[HN Gopher] The Case of the Missing Fuel: The story of the Stock...
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The Case of the Missing Fuel: The story of the Stockport air
disaster
Author : yarapavan
Score : 68 points
Date : 2022-10-25 15:17 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (admiralcloudberg.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (admiralcloudberg.medium.com)
| ddulaney wrote:
| 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-...
|
| Nobody dies, the pilots do exactly the right thing, and the
| system works! Also, the failure mode and investigation is super
| in-depth.
| puffoflogic wrote:
| That 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.
| sq_ wrote:
| I 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.
| permo-w wrote:
| I hate it when articles do this. 90% of the story, with a
| cockteasing line about why the plane went down, then CUT to the
| full story in extremely deep detail. I understand that the author
| is trying to circumvent short attention spans by writing a short
| version to draw the reader into the long version, but please
| don't information bait
|
| give the information in the beginning and then _I'll_ decide if I
| want to know a detailed history of the company the plane was
| owned by, or all the alternative names of the model
| tantalor wrote:
| In paragraph 106,
|
| > it was possible to accidentally transfer fuel between the
| Argonaut's eight fuel tanks, potentially cutting off one or
| more engines from its fuel supply, without anyone noticing
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| https://scribe.rip/74685ae96cb3
| lallysingh wrote:
| Looks like a study of adding more controls vs likelihood of
| screwing things up. Are modern fuel transfer systems this
| complicated?
| rtkwe wrote:
| We've learned a lot in interface design since then and
| partially because of accidents like this. There's a couple
| reasons a situation like this is probably highly unlikely; on a
| 737-800 for example the fuel pump controls and panel are now
| part of the overhead controls [0] now, the feed controls aren't
| analogue so you can't accidentally have it partially open to
| the crossfeed position, and finally the fuel levels and
| operation are computer monitored now so if you were getting
| dangerously low on fuel you'd get warnings.
|
| [0] https://i.stack.imgur.com/vw59I.png
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| >We've learned a lot in interface design since then and
| partially because of accidents like this
|
| But if you have any illusions that such a thing couldn't
| happen again look no further then the 737 MAX disasters. It
| shows how decades of stringent safety standards and lessons
| learned can be ignored in order for a company to earn a few
| dollars.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Sure issues can recur but this specific problem is highly
| unlikely to because the issues that lead to it don't exist.
| Valves aren't directly actuated any more so it's impossible
| to leave them in a cross-feed configuration without leaving
| the switch in that position. Also planes can fly with half
| their engines out now so even if you did lose an engine to
| accidentally starving it of fuel today the plane would
| still make it back to land. So much of the design and
| engineering that lead to this problem just don't exist in
| modern planes.
|
| The MAX problem also wasn't a recurring problem it was a
| new one driven by money because of the huge incentive to
| maintain type compatibility so Boeing or it's customers
| wouldn't need to completely retrain all the pilots with
| 737-* type ratings. That combined with the flimsy
| regulation and oversight provided by the FAA let a safety
| critical system through with only one sensor driving it's
| function.
| worik wrote:
| > Sure issues can recur but this specific problem is
| highly unlikely to because
|
| These days the automated system to maintain fuel to the
| engines would fail when the sensor in the fuel tanks
| malfunctions. It would pump fuel overboard trying to pump
| fuel from an empty tank into a full one.
|
| Obviously I made that up. The 737-max debacle shows us
| that we are past peak safety of aeroplanes. We rely too
| much, now, on automated computer systems which we
| (computer programmers) know are very expensive to get
| right. It is much cheaper to have them "almost perfect".
| jefftk wrote:
| _> we are past peak safety of aeroplanes_
|
| I'd bet against that. Deaths per passenger mile have been
| decreasing continually for decades: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/File:Fatalities_per_revenue_pa...
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| I remember reading something similar before, where I think the
| B-17 had very similar flaps/landing gear controls, and placed
| close together on the panel, where pilots on short final would
| pull one lever rather than the other
| https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/b-17-crashes-due-to-co...
| jabl wrote:
| One wonders how many WWII planes were lost in 'freak' accidents
| like these during the war, the cause never being investigated
| thoroughly since, heck, there was massive carnage going on all
| the time in the skies and as long as the accident rate was low
| enough it was acceptable.
| p_l wrote:
| I've read at least one writeup from 1960s about A-3
| Skywarrior ending up crashing while practicing touch-and-go
| (where you touchdown, then immediately take off again to do
| another practice round).
|
| The pilot has accidentally released the drag chute instead of
| stowing landing gear, because the controls for both were a)
| similar b) located near each other c) not clearly visible
| from left seat.
|
| Afterwards, the drag chute release was moved way elsewhere.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| I thought his might be another case [1] where there was an
| imperial to metric conversion problem that led to insufficient
| fuel on board and a semi miraculous glide down landing where
| thankfully everyone walked away. The story is far more nuanced on
| examination and for those interested Tim Harford [2] has an
| excellent Cautionary Tales podcast episode outlining the details
| within a wider context.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1983/07/30/us/jet-s-fuel-ran-out-
| aft...
|
| [2] https://timharford.com/2022/09/cautionary-tales-when-the-
| pla...
| cperciva wrote:
| See also the Azores Glider, where a fuel leak was made worse by
| rebalancing the fuel between tanks -- resulting in both engines
| dying instead of just one.
|
| Fortunately the story of the Azores Glider has a happy ending;
| that set a record for the longest unpowered glide in a passenger
| aircraft, at 121 km, and made a successful emergency landing with
| no fatalities and only two serious injuries.
| atdrummond wrote:
| These kind of incidents are why most commercial-use three/four
| engine planes usually had flight engineers. The DC-3 and DC-4
| were exceptions; the Boeing 307 and 377, DC-6, DC-7, and
| Constellation reciprocating engine models all required engineers.
| Likewise many early three and four engined jets also were flown
| with engineers. See: Boeing 707, 727, early 747, DC-8, DC-10,
| L-1011.
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(page generated 2022-10-25 23:01 UTC)