Dad,I just bent your new airplane

SimonK

OK so this has nothing to do with rebreathers but everyone enjoys a good disaster, below is from an email doing the rounds at work.

Apologies to any pilots out there if you have already seen it.


WRECKED A340-600 at TOULOUSE FRANCE

These are pictures of the wreck of a brand new A340-600, in November 2007, that had never flown. Brand spanking new right out of the hangar, without a single hour of air time. Enter the airline flight crew. Nine employees of the airline were in the aircraft, but not one employee from Airbus was present. The crew taxied out to the run-up area. Then they took all four engines to takeoff power with virtually an empty aircraft. This was their first mistake as they obviously didn't read the run-up manuals. They had no clue just how light of an empty air bus really is.
No chocks were set, not that it would have mattered at that power setting. The brakes will not hold it back at full power anyway. As it turns out, the takeoff warning horn was blaring away in the cockpit because they had all 4 engines at full power. The aircraft computers thought they were trying to takeoff but it had not been configured properly (flaps/slats, etc, etc) Then one of these brain surgeons decided to pull the 'Ground Sense' circuit breaker to silence the alarms. This fools the aircraft into thinking it is in the air.

That was their last mistake. As soon as they did that, the computers automatically released all the brakes and set the aircraft rocketing forward. The poor bastards had no idea that this is a Safety feature so that pilots can't land with the brakes on. There was no time to stop and no one smart enough to throttle back the engines from their max power setting. So the rest is as you see it below.
Note: No one is talking and it didn't make the main stream media so who knows if there were survivors.





Just thought of a rebreather connection: Alex is always telling us that rebreathers should be as safe as commercial airliners!

Stay Safe
Simon

bherring68

Didn't this happen some time last year?

Bill

Edit: Never mind, should have read it more carefully before replying.

tekdiver170

Huh kinda sounds similar to most rebreather accidents, pilot error, or flying past your experience level.

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Dutchy

The time that only passengers are allowed anywhere near a plane is approching fast. Pilots are a weak link.
Even when we forget about intentional crashing by terrorist or suicidal pilots there's still a category of errors where the plane would have done it better than the pilot.
Either you fly one all by yourself (single engine no passengers) or you have the machine do it for you in its entirity if that's not an option. Anywhere inbetween is IMHO dangerous. Rebreathers IMHO are like that. I expect Alex building in buoyancy control the very moment it becomes a realistic option.

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AD_ward9

Nice pictures, but actually, I said "as safe as 737 Shuttle Flight from Edinburgh to London", not "as safe as a plane with a bunch of test pilots". Slightly different thing. Or should be.

Have you ever know anyone who has been on China Airlines?

Alex

PaulTG2

The question isn't just how many pilot errors caused crashes, but how many were prevented by pilot action -- a question no one really has an answer to.

Having only computers in the cockpit we'd likely just be trading "pilot error" for other human programming errors... or software inadequacy, or computer failure. Whether a computer or pilot is flying, in the end people still mis-fuel, mis-enter data, mis-judge weather, don't repair correctly, don't inspect correctly, and incorrectly write software. Most of the time you're better off with a human brain troubleshooting the problems you never read about in the paper.

In many cases flying is far more about judgment of the overall situation than most people know. It is very, very hard to codify much of the decision making processes involved in flying. Check out the B2 accident for example, the debate Airbus vs. Boeing fly-by-wire, and even the FAA regs which allow the pilot to deviate from anything if they need to for the safety of flight.


I don't think anyone involved in Sioux City would have preferred a computer flying the aircraft. Or all those flights that ended well because the pilot pull it through -- the 777 dual engine outage due to fueling mistake, safe landing with gear problems, portions of the fuselage being ripped away, control surfaces not working, gear actuator failure, or any of the other thousands of situations that didn't make the news because the crew handled it properly.



-p

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tibby

Oh, Daddy's gonna' be really mad now...he's probably still making payments on it.

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Dutchy

Your job is safe for now. That is exactly why I wrote approaching fast instead of now. The difference between human error in piloting and human error in system design is that pilot errors are not fixed over time.
When a design error (or programming error) is found root cause analysis may reveal even more errors that can be corrected before more lives are lost. Pilot errors can be repeated despite changing protocols. And I must say that there are better examples than the 747 out of fuel. The thing shouldn't have taken off in the first place. Wasn't that because of Metric versus Imperical measures? It's got to be human error then not replacing a defective measurement system and assuming it would be OK because of what was allegedly put into it?

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Guilhem

Well, the local press mentioned it (see here). Basically, what the article says is that the aircraft was undergoing engine thrust tests, while in a fixed position. 2 engines only out of 4 were pushed at 70% of their max power, when the system that held the aircraft in place let go, and the craft then started moving at higher speed towards the noise-reduction wall.

caveseeker7

OOOPS!

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Cheers
Stefan



"Political Correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority,
and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media,
which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible
to pick up a turd by the clean end.'!"