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Admiral Cloudberg's write-ups are excellent. The MH 370 one is a fascinating read as well, but I'll recommend my favorite air disaster writeup: https://admiralc
by ddulaney 4y ago
Admiral Cloudberg's write-ups are excellent. The MH 370 one is a fascinating read as well, but I'll recommend my favorite air disaster writeup: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lesser-of-two-evils-the-crash-of-ameristar-charters-flight-9363-b31023d9a66a https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/lesser-of-two-evils-the-...
Nobody dies, the pilots do exactly the right thing, and the system works! Also, the failure mode and investigation is super in-depth.
- fbdab103 4y agoThis story raises a question I have idly wondered - why do runways seem only just long enough for their intended purpose? That is, I see planes that seem to takeoff fairly close to the end of the available road. I want to assume there is some good reason that is not, "we didn't want to pay for more runway".
- WalterBright 4y agoI don't see that, airplanes lift off with plenty of room. BTW, bombers in combat would typically be overloaded with bombs and fuel. They needed every inch. If the runway was longer, they'd just get more bombs and fuel put on. Any hiccup in the engines meant certain fiery death. My dad (AF pilot) would always hang the tail over the back of the runway, as he wanted every inch. Old habits never died :-)
- tacostakohashi 4y agoOne reason is that the planes are taking off with reduced thrust, which produces less noise, uses less fuel, is easier on the engines, etc. That is, they can calculate and use a thrust setting towards the minimum required given the available runway length, rather than full trust to get airborne as soon as possible.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoThey tend to follow precise regulations based on what planes will use it, altitude, ambient temperature etc. https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/index.cfm/go/document.information/documentid/22809 https://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/advisory_circulars/...
- kortilla 4y ago> I want to assume there is some good reason that is not, "we didn't want to pay for more runway" This is how the entire world of engineering works. Overbuilding everything is much worse for society due to the massive costs. Doubling runway lengths cumulatively would consume hundreds of thousands of acres in the US alone. Many of these airports are right in cities so you’re talking about displacing hundreds of thousands of people. If you could stomach that, airlines with real engineers would just calculate that they can now land much larger and/or heavier loaded planes and do such.
- masklinn 4y ago> "we didn't want to pay for more runway". It is a factor (a normal factor of engineering), alongside “there’s no space for more runway” (because you also need blast pads, stopways, clearways, … which are not the runway itself), and also for noise and efficiency concerns a plane is not going to do a full-out takeoff if it doesn’t need to.
- pfdietz 4y agoMentour Pilot has an episode on that accident. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61_TqeITE3I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61_TqeITE3I
- sq_ 4y agoI love their write-ups, but I hadn't seen that one before. Crazy story! It's easy to imagine how scared/shocked Gruseus must've been by a new-to-him pilot trying to abort that late... glad he trusted him in the moment.
- puffoflogic 4y agoThat is definitely an amazing one. Here's a redacted summary of the story, to convince everyone to click: We teach pilots never to do X. The pilot of this doomed flight decided to do X. There is no doubt whatsoever that by doing X, he saved the lives of 116 people who otherwise would have died, and doing X was therefore praiseworthy. That said, not only will we continue to teach pilots never ever to do X, we'll also convince you that this is still the right thing to teach! (Also shout-out to the pilot monitoring who upon realizing the PF was doing X, exclaimed, "[expletive]! Don't do that!", and then proceeded to help with X, without which help not all the lives would have been saved. An example of where sometimes CRM does mean "blindly follow".) This is an excellent introduction to the intellectual field of aviation disaster avoidance and learning from disasters.
- benlivengood 4y agoIt doesn't seem the NTSB recognized that the root cause is a choice of V2 and runway length too short to reach V2, try to rotate for 3 seconds, think about the problem (reaction time), and then apply reverse thrust and brake to a standstill while still on the runway.
- sokoloff 4y agoV1 is the takeoff decision speed. Vr is the rotation speed. V2 is the initial climb speed. V1 is the speed that’s relevant here and I think the crew decision to abort well past V1 is both completely appropriate and unusual. There often isn’t enough runway to reach a chosen V1 then Vr then try to rotate them realize you’ve got an unflyable airplane then start the abort and still stop on the pavement or EMAS overrun. Normalizing post-V1 aborts would almost surely cost more lives than it saves. Taking a problem into the air is often the safest course of action.