martin1975 6y ago"Greed is good" - Gordon Gekko
- Havoc 6y agoYeah the way everyone is treating this as a technical problem instead of a corporate culture problem make me wary of repeats. You’re not fixing the root cause