I'm not sure I'd count Apollo 1 as a flight incident, there wasn't even fuel in the rest of the rocket. It was a training/simulation accident, more of a systems integration failure than a flight accident. So in my view Apollo only suffered ONE serious in flight failure and even though we nearly lost the crew, this failure only really cost the mission. As a system it's record is pretty darned good, considering how far out on the bleeding edge of technology it was in it's day.

It was the EARNINGS numbers that tanked the share price...

The tweet was just premature because most companies release earnings AFTER the market closes.

The drop in the share price would have happened after the earnings miss anyway, so it wasn't the tweet.

I like this idea actually. Personally I learned to fly at an airport that had a flight service station on the field so although we didn't have a manned tower, we had almost exactly what you describe. Pilots would use the FSS advisory frequency and although they where not issuing clearances, they did provide traffic advisories and local conditions if you contacted them. They stopped short of requiring radio contact in VMC though that makes sense to me.

This "remote tower" thing sounds a bit dodgy to me anyway. There just are things that you can only do from the tower cab on location. I'd hate to see what it took to use the signal lights or dig out the binoculars to see if there's some trash on the runway if you are 70 miles away. And unless you have a LOT of traffic a tower isn't necessary or helpful.

I don't know if this is worth it even then. You've got to be at some minimum traffic level or it doesn't matter. I've flown into and out of "uncontrolled" and "controlled" airports and unless we are talking about IMC situations and multiple parallel runways, I don't see the need for more than a Unicom frequency. About all a tower gets you is improved though put and that's only really when the airport is under IFR, well that and enforced separation between us slow guys and the jets.

I'm guessing the necessary traffic rate that makes this kind of VR system worthwhile, is darn close to the traffic rates that makes manning the tower locally a viable solution. Yea, it might be a bit cheaper on the labor side, but it's not like you have to man a tower 24/7 anyway.

So triple redundancy isn't good enough? The aircraft system that fails, then two separate electronic copies of the "how to" manual? (And lets not forget the systems knowledge of the two pilots which they are required to know to be type rated.)

I'll bet that a hard copy of the aircraft flight manual is in the cockpit anyway. It's not that heavy (compared to the bookshelf full of maps) and not that big.

Well... There are ALWAYS brain dead hypotheticals we can come up with.

Remember, we are talking about MAPS here. The loss or misplacement of a map in flight is not a life threatening event in its own right. Where it might be advisable to have separate backups for everything in an aircraft, there are just some things which are not worth the effort to worry too much about and in this case, your final line of defense is to fall back on ATC to assist you with the procedures.

I think two separate, albeit identical, sources of this information is sufficient. The chances of a dual in-flight failure is going to be quite rare, and in those cases there is a viable backup sitting at the other end of the radio. A backup path that is actually trained in how to get lost pilots and their passengers on the ground safely.

The emergency handbook for the aircraft isn't the issue here, it's the maps and approach plates which are constantly changing and must be kept current. The maps are legally required to fly IFR so it's part of the checklist before you kick the tires and light the fires you make sure you have the necessary maps and approach plates for your destination and alternates.

Yea, but the problem was discovered before the aircraft left the ground so this is not a safety issue.

I'm guessing that their solution will be to put Pilots and Copilots on different update schedules and also allow for the immediate roll back of any software updates by the user. Where I don't think having one application on one OS is necessarily all that risky, what cost them in this case was the inability for the pilots to roll back to the last version that worked right after an upgrade or grab a 'backup device" from the pilot's lounge if theirs is somehow messed up. Given that the issue is not safety but more about keeping the schedule here, I imagine that the logistical costs of their solution will be a primary consideration.

Actually, for IFR flight the FAA regulations require that you have current approach plates in the cockpit for reference when flying IFR approaches. It's part of the "minimum equipment" required. So if you don't have them in hard or soft copy, you legally cannot fly the approach, even if you think you memorized the whole thing.

In an emergency, ATC can assist you by providing the necessary information and then authorize you to fly the approach even if you don't have the maps, but you are going to have to answer some embarrassing questions once you get on the ground. What type of questions? Well, ones that will end an ATP's career if they don't have really good answers for, and "my dog ate my maps" or "I forgot to bring them" are NOT good answers but "Both I-Pads crashed in flight!" might just be enough to keep you out of trouble.

Why all this trouble? Just test to make sure you have the maps in each of the two I-Pads, that they are current and you can access them before you kick the tires and light the fires...

This check is performed AFTER the update process is completed and the IPad is disconnected from EVERYTHING and BEFORE you push back from the gate. What happened was one or both of the redundant IPads was messed up and they couldn't get the application to run, so they stayed on the ground. Seems pretty much the safe way to do it.

Your idea, where it has merit, is pointless. Just verify that both map sources are working before flight and you are good to go. Seems perfectly safe to me to use just one operating system/application for this if you disconnect them and test to make sure you have access to what you need for the flight in question.

Then.... The ground based controllers will be forced to assist the pilots in navigation to the destination and unless the weather is below VFR minimums, nothing changes for the flight. IF the destination is under IFR rules, then the flight might be forced to divert because they don't have the minimum necessary equipment to do an IFR approach (i.e. a copy of the approach plate) available.

Actually, for most of these pilots, they've flown the same route multiple times in the last few weeks anyway. Likely they know all the frequencies, airways and procedures by heart already. So the only real way anything changes is if the destination is IFR, not that they couldn't fly the approach, but that they don't legally meet the requirements to do so without the maps in hand.

They DO have a backup...

Both pilots carry IDENTICAL I-Pads.... What amazes me is that nobody thought of the single point of failure, the application the I-Pads run.. OOPS..

There were ST movies AFTER 4?

Oh, yea, that junk I could only really sit though once... The best of the bunch was #2 and how that was made after the dreadfully made #1 is a testament to the draw of the franchise. After #2 it was down hill, no matter what the director. The stories where junk, the premise of each worse. About the only thing that advanced was the special effects.

BTW, my complaints about Nimoy are really "tongue in cheek" as is my critique of #4. Where it's not the best effort in the franchise, I actually liked it as a movie. And that's saying something because I was a projectionist at the time and I saw that movie multiple times a week for the bulk of it's time in theaters.

Shatner can't act OR direct though... But it happened that his single character fit his personality pretty well for the most of his career so he got by.

Maybe after my current contract is up I'll give them the heave ho...

I hear that the "customer retention" people have a bit more authority, but they are also a whole lot more pushy by the sounds of the news reports..

I didn't like the first one, or the second, so we are not comparing apples to apples...