Seems so, but perhaps some nations like France want a bigger variant with a bit more range and larger sensors. Airbus A330 is already used by European fighters for aerial refuelling so I suppose it could also be built into an AWACS.
Oh good grief. At least buying renewables from the Chinese government doesn't get them interfering in your domestic politics, a major advantage over the US system.
> Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a large plume of fire and smoke.
Oh woah, very insightful discussion thread you found there.
So the tl'dr is: the leading very preliminary theory is that the MD-11's left engine fell off the wing just like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_191 (a DC-10, the immediate predecessor of the MD-11) which was caused by maintenance errors weakening the pylon structure holding the engine.
The parallels with AA Flight 191 are striking. In THAT accident it was found [1]:
1) improper maintenance—American Airlines had used a forklift shortcut to remove the engine and pylon together, rather than following McDonnell Douglas’s prescribed method
2) The detachment tore away part of the wing’s leading edge, rupturing hydraulic lines and severing electrical power to key systems, including the slat-position indicator and stall warning (stick shaker).
3) The pilots followed the standard engine-out procedure and reduced airspeed to V₂, which caused the aircraft to stall and roll uncontrollably left. This procedure was later found out to be incorrect.
Defective maintenance practices, inadequate oversight, vulnerabilities in DC-10 design, and unsafe training procedures combined to cause the crash, killing all 273 people on board and leading to sweeping reforms in airline maintenance and certification standards.
And just to add for those that aren't pilots: When they say "reduced airspeed to V2" that doesn't mean reducing engine power, it means pointing the nose higher while thrust remains at the maximum permissable setting. You're loosing speed but climbing faster.
This can happen if you accelerated past V2 (V2+20 is normal) before the engine failure and then after the failure you slow down to V2 to get the best climb angle on a single engine plus some safety margins above stall etc.
(asked earnestly out of lack of familiarity with this field) Are maintenance/certification standards distinct between passenger and cargo carriers?
It's hard for me to tell if this suggests a step backwards in application of the reforms instigated after AA191 or that those reforms were never copied over to cargo aviation.
Yes but mostly related to purpose specific things: passenger carriers have additional safety checks for cabin things like seats, oxygen and evacuation systems. Cargo carriers have additional safety checks for things like cargo restraint and decompression systems.
Furthermore (and I don't know if this is related to the cause of this crash), cargo jets tend to be older/refurbished passenger planes that have outlived their useful lives flying passengers.
To expand on #2, the loss of hydraulic pressure also caused the uncommanded retraction of the leading edge slats on the left wing, which was found by the NTSB to be part of the probable cause. Full report is here (PDF): https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...
(I do not mean to imply that this exact slat retraction is necessarily relevant in the Louisville crash, however - I believe aircraft since AA191 are designed to maintain their wing configuration after loss of hydraulic pressure.)
What strikes me as odd is that this looks like the "naked" engine, without the cowling/nacelle that usually surrounds it? Anyway, if an engine departs the aircraft shortly after (last-minute) maintenance was performed on it, that's indeed suspicious...
The fan cowl and thrust reverser cowl are structurally fastened to the pylon/strut at the top, they only wrap around the engine, and are fastened to themselves at the bottom using latches. The strut considered part of the airframe structure. The inlet cowl is bolted directly to the engine, I saw in a picture that it was found approximately mid-field on the airport property.
From all the annals of aviation disaster, flight 191 is possibly the one that haunts my nightmares the worst. Perhaps because the scenario feels plausible for every single take-off. Perhaps just because of the famous photo.
Maybe I was a bit vague, I was replying to a general source recommendation ("The AVHerald is usually the best source for these things") with a similar comment: "in addition blancolirio is usually good too on youtube".
He has since posted a 15 min video[0] with more detail.
PPRuNe[1] is another good one. Just be aware that all of these sites have a mixture of commentary by professionals in the air transport industry, amateur enthusiasts, and random bystanders.
Best advice is always to wait for authoritative statements.
The engine that fell off (!) had been worked on for two hours at Louisville, KY immediately before takeoff. Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.
> Occam's Razor suggests that whatever they did right there is to blame.
Ordinarily yes, but in this case there are reports that the plane underwent a "heavy maintenance check" from Sep 3 to Oct 18, which may have included engine removal and overhaul (source: pprune.org, from a poster who's not given to flights of fancy.)
In the Reddit /r/aviation thread, there are people who spotted that specific plane at San Antonio International airport since it was apparently being serviced at a major service facility there. So yes to major service potentially at issue, and no to international work being at fault.
Despite the enshittification of Reddit, it is still unparalleled for situations like this. There is more friction for the Fediverse to have an equivalent community, but I hope more people realize the smoothness is not free.
Have you ever heard of the phrase "a distinction without a difference"? The delta between "domestic" and "international" has basically been erased for all intents and purposes over the last 25 years. H1-B can and is used for Aviation Mechanics, not to mention that approximately 25 million of the official 60 million in the US that were not born American citizens have been granted citizenship in that period.
You seem to be trying to defend "international", but reality is "international" has become "domestic" as the USA turns into something other than the USA.
Is this an honest question, or just a snark after being another reddit tier downvoters in hopes of making reality go away?
But I’ll bite in case it’s an honest question by an honest person; you’ve surely heard of the story based on the ship of Theseus, but what if the ship was replaced with not even ship replacement parts, but totally different things? Would and should you still call it a ship at all? Would it still serve the purpose and function of a ship of it was instead a pile of rocks rather than the components of a ship perfectly joined in a way that allows its characteristics of a ship to serve their purpose in general, even if the specific ship was replaced part by part?
If I could magically snap my fingers and replace all of India or all of Germany with Japanese people or maybe aboriginals of what is today called Australia; would it still make sense to call India, India or Germany, Germany? Why still call them India and Germany at that point since it’s just nonsensical to do so when no one there is Indian or German?
On a more specific level, what is the USA without the ethnicity and cultures that not just made it and everything we take for granted that came from it … all that democracy and freedom stuff… possible in the first place, but the people who built it on those foundations?
To me it seems like over of those PE leveraged buyouts that ends up hitting the whole company to siphon off the value and leave an empty just in its place; you know, like what has essentially been done to all of America for the last 50 or so years. Now people wonder why the whole collective west cannot even muster the industrial capacity to even supply the Ukraine, let alone ourselves.
Maybe it will be something, and it might even still be called the USA if you swap everything behind the branded facade out with something totally different like how Berkshire Hathaway still carries the name but has absolutely not a single connection to either of the original companies. But keeping the name does not make Berkshire Hathaway a textile manufacturing company. What is America when people have successfully replaced the people and neutralized and eradicated the Constitution that is a thorn in the eyes of extremely terrifying people?
It always baffles my mind a bit that such basic things have to be explained like what you are essentially asking, i.e.,” how can replacing something with something totally different mean it is not the same thing as it was before”. I don’t mean that as a personal insult, it’s just concerning and curious how fundamental lower order thinking is failing or maybe just being eroded or even just driven out. It feels like full fledged civilization cognitive devolution, like being asked why one should avoid doing things that will cause death; on the level of collapse of the most fundamental survival instincts. It’s quite curious from a historical perspective.
The Mayflower WASPs didn't build the space program, that was largely down to those paperclip German scientists.
What is the USofA other than wave after wave of immigrants mixing together with Chinese railway workers, Spanish speaking holdovers from New Spain, and migrants from every corner of the earth?
I’m not sure you understand the correct nature of American history. Yes, Germanic people created America from start to finish. But no, Chinese railway workers or even other Europeans like the Spaniards and some wayward Slavs, and definitely not “migrants from every corner of the earth” are the basis of the creation of the USA.
That is a propaganda psyop that was the wedge that Americans were not in any way equipped to see or defend against because they thought they were untouchable in “fortress America” protected by seas and weak neighbors. For context, for the first 200 years of America’s existence until 1975, America was basically a purely Germanic European civilization and even nation, depending on your definition. For context; the Anglo Saxons, the Dutch, the Germans, i.e., the founders of America; are all Germanic people. Although they played a rather secondary role, even the French, i.e., the Franks (I don’t want to hear it, French people! Yes, you’re special and unique flowers.) are also a Germanic people, even though that gets a bit more complicated the more special you get.
There are literally not even any Africans that made it to the Americas on their own volition to this day. Not one. There are no founding stock Hindi speakers. There are not even Spanish founders of America since Germanic culture did not and clearly still does not mesh well with whatever we want to call the culture of the group called Hispanics in America; and I personally appreciate Spanish and Hispanic culture and countries on an individual level.
It was no Semitic philosophy that could have even produced the Constitution. It was neither Hindu or any other reincarnation based mindset that restrained government power through the Constitution … how would it when you believe you just reincarnate and this is not a one-shot? It cannot … thus, it, among all the other cultures, did not. It all, solely and only came out of European cultures; people who respected the Greeks and Romans for their accomplishments, and didn’t instead try to destroy them and erase and replace their culture and knowledge and history as is being done now all throughout the “west”.
What happens when you’ve strangled the single most effective and productive engine of civilization in human history, Europe? I sure don’t know exactly because it’s never been done in 3000+ years of civilization, but someone’s going to find out, even if it happens after I’ve gone and we haven’t just let narcissistic psychopaths snuff out life on this planet and possibly even in the whole universe.
This doesn't excuse the engineer as "just obeying orders". They are making a tradeoff between being ethical and being unemployed/unemployable, which understandably can be a very hard decision, but it's still their decision and they aren't guilt-free if something happens.
I wonder what the FAA does organizationally that lets it function properly to find cause. It must be highly tempting to blame things on the foreigners and stuff like that. The Air India crash had a lot of that going on.
The 737 Max crashes were also so frequently explained by online commenters as because of “outsourced software engineers” and so on.
But the FAA/NTSB always comes through with fact finding despite the immense political pressure to find these facile explanations. Organizationally, someone once designed these things well, and subsequently it has been preserved so well.
When I see so many American institutions turned to partisan causes through an escalation of “well, they’re doing it” it’s pretty wild that this org remains trustworthy. Wild.
You can't play with the NTSB. Just wait a few months and see, they will literally say the exact reason it happened and who's the one to blame in their report. These guys are the best at what they do. This is one of the government bodies other countries would dream to have.
The NTSB never assigns blame to people in their reports. They report what happened, and who did what, but their reports are not intended for use in a court and their advisories are always ways to fix procedures rather than blaming individuals.
Ofc! But they do such a good job you can almost always know who's the one to blame which goes hand in hand in what procedure should change. I don't mean blame as in malice but as in the weakest link. I believe it's just lost in translation because I don't speak English. Blame is just not the right word here
Huh, wow, that actually did answer the question. Short version: the FAA did have this failing; the NTSB was created independently specifically to avoid that flaw. For the rest, he’s right, better to read it.
Yeah, wasn't meant to be a lazy comment on my part, but I started summarizing it a few times and found myself quoting more of the article than made sense.
One thing that stood out to me was just how long ago that separation was achieved and subsequently ensured.
Maybe the maintenance is better in the other country.
Either way, to say it's "likely relevant" is a huge leap. We have no idea what caused the crash - it could be a million things and likely some combintation of them.
"TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections"
There are foreign planes entering US airspace every day, carrying thousands of passengers. They are also serviced by foreign technicians, outside the reach of the FAA's inspections, and they seem to be doing just fine.
"Foreign" in itself isn't bad, you just need to choose/require reputable partners. If you outsource your maintenance to the same crews that maintain jets for Polish LOT or Taiwanese China Airlines, you may save some money and yet get excellent service, as those airlines aren't known for having safety problems.
> TDLR 10-20 years ago, the US started allowing maintenance of domestic planes in foreign countries, outside the reach of the FAA’s inspections
Foreign Repair Stations date back to the 90s [1], the thing is they need to be supervised by an FAA Certified Mechanic. Inspection of these was already a hot issue in the early '00s... No one gave a fuck, it was all about saving costs for a very long time.
The linked 2007 report's second page (!) already leads with this:
> Since 2001, eight commercial air carriers have gone through bankruptcy and one has ceased operations. Fuel prices remain high, and this makes cost control a key factor in both the sustained profitability and overall survival of an airline.
IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable.
> IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable.
Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety?
If so, I think it's optimistic to assume that would be the result, rather than just more profits.
I'm all for tighter regulations and enforcement on safety and maintenance, though.
> Are you saying higher prices would lead to better safety?
Higher prices and regulations.
With no floor on pricing, there will always be enough greedy executives who are willing to cut corners to make money in a ruthlessly competitive environment, fully knowing that it is very hard to prosecute a C-level executive personally.
The other possible result will be that eventually the market "agrees upon" a minimum price floor while being in compliance to regulations - but that usually means that the company will be as bare-stripped of assets and reserves as possible, which means in turn that the slightest external shock can (and will) send not just one but multiple companies crashing down hard. We've seen this with Covid - an economy that has optimized itself for decades on running as lean as possible is very sensitive to all sorts of external interruptions. Of course, that's not directly relevant to safety... but indirectly it is, as the inevitable result of that is an oligo-, duo- or monopoly and then, we've seen with Boeing where that ends, incentives aligned too much to cut corners.
I kiiinda see where you're coming from but I guess I just don't buy it, TBH.
I think greed is what's causing cut corners.
You mention Boeing, and they were quite healthily profitable during the entire time they were cutting corners on the 737 MAX. Airbus wasn't an existential threat. It still isn't, in fact, even after all the fallout.
IDK, Ryanair in Europe (an epitome of low-cost airline) has both decent margins and zero crashes. They once had a birdstrike, hardly caused by their ticket cost, and wrote off the hull (no fatalities); otherwise, nothing.
A lot depends on your overall marketing. The airline can make money on a "stupid tax", e.g. people who didn't check twice the max. allowed weight of their baggage and have to pay a 100 USD/EUR fee for that single extra pound. I have seen it more than once.
People being people, you can almost rely on this happening frequently enough.
Yes, admittedly, there could still be a reason why the GP's opinion is right, even though the numbers don't back it up. It's hard to argue that deregulation made flying safer, because as you say there were a ton of other factors in play.
However, it's impossible to argue that deregulation made flying more dangerous, as the GP believes, simply because flying didn't become more dangerous. Sure, maybe we'd be even safer in the air if price deregulation hadn't happened, but that requires an impressive amount of handwaving. Overall, the tradeoff seems to have worked out incredibly well for everyone. The only people who are really in a position to object would be climate researchers.
The government should just set a higher safety standard and let the companies figure out the costs. Setting a floor price without proper regulation == companies doing the same bagging more $$ -- To be very frank, I would do that if I were the chairman of such companies -- either I do that or I'm madmen getting voted out of my position next year.
> The government should just set a higher safety standard and let the companies figure out the costs.
The problem is, it doesn't work out that way. We lost enough people to that madness - as soon as hundreds, if not thousands (see 9/11) of lives are at stake, IMHO the effort to ensure compliance with standards is so massive, the government could (and should...) do the damn job itself.
>this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries.
Aviation is one of the most regulated industries to the point where I've heard multiple aircraft maintenance people who don't know each other make quips to the tune of "we only cut the stupid corners because cutting the smart ones is illegal".
I'm not saying it should be less regulated but considering that the aircraft was maintained recently I wouldn't be surprised if some dumb "well you didn't say we couldn't do it" thing that isn't technically disallowed but should be covered under some broader "don't be stupid" rule was ultimately a causative factor.
> IMHO, this is a perfect example why the government needs to regulate prices in safety-critical industries. The "race to the bottom" must be prevented - sorry, flying NYC-SFO for 70$, that's not sustainable.
This is nonsense. Commercial aviation is already ridiculously, insanely safe and has been for decades. Your proposed solution would not have done anything to prevent the one major accident in the past 15 years of commercial aviation in the US, which was caused by a military helicopter pilot violating an ATC restriction in complex airspace, not a maintenance issue.
What evidence do you have that "NYC-SFO for $70" is not sustainable? From March 2009 to December 2024 years in the US, the fatality rate in commercial aviation was 0.4 per passenger-light-year. That's nearly 15 years of operation with the foreign repair stations that you are accusing of putting profits before safety.
This is, like, the most ridiculous industry possible to demand more regulation of.
> This is, like, the most ridiculous industry possible to demand more regulation of.
And yet, we got hundreds of people dead because Boeing by all accounts clearly isn't regulated enough - and cut corners because airlines wanted to maintain their pilot type ratings.
1. The Boeing 737-Max crashes had nothing to do with maintenance, which is what the original poster was concerned about.
2. Arguably, these crashes were due to the FAA's failure to apply existing regulations, not a lack of adequate regulation in the first place! I don't have any problem with better funding for the FAA to do their job effectively.
As someone who used to work at one of these foreign maintenance stations,
Firstly, fuck you.
Second, this shop consistently rated higher across all metrics, including those inside the US. Loss time injury rates measured in the millions of man hours.
Third, 80% of my job whilst there was to build software for QA and their rigourous on-going inspection reigeme that included yearly in person audits lasting weeks from FAA inspectors, EASA inspectors and every other country and airline this base overhauled.
Take your uninformed bs and hit the road. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about and insinuating that they're outside the reach of the FAA shows you know exactly 0 about the certification process that keeps millions of people safe on a daily basis.
Which, at least in American English, comes across like corporate jargon/weasel words. Lost their job is literally true and would probably take a bunch more words to describe the precise reasons.
Both things can be literally true. I've lost my job by being made redundant, twice. In Britain redundancy is a very specific thing, where your role no longer exists and you must be let go in a fair way according to employment law. It's quite the opposite of jargon or weasel words here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights
Hmm I'm not so sure, admittedly based on anecdata. In the UK I know 10+ people who drive Teslas, and none of them are fanboys in any way. It was just the cheapest EV with decent range when they bought it.
I'd say the UK isn't representative of the Tesla market is my guess. Ive talked to a bunch of friends who own them and are the antethesis of red pilled. They lament that the competition is still not there at all and that their Teslas are a much better experience then the rest of the market. Take it for what its worth - anecdotal.
Would they buy them again? Probably not but thats because of politics.
On the politics things -- thats only one side of the population. The other side would be more open to purchasing it. Almost nets out except that whole ability to pay piece.
1) sufficiently long track record of reliability (I might consider Ford and Rivian now)
2) free remote start and unlock
3) camera recordings - how is this not standard in all cars by now?
4) not having to buy via dealership (this is worth a lot to me). Bought a Tesla on my couch in 15 minutes and picking it up took 15 minutes. Dealerships take hours and hours, and try to upsell you.
5) $35k to $40k price point - if BYD were to come to America, I would drop Tesla in a heartbeat
The camera recordings thing to me BLOWS MY MIND! Also for competitors such as Volvo -- only finally having a functional user experience for apple or google. They are years behind on the trivial matters (that people care about).
I don't think Ford is in the running.
FSD is pretty sweet especially compared to volvo's woefully poor autopilot efforts.
More importantly you keep the portfolio semi-balanced.
Just using Google / Gold as a comparison [1].
Assume you have 100 units of each.
In late 2021, Googs gone up ~100% so you have to rebalance because you have $200 in Goog and $92 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 80 Goog (160$) and 144 Gold ($130).
In late 2022, Googs gone down ~40% so you have to rebalance because you have $96 in Goog and $141 in Gold. So lets say you rebalance to 100 Goog ($120) and 118 Gold ($112).
So over the course of 2 years Goog has gone up 20% and Golds gown down 5% but your investments are overall up 16%. Obviously a 100% Goog investment is higher but with more risk.
If you didn't do any rebalancing then you have a gain of 7.5% (100*1.2 + 100*0.95 = 215)
