777 Crash and Fire at SFO

[orangehuggy]

Apologies to anyone that takes offence to this rather tasteless, although quite clever prank. Unusual that the NTSB intern confirmed the names without checking.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfhfxNIMJjA

[Jingogunner]

Hack Pranking

Apologies to anyone that takes offence to this rather tasteless, although quite clever prank. Unusual that the NTSB intern confirmed the names without checking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfhfxNIMJjA

Thanks for that to whoever was responsible for so aptly misinforming media idiots. I really enjoyed it. In principle, I believe some hacks do desperately need pranking. I used to do that sort of thing (in a different industry to aviation) when I was a kid, but later on I had to stop because many people trusted me and I had to be serious and accurate in everything I said. I'd be very amused if someone could get them to make absurb announcements about the technical details, which I suspect are terminologically ripe for such purpose. Sadly, in reality, flight professionals have to be honest and accurate all the time if the trust of the public is to be maintained. Having said that I believe it might do no harm to give a little rope for really obtuse hacks, crazed by their lust for story, prestige and money, to hang themselves publicly for our amusement.

[Leftseat86]

http://www.ntsb.gov/news/2013/130712.html



I wonder if that means they (the TV station) gave the names, asked for confirmation and he confirmed? Or if they asked for the names and he provided those?

You'd have to be pretty dense to run with those names regardless of who "confirmed" them.

I'm also baffled at how this happened and these people were so stupid that no one noticed before they went on the air.

[3WE]

I'm also baffled at how this (joke pilot names) happened and these people were so stupid that no one noticed before they went on the air.

Wow, sounds like a classic Swiss cheese alignment of miss steps...these sorts of things can cause planes to crash!

I think they need more training.

[BoeingBobby]

And I have a question for 747 instructor BoeingBobby, how many of your landings are handmade? 100%, or less?
.

I would say 99.5 % or more are hand flown approaches and landings. As Brian pointed out in an earlier post, There is a requirement for each aircraft in the fleet to do an auto-land every 15 days @ our company (Not sure about others) to maintain the Cat 2 Cat 3 qualifications of the aircraft.

[3WE]

...I don't know that much about ITS...

...He was unfriendly, cynical, fear-mongering, and some people were taking him seriously...

...he contributed to some of the discussions with 100% pure BS...

It was not 100% pure BS (hint, absolute statements are almost always wrong). Oh yeah, he stirred the pot, and could be brutal- but often times the brutality was deserved (see footnote Boeing Bobby). And if folks take everything on an obscure aviation forum infested with photographers and parlour talkers overly seriously, they need a reality pill.

Boing Bobby- my apologies to you for my flaming. I have to admit that the posts that aggravated you also aggravated me. There is a point where folks start spewing total BS or over-the-top things that they really don't know much about (or aren't really relevant)...and over the years of being on a forum, I've realized that there are many times when I spewed BS, got flamed and deserved to get flamed. But I learned, and try (with limited success) to post smarter. But yeah, I have my dark side in that I get a good chuckle and try to stir crap occasionally too.

[BoeingBobby]

It was not 100% pure BS (hint, absolute statements are almost always wrong). Oh yeah, he stirred the pot, and could be brutal- but often times the brutality was deserved (see footnote Boeing Bobby). And if folks take everything on an obscure aviation forum infested with photographers and parlour talkers overly seriously, they need a reality pill.

Boing Bobby- my apologies to you for my flaming. I have to admit that the posts that aggravated you also aggravated me. There is a point where folks start spewing total BS or over-the-top things that they really don't know much about (or aren't really relevant)...and over the years of being on a forum, I've realized that there are many times when I spewed BS, got flamed and deserved to get flamed. But I learned, and try (with limited success) to post smarter. But yeah, I have my dark side in that I get a good chuckle and try to stir crap occasionally too.

Apology accepted, no worries.
BB

[Evan]

Wow, sounds like a classic Swiss cheese alignment of miss steps...these sorts of things can cause planes to crash!

I think they need more training.

The more I learn about this accident, the more I think we need a new class of cheese analogy. Is there a cheese with more holes than Swiss? Havrati? I think what we have here is a case of the Havrati lining up with the Gruyere.

[TeeVee]

The more I learn about this accident, the more I think we need a new class of cheese analogy. Is there a cheese with more holes than Swiss? Havrati? I think what we have here is a case of the Havrati lining up with the Gruyere.

there's a type called swiss lace...very appropriate!

[guamainiac]

Or, something smells! Who cut the cheese?

[Schwartz]

Please don't smack me too hard for this one, but if they, for lack of power while the engines spooled up, would they have had a pigs prayer, even the slightest chance, that if they went gear up, they may have cleaned it up enough to stretch the glide that few extra yards and cleared the seawall?

I know there is no true "correct" action one can take when you are that far behind the airplane and belly in gear up has it's problems too but it does sound like it may have been a bit better than no gear and no tail and that final slam dunk into the tarmac.

One other big problem with this is that they would already have to assume they were going to crash to even consider doing that. Since they only missed by a matter of feet, I think one has to assume they thought they might just squeek in up until the very end.

[Schwartz]

NBC: SFPD Confirm Asiana Airlines 16 Year Old Crash Victim Was Struck By Responding SFFD Fire Apparatus while she was covered by firefighting foam. Unknown if it played a role in her death.

From the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/third-chinese-girl-to-die-from-injuries-in-san-francisco-flight-crash-identified/article13209448/#dashboard/follows/

Talmadge also confirmed that an Associated Press photograph of a body under a yellow tarp near the burned-out jet was Ye Meng Yuan.

The photo, taken from above, shows firefighters looking down at the tarp, and there are truck track marks leading up to it.

Police said the teenager was covered in foam that rescuers had sprayed on the burning wreckage. When the truck moved while battling the flames, rescuers discovered her body, Esparza said.

“The driver may not have seen the young lady in the blanket of foam,” said Ken Willette of the National Firefighter Protection Agency, which sets national standards for training airfield firefighters. “These could be factors contributing to this tragic event.”

He said fire trucks that responded to the Asiana crash would have started shooting foam while approaching the fuselage from 80 or 100 feet away. The foam was sprayed from a canon on the top of the truck across the ground to clear a safe path for evacuees. That was supposed to create a layer of foam on the ground that is several inches high before the truck gets to the plane.

[snydersnapshots]

One other big problem with this is that they would already have to assume they were going to crash to even consider doing that. Since they only missed by a matter of feet, I think one has to assume they thought they might just squeek in up until the very end.

Even if the tail had cleared the sea wall, it would have impacted the runway before the landing gear given the length of the plane and the pitch attitude to maintain the airspeed...

[EconomyClass]

I agree with Patrick Smith in that a crash with nearly everyone surviving is closer to good news than bad news. I don't know how many times a plane comes in to land in an unorthodox manner, but it must number in the hundreds. And then there are the thousands upon thousands of near-perfect landings. I'm sure this kind of crash gives those people with fear of flying bad dreams.

What I question is this. I think he's trying a bit too hard here:

It is imperative to remember that Saturday's accident was the first multiple-fatality crash involving a major airline in North America since November 2001.

Given the number of trips now handled by code-sharing minor airlines, I don't think this should be that comforting. Since Colgan, I've been very very interested in the name of the actual company completing my trips. Patrick Smith does his bit to make this reality unimportant. If it isn't "a major airline", who cares if everyone on board dies? I really think the guy approaches analysis rationally. But why does he feel it is so necessary to throw out hair-splitting generalizations? The industry has gone a long way to cut its expenses, sometimes by outsourcing to questionable companies like Pinnacle. Smith and all other apologists should stop trying to hide from these realities. Passengers should be digging a little deeper into who they are betting their lives on.

[MairzyDotes]

Hi

I've been reading this discussion, and found it very interesting. I'm not an expert on flying or piloting. I've always followed more the human factor I guess of performance including what I guess is called CRM. When I first heard about it, I assumed it hit the sea wall being SFO that came to mind.

I used to fly Asiana a few times and knew some American-based flight attendants. I'd had always had good experiences with them though being at Gimpo airport was always an experience.

I could almost see a cockpit experience not much different than KLM in Tenerife i in terms of crew resource management.

And I read somewhere that AA 191 was an absolute disgrace and I 100% agree with that. The biggest impression that crash left on me when I was growing up was going to a funeral with nothing left to bury b/c that crash really left nothing and then you follow the process and it's really so stupid. To this day, that one still bothers me. It never had to happen and it should never have happened. It's great that there was an investigative process however.