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Pilot of Boeing flight says he lost control after instrument failure
- sio8ohPi 3y ago"passenger says". I'm dubious and betting on clear-air turbulence, but we'll know in a few days.
- beverlythelma51 3y ago[dead]
- wkat4242 3y agoThis sounds more worrying now. When I heard it originally it sounded like a mountain wave. Those are extremely powerful natural downdrafts (or up!) and common in South New Zealand.. They've crashed flights before: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOAC_Flight_911 though that was at mount Fuji in Japan. But if the plane did this by itself.. wow. The 787 is fly by wire. Worrying. And very bad timing for Boeing.
- nop_slide 3y agoNot sure how I acquired the "common" knowledge that a plane has never crashed before due to turbulence alone, but this looks like an example of such a case!
- avemg 3y agoI think maybe you've misunderstood what the common knowledge said. Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude, so yea turbulence alone hasn't caused a crash. But anything near terrain is plenty risky (mountain waves, low-level wind shear). If the turbulence makes you drop a couple of hundred feet that's no big deal at 35,000 feet and no matter how bumpy it gets, the wings aren't going to break off. But if you're near the ground (or a mountain), well....
- nop_slide 3y ago> Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude, so yea turbulence alone hasn't caused a crash The linked wiki article literally says it ripped the plane apart > The aircraft then encountered strong turbulence, causing it to break up in flight and crash into a forest.
- wkat4242 3y ago> Turbulence hasn't ripped an airplane apart at altitude It has, not only in this case but also here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLM_CityHopper_Flight_431 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLM_CityHopper_Flight_431 And there are many other examples. I guess it depends by what you mean by "at altitude"? Most of these accidents did happen below 10.000 feet yes. And the mountain wave phenomenon in New Zealand in particular reaches pretty high. Some glider pilots use it to get up really high, so high some of them got frostbitten. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItPnp4pJ_bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItPnp4pJ_bg There at 19k feet. But yes at that altitude the phenomenon is probably not strong enough anymore to break up an airliner.
- bombcar 3y agoI guess a tornado can be called turbulence.
- usrusr 3y agoThe good news is that very strong downdrafts, in absolute terms, simply can't happen close to the ground, because the air in question needs somewhere to go.
- BasilPH 3y agoFascinating article. Some interesting anecdotes: > The victims even included several survivors of the Canadian Pacific Air Lines Flight 402 crash. (Note: A plane that crashed the day prior, with only 8 out of 72 people on board surviving) > Several booked passengers cancelled their tickets at the last moment to see a ninja demonstration. These passengers, Albert R. Broccoli, Harry Saltzman, Ken Adam, Lewis Gilbert, and Freddie Young, were in Japan scouting locations for the fifth James Bond film, You Only Live Twice (1967). Coincidences like this are of course bound to happen with large enough numbers of people traveling, but I still find this interesting.
- joecasson 3y agoA blip of zero controls - not ideal! Although hearsay from a passenger hardly sounds reliable. The thing I'm wondering is: are quality issues happening elsewhere? Or are we caught in an anti-Boeing hype cycle? I'm skeptical whenever the media really grabs hold of a narrative that's so one-sided.
- rco8786 3y agoYea I have the same question. Objectively it appears that Boeing is having some really serious safety issues. Things that absolutely do not jive with what we’ve been taught our entire lives about how safe airline travel is. But I’m open to the idea that 5-10 “major” incidents a year is maybe within the normal range and we just don’t ever hear about them.
- bbor 3y ago[flagged]
- chung8123 3y agoI don't this this allegedly happened. What authorities are saying Boeing killed a whistleblower?
- datadrivenangel 3y agoThe whistleblower was found dead in their car of an 'apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound'. Seems extremely unlikely that they would decide to kill themselves after 32 years at Boeing and deciding to blow the whistle. "Barnett, who spent decades working for Boeing at its plants in Everett, Wash., and North Charleston, S.C., had repeatedly alleged that Boeing's manufacturing practices had declined — and that rather than improve them, he added, managers had pressured workers not to document potential defects and problems. "
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
- philip1209 3y agoI'm skeptical of this account - Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion. Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum - that would have needed to be a stall, a change in trim, or an external weather event such as a downdraft. A stall would have been accompanied by a stall recovery procedure involving attitude + thrust changes, and nobody seems to be reporting that in the article. I'm no professional, but if I had to guess - the plane got hit by a hard gust, and the gust triggered a short in some electronics that caused the screens to go blank. (So, the opposite direction of causality).
- marvin 3y agoIf passengers were touching the ceiling, it would have required either a very powerful downdraft or control surface inputs leading to greater-than gravity acceleration downwards. Very interested to hear the investigation into this.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago>Newton's First Law says that an object in motion stays in motion. How is this relevant? There is turbulence and gravity, this isn't "empty" space. > Losing instruments for a second doesn't cause a change in momentum No, but modern jets need computer-aided control of flight control surfaces to keep the aircraft stable. If the account is accurate sounds like quite literally everything had a blip for a second, which would have prevented computer-intervention when encountering severe turbulence, or worse, flight control surfaces became "stuck."
- LaffertyDev 3y agoNitpicking. I agree with your broader point. > No, but modern jets need computer-aided control of flight control surfaces to keep the aircraft stable. Most aircraft outside of fighter jets are aerodynamically stable. Loss of powered flight would mean the airplane will glide (in nominal operation). Even the 737MAX7/9 aircraft are still stable (although that brings up defining exactly what we mean by aerodynamically stable... )
- datavirtue 3y agoReminds me of the time my brand new F-250 "crashed" and rebooted. Lost all functionality for almost a minute, completely dropped dead on the road. It rebooted and continued on. Happened one time in five years and ~50k miles.
- post_break 3y agoTeslas were known for doing the same thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWRx6ZuV80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWWRx6ZuV80
- WillPostForFood 3y agoNot the same thing, He said the f-250 lost all functionality, including power. The video you posted is just the Tesla screen rebooting, while keeping all driving functionality.
- ghusbands 3y agoThat Tesla didn't "completely drop[] dead on the road" like the post you're replying to stated - it just had the non-driving controls go dark for a couple of minutes. Still terrible, and the Nissan Leaf also does it occasionally, though for less time.
- burgerrito 3y agoThis gives a whole new meaning to the sentence "My car crashed"
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoHeh, yeah. Had a Subaru Forrester decide that something was wrong with the throttle or cruise control or something, and the appropriate response was to ignore the accelerator and just leave the engine at idle. On the freeway. In the middle of a road trip. Manual "reboot" fixed that one. But "have you tried turning it off and back on again" is not a good answer for an airliner...
- fotta 3y agoI had a Chrysler Pacifica go into limp mode several times due to issues in a CAN bus connector sending bad ECM data. It was very intermittent so service couldn't do anything. Eventually someone in an owner's forum figured it out so I was able to swap out the $5 connector.
- queuebert 3y agoOn a related note, one of the whistleblowers was just found dead: https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/boeing-whistleblower-found-dead-206320197792 https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/watch/boeing-whistleblower...
- dang 3y agoBoeing whistleblower found dead in US - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39673589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39673589 (438 comments)
- engineer_22 3y ago"self inflicted gunshot wound"
- psunavy03 3y agoIf the FBW system is getting spurious inputs, that's a Very Bad Thing. But I'm skeptical about CNN reporting from some rando non-aviator being accurate as to what exactly is going on. This is like asking some random person what their doctor or lawyer told them, and expecting them to get it all right.
- lenerdenator 3y agoThey're down ~27% YTD. Something tells me that there's going to be a "come to Jesus" meeting soon in the C-suite's future that results in the deployment of a golden parachute.
- ChicagoBoy11 3y agoCan only hope to unfortunately find myself with one such meeting scheduled on my calendar!
- chasd00 3y agohopefully the parachute is made by Boeing
- dh2022 3y agomaybe not made by Boeing, but certainly paid by it....
- robocat 3y agoEngineers probably told to make a golden parachute for the execs. Engineers love a good challenge. Let's compare tensile strength of gold to silk (the original parachute material): • Ultimate tensile strength of Gold is 220 MPa • degummed natural silk fibers, with a tensile strength of 614 MPa So approximately just triple the gold thread versus silk thread. Expensive but doable. Gold may add to total weight (parachute + person) to keep floating causing velocity to increase versus silk. Attach warning label: IANA MECHENG.
- michaelcampbell 3y agoThere will be a scapegoat, and then big bonuses for everyone else for eliminating the bad seed, at the expense of the workers who won't get raises to pay for it all.
- dessimus 3y agoCalhoun opens the third envelope...
- new23d 3y agoThis is the FlightRadar24 playback of the flight: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/la800#34506b53 https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/la800#34506b53 At time ~02:27, a dip in the altitude can be seen in the flight data chart.
- Bluescreenbuddy 3y ago[flagged]
- _obviously 3y agoReal time operating systems are expensive to develop for and require laborious system validation. That's why we decided to use a custom version of Android Jelly Bean running on the latest MediaTek quad core processors featuring Arm Mali gpus. Sensor communications are handled wirelessly with BlueTooth. Be sure to turn off all electronic devices before the flight. :)
- onetimeuse92304 3y agoAll development was offshored to a lowest bidder. Thanks to this, all our critical flight control software is now developed by a single intern aided by Copilot (sic!) We are now looking for a way to optimize the intern away.
- SomeoneFromCA 3y agoIt would be nice, if someone could train stray cats. I have very smart in my neighborhood. And can be hired for cheap, basically a slice of sausage.
- Hypocritelefty 3y ago[dead]
- doodlebugging 3y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 3y agoYea I laugh at everyone try to shove AI into hardware and software design of physical products as if there's a market of engineers out there and not just hobbyists keeping things alive in the states. We've long since offshored the development of any physical products that isn't considered ITAR/defense world.
- onetimeuse92304 3y agoI think there is a great opportunity to use AI in design and development, as long as it is used correctly. Which is as tools to help engineers. At my previous workplace I wrote a documentation bot which helps people find documentation based on vague descriptions of what they are looking for (like when you know you saw something but you don't know where exactly or what the keyword is). Or by specifying what you want to accomplish. Mind, the bot would not create answers to questions, it would just ingest existing documentation and point people to things that are relevant to their searches.
- guender 3y ago[dead]
- bfrog 3y agoProbably some software written in C++ by one of those "I never write bugs" types followed by a hardware watchdog thankfully catching it and rebooting. Maybe its time to rethink software safety and verification there of? Safety in software is a bit of a joke. Document the behavior, its safe! Yeah no.
- tptacek 3y agoIf you watch The Aviation Herald, this kind of reporting feels a little like trying to write news stories off VAERS data. Crazy shit is happening more or less all the time in planes; the idea isn't that nothing ever goes wrong, but that layered controls prevent injuries or hull losses. It's not that there necessarily isn't a thru-line to these stories. And I read "Flying Blind" like everyone else and share the popular opinion of Boeing's modern engineering culture. But there's basically no content in these stories. There are experts somewhere that can put events like this into context, but they're not cited and the story isn't written around that kind of analysis, so we're left to supply it ourselves. Human nature suggests that the blanks we'll fill in will be a disaster movie, because that's "fun" to think about. https://avherald.com/h?article=5138ccfe&opt=0 https://avherald.com/h?article=5138ccfe&opt=0
- notRobot 3y agoThis is worthy of reporting. 50+ people were injured, one is in severe condition.
- tptacek 3y agoFlight control incidents that cause injuries are not hard to find on avherald. I guess I'm not saying it isn't worth reporting. Before the Boeing Narrative set in, these kinds of stories did get reported! But now they're tied into this long-running Boeing arc, and it's frustrating because there isn't enough in the story to know what's really going on.
- CyberDildonics 3y agoIf you want to be a contrarian after a whistleblower is dead and 50 people were injured, maybe you should have some real data, stats or information instead of just saying "it happens all the time".
- 627467 3y agoMaybe what most people are truly concerned is the Boeing Narrative? Increasingly more than just a narrative
- Richardcynthia 3y ago[dead]
- notRobot 3y agoFor those who haven't read the article: this was a severe failure, the plan dropped altitude suddenly, the pilot had no control, and people in the flight were literally tossed around. > About 50 people were injured in the incident, with one person in serious condition, emergency services said.
- coolThingsFirst 3y agohow come, it's the safest mode of transportation. it's just jet fuel and meat travelling in a tight tube together.
- maybelsyrup 3y agoAnyone have the tail number for the airplane involved? Is it CC-BGG? Wondering if there's any way to tell if this is one of the 787s built in South Carolina or in Washington state.
- damiankennedy 3y agoYes, it was CC-BGG that had the incident and landed in Auckland, then the flight to Santiago was cancelled.
- Havoc 3y agoYou can probably fish it off flight radar. If you have an adsb broadcaster they’ll give you a free pro subscription
- cco 3y agoLet me introduce you to two tools! The first is https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/354285 https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/354285. A fairly complete database of aviation incidents. The second is https://avherald.com/h?article=51601631&opt=256 https://avherald.com/h?article=51601631&opt=256, similar to Aviation Safety but has comments and is more like hackernews but for commercial aviation. And yes, tail number was CC-BGG.
- maybelsyrup 3y agoThanks! Either of these tools allow you to see where an airframe was assembled?
- cco 3y agoIts a 787-9 and was produced in 2015 so I think it could be either. Neither of the two tools I linked tells you which plant.
- astrange 3y agoDon't think I like the news article structure where the reporter spends half the article listing everything bad that happened recently, that isn't actually a cause of the event, but is just there to make you feel bad about who they've decided to make the article about.
- robmusial 3y agoIn the Air France flight 11 [0] situation the pilots thought they were having instrument and control issues, they had to go around, and there was much panic in the cockpit. It turned out the entire thing was pilot induced and the aircraft was fine. Because of Boeing's massive failures on the minds of everyone it'll be interesting to see if this was truly an instrumentation failure or something else. [0] https://simpleflying.com/air-france-boeing-777-serious-incident-update/ https://simpleflying.com/air-france-boeing-777-serious-incid...
- chrisbolt 3y agoReminiscent of AF447[0] which also involved pilots making conflicting inputs. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447
- bombcar 3y agoAt some point the systems are going to be so good that the second pilot is more of a liability than an asset.
- sofixa 3y agoIf you read the final incident report[1] from BEA, you'll see that there was a hardware failure - the control yokes got desynchronised from one another which isn't supposed to happen, and the pilots were therefore unaware of conflicting inputs. Worst of all, Boeing doesn't warn in any way if that happens, because why would they? Airbuses (which don't have synchronised sticks) have "dual input" warnings audio and visual warnings. They should have communicated better, but we've seen this many times - in panic situations or under pressure, communication is hard. https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/F-GSQJ_finalreport_EN.pdf https://bea.aero/fileadmin/user_upload/F-GSQJ_finalreport_EN...
- inferiorhuman 3y ago> the control yokes got desynchronised from one another which isn't supposed to happen No, that's precisely what's supposed to happen.
- seatac76 3y agoOh wow I was expecting some really bad turbulence. Saw the WSJ video of the passenger who mentioned that the pilot told him “he lost his instruments”, how does this even happen aren’t they supposed to have redundancy.
- space_oddity 3y agoI'm becoming more and more afraid of flying with each passing day. And this fear sometimes hinders my life.
- kelnos 3y agoTitle is misleading, and should be changed to match the original headline. Pilot has not reported that information directly; this is hearsay from a passenger.
- Johnny555 3y agoI remember being on a 787 not long after they were introduced and after boarding, we had a 20 minute delay because of an equipment problem that required "rebooting the plane" (the pilot's words). They did a full power shutoff, the cabin lights went off for a few minutes (and the cabin quickly warmed up because the A/C was off and the electronic window shades turned clear), then about 20 minutes later the pilot said everything was good and we were ready for departure. The rest of the flight was uneventful.
- ricardobeat 3y agoThe first versions of the Dreamliner had some kind of software bug that ended up generating a requirement of a hard reboot every X hours until it could be fixed. I don’t know if I would have the guts to board the plane after seeing that!
- bombcar 3y agoIt was a timer that overflowed, I think, and nobody had left the plane "on" without shutting it down for whatever time it took to overflow. https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/8548-reboot-your-dreamliner-every-248-days-to-avoid-integer-overflow.html https://www.i-programmer.info/news/149-security/8548-reboot-... To be fair, 248 days is quite a long time.
- wolverine876 3y agoThe Boeing story is starting to sound a bit like the crime-in-cities story. We always can find some examples somewhere due to sheer volume of Boeing planes and people in cities. However, both are very safe. We have a social problem of embracing speculation, misinformation and disinformation and movements that are little more than angry mobs, and of treating with contempt an adherence to facts and rationality. With ever more information out there, and ever more speculation, mis- and disinformation, we need to utilize the latter - the facts and rationality - more than ever. They are proven tools for distinguishing fact from all the fictions we humans have some urge to embrace. I still think Boeing has legitimate liability and responsibility, and needs to fix their manufacturing and safety situations. Airplane manufacturing can't respond only when things get worse.
- sparrc 3y agoNot really. No airplane was ever grounded by the FAA since the 1970s, when they grounded the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. Since the merger, the FAA has grounded both of Boeing's new planes (The 787 Dreamliner and the 737 Max). Boeing's safety record is objectively declining. They are shipping out airplanes with safety issues that are being found "in production". This is why their planes are being grounded (something that never happened to Boeing pre-merger).
- sio8ohPi 3y agoNumber of groundings depends on the subjective judgement of FAA employees. It's not useful as an objective measure. Christ, Boeing planes used to just spontaneously explode back in the 90s, and the only reason more people weren't killed was that two of the three had the good fortune to happen on the ground.
- sparrc 3y agoModern airplanes should be compared to what is possible in modern times with modern safety standards. If you want an objective measure then compare the Boeing Max planes to their Airbus equivalent: the A320neo. The A320 neo has had zero fatalities. This is an objective measure that Boeing should be compared against. AFAIK there have also been zero manufacturing defects at the scale of missing bolts on a door panel.
- WalterBright 3y agoOr maybe the pilot made a mistake and is trying to save face by blaming the instruments. I suggest waiting for the investigation to figure out what went wrong. For example, he could have slipped while climbing out of the seat and fell against the control column.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fransje26 3y ago> Or maybe the pilot made a mistake and is trying to save face That wouldn't be the first time
- WalterBright 3y agoLooks like I wasn't far off: "Flight attendant hit a seat switch that pushed pilot into controls during flight to New Zealand, industry officials say" https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/cockpit-mishap-might-have-caused-plunge-on-latam-boeing-787-ee3dd7b4?mod=hp_lead_pos2 https://www.wsj.com/business/airlines/cockpit-mishap-might-h...
- ricardobeat 3y agoAren’t turbulence / tailwinds / low pressure zone the only things that can cause a plane to suddenly lose lift and drop? I don’t think there’s any control input that can cause that, this story doesn’t seem to make sense.
- sio8ohPi 3y agoQuantas 72 is a flight that experienced a sudden uncommanded pitch-down (-0.8g), causing injuries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_72 So it's in principle possible. But passengers are notoriously clueless, to the point that "there was a go around and I thought we were all going to die" is practically a meme in aviation circles. Wait a few days and see what comes to light once it's investigated.
- ricardobeat 3y agoWow, I never imagined these aircraft could make violent maneuvers like this, at cruise speeds, without structural damage.
- fransje26 3y agoGood find. I was wondering it was possible.
- spiderxxxx 3y agoIce can do that too. And engine failure.
- ricardobeat 3y agoIn those cases the plane doesn't suddenly drop though? You just lose speed and start gliding.
- rootusrootus 3y agoGiven that all we have is hearsay, and we've seen many incidents like this in the past that were caused by "clear air turbulence" ... I'm going to default to assuming it was not a mechanical defect in the plane until we know otherwise. It is by far the most likely answer.
- Animats 3y agoThe 787 is full fly by wire. Was there actually a failure of the flight control system? So far, there's not much info. Overview of 787 control system.[1] [1] https://ioactive.com/reverse-engineers-perspective-on-the-boeing-787-51-days-airworthiness-directive/ https://ioactive.com/reverse-engineers-perspective-on-the-bo...
- codalan 3y agoFun fact: So is the braking. There are no hydraulic backup systems in place.
- berkut 3y agoThis sounds a bit like this issue: https://www.aviationtoday.com/2015/05/05/boeing-787-power-issue-to-receive-software-fix/ https://www.aviationtoday.com/2015/05/05/boeing-787-power-is... Which was an issue where the 787's Generator Control Units went into failsafe mode after being powered on for 248 days...
- dz0ny 3y agoOn Dec 2nd 2016 the FAA had issued their airworthiness directive AD 2016–24–09 summarizing: "We are adopting a new airworthiness directive (AD) for all The Boeing Company Model 787–8 and 787–9 airplanes. This AD requires repetitive cycling of either the airplane electrical power or the power to the three flight control modules (FCMs). This AD was prompted by a report indicating that all three FCMs might simultaneously reset if continuously powered on for 22 days. We are issuing this AD to address the unsafe condition on these products."
- nightowl_games 3y agoOh my god that is pathetic. 22 days is so short.
- fransje26 3y agoFor what it's worth, that AD got superseded in 2020, after a hardware and software update: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/09/2020-22236/airworthiness-directives-the-boeing-company-airplanes https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2020/10/09/2020-22...
- elihu 3y agoJohn Oliver did an episode on Boeing quality control just 5 days ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8oCilY4szc
- mriziq 3y agoBoeing news … meanwhile doors or flying off planes, planes are dropping mid flight … and the whistleblower is dead. What a strange time. I’m afraid of airplanes (made by Boeing) now.
- fransje26 3y agoNo. It's a turbulent time with new opportunities. When one door closes, an other door opens. Boeing.
- RoosevelLester 3y ago[dead]