[HN Gopher] A pilot crashed a full passenger jet into the bay, d...
___________________________________________________________________
A pilot crashed a full passenger jet into the bay, didn't lose his
job (2021)
Author : Stratoscope
Score : 43 points
Date : 2024-12-17 18:40 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.sfgate.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.sfgate.com)
| Stratoscope wrote:
| This was the interesting part for me:
|
| > When asked what went wrong, he simply replied, "As you
| Americans say ... I f--ked up."
|
| > Captain Asoh's frankness and self deprecation helped him
| preserve his career. Rather than get fired, as was expected, the
| airline merely demoted him to copilot, before allowing him to
| work his way back up to captain a few years later. He went on to
| captain hundreds more flights, all of which landed successfully.
|
| > The "I f--ked up" reasoning, or what became more eloquently
| known in legal circles as "The Asoh Defense" is used to prove
| that sometimes a frank admission of guilt is the easiest way out
| of a pickle.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Reminds me of a case in healthcare, where a hospital found
| genuine apologies were way more effective than stonewalling to
| try and avoid liability.
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/saying-sorry-pays...
|
| > When a treatment goes wrong at a U.S. hospital, fear of a
| lawsuit usually means "never daring to say you're sorry."
|
| > That's not the way it works at the University of Michigan
| Health System, where lawyers and doctors say admitting mistakes
| up front and offering compensation before being sued have
| brought about remarkable savings in money, time and feelings.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| But they have to be genuine, not "We found the button to
| press to get the best result."
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Plenty of people can fake genuineness. It doesn't _have_ to
| be genuine to be effective, it just has to be well
| received.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Joel Spolsky wrote about this roughly 20 years ago on
| JoelOnSoftware. IIRC, he hired a locksmith to copy a key and
| the key didn't work. After the third (and likely final,
| because of how irritated he was getting) try going back to
| the shop, the locksmith took a closer look at it and said,
| "I'm sorry, I see where I went wrong." Instantly, situation
| defused from major annoyance to "OK, this guy just made a
| mistake, I'll try it again."
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I wish more people knew this... it actually works amazing.
| Taking responsibility for your mistakes and, better yet,
| explaining exactly what went wrong and how you will prevent it
| in the future almost always turns out better, and builds more
| respect and trust than trying to deny or shift the blame as is
| usually done. Learning this radically improved my career
| progression, and personal relationships. It also takes the
| power away from people that would use it to manipulate or
| control you.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| " If the plane had come down in any other part of the bay, such
| as the 30-foot deep waters to its east or the dry flats to the
| west, Flight 2 would have either sunk, or likely set ablaze"
|
| Wait wait wait, plane fuselages don't naturally float? I always
| assumed they did?
| parl_match wrote:
| They do for a bit...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I doubt they are water tight, so eventually they'd fill with
| water. It's not like they're designed for space and need to
| be perfectly sealed
| ipaddr wrote:
| You have about 20 minutes depending on the plane and it
| being upright. The Hudson plane stayed up for 24 minutes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, depends how hard you hit, and people need to get out...
| Water is not soft at ~150 knots; even Flight 1549 in the
| Hudson's perfect ditching resulted in the plane sinking when
| they opened the doors.
|
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:US_Air_Flight_1549_r...
|
| In this case, the ditching wasn't really _intentional_ (the
| Hudson flight knew they were going down; this one just... flew
| into the sea due to fog), so it could have looked more like
| this if they were less lucky:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ditching_of_Ethiopian_Air...
|
| Per Wiki:
|
| > Asoh later stated that he realized the plane was too low once
| he spotted the water after the plane broke through the fog with
| an air speed of 177 mi/h (285 km/h). He grabbed the control
| stick to gain altitude and advanced the throttles in
| anticipation of having to abort the landing and perform a go-
| around, but the plane's main landing gear had already struck
| the water...
|
| The Hudson flight was very challenging flying, but they did
| have four minutes of "we're going down", and enough time before
| "we're going down _in the water_ " to do things like raise the
| gear.
| fsckboy wrote:
| flight 1549 took on a fair amount of water, but did not sink
| completely
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/submechanophobia/comments/7qse0g/us.
| ..
|
| maybe it would have had it not been tied up, but it never
| did.
| gandalfian wrote:
| DC-8 a 1950's jet in 1968 so modern buoyancy may not have
| applied. Everyone made it to shore without getting wet and the
| airplane was back in the air within a year. Remarkable.
| d_silin wrote:
| "...Captain Asoh somehow managed to guide the plane onto the
| water and into the mud below without a single injury to the 100
| adults and seven children on board, beyond a bloody nose."
|
| A+ landing: zero fatalities and your airplane can take-off again
| on the same day.
|
| B landing: zero fatalities.
| lisper wrote:
| The standard joke among pilots is: if you can walk away, it was
| a good landing. If you can re-use the plane, it was a great
| landing.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Then this must count as a great landing!
|
| > While everyone aboard safely went about their strange day
| after the crash, the plane was left with $4 million of
| damage, though it was fixed up and flying again less than 12
| months later.
| bluGill wrote:
| For those of us who are not pilots, but have played with
| flight simulators: in case of an emergency where we have to
| take the controls the airplane already belongs to the
| insurance company, try to save your own life.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > Captain Asoh was the last to leave, and returned to the plane
| after ensuring everyone was safely ashore to gather and return
| the passengers' personal belongings.
|
| > A language barrier between Captain Asoh, who spoke little
| English, and his American copilot, Joseph Hazen, was also
| partially to blame, as the pair attempted to use a new instrument
| landing system for the first time. But at the NTSB investigation,
| Asoh chose not to blame any of those factors or make any excuses.
| When asked what went wrong, he simply replied, "As you Americans
| say ... I f--ked up."
|
| Talk about being responsible for ones actions. This man is a
| model.
| bluGill wrote:
| > pair attempted to use a new instrument landing system for the
| first time
|
| This is the real root cause: insufficient training. They should
| have both used the system before in training situations on a
| nice day when they can look out the window if they don't
| understand something. Unless they are test pilots for the maker
| of the landing system (which they were not because this was not
| a test situation) they should have had a qualified trainer
| teach them how to use the system and plenty of hours of in the
| simulators using this system in situations much harder than the
| one they encountered.
| zabzonk wrote:
| "I f*cked up" is something I've had to say several times in my
| career as a dev. It's in the nature of things.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-12-17 23:00 UTC)