Comment Re:Someone teach me something here... (Score 1) 360
I never said that inflation was 1.4%. I said if you had to suddenly pay 1.4% more for every purchase you'd not be happy. That includes taxes, fees, etc.
How much manual labor do you do?
Why does that matter? I don't run marathons for the labor involved.
When I worked in fast food and manufacturing, I spent more of my spare time reading, gaming, and writing software. I still do those things in my spare time, but now, as a desk jockey, I do a lot more woodworking, cooking, and biking. I trained for a week long bike ride across Iowa. Best shape I've been in in years because of it. As I spoke with my fellow riders among the corn fields, I found a lot of professional workers. I didn't find any carpenters or plumbers or electricians.
Among the people I run with are contractors, police officers, EMTs, etc. They run the whole gamut of professions from those who do a lot of manual work to those who do very little.
I assume that one of the reasons you find running to be rewarding is because of the amount of work it takes to successfully prepare for a marathon. Running a marathon in anything under 5 hours is a major achievement. We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Some guy that builds houses for a living? He doesn't need any more hard work.
Well I know of two guys who did run marathons who built houses for a living. One of them has since sold his business but that's what he did. It may be true that those of perform manual labor are not as likely to run but they are there.
Similarly, people who don't find themselves doing enough real work do things like running marathons.
As a marathoner, I resent your implication that I don't do enough real work. Training for and running a marathon is my hobby. I train with doctors, lawyers, housewives, entrepreneurs, students, wait-staff, etc. It takes a lot of time and is like getting a second job but it's not because we spend all day doing nothing. Some people choose to watch TV in their spare time; some people choose to play video games. You may not choose a marathon over your current hobbies but that is your choice; don't denigrate those who simply choose differently.
You have a strange definition of stop.
Again I refer you to the transcript. From the initial stall warning at 2 hr 10 min, there are stall warnings in every minute. Then the plane crashed.
I do not know where you get the impression that we disagree about this. Of course they stalled because their speed was too low and the AoA was too high.
Your conclusions have been wrong about Air France 447 because you have been wrong about the facts. The conclusions of the BEA specifically contribute the accident to the pilots and a number of other factors including the pitot tube design. However, the failure of the pitot tubes should not have led to a crash by themselves. You seem to want blame everything else except what is clear in the report. The computer did not "panic". The stall warning did correctly identify the problem that occurred. The pilots under a number of alarms did not establish initial control. There was a communications breakdown between the pilots. The pilots ignored the stall warning until too late.
This is a factual bit we disagree about.
You can read in the transcript. The stall warnings never stopped. They didn't alarm all the time but they didn't stop. The plane eventually stalled because the pilots did not correct the problem. I refer you to the final report of the accident not the opinion of a pilot's union.
The aeroplane went into a sustained stall, signalled by the stall warning and strong buffet. Despite these persistent symptoms, the crew never understood that they were stalling and consequently never applied a recovery manoeuvre. The combination of the ergonomics of the warning design, the conditions in which airline pilots are trained and exposed to stalls during their professional training and the process of recurrent training does not generate the expected behaviour in any acceptable reliableway.
That is unless you want to argue with conclusions of the official report.
Do you really think you need to tell me what a stall is?
When you posted something factually incorrect about what a stall is, I expect you to admit that you posted factually incorrect information. I'm not a professional pilot but I know enough about aviation to know what a stall is. Stalling due to high speeds is unlikely especially when that was not the case in Air France 447. There were climbing; their air speed was not too high. They were stalling because their air speed was too low and the AoA was too high; they just didn't believe the warnings.
Yes, the stall happened because airspeed was too low. However, the stall warnings did the worst thing possible: turn off when airspeed is low and turn on when airspeed increases.
There were a number of contributing factors to this accident, but you seem desperate to dismiss that the fact that the pilots made errors that led to the crash and blame everything else. The computer did not "panic"; it did exactly what it was supposed to do. The stall warnings while intermittent did alert the pilots to the exact situation that caused the plane to crash. This was a recoverable situation, and the pilots did not apply the proper procedures: Establish initial control then deal with the situation. Instead the crew panicked not the computer.
More generally, the double failure of the planned procedural responses shows the limits of the current safety model. When crew action is expected, it is always supposed that they will be capable of initial control of the flight path and of a rapid diagnosis that will allow them to identify the correct entry in the dictionary of procedures.
I am not sure why you think the part you copied from the transcript contradicts what I said.
No you said that the stall warning stopped when the pilot pulled up (read above). That is not correct. The stall warnings happened continuously throughout the time until the condition was corrected. It was never corrected.
The stall warnings sounded multiple times, whenever airspeed got high enough (i.e. the pilot was doing the right thing) to make the system believe the readings
No that is also incorrect. Stall warnings are when there is not enough lift. Most of the time (and in this accident), this is when the airspeed is too low or the angle of attack is too high. Stalling at high speeds is possible but not in this case especially since the pilot was climbing not diving.
The pitot tubes were working correctly for the majority of the accident, precisely because there was no ice on them for the majority of the accident.
The pitot tubes were to be replaced per schedule because they had a tendency to ice up during flights. I point you to the wiki article on the flight as multiple incidents led to the replacement advisory.
Yet the computer system stuck in alternate law, encouraging the pilot to do the entirely wrong thing.
The computer did not get "stuck" in alternate law. The computer with conflicting airspeed readings goes to alternate law by design. This is basic flight (and computer system) protocols. As for "encouraging the pilot to do the entirely wrong thing", I don't know where you get this idea: The computer did not goad the pilots into climbing nor told them what to do. The computer realized it could not fly the plane according to its program and switched to alternate law giving the pilots full control of the aircraft. It is up to the pilots to fly manually (which they are supposed to be trained to do).
The problem is the pilots did not follow training or procedures. It may be an increasing problem as more pilots rely too much on autopilot. This has been identified as a trend in all airlines as more airlines are created with more flights and more planes. The US is also subject to this problem; however, the US has a larger pool of ex-military pilots who were trained to fly manually.
In fact Alamo a few years back threw out a seemingly drunk individual for texting and turned it into a pre-movie PSA.
Read the cockpit transcript. The stall warnings stopped whenever the crew member pulled the stick back and made the stall worse. (They stopped because the computer was programmed to treat the ridiculously low airspeed indications as instrument failures and disregard them).
I have. That's not what I read in the transcript.
2 h 10 min 03: Cavalry charge (autopilot disconnection warning)
2 h 10 min 10,4: SV: stall
. .
2 h 10 min 13,0: SV stall
. .
2 h 10 min 41,6: Weâ(TM)re in... yeah weâ(TM)re in climb
2 h 10 min 51,4: SV Stall
(for the next minute until 2 h 14 min 01,7 there are stall warnings)
It has 2 pitot tubes and 1 failed.
This is incorrect:
On 12 August 2009, Airbus issued three Mandatory Service Bulletins, requiring that all A330 and A340 aircraft be fitted with two Goodrich 0851HL pitot tubes and one Thales model C16195BA pitot (or alternatively three of the Goodrich pitots)
Apart from that the aircraft was in perfect condition. The failing pitot tube recovered during the fall, so all equipment worked correctly.
The pitot tubes failed because of icing. There would be no ice when they were recovered so "working correctly" isn't exactly true as the conditions of the accident were not in place when they were recovered.
The autopilot shut off and the computer put the plane into alternate law, where pilots are allowed to do stupid things like stall the plane. The computer had one perfectly working airspeed indicator to rely on, but instead it panicked.
Do you know what happens when one of the pitot tubes fails in these conditions? It give erratic readings. So the autopilot cannot determine which one of the 3 readings is correct. It's not "panicking" if it is meant to do that.
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