[HN Gopher] UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
___________________________________________________________________
UPS plane crashes near Louisville airport
Author : jnsaff2
Score : 353 points
Date : 2025-11-04 23:10 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (avherald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (avherald.com)
| haunter wrote:
| Video of the crash, left (?) engine was already engulfed in
| flames while taking off
|
| https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
|
| https://xcancel.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
|
| Edit: just the mp4
| https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1985845862409334784/pu/...
|
| There is an incredible amount of ground damage! Just wow, this is
| very bad https://files.catbox.moe/3303ob.jpg
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| UPS2976
|
| https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/UPS2976
| justsid wrote:
| The damage on the ground is scary to look at. I think the only
| silver lining here is that it was "just" a sparser industrial
| area and there weren't any homes. I'm really curious about what
| the investigation will reveal in a few months. This doesn't
| look like a "regular" engine fire from a bird strike or so, you
| would normally expect the flames to come out the back and not
| over the wing. And at least in theory the MD-11 should be
| flyable with just two engines, although flames on a wing is
| probably "really really bad" just by itself already. Too early
| to speculate about what happened though.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > And at least in theory the MD-11 should be flyable with
| just two engines
|
| Flying with two engines and taking off without an engine in a
| loaded aircraft are two very different things. A lot more
| thrust is needed during takeoff than after.
| andy99 wrote:
| I specifically remember watching a flight test doing an
| aggressive takeoff and having the voiceover say that
| aircraft (two engine) need to have enough power to take off
| full with one engine. And so can take off very steeply
| empty with two engines. Would that not also be the case for
| these planes?
| justsid wrote:
| Yes, planes are designed to be able to take off with a
| lost engine. Usually this will extend the roll a bit
| because the speeds are different for engine out
| operations. This isn't the first MD-11 with an engine out
| take off, 5 years ago a FedEx MD-11 took off with a
| failure in the left engine[1]. Slightly different case,
| obviously, but it's certainly something that is accounted
| for when designing planes.
|
| [1] https://www.avherald.com/h?article=4dfd50b9&opt=0%20
| bobthepanda wrote:
| That being said, depending on _how_ you lose the engine
| it can really mess up the takeoff; AA191 was lost when an
| engine detached from the plane on takeoff and took out
| part of the wing and hydraulic system with it. https://en
| .wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191
| anonymars wrote:
| > when an engine detached from the plane on takeoff...
|
| https://imgur.com/a/NYlrLYO
|
| https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/757091156717862935
| /14...
|
| Source: https://reddit.com/r/flying/comments/1ooms7t/ksdf
| _accident/n...
| rob74 wrote:
| Yes, the takeoff roll will be longer, the climb will be
| much more shallow, but it is possible to take off with
| one out of two engines (and obviously also with two out
| of three). Of course, after successful takeoff, the plane
| should turn around and land as soon as possible.
|
| In this case however, with the wing already on fire (the
| engine is below the wing, so flames coming out of it
| would be visible behind and under the wing, not in
| front), I'm afraid that even if they had managed to take
| off, the fuel tank would have exploded or burned through
| the wing before they would have had a chance to land.
| Actually, this looks similar to the 2000 Concorde
| crash...
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| All planes are definitely capable of taking off safely
| even if they lose an engine at the worst time. Whatever
| happened here, I would be shocked if lack of thrust in
| the 2 remaining engines was a significant factor unless
| someone really screwed up the load calculations and they
| were overweight for conditions.
| dboreham wrote:
| Lack of thrust in the "taken out by debris" sense seems
| to be the case here.
| lazide wrote:
| Single engine planes (GA, and some military planes) don't
| handle this condition well at all.
|
| In fact, for awhile (maybe still the case), the #1 killer
| of skydivers was single engine failure on takeoff from
| the jump plane (and similar aircraft failures), not
| accidents 'while skydiving'.
| avalys wrote:
| Every multi-engine airliner is designed to be able to take
| off safely even if an engine fails at a critical moment.
| What might have happened in this case is that the mechanism
| of failure of one engine caused damaged or interfered with
| the operation of another engine (via smoke, debris, etc.),
| and taking off with two engines degraded is not part of the
| design criteria.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Some engine failures can't be contained within the
| cowling, like turbine disc rupture. Probably something
| like this happened where fragments punctured the
| surrounding wing structure and/or fuel tanks.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I do think 'engine fails' and 'engine has left the
| building' are two different categories of problems. Even
| if the rear engine was working I'm going to assume this
| craft would have crashed, probably just farther down
| range.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Taking off with one engine inoperative (on a multi-engine
| aircraft, obviously - you aren't going to get anywhere with
| your only engine gone) _is_ completely normal /within
| design parameters, albeit undesirable.
|
| In fact, it being normal almost certainly contributed to
| the scale of this accident, since a single engine failure
| during the takeoff roll isn't considered enough of an
| emergency to reject the takeoff at high speed (past a
| certain speed, you only abort if the aircraft is literally
| unflyable - for everything else, you take the aircraft &
| emergency into the air and figure it out there). The crew
| wouldn't have had any way to know that one of their engines
| had not simply failed, but was straight-up _gone_ with
| their wing on fire to boot.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > The crew wouldn't have had any way to know that one of
| their engines had not simply failed, but was straight-up
| gone with their wing on fire to boot.
|
| I don't know about the MD-11 itself, but other aircraft
| from that time period have sensors to detect and report
| overheat and fire in various parts of the aircraft,
| including engines and wings.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| I'm sure they knew there was an issue, but I don't think
| the sensors can differentiate between "your engine is on
| fire, but if you can shut it down quickly, everything
| will be cool." and "half your entire wing is on fire and
| your engine is pouring flame out the front/top instead of
| the back"
| positron26 wrote:
| This puts an impractical amount of faith in the sensor
| wiring when the whole pylon and cowling are shredded.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| I don't know what the MD-11 would have had, again I
| didn't work on it. But the systems used for other
| aircraft would have reported an alarm based on what I saw
| in the video, at least they were designed to do that. The
| LRU receiving the sensor inputs wouldn't typically be in
| the wing and would be able to continue reporting the
| alarm condition even if the sensors fail. In fact, the
| lack of current from the sensor (for the systems I worked
| on) would have been enough to trigger the alarm if the
| sensor were completely eliminated.
| positron26 wrote:
| No reading is not quite the same as "hot", but I'm sure
| it did contribute to discerning simple compressor stall
| to whatever this was.
| krisoft wrote:
| It is a very practical amount of fait.
|
| There are two fire detection loops for each engine.[1]
| Even if both fails (because they get shredded as you say
| it) the system will report an engine fire if the two
| loops fail within 5s of each other. (Or FIRE DET
| (1,2,3,or APU) FAIL, if they got shredded with more than
| 5s in between without any fire indications in between.)
|
| The detection logic is implemented directly below the
| cockpit. So that unlikely to have shredded at the same
| time. But even if the detection logic would have died
| that would also result in a fire alarm. (as we learned
| from the March 31, 2002 Charlotte incident.)[2]
|
| In other words it is a very reliable system.
|
| 1: page 393 https://randomflightdatabase.fr/Documents/Man
| uel%20Aviation/...
|
| 2: https://www.fss.aero/accident-
| reports/dvdfiles/US/2002-03-31...
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Well, there's a very big difference between "Engine fire:
| some of the combustion chamber's heat and flame has
| breached containment" and, say, "Engine fire: the engine
| has exploded, catastrophically damaging your wing which
| is now visibly on fire". However, both things are
| reported in the cockpit as ENG FIRE.
|
| There's also a very big difference between "Engine
| failure: something has damaged or jammed enough
| components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast
| enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and
| "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the
| aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust".
| However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG
| FAIL.
|
| (Un)fortunately, cockpit warnings prioritise the what (so
| to speak) and not the how or why. On one hand, this makes
| decision-making a lot simpler for the crew, but on the
| other...well, in rare cases the lack of insight can
| exacerbate a disaster. Depending on when exactly the
| engine gave out, this poor crew might have been doomed
| either way, but they might have been able to minimise
| collateral damage if they knew just how badly crippled
| the aircraft was. And there was a very similar accident
| to this one (actually involving the predecessor of the
| MD-11, the DC-10), American Airlines 191 - one of the
| engines detached from the aircraft, damaging the leading
| edge of its wing in the process, causing that wing to
| stall when the crew slowed down below the stall speed of
| the damaged wing in a bid to climb. If they could have
| somehow known about the damage, the accident might have
| been avoided entirely as the crew might have known to
| keep their speed up.
| eternityforest wrote:
| Could they add cameras to solve this issue?
| roryirvine wrote:
| During engine failure / fire situations, I would expect
| that pilots are likely to be too busy to have any time
| left over for peering at a video feed, trying to assess
| the state of the wing.
|
| In emergencies, information overload tends to make things
| worse, not better.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like rearview
| mirrors would be helpful. It does not add that much
| workload if you take a quick glance in the "mirror" and
| figure out what the problem exactly is.
|
| And now we have technology that allows for cameras
| everywhere to give a better situational awareness across
| all critical aircraft surfaces and systems.
|
| It is going to take a little bit of adjusting to, but it
| will help improve safety in a tremendous way.
| cedilla wrote:
| This would need to be tested. There's a lot going on
| already during normal take-offs. Now you're in a
| situation where the engine fire alarm is going off,
| probably a few other alarms, you got so many messages on
| your display that it only shows the most urgent one,
| you're taking quick glances at 50 points in the cockpit
| already.
|
| And how would the cameras even work? Are the pilots
| supposed to switch between multiple camera feeds, or do
| we install dozens of screens? And then what, they see
| lots of black smoke on one camera, does that really tell
| them that much more than the ENG FIRE alert blaring in
| the background?
|
| Maybe this could help during stable flight, but in this
| situation, when the pilots were likely already overloaded
| and probably had only a few seconds to escape this
| situation - if it was possible at all - I can't imagine
| it being helpful.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| You know how the tail camera works on the new planes?
| Something like that, which can be far away from the
| wings, but get the full picture. Am I saying it's the
| solution for everything? No. But after you go through the
| memory committed items during an emergency, you can take
| a look outside and be like "ah, I see better what the
| problem is".
|
| If we don't try to see how it goes, we won't know if it
| is a good idea or not.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It'd certainly need more thought put into it than just
| showing the camera view from the entertainment system.
| Either just one camera on the tail pointed forwards, so
| you have one single camera that can show the whole plane,
| or two cameras in the front, one pointed at each wing.
| Two cameras is worse than one, but they are less likely
| to be affected by smoke or blood splatters or whatever.
| Maybe give each pilot one of the camera feeds. And you'd
| have to fit a dedicated screen for the video feed so
| pilots don't need to switch through screens in an
| emergency.
|
| It'd take lots of testing and engineering. But especially
| in cases where you have multiple warnings going off I
| imagine that a quick view at an exterior camera can often
| give you a clearer/faster indication of the situation
| krisoft wrote:
| > Having cameras pointed at the engines/wings like
| rearview mirrors would be helpful.
|
| Helpful in what way? What are the pilots going to do with
| the information?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| They won't have to rely on cabin crew description of what
| they see over the wings or have to send one of the pilots
| to take a look (see UA1175).
| sim7c00 wrote:
| its super weird to me this isn't a thing, and there's
| resistence to the idea. I mean, if they are already
| masters at glacing at 100000 differnent indicators and
| warning messages etc. and processing them at super speeds
| (they really do!) then i'd say a monitor with a bunch of
| buttons below it to switch feeds (maybe a little more
| elaborate, but not tooo...) would be helpful.
|
| the problem might be getting trained and experienced
| pilots to adjust to it since they are already in a
| certain flow of habits and skills to apply in their job,
| but new pilots surely could learn it as they aren't so
| set on their ways yet and have the opportunity to build
| this new data into their skillset / habits.
| bronson wrote:
| Pilots are already overloaded so we can probably overload
| them a little more?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Look, information overload is a real problem. Medical
| devices are an analogous industry in that in an emergency
| nurses and doctors are getting completely bombarded with
| alarm tones, flashing lights, noise, and also whatever is
| going on with the patient. There are standards in that
| industry governing how you alarm, what your alarm tones
| sound like, what colors you're supposed to use, how fast
| you're supposed to flash, and so on. And people still
| miss alarms because there are still a ton of them all
| going off at once.
|
| People have an upper limit on their capacity to take in
| information, and that limit goes down when they are
| moving quickly to solve problems. Throwing more
| information at them in those moments increases the risk
| that they will take in the wrong information, disregard
| more important information, and make really bad
| decisions.
|
| So no, it's not cut and dried like you're thinking.
| cmurf wrote:
| The entire event was over in less than a minute, and
| during that time there's only one thing pilots are
| working on: maintaining what little control they have,
| and gaining as much altitude as possible without loss of
| control.
|
| This is consuming all mental processing, there are no
| spare cycles.
|
| This wasn't a salvageable situation by having more
| information after the engine separated. If a sensor could
| have provided a warning of engine failure well before V1,
| that would be helpful.
|
| I expect the questions will focus on what information
| existed that should have resulted in aborting the
| takeoff. Not what information was needed to continue.
| krisoft wrote:
| Okay. So you mean in general it would help in some cases.
| Not that in this case it would have helped.
|
| > see UA1175
|
| I'm familiar with the case you are mentioning. I'm also
| aware that they sent a jump seater to look at the engine.
| But did seeing the engine provide them with any
| actionable information? Did they fly the airplane
| differently than if they would have just seen the
| indications available in the cockpit?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Yes, the cameras would not have helped here, but it
| dorsn't mean they are useless in general.
|
| Stupid car analogy: airbags help in most cases, but not
| all. Are they useless?
|
| Regarding UA1175, they had someone extra, but not all
| flights happen to have someone extra in the cockpit.
| krisoft wrote:
| > airbags help in most cases, but not all.
|
| Excellent. So in what cases does seeing the engine
| visually do help? So far we discussed UPS2976 and UA1175
| where the presence or absence of the camera didn't change
| the outcome.
|
| > Regarding UA1175, they had someone extra, but not all
| flights happen to have someone extra in the cockpit.
|
| You are dancing around my question. What does the pilot
| do differently based on what they see? If you can't
| articulate a clear "pilot sees X they do Y, pilot sees Z
| they do Q" flow then what is the video good for?
|
| in a sibling thread you say "There are countless
| situations where it can be helpful." But you haven't
| named even one of those countless situations yet.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Let's say there is a case like UA1175: - they can see how
| damaged the engine is - they can see if the wing is
| damaged in any way (over and under) - is there any other
| damage to the aircraft (like there was a piece of
| shrapnel that hit the plane)
|
| In other situations: - are the wheels out when the
| sensors say they are not - have a way to visually inspect
| critical parts of the plane while in flight (so you don't
| have to do a flyover and the tower to look with
| binoculars at the airplane)
|
| This is what comes to mind now.
|
| Happy? Or am I still dancing?
| filleduchaos wrote:
| > So far we discussed UPS2976 and UA1175 where the
| presence or absence of the camera didn't change the
| outcome
|
| To be fair, the presence of a camera _might_ have changed
| the outcome of UPS2976. Depending on when the fire
| developed fully, rejecting the takeoff based on the sheer
| size of the fireball on the wing might have led to fewer
| casualties on the ground. This is of course under the
| assumption of a world where a camera feed is a normal
| part of the flight deck instruments and there is a
| standard for the pilot monitoring to make judgments based
| on it.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Yes, the cameras would not have helped here, but it
| dorsn't mean they are useless in general._
|
| I think that statement needs the support of actual
| evidence. Air incident investigation agencies make
| detailed reports of the causes of crashes, with specific,
| targeted recommendations to help ensure that similar
| incidents don't recur.
|
| If we haven't seen recommendations for cameras like that,
| then I think it's reasonable to assume that the actual
| experts here have determined that cameras would not be
| helpful.
| lazide wrote:
| Sure, but in this situation there is zero time for any of
| that.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| There are countless situations where it can be helpful.
| You don't have to focus on a particular one where this
| would not be of any use.
| lazide wrote:
| Sure, but we're literally in the thread discussing the
| exact situation it wouldn't be helpful in haha
| zuppy wrote:
| They surely can and this has been done. On one the
| flights that I took with Turkish Airlines they had a few
| video streams from different sides of the airplane. One
| was from the top of the tail and you could see the entire
| plane.
|
| Now... not sure how much that is helpful in this kind of
| emergency, they really didn't have time to do much.
| fredoralive wrote:
| I'm not sure they usually have the views on screen in the
| cockpit in flight, even if available (and an old MD-11
| freighter won't have the cameras in the first place). The
| picture of an A380 cockpit (on the ground) on Wikipedia
| does show the tail view on a screen, but its on the
| screen normally used for main instruments. With an A380
| that had an uncontained engine failure causing various
| bits of havok (Qantas 32?) IIRC the passengers could see
| a fuel leak on the in flight entertainment screens, but
| they had to tell the crew as AFAIK they didn't have
| access to the view in the cockpit in flight.
| ragazzina wrote:
| > There's also a very big difference between "Engine
| failure: something has damaged or jammed enough
| components that the turbines are no longer spinning fast
| enough to produce thrust or drive the generators" and
| "Engine failure: the engine is no longer attached to the
| aircraft, which is why it is no longer producing thrust".
| However, both things are reported in the cockpit as ENG
| FAIL.
|
| What is the difference?
| HPsquared wrote:
| Wider effects like damage to the wing or changes to
| aerodynamics.
|
| Edit: and damage to other engines, possibly engine #2 in
| the tail ingesting debris in this instance.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's the biggest, the weight gone entirely unbalances
| the plane; if you knew exactly what happened you MIGHT be
| able to keep it level (and it seems they did for a bit)
| but eventually airspeed drops, it tips, and cartwheels
| (which is apparently what it did from the videos).
| Modified3019 wrote:
| The aircraft hit the roof of a UPS warehouse, barely
| clearing it before coming down in the parking
| lot/junkyard nearby. So when we see it turning over in
| its last seconds (like the trucker dash cam video), it
| only had one wing at that point.
| beerandt wrote:
| Deadweight or no-weight engine is a relatively negligible
| problem in terms of the weight-balance envelope.
|
| Cut fuel & hydraulic lines near that engine (that affect
| the other engines/ apus) (or less likely structural or
| aerodynamic problems) is what's going to shift this from
| "engine failure" recoverable problem to a global
| nonrecoverable one.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >What is the difference?
|
| Wanting to be in the air vs wanting to over-run the end
| of the runway.
| singleshot_ wrote:
| Hydraulic pressure
| mvkel wrote:
| It's the difference between "I can't walk because my leg
| fell asleep"
|
| and
|
| "I can't walk because I have no legs"
| kelnos wrote:
| I think too many of us are used to movies and TV (and
| Star-Trek-like scifi) that gives the incorrect view that
| extremely detailed information about the state of things
| is available.
|
| The notification in the cockpit is likely nothing more
| than "ENG 2 FIRE" or similar. That could mean anything
| from "the fire is minor enough and we're at high enough
| speed that it's significantly safer to take off and then
| make an emergency landing", to "the engine has exploded
| and the wing is on fire and catastrophically damaged, so
| even though aborting takeoff now is dangerous and will
| likely cause us to overrun the runway, trying to continue
| would be worse".
|
| It's a judgment call by the pilot to guess which of these
| is the case (or any possibility in between), and given
| the probabilities of various failure modes, I think it's
| fair for a pilot to assume it's something closer to the
| former than the latter.
| roygbiv2 wrote:
| Looks like a compressor stall on number two engine two
| seconds into the video.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| I don't know, that looks like a lot more than just a stall.
| There was a ton of flame that looked like it was coming out
| of the front or top of the engine, rather than just
| something shooting out the back.
| loeg wrote:
| I think you're looking at the left wing (number 1)
| engine; GP is talking about either the tail or right wing
| engine. (I think tail is number 2 on MD-11.) There's a
| brief explosion visible through the smoke at about 1-2
| seconds in, to the right of the engine visibly on fire;
| that's probably what he's talking about.
|
| Freeze frame: https://imgur.com/a/c3h8Qd3
| FabHK wrote:
| And having 2 out of 3 engines fail (or underperform)
| would explain the insufficient climb thrust.
| loeg wrote:
| Right!
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| Yup makes sense. Now seeing photos of the entire left
| engine on the ground by the runway and the implication
| that however it failed it might have damaged the tail
| engine.
| positron26 wrote:
| Agree, looks like an engine disruption.
|
| The rotation already exacerbates the flow into that
| engine. Change in flow geometry gets more smoke in its
| way when it's already eating turbulent air.
|
| We don't know if it just had a disruption or a full-blown
| stall, but give the way it made it to takeoff speed and
| then just gave out, stall seems likely.
| CPLX wrote:
| I would say it does not, in fact, look like a compressor
| stall. It looks very much like an uncontained disassembly,
| presumably from fan blades that suffered a catastrophic
| failure and broke up in a way that exceeded the limits of
| the engine's containment.
|
| Obviously impossible to tell from some cell phone type
| videos. Being struck by something is also possible. But it
| sure does look like an uncontained engine failure.
| loeg wrote:
| I think you're looking at engine number 1, while GP is
| talking about engine 2.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818448
| JCM9 wrote:
| Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an airport
| that has a high density of people, precisely to limit
| casualties during an event like this. Industrial would be
| permitted while residential and commercial use is not.
|
| Scarily there are communities that have ignored such logic
| and permitted dense residential development right next to an
| airport.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> Zoning guidance generally prohibits land use near an
| airport that has a high density of people
|
| Queens, NY has entered the chat..._
| globular-toast wrote:
| Some of the larger townships in Cape Town are right in
| the flight path too. Not many white people there either.
| chronciger wrote:
| >Queens, NY has entered the chat...
|
| You're correct, but at least LaGuardia airport generally
| has takeoffs over water.
|
| LaGuardia aircraft landings may happen over dense
| apartment buildings, but less likely for catastrophic
| damage (glide path, less fuel, engines are <10% throttle,
| etc)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| It also has JFK, on the South side.
| Thorrez wrote:
| Probably also due to noise.
| SilasX wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say, that sounds like a much more
| salient reason not to live near an airport than the
| possibility of that rare crash.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| You can always come up with some pretext to justify things
| by ignoring the other side of the equation.
|
| How many lives do the man hours spent commuting, or toiling
| away to afford higher rents waste?
|
| IDK how the math pencils out, but an attempt ought to be
| made before drawing conclusions.
| Retric wrote:
| None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro
| areas don't just have dense urban housing. The common
| solution in many land strapped cities is for airports to
| rout aircraft over water often by building airports on
| reclaimed land.
|
| What generally gets areas in trouble is locations that
| used to be a good get worse as aircraft get larger and
| the surroundings get built up. The solution is to send
| larger airplanes to a new airport, but it's not free and
| there's no clear line when things get unacceptably
| dangerous.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > The common solution in many land strapped cities is for
| airports to rout aircraft over water.
|
| That works in costal areas, but not inland.
|
| There's no large body of water near the Louisville
| airport.
| Retric wrote:
| The Ohio River is a large body of water fairly close if
| someone was going to relocate Louisville airport.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| The Ohio River is a mile wide at Louisville, but that
| still doesn't wide enough to classify it "large body of
| water", especially because it is a river that moves
| relatively quick for its width and then hits falls/rapids
| just downstream of Louisville.
|
| But also there's a lot of urban and suburban development
| you'd have to displace to even consider moving the
| airport near the Ohio River for most miles both up and
| down stream of Louisville.
| Retric wrote:
| Tradeoffs. Physical land under the airport is lost either
| way, but land near the old airport becomes more useful
| where the river itself couldn't have buildings in either
| situation. Thus moving it near a river or other large
| body of water is a long term net gain.
|
| As to a crash, ditching into an industrial area isn't
| significantly worse for the passengers than ditching into
| a set of rapids, but the rapids are far better for the
| general public.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| To be fair to this specific airport, the industrial area
| South of the airport is almost entirely UPS Airlines
| facilities. The safety hazard posed by the UPS Airlines
| flight crash was primarily to UPS Airlines warehouses and
| warehouse workers. They made their own tradeoffs in this
| case of what they placed close to their own runways
| (including apparently they had a fuel recycling plant not
| far from the crash line that made firefighting more
| complicated). Sure it's still very different from a large
| body of water, but it's also certainly not like the land
| was entirely a general usage industrial area either.
|
| Had the crash happened in a different direction there
| might be other complaints, sure, but even airports with
| large bodies of water neighboring them only generally
| neighbor a side or two.
| johann8384 wrote:
| It's not even a mile wide here. The widest spot I
| measured just east of the falls was 0.75, at Utica it is
| 0.34 and at Westport it's 0.39.
| mywittyname wrote:
| I don't think effectively damming (alternatively,
| rerouting) the Ohio River is a solution to relocating an
| airport in Louisville. That's a wildly ambitious
| undertaking compared to most other land reclamation
| projects.
|
| Yeah, the terrain around Louisville poses a challenge for
| placing an airport, but they could do like Cincinnati
| does, and have their airport located across the river. Or
| place it between Frankfurt and Louisville. Or do like
| Pittsburg and make the terrain flat enough for an
| international airport.
| wongarsu wrote:
| Inland it can work if you have a river. London City
| Airport would be an example
| Arainach wrote:
| >None? Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro
| areas don't just have dense urban housing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_International_Airpor
| t
|
| It's hard to project growth. Things build right up to the
| limit of the airport for convenient access, then the area
| grows and the airport needs to grow - and what do you do?
| Seattle-Tacoma is critically undersized for the traffic
| it gets and has been struggling with the fact that
| there's physically nowhere to expand to.
| Retric wrote:
| Zoning is one option to direct growth, but you can move
| airports. Chicago is right next to a Great Lake and
| there's relatively shallow areas ready to be reclaimed
| etc.
|
| Obviously you're better off making such decisions early
| rather than building a huge airport only to abandon it.
| Thus it's called urban planning not urban triage.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Zoning is one option to direct growth
|
| My magic crystal ball named "the past 50yr of history"
| says it is unlikely to be the success you envision.
| Arainach wrote:
| Move them to where? Cities large enough to merit an
| airport generally either have development which has
| expanded around them or physical features not conducive
| to development (mountains, lakes, etc.).
|
| It's easy to say "just build bigger elsewhere" but unless
| you go dozens of miles out and add hours to every trip
| to/from the airport there's no options.
|
| And no, "just fill in every body of water" is not an
| option. It doesn't work at all in many cases, is
| hilariously expensive in all cases, and has enormous
| environmental impact.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| There's a real convenience to an airport not being 50
| minutes away
| eitally wrote:
| Congonhas (the original Sao Paulo airport) is right in
| the middle of the city.
|
| There was a significant crash there in 2007:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054
| nostrademons wrote:
| San Jose does. You can, in theory, walk to downtown from
| the airport; it's about an hour and a half via pedestrian
| trail:
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/zhZdA5tWGAKunM2e8
|
| (This is widely considered a misfeature of San Jose - it
| limits the height of buildings in downtown San Jose to 10
| stories because the downtown is directly under the flight
| path of arriving flights, it limits runway length and
| airport expansion, and it means that planes and their
| noise fly directly over key tourist attractions like the
| Rose Garden and Convention Center. If we ever had a major
| plane crash like this one in San Jose it would be a
| disaster, because the airport is bounded by 101 on the
| north, 880 on the south, the arriving flight path goes
| right over downtown, and the departing flight path goes
| right over Levi's Stadium, Great America, and several
| office buildings.)
| Retric wrote:
| There's roughly a mile of roads, green spaces, and river
| between the airport and downtown San Jose which an
| absolutely identical accident would impact. It's not very
| wide, but pilots aren't going to aim for buildings if
| they can help it.
|
| So while downtown being in the flight path is a risk
| there was some method to the madness which caused that
| alignment.
| jonas21 wrote:
| San Diego's airport, on the other hand, has the a
| bustling restaurant district, an interstate with frequent
| bumper-to-bumper traffic, and a dense residential
| neighborhood all within a mile off one end of the runway
| -- and a popular shopping area, an elementary school, and
| a high school within just over a mile from the other end.
|
| In addition, the terrain rises in both directions (so
| sharply on one side that planes can't use ILS when
| landing from that direction).
| Retric wrote:
| Agreed, and clearly there's a bunch of much safer
| options. The north island air station base is close and
| almost comically better.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| The fact that San Diego operates essentially downtown
| with a single runway is a marvel, even if it does cause
| issues. I hope they get the tram extension one day.
| bdamm wrote:
| San Jose Airport's walkability and bikability is actually
| wonderful and I always take the opportunity to walk or
| bike there when flying into SJC.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| The Las Vegas Airport is very close to the strip,
| surrounded by residential neighborhoods and hotels about
| 1/4 - 1/2 mile from the airport, and UNLV university is
| about 1000 feet in a straight line from one of the
| runways.
| vel0city wrote:
| > Nobody puts airports inside city centers and metro
| areas don't just have dense urban housing
|
| Ever see Dallas Love Field?
|
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/A94EdexYwfpyeMxa7
|
| Lots of airports are pretty much immediately adjacent to
| their city centers.
| ilamont wrote:
| > Nobody puts airports inside city centers
|
| Taipei Songshan, Boston Logan and the old Hong Kong Kai
| Tak to name a few.
| Retric wrote:
| Boston Logan is surrounded by water to the point only one
| end of a single runway isn't aimed directly at water soon
| crosses water. The city center requires crossing a
| bridge. Taipei is a little worse but its only runway is
| going next to a river here and aimed at a park on each
| side.
|
| Hong Kong Kai Take would be a solid example except it
| closed in 1998 because of how the city grew. Look at maps
| from 1950 and it doesn't look like a bad location for a
| small airport.
| matt-p wrote:
| In all honesty most countries in europe have at least one
| airport in a city centre. I mean look at lisbon, RKV,
| BHD/LCY (even glasgow,LHR to some extent), BMA, NCE.
| andrepd wrote:
| The pollution and noise probably has health effects many
| times more significant than the sum of extremely rare
| crashes like these.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| Jets are also simply too loud for homes under the takeoff
| path in standard use. There's what amounts to a ghost town
| next to LAX due to this and the history of the airport.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_del_Rey,_California
|
| Burbank Airport has quiet hours and has left a bunch of
| commercially zoned area under that takeoff path.
|
| I'm in Atlanta now and they bought up a lot of land around
| the airport when redeveloping it and do similar zoning
| tricks for the buffer. One of the buffer zones is the
| Porsche Experience. It's loud as heck when you're on the
| part of the track closest but not bad where the corporate
| HQ and paddock is
| duped wrote:
| Meanwhile, ORD is surrounded by residential areas and
| they're building a new tollway perpendicular to the
| runways
| fortran77 wrote:
| I grew up 3 miles (as the crow flies) from JFK Runway 31
| R / 13 L in Cedarhurst, New York
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Cedarhurst,+NY+11516/John
| +F....
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I just looked that up (Atlanta) on https://noise-map.com/
| and man, that's way not enough zoning tricking in my
| book. Not that it's much different in other cities (or
| countries).
| rpcope1 wrote:
| It's amazing that towns don't see this sort of thing and
| think "huh maybe it's not a good idea to put apartments
| right on top of an airport", but I guess they don't.
| Longmont is in trouble with the FAA because they OKed a
| bunch of apartments right at the end of Vance Brand that
| would be right in the path of aircraft struggling to gain
| altitude out of the airport. Naturally there's a vocal
| contingent of people around here that think this is the
| airport's problem and not the town or greedy developers,
| and that all the airports (except DIA) should be shut down.
| pksebben wrote:
| Fresno here. If this had happened at FAT (FYI now? We have
| dumb names) the casualties would've easily hit three digits
| from initial impact, and then whatever else burned
| afterwards because CA==tinderbox.
| eitally wrote:
| Same with SJC, no matter which direction they were taking
| off.
| silisili wrote:
| UPS actually bought and destroyed thousands of homes near
| their end of the airport about 20 years ago, under the
| guise of 'noise', but realistically for expansion of
| warehousing. Now, I guess I feel slightly less upset by
| that (my childhood home was one of them).
| pkulak wrote:
| Midway comes to mind:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/GRUXJVdUPQMWkZNU6
| imglorp wrote:
| An accident on takeoff means full tanks - some 38000
| gallons(?) spread along the site like a napalm strike.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| A particularly large amount of fuel because it was flying
| to Honolulu
| WorldMaker wrote:
| A particularly large amount of fuel also because it was
| loaded with heavy cargo intended to make it all the way
| to Honolulu.
| alchemism wrote:
| The ground damage in the recent North Philadelphia Airport
| crash was only due to a chartered jet, but it practically
| wiped out a residential city block.
| anonymars wrote:
| The second video here shows an incredibly close view of the
| impact from a nearby dashcam.
|
| https://www.wdrb.com/news/ups-plane-catches-fire-and-explode...
|
| > There is an incredible amount of ground damage!
|
| It's fortunate it wasn't taking off the other direction,
| towards the adjacent downtown of Louisville (https://www.google
| .com/maps/place/Louisville+International+A...)
| rodface wrote:
| That is an incredible video.
| The_President wrote:
| News site - video obfuscated.
| anonymars wrote:
| I would say it's easy to see the list of videos with no
| undue nonsense, the list is augmented as new footage is
| available, it contains more context on the accident (also
| augmented with subsequent information), and the local news
| deserves the traffic more than twitter
| The_President wrote:
| Linking to raw video directly is a more efficient use of
| time.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Oh wow...
| tonmoy wrote:
| From what I read they engine caught fire right after they hit
| V1, so basically the only option was to take off and solve the
| problem in the air
| octaane wrote:
| This is probably the worst way a plane could go down in terms of
| damage caused. Maximum effect in term of damage. Cargo plane
| apparently reached V1 (go/no go speed) on the runway, and
| suffered a catastrophic engine failure. They passed V1, so they
| knew they were going down. Engine was shedding large debris,
| including the housing (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
|
| They were on fire just as they reached V1.
|
| Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight
| to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
|
| Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead at
| 160 MPH to minimize collateral damage (highway and warehouses at
| the end of the runway) and crash and die somewhere else, instead
| of go beyond the runway at that speed. Accelerating a fully
| loaded jet plane at ground level beyond the runway has obvious
| consequences. They had one choice.
|
| Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low,
| they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground
| port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of
| jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the
| plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by before this, footage
| shows the cockpit being slammed into the ground like a mousetrap
| by the flip once the port wing was gone and gravity took the
| starboard wing over.
|
| Physics took over. Plane flipped and rolled upon loss of port
| wing, smearing a rolling fireball of the remaining fuel load from
| the starboard wing for another half a mile.
|
| Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
|
| Respect to the flight crew; rest in peace, they made the best
| they could out of a really shitty scenario. They flew it all the
| way down.
|
| Footage:
|
| https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
| gizmo686 wrote:
| > they tried to take off instead of accelerate past the runway
| at ground level
|
| Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the next
| "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent both for
| cases like this, and breaking failures following landings.
| octaane wrote:
| Unless you have a berm several dozen meters high with a 100
| meter base, you ain't stopping something like this from a
| physics standpoint unfortunately.
|
| Many airports have this problem. The recent korean air
| disaster which echos this is another example. BTW, this is
| why most airports, if possible, point out to sea...
| wickberg wrote:
| Newer airports usually try to have space, that's the only
| thing helping with the physics involved here.
|
| Older airports might have EMAS [1] retrofitted at the ends
| to help stop planes, but that's designed more for a landing
| plane not stopping quickly enough (like [2]) - not a plane
| trying to get airborne as in this case.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arre
| stor_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlin
| es_Flight_1248
| positron26 wrote:
| There is a dead zone between rejection and successful take-
| off speeds. We see it hit too often.
|
| I think pilot training is playing a factor. A normal
| rotation kills too much energy. One engine can climb when
| you have some airspeed and get clean, but if you lose too
| much energy on rotation, the inefficiency of the AoA for
| the rest of the short flight means that engine can no
| longer buy you any up. I've seen too many single-engine
| planes going down while trying to pitch up the whole way
| down.
|
| So, less aggressive single-engine rotations and energy
| absorbers at the ends of runways that can't get longer.
| This seems like the kind of thing where we do it because it
| removes a significant cause of people dying.
|
| Just watched this angle a few more times:
| https://x.com/BNONews/status/1985845907191889930
|
| Another crash video shows the aircraft clearly descending
| before colliding with anything. It manages to go up a bit,
| so it's fast enough to get airborne. The normal looking
| rotation kills too much energy. The plane is then too
| inefficient to maintain speed. AoA goes up while energy
| goes down. Power available goes negative and then it's
| over.
| bigbadfeline wrote:
| > It manages to go up a bit, so it's fast enough to get
| airborne. The normal looking rotation kills too much
| energy.
|
| Yes, it did get airborne for a few seconds but from the
| video below, it looks like the left wing was damaged by
| the fire and could not provide enough lift, then the
| right wing rolled the plane to the left causing the
| crash.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/shipwreck75.bsky.social/post/3m4
| tvh...
| positron26 wrote:
| > looks like the left wing was damaged by the fire
|
| The wings and aerodynamics don't really care if air or
| air with combustion are flowing around them.
|
| Roll is a consequence of the loss of control due to low
| speed and the yaw of the good engines. Speed up, rudder
| works, plane might maintain positive climb.
| loeg wrote:
| > The wings and aerodynamics don't really care if air or
| air with combustion are flowing around them.
|
| Not saying it's what happened here, but if the heat is
| intense enough to deform the wing / control surfaces, it
| matters.
| positron26 wrote:
| For skin, a few seconds might be significant. For the
| spars, not nearly enough time to matter. It's also not at
| cruise speed slamming into a downdraft or anything. This
| is about a 1G loading. Negligible for a while. While the
| fire looks cool, there's a lot of free stream mixing in
| and the temps won't really get that high beyond the
| cowling.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| More likely is the hydraulics on that side burst, leading
| to a loss of pressure keeping the control surfaces
| deployed. If that lead to the leading-edge slats
| retracting (like they did in AA 191) you'd get a massive
| loss of lift on that side. The structural parts of the
| wing didn't have time to melt, but the fire certainly
| could damage all the internal control materials.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Rotation does increase drag, but you need to rotate in
| order to achieve the necessary angle of attack. The only
| way to reduce the rotation angle is by going _faster_
| than the normal rotation speed for the given weight and
| airfield density altitude, but doing so is out of the
| question in this scenario.
| brazzy wrote:
| There might be other kinds of damage where the quicker
| altitude gain of a normal rotation is crucial for
| survival.
|
| I'm skeptical whether pilots can realistically make this
| kind of decision, given that they have no more than a few
| seconds to make it, and in cases such as this based on
| very incomplete information about the state of their
| aircraft.
| LgWoodenBadger wrote:
| Increased thrust requirements for airliners that force
| planes to hit an increased v1 (or whatever it's called)
| sooner on the runway to allow for more time to reject
| takeoff.
| topspin wrote:
| > Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the
| next "important" thing.
|
| Some do. Here is what it looks like when an overshooting
| plane utilizes such a barrier:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW71FrX8t_g
|
| 179 dead.
|
| Consider the possibility that gigantic flying aluminum tubes
| filled with tons of flammable fuel hurtling around at
| hundreds of kilometers per hour comprise a dilemma that has
| no trivial answers. Even defining what "important thing"
| means at any given instant is not straightforward.
| beAbU wrote:
| There is a spectrum between "no barrier" and "immovable
| barrier".
|
| Arrestor beds exist, and given enough space a fully loaded
| plane at take-off velocity can be stopped in a controlled
| and safe way.
|
| Cost and space are often the reason why this does not
| happen.
| TylerE wrote:
| Security/debris fencing yes, but that's like, orders of
| magnitude short of what would stop the amount of energy we're
| talking about here.
|
| You also don't particularly want it to be catastrophically
| effective as there are real world cases where planes have
| clipped the fence and then NOT gone on to crash, or at least
| to crash in a fairly controlled manner with the majority
| onboard surviving. Hitting a brick wall at 180mph is going to
| have a 0% survival rate.
| namibj wrote:
| Yet a reinforced concrete wall of e.g. triangular section
| and anchored with "long enough" piles would be about the
| only not-that-expensive way to turn a short strip of
| "airport land" past the EMAS into a V1 stopping
| supermarket.
| FabHK wrote:
| > Do runways have some sort of barrier between them and the
| next "important" thing. It seems like that would be prudent
| both for cases like this
|
| Ha, Jeju Air Flight 2216 smashed into a barrier on the second
| landing attempt in Muan last year [0], and people commented
| "How could there be a barrier at the end of the runway, so
| obviously stupid, irresponsible", etc.
|
| Now a plane does not smash into a barrier at the end of the
| runway and people suggest putting barriers at the end of the
| runway.
|
| Don't mean to attack parent post, but may I suggest that
|
| a) hordes of experts have thought long and hard about these
| issues, and it is unlikely that you can encounter this for
| the first time as a lay person and come up with a solution
| that has eluded the best engineers for decades ("why don't
| they attach a parachute to the plane?"), and
|
| b) we are very close to an optimum in commercial aviation,
| and there are few if any unambiguous ("Pareto") improvements,
| but rather just tradeoffs. For example: You leave cockpit
| doors open, terrorists come in and commandeer the plane to
| turn it into a weapon. You lock the cockpit doors closed, and
| suicidal pilots lock out the rest of the crew and commandeer
| the plane to turn it into a weapon of mass-murder-suicide.
|
| There are no easy answers.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeju_Air_Flight_2216
|
| ETA: In 2007 an A320 overran a runway in Brazil and crashed
| into a gas station, killing 187 pax & crew + 12 on the
| ground.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAM_Airlines_Flight_3054
| linehedonist wrote:
| One improvement is a bed of concrete at the end of the
| runway that will catch the wheels and slow an airplane down
| to a stop. Pretty much everyone agrees it's a good idea but
| it's not always possible due to space needs or cost. https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrestor_...
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| If it costs too much it is also a bad idea. Why? Because
| that money can be spent on other safety.
| brazzy wrote:
| The Wikipedia article says exactly the opposite, citing
| hard numers.
| rob74 wrote:
| If you're designing a new airport, sure, you can have
| runways with ample safety margins and generous overrun
| areas at the end of the runways. If you want to make an
| existing airport safer, and you can't buy up and demolish
| buildings around it, using EMAS is actually a cost-
| effective safety improvement.
| amelius wrote:
| Also put the fire department right next to it. Or some
| kind of automated extinguisher.
| fullstop wrote:
| There was a young girl who survived the crash of Asiana
| flight 214, but was run over by a firetruck because she
| was covered in extinguisher foam.
| amelius wrote:
| => Don't drive through the foam.
| fullstop wrote:
| Yes, we can have the automated extinguishers leave a
| clear path. :-)
| amelius wrote:
| Use drones if necessary.
| amelius wrote:
| > Later investigations concluded that Ye was already dead
| from severe injuries caused by being ejected from the
| aircraft.
|
| from:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
| fullstop wrote:
| Wow, TIL. Thanks for pointing that out!
| JCharante wrote:
| biased investigations
| fuzzythinker wrote:
| Or a ramp with "one-way teeth" that stops it with gravity
| and stops it from sliding back down with teeth.
| kijin wrote:
| The ramp will need to be very long and very high in order
| to absorb the momentum of a fully loaded widebody jet.
| Not something that you'd want near a runway where planes
| can land in either direction.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| The plane is fast and heavy.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| And fragile and will go splat if you try and do anything
| approaching a runaway truck ramp to it.
| nedrylandJP wrote:
| Sounds like a much more substantial runaway truck ramp
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| linehedonist's comment is an idea that is shown to work
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engineered_materials_arrest
| or_...
| csomar wrote:
| The solution is to "free" the perimeter of takeoff/landing.
| Bonus: People don't have to chose to work/live in these
| noisy areas. I understand some areas have challenges to
| come up with space but the US has tons of space and maybe
| the sea should be used to host these airports.
| pixl97 wrote:
| This is how almost all airports built in the last 50
| years have worked. They were built way outside the
| cities. The cities grew to the airports.
|
| More so, because of strong property rights it's very
| difficult to stop any development near the airports at
| all. The airport would have to buy up hundreds of square
| miles of land to prevent it at a staggering cost.
|
| Lastly, one of the buildings that was hit was the UPS
| warehouse that stored goods to load on the plane. You
| want that as close as possible to the airport. Though
| right at the end of the runway is not the greatest place.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| After 9/11, unlock the pilot doors. The passengers will
| revolt against any attempted aircraft hijackings.
|
| We need members of the public ready to help in a situation
| where a pilot goes crazy, and they can't help with a locked
| door making it impossible for them to enter.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Do we need that? MH370 may have benefitted, but it's
| hardly a common problem.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Some runways have been extended with 'engineered materials'
| surfaces, often a form of porous concrete into which an
| airliner's wheels will sink, absorbing a lot of energy and
| arresting the airplane without causing it to break up. It is
| very effective for landing overruns, but I don't know about
| last-seconds aborted takeoffs.
| loeg wrote:
| It's designed for the much lower speeds of landing overruns
| (70 knots and below), whereas takeoff speeds are higher (in
| this case, like 185 knots).
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Standard procedure at V1 is commit to the takeoff and diagnose
| the problem in-air. Much of your comment is pure speculation
| until flight data recorders come back, we have no idea what the
| crew was thinking or what issues they were even aware of.
| octaane wrote:
| You're 100% right, and that's exactly what I'm getting at -
| they hit V1 and were aware they had a serious problem, but
| couldn't abort.
|
| As far as the rest of my comment - watch the videos that I
| linked.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Could they have not hit V1 but decided to take off anyway
| to minimise damage (i am guessing the reverse thrust might
| be impossible to stop?)
| t0mas88 wrote:
| No, and reverse trust is not included in the calculation
| for stopping distance for a failure below V1. You can
| stop from just below V1 with only the brakes, if that's
| not possible you're not allowed to start the takeoff. You
| would have to reduce weight until the numbers fit the
| runway.
|
| After V1 you must be able to take off on only the
| remaining engines. If that's not possible you must reduce
| weight until it is possible or you're not allowed to
| start takeoff at all.
|
| This is why in very warm weather and higher altitude
| airports (lower performance) sometimes cargo/luggage or
| even some passengers are left behind, while in colder
| weather all seats could be used.
| chzblck wrote:
| Sorry for ignorance but why is the right thing to continue to
| take off with an engine on fire?
| octaane wrote:
| To avoid mass casualties at the end of the runway - on the
| road, or the buildings that the runway points to. Check the
| layout on google maps.
|
| More specifically, V1 is the max speed at which you're about
| to take off, but you can still abort from. They hit that max
| speed and realized there was a major problem that
| hypothetically, they could have slowed down from, but
| realistically was not possible. They had no choice.
| atrus wrote:
| It was at a point where they were going to fast to stop or
| land safely. At that point you're just trying to pick the
| best place to crash.
| FabHK wrote:
| V1 is the speed at which you can still stop the plane before
| the end of the runway. (It is computed for each takeoff based
| on runway length, aircraft mass, takeoff engine power
| setting, flaps, wind, runway condition, etc.)
|
| When the plane reaches V1, pilots take the hand off the
| throttle: they're committed to takeoff, even if an engine
| fails. It is better to take off and fix the problem or land
| again, than to smash into whatever is beyond the end of the
| runway.
| panxyh wrote:
| Isn't there any margin? Does it calculate stopping before
| end of runway or before causing damage?
|
| Surely uncertainty about the situation contributes to
| defaulting to committing, but what if it's a passenger
| plane and at V1 pilots know they've lost power? Wouldn't
| veering into highway at 30 mph be weighted against certain,
| big loss of life?
|
| Edit: I now see that this has been partially answered by
| uncle comment
| kijin wrote:
| A fully loaded plane is extremely likely to turn into a
| fireball if it hits anything on the ground, even at
| 30mph. It's just a thin shell of aluminum with tons of
| fuel sloshing inside.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| There is some margin in the calculations. But the
| training is very very clear, before V1 you must abort and
| after V1 you must continue. No discussion, no decision to
| make. You call V1, hands go off the throttles and no
| matter what you're going to fly.
|
| The margin is for example that the plane must not just be
| able to fly, but also reach a minimum climb gradient to
| clear obstacles with a bit of safety margin. There is
| also an allowance for the time it takes from calling
| abort to actually hitting the brakes. And for example
| headwind is part of the calculation (it makes the takeoff
| distance shorter) but only 50% of the headwind is used in
| the calculations.
|
| But all of those margins are not for the crew to use, the
| crew must just execute the procedure exactly as trained
| which means at V1 you're committed to continue the
| takeoff. And before V1 in case of an engine failure you
| have to hit the brakes to make sure you can stop before
| the end of the runway.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| After you reach V1, you take off.
|
| Between V1, Rotate and V2, there's like a 2-3kts
| difference (between each of them).
|
| I am not familiar what the procedure is if you have dual-
| engine failure at or above V1.
| hugh-avherald wrote:
| V1 is the decision speed with respect to a single engine
| failure in a multi-engine aircraft. It's the speed below
| rotation speed at which the decision to abort safely can
| no longer be made.
|
| Captains can make the decision to abort the takeoff in
| the case of absolute power loss or for 'failure to fly'
| (where the aircraft is clearly not going to fly, e.g. the
| elevator/pitch controls aren't responding). But the
| training is adamant: if you're uncertain what has
| happened after V1 you try to fly the plane away from the
| runway.
| panxyh wrote:
| > abort safely
|
| That's what I'm getting at. I want to abort unsafely.
| Imagine 400 meters of grass field after the end of the
| runway, and a water body. I'm asking wether such factors
| are accounted for, or if plane on ground beyond runway
| does-not-compute.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| You should never plan to use your safety margin!
|
| That "extra" 400m of grass? That's for all the other
| things that can still go wrong even when you follow
| procedure. e.g., you're below V1 so you abort takeoff,
| close throttles and hit the brakes. You should be able to
| safely stop on the runway.
|
| But now your brakes fail because maybe the reason you had
| to abort was a fire that also managed to burn through
| your brake lines, or it started to rain just as you were
| taking off, or...
|
| Now that's where the 400m of safety margin comes in to
| save your ass (hopefully). It's "extra", you don't plan
| on using it.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _I want to abort unsafely_
|
| I expect pilots are trained explicitly _not_ to do that.
|
| If you can't abort safely, than it follows that the safer
| course of action is to try to fly. I'm sure there are
| exceptions to that, but a pilot has barely seconds in
| which to decide if any of those exceptions apply, so
| they're not going to abandon procedure unless the
| situation is clear.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Wouldn 't veering into highway at 30 mph be weighted
| against certain, big loss of life?_
|
| V1 for this plane in those conditions is nearly 200 mph.
| Even if they shut down all engines and applied full
| brakes (and assuming the brakes/tires didn't catch fire),
| they'd still run off the end of the runway with enough
| kinetic energy to kill themselves and anyone else in the
| way.
| appreciatorBus wrote:
| It depends on whether or not, at the point in which you
| realize you have an engine on fire, you have room on the
| runway left to stop.
|
| As I understand it, there is a low speed regime, under 80
| knots, where are you stop for basically anything.
|
| Then there is a high speed regime, where you only stop for
| serious issues, because you now have so much kinetic energy
| that stopping the plane, while still possible, will involve
| risk. (i.e. fire from overheated brakes.)
|
| At a certain point, called V1, there's no longer enough room
| to stop, no matter what your problem is. You're either
| getting airborne or you're crashing into whatever is ant the
| end of the runway. In general, getting airborne is the safer
| option, while obviously still not risk free.
|
| However, this calculation also assumes that the engine fails
| in an isolated fashion, and its failure did not affect the
| other engines. If the failure of the left engine threw off
| debris that damaged the middle engine then we are now talking
| about a double engine failure. I'm sure the pilots knew there
| was a problem with the engine when they made the decision to
| continue, but it's possible that problems with the middle
| engine weren't apparent yet and that it only started to fail
| once they were committed.
|
| Obviously, this is just speculation, and we will have to wait
| for the preliminary report at least.
|
| RIP
| bathtub365 wrote:
| Being untrained but spending a little bit of time in a full
| motion 737 simulator that's used to train and certify
| commercial pilots, I was amazed at how quickly things
| happen even in a scenario with no faults.
|
| This situation (single engine failure at V1) is something
| that commercial pilots are certified in at every recurrent
| certification since it's one of the most difficult you can
| be in. The crew now need to climb and go around for a
| landing on one engine while simultaneously running through
| the engine failure (and also likely fire) checklist. I
| don't know if a double engine failure at V1 on a fully
| loaded 3 engine aircraft is technically survivable or if
| it's something that's trained on. They were put in an
| incredibly difficult situation just based on what reports
| we've already seen.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| I would be astounded if there was anything the pilots
| could have done to prevent this.
|
| The plane was two engines out and a main fuel tank on
| fire, fully laden with a full fuel load. No amount of
| training or improvisation was going to fix that.
|
| If anything it's lucky/professional they crashed into an
| industrial park and didn't have time for a go around. It
| would have been an even bigger disaster if they'd crashed
| into the town centre or a residential area.
| loeg wrote:
| > I don't know if a double engine failure at V1 on a
| fully loaded 3 engine aircraft is technically survivable
|
| Not on the MD-11, anyway.
| basisword wrote:
| >> highway and warehouses at the end of the runway
|
| It's astonishing that this is a thing. Why aren't we building
| airports with enough space for a plane to remain on the ground
| and have plenty of room to decelerate in this situation? I can
| understand why it can't be retro fitted to existing airports
| but is it a scenario that's considered at new airports? Just
| seems like such an absolutely basic safety step.
| giantrobot wrote:
| Airports are usually built (originally) out in the boonies
| away from the major metro area. As time goes by and that land
| gets more valuable developers grease palms of politicians in
| land use commissions to allow developments closer and closer
| to the airports.
|
| Airports also grow themselves. Some municipal airports sited
| for small aircraft extend their runways to handle larger
| planes.
| kube-system wrote:
| Louisville is a major cargo hub. The airport likely was not
| built by the warehouses, the warehouses were likely built by
| the airport.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| A lot of the airport's surrounding buildings (to the South
| especially) are indeed UPS Airlines' own facilities.
| johann8384 wrote:
| Yes, in fact, lots of the area that is warehouses to the
| south, and where the larger run way to the east and some
| buffer zone to the east used to be neighborhoods and they
| were bought and torn down to make room around the airport.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Louisville/comments/1983ko2/what_h
| a...
| lelandbatey wrote:
| Yes, new major airports (rare as they are) do try to acquire
| large areas of land, larger even than they think they need
| now, in anticipation of future expansion. However, for
| scenarios like this, there's limited utility to making the
| runway longer "just in case." They already pick runway sizes
| "big enough and then some" as the minimum to even bring
| planes of each size to an airport. So there is margin.
|
| But no matter the margin, a plane can always crash on the
| wrong side of any fence. And people will always build right
| up to wherever you put the fence as closer to the airport is
| more convenient for everything airport related.
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| > Why aren't we building airports with enough space for a
| plane to remain on the ground and have plenty of room to
| decelerate in this situation?
|
| But that's exactly what a runway is? They're extremely long,
| have ample safety margins, _and_ have "protected areas"
| extending out on either end, and outside of that there are
| regulations about what can and can't be built along the
| extendend runway centerlines. But jetliners are huge, heavy,
| fast, and designed to go long distances - the stopping
| distance of a fully loaded jet at full takeoff speed is
| measured in miles.
| trallnag wrote:
| Makes me think of the song "ogromnoe nebo"
| https://youtu.be/0EQNv8L49cs?si=2LTHtiKNvpZVDWVy
|
| Work place related accidents always have a certain tragedy to
| them. Still remember when in the industrial park, my employer
| is located in, tanks belonging to a trash incinerator for
| special chemical waste exploded, taking several people with it.
| justin66 wrote:
| > Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
|
| Let's leave that word to mean what it actually means.
| Louisville experienced a serious fire.
| johann8384 wrote:
| It's a few blocks of fire. I was on Tanker 4565 standing by
| as a backfill for units on scene. It's no where near "All of
| Louisville", that's a ridiculous thing to say.
| johann8384 wrote:
| It was around 250k gallons of fuel. Our CAD notes on the
| initial dispatch said 250k, one press briefing said 280k, and
| then it was changed to 220k which I think is the actual number.
| johann8384 wrote:
| Not a UPS Factory (whatever that means).
|
| Grade A Auto Parts on Melton Ave was the initial damaged
| building. I don't have the name of the chemical place handy.
|
| Med Command setup at River City Metals.
| octaane wrote:
| This is probably the worst way a plane could go down. Maximum
| effect in term of damage. Cargo plane apparently reached V1
| (go/no go speed) on the runway, and suffered a catastrophic
| engine failure. They passed V1, so they knew they were going
| down. Engine was shedding large debris, including the housing
| (!!!) which is a shrapnel shield.
|
| They were on fire just as they reached V1.
|
| Plane was fully loaded with 38,000 LB of fuel for 12 hour flight
| to hawaii. Worst case scenario.
|
| Pilots did the heroic thing - they tried to take off instead of
| accelerate past the runway at ground level at 160 MPH to minimize
| collateral damage (highway and warehouses at the end of the
| runway) and crash and die somewhere else.
|
| Instead, they clipped the UPS factory because they were so low,
| they tried to clear it but did not. Plane then hit the ground
| port wing down, shearing it off entirely, smearing a fireball of
| jet fuel across half a mile (not an exaggeration) before the
| plane flipped. Crew were likely dead by then, footage shows the
| cockpit being slammed into the ground by the flip once the port
| wing was gone and gravity took the starboard wing over.
|
| Plane flipped, continued to smear half of the fuel load for
| another half a mile.
|
| Louisville is now a firestorm as a result.
|
| Footage:
|
| https://x.com/osinttechnical/status/1985845987684855969?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985849267152699741?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985848132500885995?s=46
|
| https://x.com/faytuksnetwork/status/1985843126934614297?s=46
| loeg wrote:
| > They passed V1, so they knew they were going down.
|
| To know this, they would have to know they had lost multiple
| engines. Clearly this is the case by the end, but it's not
| clear who realized what at what time.
|
| The NTSB investigation will bring more light.
| octaane wrote:
| Agreed, only the NTSB investigation will provide a full
| account. But if you look at where they were on the runway,
| they had passed V1.
| loeg wrote:
| Yes, but multiengine aircraft are designed to take off with
| one lost engine.
| giantrobot wrote:
| There was more of an issue than just an engine being out.
| It looks like catastrophic damage to at least the left
| wing. So you have to now assume an engine out, reduced
| lift (if not a stall) on one wing, and likely no control
| surfaces responding on that wing.
| loeg wrote:
| I think this conversation has become completely divorced
| from my original criticism of OP's comment, which is that
| _we don 't know what the pilots knew_ before V1, at V1,
| after V1.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45818462
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| [Off-topic] >The police department also urged those in the area
| to turn off any air intake systems as soon as possible due to the
| smoke in the area.
|
| Excellent edge-case for IFTTT thermostat. Localized air quality
| alert --> Intake offline.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| LLM reading the news could do this too!
| SpaghettiCthulu wrote:
| You really want an LLM hallucinating that everything is ok
| and turning your air back on? Or hallucinating that
| everything was always ok and not turning your air off in the
| first place?
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Hallucinate off is fine then send message to me with
| decision criteria.
| kirykl wrote:
| Side view https://x.com/TexasHodlerMom/status/1985870817133985970
| pseingatl wrote:
| Another DC-10/MD-11 crash. Does UPS perform their own engine
| maintenance, or do they outsource the work? What is the effect of
| the recent layoff of 40,000 and the current cost-cutting project?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Maybe wait with the judgements until the report is in? There
| are so many possible reasons why this could have happened that
| have nothing to do with the two items you listed (though it
| maybe that it does, it is just a bit pointless to assign blame
| before you know what the cause of the accident was).
| bombcar wrote:
| I mean the engine is laying on the side of the runway and the
| plane is seen on fire trying to take off; I'm going to go out
| on a limb and say maintenance was somehow involved.
|
| Well-maintained planes don't _do_ that.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| There has been at least one crash due to manufacturing
| defects that no one knew about beforehand or could
| therefore diagnose. We will find out what happened in about
| a year once the investigation is complete.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Phase of flight is a major contributor to accident
| statistics with take-off and landing much more often
| associated with accidents than the rest of the flight.
|
| Take-off asks a lot from the engines, and one nasty bit
| about manufacturing defects is that they can take a while
| to show up, but the bulk of them usually surfaces when
| the aircraft are relatively new.
|
| But: this plane was delayed before the flight due to
| maintenance on engine #1, so that's the first place where
| I would start looking for issues without any kind of
| judgment beforehand on what you would expect to find. And
| that's the main issue with that comment, it assumes a
| conclusion, that's not how these investigations work
| because then you might miss the actual cause. And given
| how critical these machines are it doesn't take much. All
| it takes is a single, tiny mistake.
|
| The really bad luck here is that it seems as though the
| failure of engine #1 took the center engine right along
| with it. That's one of the issues with that particular
| design, if you have debris from one of the forward
| engines it could easily get ingested by the rear mounted
| one.
| bombcar wrote:
| Luckily for me and everyone, I'm not an NTSB
| investigator, and will probably forget about this before
| the report is issued :)
| jacquesm wrote:
| You may well be right. Or... maybe there was a non-stress
| related manufacturing issue with a turbine blade. Maybe it
| ingested a bird, maybe it sucked in some crap lying on the
| runway. Maybe there as an issue with a part that was
| replaced during the 2 hour service just prior to the
| flight. Maybe there was an error during that service, or a
| defect that was overlooked. And a million other
| possibilities.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I mean, I don't think I've heard of a bird strike
| knocking the engine off a plane.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Oh, interesting. They even made a movie.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549
|
| Once an engine breaks the question is whether or not it
| becomes unbalanced, that is one reason why they can
| become detached from the plane.
| rpcope1 wrote:
| This is the MD-11 we're talking about here. As bad as the
| 737 MAX is/was the DC-10/MD-11 is kind of well known for
| having all sorts of crazy problems like:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232
| bombcar wrote:
| Ah, the good old Might Disintegrate-11.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose. It'll take a while
| before we look at American planes through lenses other than
| Boeing straight-up lying.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Which was a tradition that started at McDonnell-Douglas,
| who then became Boeing's management post-merger.
| loeg wrote:
| This aircraft was not built by Boeing.
| watwut wrote:
| It was build by a company that got merged with boeing and
| whose management ended up running Boeing. Which is what
| made Boeing known for issues.
| skim_milk wrote:
| The last MD-11 crash with deaths was in 2009 and the last DC-10
| kerfuffle was when their unapproved replacement parts fell on
| the runway and killed the Concorde. I wonder if flight 232 gave
| them a bad name - everybody seems to know that accident. Looks
| like have a good record otherwise.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The DC-10 had some significant design flaws at the start.
| gmac wrote:
| e.g. https://mondortiz.com/the-problematic-cargo-door-of-
| the-doug...
| dingaling wrote:
| The DC-10 was a rushed programme to avoid Douglas being
| frozen out of the 1970s widebody market by Lockheed and
| Boeing.
|
| Similarly, the MD-11 was a cost-restricted update of the
| airframe to avoid McD being frozen out of the 1990s
| widebody market by Airbus and Boeing.
|
| McD management wouldn't fund the more ambitious four-
| engined MD-12, so the trijet's fuselage was stretched and
| aerodynamic tweaks applied.
|
| The MD-11 never met its performance targets and heralded
| the end of the Douglas commercial line. It was fairly
| quickly relegated from pax to cargo service where it has
| a good payload but little else to commend it.
| blueflow wrote:
| https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=1
| metalman wrote:
| that the engine tore off meakes the likelyhood of significant
| damage to critical flight control systems quite high, any such
| damage would have been asymetric and counteracting forces
| inducing a roll may have been impossible. you know they tried
| cjrp wrote:
| The AVHerald is usually the best source for these things, rather
| than MSM: https://avherald.com/h?article=52f5748f&opt=0
|
| > Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for
| about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the
| engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine
| emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse
| and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a
| large plume of fire and smoke.
| Hendrikto wrote:
| https://archive.is/cdKm0
|
| My IP was blocked, for some reason.
| nielsbot wrote:
| You mean AV Herald? The site says you can't use a relay
| service to access it. For example, Apple Private Relay.
| mrb wrote:
| Oh woah, very insightful discussion thread you found there.
|
| So the tl'dr is: the leading very preliminary theory is that
| the MD-11's left engine fell off the wing just like
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 (a
| DC-10, the immediate predecessor of the MD-11) which was caused
| by maintenance errors weakening the pylon structure holding the
| engine.
| rob74 wrote:
| This video from an aviation youtuber contains a picture of
| the engine:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4q2ORhIQQc&t=526s (the video
| itself is also worth watching in full IMHO).
|
| What strikes me as odd is that this looks like the "naked"
| engine, without the cowling/nacelle that usually surrounds
| it? Anyway, if an engine departs the aircraft shortly after
| (last-minute) maintenance was performed on it, that's indeed
| suspicious...
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The cowling was probably easily torn off when the engine
| went full speed like a missile for a few seconds after
| detaching.
| colechristensen wrote:
| The cowling isn't particularly structural so if your engine
| falls off on takeoff it's not so surprising that the cover
| didn't land with it.
| buildsjets wrote:
| The fan cowl and thrust reverser cowl are structurally
| fastened to the pylon/strut at the top, they only wrap
| around the engine, and are fastened to themselves at the
| bottom using latches. The strut considered part of the
| airframe structure. The inlet cowl is bolted directly to
| the engine, I saw in a picture that it was found
| approximately mid-field on the airport property.
| stevenjgarner wrote:
| The parallels with AA Flight 191 are striking. In THAT
| accident it was found [1]:
|
| 1) improper maintenance--American Airlines had used a
| forklift shortcut to remove the engine and pylon together,
| rather than following McDonnell Douglas's prescribed method
|
| 2) The detachment tore away part of the wing's leading edge,
| rupturing hydraulic lines and severing electrical power to
| key systems, including the slat-position indicator and stall
| warning (stick shaker).
|
| 3) The pilots followed the standard engine-out procedure and
| reduced airspeed to V2, which caused the aircraft to stall
| and roll uncontrollably left. This procedure was later found
| out to be incorrect.
|
| Defective maintenance practices, inadequate oversight,
| vulnerabilities in DC-10 design, and unsafe training
| procedures combined to cause the crash, killing all 273
| people on board and leading to sweeping reforms in airline
| maintenance and certification standards.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6iU7Mmf330
| akerl_ wrote:
| (asked earnestly out of lack of familiarity with this
| field) Are maintenance/certification standards distinct
| between passenger and cargo carriers?
|
| It's hard for me to tell if this suggests a step backwards
| in application of the reforms instigated after AA191 or
| that those reforms were never copied over to cargo
| aviation.
| noer wrote:
| Yes but mostly related to purpose specific things:
| passenger carriers have additional safety checks for
| cabin things like seats, oxygen and evacuation systems.
| Cargo carriers have additional safety checks for things
| like cargo restraint and decompression systems.
|
| Furthermore (and I don't know if this is related to the
| cause of this crash), cargo jets tend to be
| older/refurbished passenger planes that have outlived
| their useful lives flying passengers.
| cjrp wrote:
| > cargo jets tend to be older/refurbished passenger
| planes that have outlived their useful lives flying
| passengers.
|
| Exactly what happened in this case; the airplane was
| built in 1991 to carry passengers, and then converted in
| 2006 for freight.
|
| https://www.planespotters.net/airframe/mcdonnell-douglas-
| md-...
| conradev wrote:
| worth noting about AA191: With a total of
| 273 fatalities, the disaster is the deadliest aviation
| accident to have occurred in the United States.
| daemonologist wrote:
| To expand on #2, the loss of hydraulic pressure also caused
| the uncommanded retraction of the leading edge slats on the
| left wing, which was found by the NTSB to be part of the
| probable cause. Full report is here (PDF): https://www.ntsb
| .gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
|
| (I do not mean to imply that this exact slat retraction is
| necessarily relevant in the Louisville crash, however - I
| believe aircraft since AA191 are designed to maintain their
| wing configuration after loss of hydraulic pressure.)
| t0mas88 wrote:
| And just to add for those that aren't pilots: When they say
| "reduced airspeed to V2" that doesn't mean reducing engine
| power, it means pointing the nose higher while thrust
| remains at the maximum permissable setting. You're loosing
| speed but climbing faster.
|
| This can happen if you accelerated past V2 (V2+20 is
| normal) before the engine failure and then after the
| failure you slow down to V2 to get the best climb angle on
| a single engine plus some safety margins above stall etc.
| bluebarbet wrote:
| From all the annals of aviation disaster, flight 191 is
| possibly the one that haunts my nightmares the worst. Perhaps
| because the scenario feels plausible for every single take-
| off. Perhaps just because of the famous photo.
| tomhow wrote:
| We updated it, thanks. (Original URL was
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ups-plane-crash-louisville-
| kent...).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| PPRuNe[1] is another good one. Just be aware that all of
| these sites have a mixture of commentary by professionals in
| the air transport industry, amateur enthusiasts, and random
| bystanders.
|
| Best advice is always to wait for authoritative statements.
|
| https://www.pprune.org/accidents-close-calls/669082-ups-
| md11...
| chaostheory wrote:
| This is likely relevant
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/11/airplane-maintenance...
|
| TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of
| domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the
| FAA's inspections
| imglorp wrote:
| There's a lag time between such cost saving measures and
| piles of dead people.
|
| See also how FAA allowed Boeing to oversee its own
| certification for MAX.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance
| of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of
| the FAA's inspections
|
| Foreign Repair Stations date back to the 90s [1], the thing
| is they need to be supervised by an FAA Certified Mechanic.
| Inspection of these was already a hot issue in the early
| '00s... No one gave a fuck, it was all about saving costs for
| a very long time.
|
| The linked 2007 report's second page (!) already leads with
| this:
|
| > Since 2001, eight commercial air carriers have gone through
| bankruptcy and one has ceased operations. Fuel prices remain
| high, and this makes cost control a key factor in both the
| sustained profitability and overall survival of an airline.
|
| IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to
| regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to
| the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for
| 70$, that's not sustainable.
|
| [1] https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/Web_File_Fore
| ign...
| rkomorn wrote:
| > IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs
| to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race
| to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO
| for 70$, that's not sustainable.
|
| Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety?
|
| If so, I think it's optimistic to assume that would be the
| result, rather than just more profits.
|
| I'm all for tighter regulations and enforcement on safety
| and maintenance, though.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Are you saying higher prices would lead to better
| safety?
|
| Higher prices _and regulations_.
|
| With no floor on pricing, there will always be enough
| greedy executives who are willing to cut corners to make
| money in a ruthlessly competitive environment, fully
| knowing that it is very hard to prosecute a C-level
| executive personally.
|
| The other possible result will be that eventually the
| market "agrees upon" a minimum price floor while being in
| compliance to regulations - but that usually means that
| the company will be as bare-stripped of assets and
| reserves as possible, which means in turn that the
| slightest external shock can (and will) send not just one
| but _multiple_ companies crashing down hard. We 've seen
| this with Covid - an economy that has optimized itself
| for decades on running as lean as possible is very
| sensitive to all sorts of external interruptions. Of
| course, that's not directly relevant to safety... but
| indirectly it is, as the inevitable result of that is an
| oligo-, duo- or monopoly and then, we've seen with Boeing
| where that ends, incentives aligned too much to cut
| corners.
| rkomorn wrote:
| I kiiinda see where you're coming from but I guess I just
| don't buy it, TBH.
|
| I think greed is what's causing cut corners.
|
| You mention Boeing, and they were quite healthily
| profitable during the entire time they were cutting
| corners on the 737 MAX. Airbus wasn't an existential
| threat. It still isn't, in fact, even after all the
| fallout.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Okay, what possible fix for everpresent greed in US
| business management is there other than _regulation and
| enforcement_?
| rkomorn wrote:
| Edit: I actually think I just don't get the gist of your
| question/comment.
|
| > I'm all for tighter regulations and enforcement on
| safety and maintenance, though.
|
| That's from my first comment in this thread. I'm not sure
| what part of my comments make you think you should ask me
| that question.
|
| What I'm arguing is against the notion that having
| minimum prices would fix said greed.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Super-low prices require razor-thin margins, which leads
| to cutting corners, which leads to worse safety.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Statistics say otherwise. Flying was far more hazardous
| in the days before deregulation.
| rkomorn wrote:
| That may well be correlation and not causation.
|
| The industry (edit: planes in particular) is also decades
| more mature, as is manufacturing in general.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Yes, admittedly, there could still be a reason why the
| GP's opinion is right, even though the numbers don't back
| it up. It's hard to argue that deregulation made flying
| safer, because as you say there were a ton of other
| factors in play.
|
| However, it's _impossible_ to argue that deregulation
| made flying more dangerous, as the GP believes, simply
| because flying didn 't become more dangerous. Sure, maybe
| we'd be even safer in the air if price deregulation
| hadn't happened, but that requires an impressive amount
| of handwaving. Overall, the tradeoff seems to have worked
| out incredibly well for everyone. The only people who are
| really in a position to object would be climate
| researchers.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| IDK, Ryanair in Europe (an epitome of low-cost airline)
| has both decent margins and zero crashes. They once had a
| birdstrike, hardly caused by their ticket cost, and wrote
| off the hull (no fatalities); otherwise, nothing.
|
| A lot depends on your overall marketing. The airline can
| make money on a "stupid tax", e.g. people who didn't
| check twice the max. allowed weight of their baggage and
| have to pay a 100 USD/EUR fee for that single extra
| pound. I have seen it more than once.
|
| People being people, you can almost rely on this
| happening frequently enough.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| The government should just set a higher safety standard and
| let the companies figure out the costs. Setting a floor
| price without proper regulation == companies doing the same
| bagging more $$ -- To be very frank, I would do that if I
| were the chairman of such companies -- either I do that or
| I'm madmen getting voted out of my position next year.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > The government should just set a higher safety standard
| and let the companies figure out the costs.
|
| The problem is, it doesn't work out that way. We lost
| enough people to that madness - as soon as hundreds, if
| not thousands (see 9/11) of lives are at stake, IMHO the
| effort to ensure compliance with standards is so massive,
| the government could (and should...) do the damn job
| itself.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >this is a perfect example why the government needs to
| regulate prices in safety-critical industries.
|
| Aviation is one of the most regulated industries to the
| point where I've heard multiple aircraft maintenance people
| who don't know each other make quips to the tune of "we
| only cut the stupid corners because cutting the smart ones
| is illegal".
|
| I'm not saying it should be less regulated but considering
| that the aircraft was maintained recently I wouldn't be
| surprised if some dumb "well you didn't say we couldn't do
| it" thing that isn't technically disallowed but should be
| covered under some broader "don't be stupid" rule was
| ultimately a causative factor.
| avalys wrote:
| > IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs
| to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race
| to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO
| for 70$, that's not sustainable.
|
| This is nonsense. Commercial aviation is already
| ridiculously, insanely safe and has been for decades. Your
| proposed solution would not have done anything to prevent
| the one major accident in the past 15 years of commercial
| aviation in the US, which was caused by a military
| helicopter pilot violating an ATC restriction in complex
| airspace, not a maintenance issue.
|
| What evidence do you have that "NYC-SFO for $70" is not
| sustainable? From March 2009 to December 2024 years in the
| US, the fatality rate in commercial aviation was _0.4 per
| passenger-light-year_. That 's nearly 15 years of operation
| with the foreign repair stations that you are accusing of
| putting profits before safety.
|
| This is, like, the most ridiculous industry possible to
| demand more regulation of.
| decimalenough wrote:
| The engine that fell off (!) had been worked on for two hours
| at Louisville, KY immediately before takeoff. Occam's Razor
| suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.
| inejge wrote:
| > Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there
| is to blame.
|
| Ordinarily yes, but in this case there are reports that the
| plane underwent a "heavy maintenance check" from Sep 3 to
| Oct 18, which may have included engine removal and overhaul
| (source: pprune.org, from a poster who's not given to
| flights of fancy.)
| mikeyouse wrote:
| In the Reddit /r/aviation thread, there are people who
| spotted that specific plane at San Antonio International
| airport since it was apparently being serviced at a major
| service facility there. So yes to major service
| potentially at issue, and no to international work being
| at fault.
| hopelite wrote:
| Have you ever heard of the phrase "a distinction without
| a difference"? The delta between "domestic" and
| "international" has basically been erased for all intents
| and purposes over the last 25 years. H1-B can and is used
| for Aviation Mechanics, not to mention that approximately
| 25 million of the official 60 million in the US that were
| not born American citizens have been granted citizenship
| in that period.
|
| You seem to be trying to defend "international", but
| reality is "international" has become "domestic" as the
| USA turns into something other than the USA.
| klaff wrote:
| How exactly is the USA turning into something other then
| the USA?
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Despite the enshittification of Reddit, it is still
| unparalleled for situations like this. There is more
| friction for the Fediverse to have an equivalent
| community, but I hope more people realize the smoothness
| is not free.
| nineplay wrote:
| Or whoever was working on it said "Wait, this plane isn't
| ready yet" and the people in charge said "we've waited long
| enough, get it on the runway".
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| This doesn't excuse the engineer as "just obeying
| orders". They are making a tradeoff between being ethical
| and being unemployed/unemployable, which understandably
| can be a very hard decision, but it's still their
| decision and they aren't guilt-free if something happens.
| supportengineer wrote:
| MBA-driven decision instead of engineering decision.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it
| function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting
| to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The
| Air India crash had a lot of that going on.
|
| The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by
| online commenters as because of "outsourced software
| engineers" and so on.
|
| But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding
| despite the immense political pressure to find these facile
| explanations. Organizationally, someone once designed these
| things well, and subsequently it has been preserved so well.
|
| When I see so many American institutions turned to partisan
| causes through an escalation of "well, they're doing it" it's
| pretty wild that this org remains trustworthy. Wild.
| mh- wrote:
| The NTSB is completely independent from the FAA, by design.
|
| The history of how that came to be is worth a read and
| answers your question better than I could.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Transportation_Safet
| y...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Huh, wow, that actually did answer the question. Short
| version: the FAA did have this failing; the NTSB was
| created independently specifically to avoid that flaw.
| For the rest, he's right, better to read it.
| mh- wrote:
| Yeah, wasn't meant to be a lazy comment on my part, but I
| started summarizing it a few times and found myself
| quoting more of the article than made sense.
|
| One thing that stood out to me was just _how long ago_
| that separation was achieved and subsequently ensured.
| yard2010 wrote:
| You can't play with the NTSB. Just wait a few months and
| see, they will literally say the exact reason it happened
| and who's the one to blame in their report. These guys
| are the best at what they do. This is one of the
| government bodies other countries would dream to have.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| The NTSB never assigns blame to people in their reports.
| They report what happened, and who did what, but their
| reports are not intended for use in a court and their
| advisories are always ways to fix procedures rather than
| blaming individuals.
| mmooss wrote:
| Maybe the maintenance is better in the other country.
|
| Either way, to say it's "likely relevant" is a huge leap. We
| have no idea what caused the crash - it could be a million
| things and likely some combintation of them.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of
| domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of
| the FAA's inspections"
|
| There are foreign planes entering US airspace every day,
| carrying thousands of passengers. They are also serviced by
| foreign technicians, outside the reach of the FAA's
| inspections, and they seem to be doing just fine.
|
| "Foreign" in itself isn't bad, you just need to
| choose/require reputable partners. If you outsource your
| maintenance to the same crews that maintain jets for Polish
| LOT or Taiwanese China Airlines, you may save some money and
| yet get excellent service, as those airlines aren't known for
| having safety problems.
|
| Kosovo or South Sudan would be a different story.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| As someone who used to work at one of these foreign
| maintenance stations,
|
| Firstly, fuck you.
|
| Second, this shop consistently rated higher across all
| metrics, including those inside the US. Loss time injury
| rates measured in the millions of man hours.
|
| Third, 80% of my job whilst there was to build software for
| QA and their rigourous on-going inspection reigeme that
| included yearly in person audits lasting weeks from FAA
| inspectors, EASA inspectors and every other country and
| airline this base overhauled.
|
| Take your uninformed bs and hit the road. You clearly have no
| idea what you're talking about and insinuating that they're
| outside the reach of the FAA shows you know exactly 0 about
| the certification process that keeps millions of people safe
| on a daily basis.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| Also Blancolirio Youtube is very insightful
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3lXl9yfISM
| mvdtnz wrote:
| How is that video "insightful"? You can summarise the entire
| video as "a plane crashed after takeoff. It had an engine
| fire".
| culi wrote:
| It'd be nice if they offered an RSS feed
| jjwiseman wrote:
| In today's NTSB briefing they said as far as they know the
| aircraft was not delayed and there was not maintenance work
| done immediately before the flight.
| https://www.youtube.com/live/Rw6CtQJckzE?si=9Q98BLIVDJbfZ1QV...
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I didn't realize the MD-11 was still in use. It has had a
| difficult time in passenger aviation.
|
| Looks really nasty. It seems to have come down in an industrial
| area, which will significantly reduce casualties. I can't even
| imagine this, in a residential area.
| kmarc wrote:
| Happened in the Netherlands:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862
|
| 40+ people died in that one, it's a miracle it wasn't more.
| russdill wrote:
| I had just seen and admired a UPS MD-11 making it's climbing
| turn after takeoff from ONT earlier that day. They are quite
| capable and a beautiful aircraft.
| PrairieFire wrote:
| I think it's fair to say the MD11 has had a difficult time, but
| I would caveat that it performs well for an aircraft of its
| vintage, and is still an acceptably safe aircraft. There have
| been something in the neighborhood of 2.4 million successful
| missions completed with the MD11, and around 12 hull losses
| with fatalities, around 14 hull losses total, over the 35 years
| the MD11 has been flying. Yes, it's below average compared to
| modern wide bodies (a330, a350, newer 777/787) which are
| incredibly (truly incredible to me) safe.
|
| I do expect this incident will accelerate the retirement of the
| balance of the fleet that is still flying and the MD11 will
| complete its disappearance from the skies in the US before the
| end of the decade.
| jakub_g wrote:
| According to this article from just a few weeks ago there
| were 56 active MD11 (well, 55 now), split almost evenly by
| Fedex and UPS, and scheduled to be replaced within next 5-7
| years:
|
| https://simpleflying.com/why-mcdonnell-dougls-md-11-wont-
| be-...
| quantumVale33 wrote:
| Early reports suggest the left engine separated during takeoff
| after maintenance work earlier that day. It's a tragic reminder
| of how even small mechanical issues can turn catastrophic in
| seconds. Hope the NTSB can clarify what went wrong to prevent
| future accidents.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/cdKm0
| bob1029 wrote:
| It looks like they also lost the tail engine in the video. Debris
| from the left engine probably took it out.
|
| It seems like it happened fairly late in the sequence. Not sure
| how much of a difference it would have made.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| From wikipedia, Boeing stopped producing MD-11 since 2,000. Does
| that mean any MD-11 flying is at least 25 years old? I know
| 25-year is not particularly old for aircrafts, but MD-11 is not
| exactly reliable. Is there any reason UPS is flying these planes?
| geoffeg wrote:
| Airframes have a limited lifetime, partially defined by
| takeoffs and landings (and pressurization cycles). Cargo planes
| experience fewer cycles than passenger airlines since cargo
| carriers' aircraft usually only make a one or two flights a
| day, whereas passenger aircraft a flown back to back as
| frequently as possible. Historically, cargo carriers would buy
| used aircraft and convert them, but that's changing.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| Thanks for the explanation. I'll see if I can find some data
| on cargo planes.
| fransje26 wrote:
| The gist is correct, but the subtleties are hiding in the
| details.
|
| Wide-body (long-haul) airplanes are generally limited by
| flying hours since they rarely reach their maximum allowed
| flight cycles.
|
| In contrast, wide-body cargo planes typically fly shorter
| legs compared to when they are used as passenger carriers.
| And as a result, they are much more likely to hit their
| critical cycle limit.
| pacoWebConsult wrote:
| This particular aircraft was acquired by UPS in 2006 and
| converted for cargo missions. It was originally delivered as
| a passenger aircraft to Thai Airways International in 1991.
| [1] I actually saw this exact aircraft at RDU International
| in August of this year and took a photo, since tri-engine
| aircraft in general are not very common these days.
|
| [1]: https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/flight-tracking-
| news/majo...
| sys32768 wrote:
| In 1986, I lived a mile or so from where a mid-air collision sent
| a DC-9 crashing into a neighborhood, which killed 15 people on
| the ground: https://www.presstelegram.com/2016/08/30/cerritos-
| plane-cras...
|
| Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am
| doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my
| house and still be in a plane crash.
| dmd wrote:
| > Every time I board a plane, I think what a crazy thing I am
| doing, but then I remember that I could be safe and snug in my
| house
|
| To be fair, statistically, your living room is _far_ more
| dangerous than the cabin of an airplane.
| coddingtonbear wrote:
| Forgive me, but by what possible metric: miles traveled in
| it?
| dmd wrote:
| Given an hour spent flying in a commercial US-flagged
| airliner or an hour spent in your living room, and you're
| (far) more likely to get hurt or die in your living room.
| watwut wrote:
| Is that actual statistic?
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| Airliners are hilariously safe. One of my favorite stats
| is that it's the second safest form of transportation per
| passenger mile (elevators win).
| ferguess_k wrote:
| How about per fly versus per drive? This weeds out two
| issues:
|
| - Most people don't fly often enough to justify
| Statistics significance (I for one only flied maybe less
| than 10 flights in my whole life)
|
| - One flight is going to cover a huge amount of mileage
| anyway
|
| Edit: Just realized that issue 1 is not an issue, we are
| going to do an average here anyway, so not individual.
| watwut wrote:
| Living rooms are also hilariously safe. And we spend a
| lot of time in them.
|
| Is there actual reason to think they are less safe per
| hour of time being spend in them as OP claimed?
| anonymars wrote:
| Stairs?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Per passenger mile is arguably not the best denominator.
| People choose planes because they are going long
| distances. Consider whether a better denominator would be
| per passenger trips. A 10,000 mi trip halfway across the
| world could have the same weight as a 2 mi trip to the
| grocery store. Or per hour travelled.
|
| By these metrics commercial flying isn't as safe as you
| think.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| If I'm going somewhere in the continental US, my choices
| are to fly or drive. I'll be traveling the same number of
| miles either way, so the relevant comparison is indeed
| per mile.
| kccqzy wrote:
| That doesn't explain anything. Specifically it doesn't
| explain why in our comparisons the destination is fixed.
| You could decide for this weekend trip we're going to
| budget a max of 3 hours on transportation. Should we take
| a three hour flight to a different state or should we
| drive for three hours to a closer destination?
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| This just isn't how normal people behave. They are
| starting with a destination (relatives, national park,
| etc.) and then choosing how to get there.
| kccqzy wrote:
| That's not how normal people behave. If people choose a
| faraway destination first they are implicitly assuming
| they will fly there.
| noir_lord wrote:
| except 10,000 miles by anything but air isn't a single
| trip, it'd be multiple trips and involve a boat so that's
| not really a fair comparison either.
|
| Furthest you can go in a straight land on land is about
| 7000 miles :).
| IAmBroom wrote:
| rogerrogerr, I suspect that stat involves all deaths, not
| just to passengers.
|
| The vast majority of deaths by train involve
| "trespassers", which is code for "dimwits who bypassed
| crossing gates and got smashed by the train that couldn't
| stop". Usually not even the train drivers are injured,
| much less the passengers.
|
| But airplanes are very safe - perhaps mostly because it's
| hard for idiots to drive in front of them.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Two nits:
|
| First, you are correct about trespassers. But even if you
| only consider passengers, planes are still safer per
| passenger-mile than trains.
|
| Second, _commercial_ planes are very safe. Private
| planes... not in the same league.
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, but so are living rooms. And even when someone dies
| in the living room, it is most likely to be a hearth
| attack or other heath issue unrelated to the place.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| > which is code for "dimwits who bypassed crossing gates
| and got smashed by the train that couldn't stop".
|
| It's code for suicide. The remainder are as you
| described.
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| Actual statistics: In 2023 there were 35.3 million
| commercial flights worldwide.[1] In that year, there were
| 66 accidents in commercial aviation worldwide, of which
| one fatal (9N-ANC).[2] This means that the chance of
| being in an accident was approx 1:535,000 (0.000187 %).
| The chance of getting into a fatal accident was
| 1:35,300,000 (0.000003 %). Per passenger the chance of
| fatality was approx 1:61,111,111 (0.00000164 %), with 72
| fatalities among 4,400,000,000 total passengers.
|
| In contrast, the United States saw 125,700 preventable
| deaths in the home in 2023.[3] The country had a
| population of 336,806,231 people back then.[4] This means
| a probability of approx 1:2,679 (0.037 %).
|
| [1] ATAG Aviation Beyond Borders 2024
|
| [2] ICAO Safety Report 2024 Edition
|
| [3] National Safety Council (NSC) Injury Facts
|
| [4] World Bank
| dboreham wrote:
| Something...something...and statistics.
| rob74 wrote:
| [citation needed]
|
| All things being equal, I would assume that you are safer
| in an environment that's stationary and reasonably
| sturdy, rather than in an aluminum tube at 40,000 ft
| above ground? Ok, as they say, all things are rarely
| equal, of course people are more likely to die of old age
| or of various diseases at home rather than while
| traveling (simply because old and terminally ill people
| probably don't travel that much), but I would say that
| skews the statistics against the living room and should
| be discounted. And at home you can engage in various
| activities that you probably won't do while on an
| airplane (electrical repairs, cooking...), but if you get
| hurt while doing that, that's also not a fault of the
| living room per se...
| dmd wrote:
| That's just it though. You're safer strapped into a seat,
| doing nothing, than you are doing whatever it is you do
| at home.
|
| Would you be safer in your living room doing nothing,
| strapped to a seat, never doing anything remotely
| hazardous (like walking around), vs the same in a tube in
| the sky? Yes, of course. But that's not what people
| actually DO in their living rooms!
| metadat wrote:
| Higher risk of developing blood clots while sitting
| immobilized at altitude in an airplane seat.
|
| Contributing factors:
|
| - Prolonged immobility, which causes blood to pool in the
| legs
|
| - Low cabin pressure and dehydration from the dry cabin
| air
| someuser2345 wrote:
| There's probably a selection bias here; if you're sick,
| you are far more likely to be inside your living room
| than on an airplane.
| tshaddox wrote:
| My guess would be that a lot of living room deaths are
| due to illness which would make the person unlikely to
| board a commercial flight, or other categories which
| certain individuals could reasonably exclude themselves
| from (drug overdose, suicide, amateur electrician work,
| etc.).
|
| I doubt there's a good source of data, but I'd be very
| curious what the odds of dying in your living room per
| hour are if you exclude those categories and look at
| things like house fires, natural disasters, homicide,
| freak accidents (like planes falling on your house), etc.
| flobosg wrote:
| > by what possible metric
|
| Micromorts, maybe? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| The relevant bits here - deaths from all causes in the US
| are 22 micromorts per day. Lower in the article, airline
| travel is listed as 1 micromort per 1000 miles travelled.
|
| Background risk of death from non-natural causes are
| listed as 1.6 per day; many of those non-natural causes
| do not exist in an airplane cabin (e.g. you probably
| aren't going to be murdered because no one has anything
| more effective than a plastic spork, you probably aren't
| going to kill yourself, you probably won't be hit by a
| car). So it seems reasonable to say that being inside an
| airliner cabin is safer than being outside of one.
|
| Also, this is probably confounded by many super-old or
| super-sick people not choosing to fly - if you are in an
| airliner, you are probably healthier than the average
| person.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > e.g. you probably aren't going to be murdered because
| no one has anything more effective than a plastic spork
|
| Except for the occasional murder who has access to the
| flight controls.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| "Occasional" implies a rate at least several orders of
| magnitude higher than actual.
| JCharante wrote:
| if it happens once a decade occasional sounds right
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| So far this year alone, there have been 31,000,000
| flights. https://www.airportia.com/flights-monitor/. So
| somewhere around 300,000,000 flights per decade.
|
| If someone said an event happens "occasionally", I would
| expect it to be significantly more frequent than
| 1/300,000,000.
|
| Powerball lottery odds are 1 in 292 million. I wouldn't
| say that I "occasionally" win the lottery when I buy a
| ticket!
| watwut wrote:
| All causes deaths and living room deaths are not the
| same. Even if we count hearth attack in living room as
| living room death, we still must substract car crashed,
| bedroom deaths, hospitals deaths, garden deaths.
| SpicyUme wrote:
| Once you've traveled even a significant fraction of a mile
| in your living room I'm afraid you're likely dead or
| seriously injured.
| js2 wrote:
| > I could be safe and snug in my house and still be in a plane
| crash.
|
| According to Garp, you just need to buy a pre-disastered home.
| You'll be safe there.[^1]
|
| (Unfortunately his logic is flawed.[^2])
|
| [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3TuoGVNbBs
|
| [^2]: https://xkcd.com/795/
| Diederich wrote:
| I also lived not too far from that location, and unfortunately
| got a glimpse of the aircraft as it was spiraling down. The
| scene on the ground was pretty hellish.
| usermac wrote:
| Relative of mine is a real estate agent in the Louisville area.
| This year she sold two homes to two UPS pilots. One of them, his
| first day was yesterday. The day of the crash. He was bumped from
| that very flight.
| ferguess_k wrote:
| From my understanding "bumped" means removed? Jesus I wonder
| how he feels right now. It's like a lottery.
| tclancy wrote:
| "You take a chance getting up in the morning, crossing the
| street, or sticking your face in a fan."
|
| - Shirley Jackson
| junaid_q wrote:
| the fact that stuff like this still happens (despite the
| relatively low probability/ incident rate) is truly mind
| boggling. the acceptability threshold for this need to be lower
| yalestar wrote:
| This really reminded me of a colleague who had a part-time night
| job flying cancelled checks from Centennial Airport (KAPA, south
| of Denver) to SLC. A bunch of us went out to lunch on a Friday in
| December 2005. That night, on his return to KAPA, he crashed his
| Mitsubishi MU-2 about a mile short of the runway. He and his co-
| pilot were gone, just like that. On Monday you could see the
| wreckage and cleanup from our office which was near the airport.
| It was so surreal.
| HaZeust wrote:
| KAPA is a beautiful airport too, and its restaurant "Perfect
| Landing" on the second floor is S-tier. I've never heard about
| this case there, though. Do you have a flight number?
| yalestar wrote:
| I don't have a flight number, but here's an archived news
| article of the incident.
| https://www.deseret.com/2004/12/13/19866420/model-of-
| plane-t...
|
| Oh I guess it was 2004, not 2005.
|
| Yes, Perfect Landing is a great restaurant!
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| It does make me wonder: why are aircraft takeoffs and landings
| not recorded more often, with higher quality cameras and more
| angles? If I can watch an NFL replay in 4k a few seconds after
| the ball is snapped, why not record (and overwrite) all flights
| that take off and land at every airport?
|
| Like a dash cam, they can save the footage only if there is a
| problem. Surely that would be much better than splicing together
| many third party camera recordings.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Have you seen dash cam footage?
|
| High quality cameras are actually really rare and expensive.
| njovin wrote:
| Most frequently the actions/evidence that lead to a crash would
| not be captured on airport-located cameras. The holes in the
| swiss cheese usually start lining up either in the maintenance
| hangar, en route, or in the briefing room, not on the runway.
|
| The NTSB (and many of their non-US counterparts) are incredibly
| adept at accident investigation using debris, black boxes and
| CVRs. Even in cases where the black boxes are damaged and video
| evidence is available, the video evidence is usually not so
| helpful as to be able to determine a root cause.
|
| If you take into account that the cameras would be mostly
| useless in low-light or poor visibility conditions, and the
| costs associated with maintaining a nationwide network of high-
| res cameras that cover all runways at all major commercial
| airports (and ensures their lines of sight and operation
| through the never-ending renovations going on at these
| airports), I'm not sure that the benefits of having the cameras
| make sense.
| avalys wrote:
| Because aviation is already incredibly, ridiculously safe
| compared to essentially every other activity humanity
| undertakes, and adding additional cost, complexity and expense
| to the system would produce zero discernible benefit relative
| to the cost.
| ekelsen wrote:
| Is V1 recalculated based on the runway length at each airport /
| loading of the plane / etc.?
|
| If you have a long runway and a long runout, you have a much
| higher V1 than a short runway with tall clearance right at the
| end, right?
| mmooss wrote:
| One AVHerald comment, by a tech who works on the same kind of
| engine that fell off, says,
|
| > I pray they did not use a forklift for the installation of the
| engine, onwing.
|
| Does anyone understand that? Why wouldn't you use a forklift? Why
| would that lead to an engine falling off? It seems like you'd
| need to support the 10,000 lbs engine somehow when reattaching
| it.
| theultdev wrote:
| That's referring to American Airlines Flight 191 (May 25,
| 1979).
|
| https://www.faa.gov/lessons_learned/transport_airplane/accid...
|
| I watch a lot of airplane disasters.
|
| TLDR: you are supposed to properly disassemble and use a proper
| lift to lower the engine, not shove it in with a fork lift
| (even though it's quicker).
|
| I don't think this was the cause of this accident though, the
| engine was on fire before takeoff.
|
| Not an airplane engineer, but I very much doubt anyone has used
| a forklift to install an engine since 191. Procedures got much
| more strict.
| mmooss wrote:
| Thanks.
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