[HN Gopher] Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir fli...
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Masks, Smoke, and Mirrors: The story of EgyptAir flight 804
Author : gdmt
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-12-24 19:39 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (admiralcloudberg.medium.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (admiralcloudberg.medium.com)
| geocrasher wrote:
| TL;DR: In the end, the BEA concluded that the
| most likely cause of the crash was an unknown mechanical failure
| inside the first officer's oxygen distribution system, resulting
| in a rapidly spreading, oxygenated fire that could not be
| extinguished by the crew. The flight crew was either
| incapacitated or was unable to return to the cockpit, causing the
| flight path to become uncontrolled after the autopilot
| disconnected. [5:590]
| soapboxrocket wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of the UPS Flight 6 that crashed in 2010. Wasn't
| the cause of the fire, but the fire heated up the co-pilots
| oxygen system to the point he couldn't wear it and eventually
| succumbed to smoke hypoxia. Due to smoke in the cabin the pilot
| couldn't see his flight deck readouts or out the window and
| eventually crashed into the ground.
| veeti wrote:
| From the same author:
| https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/alone-in-the-inferno-the...
| dmckeon wrote:
| Tragedy from a Swiss cheese failure - several small
| holes/failures all line up. The issue of halon extinguishers
| versus oxygen-powered combustion producing many toxins while
| failing to extinguish is interesting - good that:
|
| > Halon fire extinguishers are scheduled to be phased out of most
| commercial aircraft by the end of 2025.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| That's more because of the ozone layer.
|
| While it's not good to use halon in a semi contained space like
| an airplane, it is incredibly effective at killing fire. It
| really sucks the heat out of it. Thus in most cases the fire is
| killed quickly and not much toxins are produced. This is
| important too because fire itself produces a lot of lethal
| toxins too, most people in a fire don't burn to death but get
| poisoned by the smoke.
|
| So it's a big loss imo. I understand why because it's one of
| the most potent ozone layer killers. But still.. you're not
| using the stuff unless you have no other choice. If you're not
| using it it doesn't end up in the environment.
|
| In this case it didn't work because the cargo bay in question
| was not fitted with extinguishers if I remember correctly.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| On a somewhat related note, Egyptian science tends to suffer from
| a massive scientific misconduct (fraud) problem - see for example
| this paper by Egyptian authors, which covers the medical field:
|
| https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.02.20.23286195v...
|
| Maybe the attitude towards "truth vs. face" is similar in
| Egyptian governmental institutions.
|
| Egypt in general is a low-trust society, scoring lower than India
| or Russia, though not much lower than usual in Africa.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/iab8r7/social_trus...
|
| This indicates that lived experience of the Egyptians themselves,
| when it comes to trusting others, is somewhat bad.
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Of course it is, it's a brutal military dictatorship where the
| last (and only) democratically elected leader was overthrown by
| the army and died in prison.
|
| Those kinds of systems, where people are convinced their
| opinions and convictions don't matter, lead to problems like
| this
| ngneer wrote:
| A rather well-written piece. My takeaway is that the French
| investigators are pros and the Egyptians are hacks. And that
| safety culture matters. One must not bend the facts to draw a
| desired conclusion. One must review the data without bias, or
| else recuse oneself.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > My takeaway is that the French investigators are pros and the
| Egyptians are hacks
|
| Describing them as "hacks" is weird. In most dictatorships, the
| concern is usually "What does the country's leadership want the
| official story to be" rather than "What actually happened".
| Take this quote from the article for example
|
| > "In my opinion, the problem with the report is that it
| appears to treat the findings of the Triple Committee -- the
| group appointed by the public prosecutor's office -- as the
| unquestioned truth, and fails to push back on any of its
| assertions, even the ones that they disagreed with. Instead,
| because the Triple Committee concluded that a bomb in the
| galley was the cause of the crash, the EAAID bent itself into a
| pretzel trying to make the evidence fit that theory.
| Unfortunately, we don't know why the Triple Committee and the
| EAAID chose to die on this hill"
|
| EgyptAir is a government owned enterprise. It's managed by the
| "Ministry of Civil Aviation" who's head is always some general
| or commander from the Air Force. If the EAAID investigators
| were allowed to say that there was a "faulty equipment" then a
| lot of questions would have had to be answered. A lot of
| questions that have the possibility of embarrassing people all
| the way up the chain (especially that as mentioned, that
| particular oxygen mask was reported faulty from another
| aircraft and removed for maintenance before, and the crew
| frequently reported that the pilot oxygen supply always
| decreases on every flight).
|
| Saying "it was terrorists" is something that no one has to feel
| embarrassed about. In fact in 2016 the Egyptian government were
| in the midst of a lot of arrests and suspension of most
| freedoms to "curb terrorist activities". And such thing plays
| well into that narrative.
|
| Are you an EAAID investigator who wants to say "it was a faulty
| oxygen mask"? Ok. How do you fancy you, your brother, cousin,
| and neighbor spending the next 15-30 years in jail pending
| investigation on conspiracy against the country?
| mmooss wrote:
| Does anyone know the author's background? All I see is 'analyzer
| of plane crashes'.
| buildbot wrote:
| She is I believe a pilot, and has been doing this for years and
| years on (originally?) reddit, in great depth and detail. She
| also has a really fun podcast with two other people called
| controlled pod into terrain.
| macintux wrote:
| A little information:
| https://www.patreon.com/admiral_cloudberg/about
| sofixa wrote:
| She's one of the best, extremely thorough, and works as a
| researcher for another very good air crash investigator,
| Mentour Pilot (YouTube channel).
| Klathmon wrote:
| I'm sorry this isn't on topic, but I'm done with websites that
| pop a full screen modal right when the page loads asking to
| subscribe or some bullshit.
|
| I just instantly hit the back button now.
| blueflow wrote:
| See https://avherald.com/h?article=4987fb09/0018 for a technical
| view.
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(page generated 2024-12-24 23:00 UTC)