Non-Military Aviation

[Shyster]

I assume tifosi is on UAL1140 and is, at the moment I type this, #2 for takeoff on 25R.

[tifosi77]

UAL1140 it is

What I heard: 3hrs, 15mins

What was actually said: 3hrs, 50mins

lol

Still pretty quick, but not absurdly so.

[Shyster]

Lisbon first, you said, so I'm thinking either United 942 or TAP 234 from IAD to LIS. Not sure why those two airlines would have two flights to the same destination leaving 10 minutes apart from Washington DC when both are in the same alliance, but they do. Or you are going to somewhere like Paris or Brussels and connecting to LIS.

[tifosi77]

TAP234 IAD - LIS, like a 6+hr layover. Yoi.

My guess is the service overlap has something to do with it being a capital-to-capital route, but I don't know if that's how that works.

We are between Flagstaff and ABQ right now, and my tablet is refusing to play the audio books I downloaded.

[DigitalGypsy66]

This is awful:

A business jet carrying a former White House official this month pitched up and down in midair, causing her death, after pilots turned off a system that stabilizes the plane, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a preliminary report.

The pilots noticed several warnings related to system failures of the aircraft’s flight control as it traveled from Keene, N.H., to Leesburg, Va., on March 3, and they followed steps on a checklist, which advised them to turn off a switch that controls a stabilizer function in the aircraft, according to the report.

When the switch was turned off, it prompted the nose of the plane to swing upward, the report says. The plane then pointed down and jerked upward again in a roller-coaster-like motion before a pilot used both hands to regain control of it, the N.T.S.B. said.

“As soon as the switch position was moved, the airplane abruptly pitched up,” the report says. One of the pilots, in his account to investigators, estimated that the plane had oscillated up and down for a “few seconds.”

Shortly after the scare, the crew members were told by a passenger that the former White House official, Dana Hyde, 55, of Cabin John, Md., had been injured. Ms. Hyde, who was a senior adviser at the State Department under President Barack Obama and served as counsel on the 9/11 Commission, was taken to a hospital after the plane landed.

She died in the hospital from her injuries, the authorities said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/26/busi ... Position=1

[Shyster]

The preliminary NTSB report for that incident is not complimentary to the pilots. Basically, when the autopilot is engaged, the autopilot is also managing the trim on the horizontal elevator. Trim is used to move the stabilizer tab at the back of the elevator in order to keep the elevator close to a neutral position for the input being commanded. This reduces the amount of control force that it necessary. (One may recall that stabilizer-trim system was the issue for the Boeing 737 MAX crashes). Here, it seems like there was a failure such that the autopilot was unable to control the trim. The Engine Indicating and Crew Alerting System (EICAS) system gave warning messages of "AP STAB TRIM FAIL" [autopilot stabilizer trim failure] "MACH TRIM FAIL" and "AP HOLDING NOSE DOWN." So the pilots were warned that the aircraft was trimmed "nose up" and that the autopilot was having to hold "nose down" in order to maintain level flight. But when they turned off the autopilot, they didn't anticipate the aircraft's nose-up condition, and the aircraft went on a roller coaster before they corrected it. It also doesn't sound like they warned the passengers that they were having control problems.

The NTSB says that the aircraft went from +3.8g to -2.3g to +4.2g, at which point the FDR actually shut off because it contains an "impact switch" that is designed to turn off the FDR at the point of a crash so that it doesn't keep going and write over important data. They pulled so many Gs that the FDR thought they had crashed.

[dodint]

What jumped out at me was "before a pilot used both hands to regain control of it."

AP can't control it but Ace here is going to one-hand it.

[Shyster]

Oops. Aircraft off the runway and over the hill at Allegheny County Airport. The aircraft is owned by a flight school, so the pilot may have been a student.

[dodint]

Doh, bummer, poor plane. Deserved better, should have been a Cessna.

[Shyster]

While not as long as the runways at PIT, the main runway at AGC isn't exactly short. I'm thinking either brake failure or a student pilot floated way long and should have gone around.

[Shyster]

Yikes. Fort Lauderdale Airport has received something like 18 inches of rain in the last 24 hours. Everything is closed.

[tifosi77]

The field is bounded on three sides by water.

There used to be a runway there on a NW/SE axis. We lived, I dunno, maybe two miles from the north end for a brief time when I was a kid. There was an alligator wrestling farm near there.

[tifosi77]

Rundown of the flying escapades of our trip

LAX - IAD, United 787-9 === Excellent. Ample legroom in premium economy, enormous windows, felt like a brand new aircraft (was actually 6yrs old, but who's counting).

IAD - LIS, TAP A321Neo === Hard to really evaluate because it was an overnight sleeptacular. Was a nearly brand new aircraft, only 2 yrs old.

LIS airport === weirdly confusing terminal, but every 3rd store sells egg custard pastries so who cares; much like the city no matter where you are, where you are going is uphill, and that goes for the tarmac as well. They don't believe in parking aircraft actually at the terminals, so you have to take a shuttle across town either from or to your jet.

LIS - SVQ, TAP E190 === Very good, wish more US carriers operated E-jets, but I understand why they aren't popular. Flight was only like 40 minutes or so.

SVQ airport === Yup, it's an airport. Spent approximately one bathroom break there, and that was it.

[commence a week of cars and trains; oh how I wish we had high-speed rail in the States.......]

MAD airport === quite nice, runway configuration meant for short taxi. That's about all I remember of it.

MAD - DUB, Aer Lingus A320 === The less said the better. Might as well have been Spirit. Cabin hadn't been cleaned thoroughly between flights.

DUB airport === Was super excited to connect through the land of my people, but it was very ho-hum. Saw Biden's advance team USAF transports on the ground, that was about the biggest highlight.

DUB - LAX, Aer Lingus A330-3 === Sat in the first row of the economy cabin, exit row 8 (or 9, whatever it was). Had approximately 2 acres of leg room, which was nice. We boarded in the second group and the bins overhead were still unclaimed, save for the 10" thick stacks of broken down cardboard boxes that were being stored there by the cabin crew for what I gathered were very Irish reasons. One of the cabin attendants chose a makeup look that gave her the appearance of being "Irish Cathy" from the Real Doll catalog, so that was amusing. In-flight food was Korean bbq chx and chicken tikka masala hand pies, which I thought were very bold choices to give people in a pressurized aluminum tube.

LAX airport - do not pass Go, do not collect $200, take yourself directly to the 7th circle of hell that is the taxi pickup line that is now outside and out of cover half a mile away from the terminals. I love LA, but LAX has always been some version of bad, and right now it's liquid s**t.

Four of our five flights were in types I had never flown before, so that was neat.

[Shyster]

What a ******.

[shafnutz05]

Easiest case ever. Throw the **** book at that loser

[tifosi77]

The funniest thing about all this to me is that until he pled guilty it wasn't even the most viewed video on his channel. He has a couple (older) videos that organically got north of 3 million views.

[RonnieFranchise]

I came across this 'cause I think the 757 may be the best-looking commercial airliner since the Constellation. IMO, though, Trump's 757 is strangely average-looking. Maybe it's the color scheme. Maybe it's the fact that I prefer the looks of the -300 to the -200.

Trump comes across with his usual pomposity, but one has to admire the loyalty of his employees.

And yowza over his personal flight attendant. I'm mildly surprised that she's not yet Mrs. Trump IV. However, one can douchily conjecture that the bed on Trump's 757 sees it's fair share of action, whether or not Melania is on board.

Flew on a 757 today for the first time in many years, ATL-PIT. Seriously don't remember when the last time I was on one way, probably on US Air though so quite a while ago. I had forgotten that you board at Row 19- I know this because I was in 19A and so I was closest to the door, had unlimited legroom and was the first one off.

Not the plane's fault but the guy in the middle seat was holding his tablet the whole time and had his elbows spread wide covering both arm rests. Seriously man?

1999 vintage Delta bird, nice ride and attractive FA's in the jump seats facing you. A fine Friday afternoon.

[tifosi77]

I always thought use of both armrests was sort of the consolation prize for being in the middle seat.

[NTP66]

You thought wrong.

[DigitalGypsy66]

[Shyster]

The infamous Gustav III airport on St. Barts. Pilots have to be specially certified to land there. If landing to the east you have to skim the top of that hill and then dive toward the runway threshold because the runway is also super short, and if you land too long the other end of the is just a tiny strip of beach and then a bath in the Caribbean.

[DigitalGypsy66]

[DigitalGypsy66]

[Ad@m]

[RonnieFranchise]

So Cleveland once considered an airport 5 miles out in Lake Erie…..like, spent millions studying it.

I know airports have been built out into bodies of water before but this seems more crazy…

https://avgeekery.com/the-cleveland-jet ... mS1ZO9SKZU