Archive for Aviation - page 3

R.I.P., James Goodson.

My father was a WWII pilot and were he still alive today, he would be 96.  There are not many left of The Greatest Generation and we lose more every day.  God rest their souls – they were faced with a horrific task and they did their duty.

Sidenote:  We learn from Goodson that smoking is good for you:

That June, he was in his P-51 making a strafing run over a German airfield when he was shot down. He fled into a birch forest before collapsing from injuries. He eventually was caught by the Germans and threatened with execution.

He recalled that one captor asked him if he wanted a drink or another indulgence before being shot. Mr. Goodson spied a box of Havana cigars, asked for a stogie and began to blow smoke rings, which he said shocked the German and led to a conversation about their mutual interest in cigars.

“The guy had never seen anything like that,” Mr. Goodson once said in an interview, “and I started teaching him how to blow smoke rings.” Instead of being shot, he was sent to a prisoner-of-war camp.

“People say smoking costs lives,” he said. “It saved my life.”

Godspeed,  Lt.Col. Goodson.  Rest Well.

Hat Tip:  Althouse     Crossposted at: Men Out Of Work Blog

The New Straits Times (Malaysia) is reporting that Malaysia Air Flight 370’s Copilot attempted a cell phone call after final radio contact and after the plane diverted from it’s planned course to Beijing.  I have seen this reported nowhere else.

The source for the story is an anonymous person inside the investigation.  The source states that the co-pilot’s cell records are being examined (as I assume would be the pilot’s, flight crew’s and all the passengers’) and the examination shows that the phone was powered off about the time that the crew boarded the flight.  This is considered normal.  However, after the flight departed, after the final radio contact with ground controllers and after the flight changed course, the phone was turned on and a call was made or attempted.  The source declined to give further information as to whom the call was attemted or if it was indeed completed.  I will be interested to see if this story is picked up by other media sources.

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Thanks! and Enjoy!

In any situation, being aware of potential dangers and having a plan for what to do if the potentials are realized is a good idea.  Typically the most dangerous situation any of us find ourselves in is driving or riding in a car.  But if you ask people what is the most dangerous thing they have done they will usually say flying in a plane.  So, because I care about you here is an article with 10 tips that could save your life in a plane crash.  Click on the link and go read the whole thing (or RTWT as we say in innernet lingo).  Or if you don’t want to I’ll give you the best three out of 10.

• You’ve only got 90 seconds to get out.  Here’s the scenario – the plane’s crashed and your still in one piece.  Good.  You’ve survived the crash and if you don’t want to die in a fire then you’ve got 90 seconds before smoke and/or fire makes it impossible for you to escape.  Forget your luggage, haul ass to the nearest exit.  And to that end…
• Remember the 5 row rule.  If at all possible never sit farther than 5 rows from the exit.  When you buy your ticket, if the airline allows you to choose your seat pay attention to where the exits are on the diagram and get within 5 rows of one.  If flying on a “cattle call” airline (i.e. Southwest) you may wish to consider paying the extra $20 or so for guranteed early check in.  This will usually get you close enough to the front of the boarding line so that you can get within 5 rows of an exit,  Personally I always try to sit in an exit row, as I am willing to help others out in exchange for being right there at the exit.  Also I feel better knowing that my wife will be the first one out the door.  Bonus – exit rows are usually a few inches wider and so more legroom.
• Overcome the “normalcy bias” by having an action plan:  Look around and imagine what you will do if sh*t gets real.  Know where the exit is and have a plan for how you will make it to the exit if you can’t see because of darkness or smoke.  Be ready to take immediate action and don’t expect much help from the flight crew, chances are they will be in as bad or worse shape than you.  Also you are less likley to panic if you have a plan and execute it.

Seven more good tips at the link.  So happy flying!  In the event of a crash you will probably be killed instantly anyway (just kidding!).  But seriously, according to an NTSB Report, from 1983 to 2000 the survival rate of crashes was 95.7%.  Remember, you survive your daily commute so you can survive a plane ride as well!

Today, Malaysian Authorities officially declared Flight 370 lost at sea with no possible survivors.  Based on close analysis of the attempted communications between the plane and satellites it was determined that the flight was on the southern of the two possible courses and this would have put it 1500 miles west of Australia in the Indian Ocean when it’s fuel would have been exhausted.  Since there are no possible landing sites, the lost at sea declaration was made.  The search continues though now as a recovery effort.  Conditions in the area are such that it is believed no one could survive for what has now been two weeks even if they had survived a crash or ditching.

Still unanswered are the questions of how or why this happened.  Authorites have all but ruled out an accident because of the circumstances surrounding how the plane “disappeared” from communications and radar, and because the flight’s behavior afterward indicated that the deed was done with purpose and some skill.  There is speculation as to who was responsible and as to whether one or both of the pilots may have been involved, though to what end is not known.

Time for another post about the missing Malaysian Airways Flight 370.  I haven’t been posting on this because there has been little actual news, just lots of (often crazy) speculation.  However, it was reported last night the Australian Authorities using satellite recon pictures may have spotted potential debris in the Indian Ocean southwest of Australia.  Aircraft and surface vessels have been dispatched, but the sheer size of the search area and bad weather make actual confirmation/recovery a long shot at best.

Good Luck

So, while not really wanting to board the speculation bandwagon, I will put a couple things out there.  I’ll call it educated speculation.  There are some responsible people with knowledge of the aircraft, airline flight procedures, etc. that are attempting to put together scenarios that fit in with the known facts.  Recently a theory was put forth that this was an accident and the cause was a fire on board that eventually incapacited the crew and passengers and the plane continued to fly on automated systems until it eventually crashed when it ran out of fuel.  Link to that article here.  You may want to read it then come back.  Back now? OK.  Now a pilot debunks that theory here in what seems to me to be a very credible way.  Go ahead and read that.  Back?  OK, good.  I still believe that the simplest explanation will turn out to be the correct one.  And I’m leaning toward the simplest explanation being an act of air piracy though we don’t know by whom or for what purpose or whether they succeeded (landed) or failed (crashed).  This mystery is a long way from being solved.

Since all the new reporting on Malaysian Airways Flight 370 seems to be speculation, I am not going to post about it again until some new concrete information comes out.  All that is known for sure is that that plane is missing and presumed crashed.  The who, what , when, where and why are all unknown.

As I stated in my first post, the simplest explanation is usually correct, and that is that the plane has crashed.  Though I believe there is a strong possiblity that this was an attempt to “steal” the airliner, IMHO the likelyhood of a successful undetected landing is very slight.  What is also unknown is if the mystery will ever be solved.  And so, continuing prayers for the passengers, crew and their families.

This is now officially a criminal investigation, as reported in The Washington Post.  The Airliner’s ACARS system initiated periodic “handshakes”with comm satellites approximately every 30 minutes for an additional seven hours after civilian radar contact was lost.  The plane’s location could not be ascertained from the signals and it is not known whether the plane was in flight for the duration of that time or if it had landed, nor is it clear whether it crashed or was landed and shut down when the system stopped communicating.

The exact amount of fuel on board is not known, but it would  have been sufficient for the scheduled six hour flight to Beijing and common practice is to carry a minimum 1 hour reserve.  Authorities have several working theories, mainly falling along three lines.  First is that the plane was hijacked either by the crew or terrorist passengers and then crashed intentionally into the Indian Ocean as an act of either terrorism or suicide.  Another theory is that the plane was hijacked by either crew or passengers with the intent to divert and land at an unknown location, but then ran out of fuel and crashed.  The final theory is the same as the second theory except that in this scenario the plane was successfully landed at an unknown location.  This third theory is deemed the unlikeliest, since authorities believe that for this to happen, the plane would have been detected entering either Indian or Pakistani airspace and as of yet there is no indication that this occurred.

Additional information:

ABC News (autoplay video)

CNN

UK Daily Mail

All bets are off now.

Reuters reports: Radar Data Suggests Missing Malaysia Plane Deliberately Flown Way Off Course: Sources

Associated Press:  1 US Theory Is Someone Diverted Missing Plane

New York Times: Satellite Firm Says Its Data From Jet Could Offer Location

How Can An Airliner Just Disappear?  The same way your Porsche disappears from your driveway.

Someone steals it.

In the continuing saga of Malaysian Airlines flight 307 there was a bit of a bombshell dropped today when the Wall Street Journal reported that the Boeing 777‘s on board telemetry system continued to operate in a sort of “standby” mode for approximately 4 hours after the last confirmed radar contact with the jet.  The initial report was that monitoring systems embedded in the plane’s Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines were emitting data, but the article was corrected to say that the plane’s satellite communications link was the origin of the signals.

Rolls-Royce Trent 800 High Bypass Turbofan engine on a Boeing 777

Modern aircraft are equipped with a digital datalink system called the Aircraft Communication Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) whereby the aircraft sends packets of information about flight systems autonomously to ground crews.  The Wall Street Journal’s anonymous sources say that according to investigators the plane’s ACARS system, though not sending data, did send signals attempting to establish a link to communication satellites and this leads investigators to believe the plane was intact and still flying.  Official sources, however, denied the report.