5 ms·

> They had 6 more minutes to do that touch and go around if that happened 6 minutes is way out of the comfort zone. They might not have made it in that case.

scrumper 1y ago
Correct, article says they landed with 220kg which is around 6 minutes of average fuel burn over an entire flight - bit less at cruise, a hell of a lot more at takeoff/climb. So I don't think 220kg is enough to do a go-around in a 737 (well, a go-around would've been initiated with a bit more than 220kg in the tank - they burned some taxing to the gate - but you get my point.) I've read around 2,300kg for takeoff and climb on a normal flight in a 737-8. A go-around is going to use close to that, it's a full power takeoff but a much shorter climb phase up to whatever procedure is set for the airport and then what ATC tells you. I just flew 172s but even with those little things we were told, your reserve is never to be used. These people came very, very close to a disaster. Fortunately they had as much luck left as they did fuel.
- whycome 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - throwup238 1y ago
    That’s about as useful as opening a fortune cookie and reading it off as an answer. Straight from the horse’s mouth: https://web.archive.org/web/20230630013840/http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_4_08/article_05_3.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230630013840/http://www.boeing... In the first table they list 2307-2374 kg of fuel for takeoff and climb.
    - whycome 1y ago
      You’re talking to the wrong horse though. Isn’t a 737-8 the max 8 variant? It uses newer dual CFM LEAP-1B engines. How does it compare? I can’t really find the data. The spec you’re referring to is for the older 737-800. Another fortune cookie: https://www.aircraft-commerce.com/wp-content/uploads/aircraft-commerce-docs/General%20Articles/2021/137_FLTOPS.pdf https://www.aircraft-commerce.com/wp-content/uploads/aircraf... It suggests an overall savings of ~14% over the 737-800 but doesn’t look at specific takeoff/climb comparison. I wasn’t posting the LLM output as a source of truth. I was just using it to question the uncited value. And I still really don’t know the answer. If you’ve got another data source I’d love to get it.
  - lawlessone 1y ago
    ok, how do we verify that?
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
      Maybe he should ask Claude next.
    - whycome 1y ago
      That’s the point? I wasn’t suggesting it was correct. Just that the value is wildly different from their own non-cited number. The next stage was to get a citation from an actual datasheet. Their reasoning was nothing beyond “I’ve read”
  - School-Cotton 1y ago
    Why do people keep insisting on pasting LLM output to HN when every time it happens, it gets downvoted to oblivion? The community clearly doesn't want it. If we wanted to know a computer program's opinion about something, we could ask it ourselves.
    - whycome 1y ago
      I was using it to question that exact stated fuel consumption number without a citation. For hard data (like fuel consumption) getting a value from an LLM isn’t absurd.
      - distances 1y ago
        If not absurd, it's very poor form. You should never use LLM as input for a discussion, nobody wants to hear that. Use it to search for authoritative sources.
      - School-Cotton 1y ago
        It’s fine if you post an actual citation that you might have found through the LLM. Just posting AI slop is worse than useless, though, and also unpleasantly dystopian.
bluGill 1y ago
I agree, well out of comfort zones. However to my reading multiple different things went wrong to get to this point.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  That could be. We just don't know right now, but your intuition may well be correct, even if there is a single root cause there could very well be multiple contributory causes.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    They failed to land at two airports before the third. I can't say if they made the right decisions but that already is two failures.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      Go arounds are not failures.
      - bluGill 1y ago
        They are expected situations, but still a failure of the original plan.
        jacquesm 1y ago
        They are not a failure of the original plan, they are a mandatory component of the original plan that if everything is nominal never gets executed. Every pilot on approach is ready for one or even more go-arounds and they happen quite frequently for a variety of reasons. They happen a few hundred times per day at ~100 k flights.

scrumper 1y ago

Correct, article says they landed with 220kg which is around 6 minutes of average fuel burn over an entire flight - bit less at cruise, a hell of a lot more at takeoff/climb. So I don't think 220kg is enough to do a go-around in a 737 (well, a go-around would've been initiated with a bit more than 220kg in the tank - they burned some taxing to the gate - but you get my point.) I've read around 2,300kg for takeoff and climb on a normal flight in a 737-8. A go-around is going to use close to that, it's a full power takeoff but a much shorter climb phase up to whatever procedure is set for the airport and then what ATC tells you. I just flew 172s but even with those little things we were told, your reserve is never to be used. These people came very, very close to a disaster. Fortunately they had as much luck left as they did fuel.

whycome 1y ago
[flagged]
- throwup238 1y ago
  That’s about as useful as opening a fortune cookie and reading it off as an answer. Straight from the horse’s mouth: https://web.archive.org/web/20230630013840/http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/articles/qtr_4_08/article_05_3.html https://web.archive.org/web/20230630013840/http://www.boeing... In the first table they list 2307-2374 kg of fuel for takeoff and climb.
  - whycome 1y ago
    You’re talking to the wrong horse though. Isn’t a 737-8 the max 8 variant? It uses newer dual CFM LEAP-1B engines. How does it compare? I can’t really find the data. The spec you’re referring to is for the older 737-800. Another fortune cookie: https://www.aircraft-commerce.com/wp-content/uploads/aircraft-commerce-docs/General%20Articles/2021/137_FLTOPS.pdf https://www.aircraft-commerce.com/wp-content/uploads/aircraf... It suggests an overall savings of ~14% over the 737-800 but doesn’t look at specific takeoff/climb comparison. I wasn’t posting the LLM output as a source of truth. I was just using it to question the uncited value. And I still really don’t know the answer. If you’ve got another data source I’d love to get it.
- lawlessone 1y ago
  ok, how do we verify that?
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 1y ago
    Maybe he should ask Claude next.
  - whycome 1y ago
    That’s the point? I wasn’t suggesting it was correct. Just that the value is wildly different from their own non-cited number. The next stage was to get a citation from an actual datasheet. Their reasoning was nothing beyond “I’ve read”
- School-Cotton 1y ago
  Why do people keep insisting on pasting LLM output to HN when every time it happens, it gets downvoted to oblivion? The community clearly doesn't want it. If we wanted to know a computer program's opinion about something, we could ask it ourselves.
  - whycome 1y ago
    I was using it to question that exact stated fuel consumption number without a citation. For hard data (like fuel consumption) getting a value from an LLM isn’t absurd.
    - distances 1y ago
      If not absurd, it's very poor form. You should never use LLM as input for a discussion, nobody wants to hear that. Use it to search for authoritative sources.
    - School-Cotton 1y ago
      It’s fine if you post an actual citation that you might have found through the LLM. Just posting AI slop is worse than useless, though, and also unpleasantly dystopian.

bluGill 1y ago

I agree, well out of comfort zones. However to my reading multiple different things went wrong to get to this point.

jacquesm 1y ago
That could be. We just don't know right now, but your intuition may well be correct, even if there is a single root cause there could very well be multiple contributory causes.
- bluGill 1y ago
  They failed to land at two airports before the third. I can't say if they made the right decisions but that already is two failures.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    Go arounds are not failures.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      They are expected situations, but still a failure of the original plan.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        They are not a failure of the original plan, they are a mandatory component of the original plan that if everything is nominal never gets executed. Every pilot on approach is ready for one or even more go-arounds and they happen quite frequently for a variety of reasons. They happen a few hundred times per day at ~100 k flights.