Will it double?

Post #400,384 by pwhysall 3/25/15 10:36:37 AM 3/25/15 10:36:59 AM Reply	Will it double? To four millionths of a percentage point? Er. Mer. Gerd! Edit: heh. Edited by pwhysall March 25, 2015, 10:36:59 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #400,385 by mmoffitt 3/25/15 10:46:59 AM Reply	Will it matter? Trying to deflect attention from the fantastic safety record of Airbus in the last year or so, you brought Boeing up. I demonstrated, clearly, that at least thusfar Boeing has a lower rate of fatal air crashes. Your point is, apparently, that Boeing is almost as bad as Airbus. Almost, but not quite. Add in the other idiotic design ideas you geniuses across the Atlantic came up with and I'd still prefer flying on a 10 year old Boeing to flying a new Airbus EVEN IF Boeing's safety drops to that of Airbus.
Post #400,386 by pwhysall 3/25/15 10:53:23 AM Reply	Two. Millionths. Of. A. Percent. >raises pinky to corner of mouth
Post #400,388 by boxley 3/25/15 1:43:09 PM Reply	before or after you mined a nostril? Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #400,403 by pwhysall 3/25/15 4:47:19 PM Reply	FOUR millionths of a percent!
Post #400,407 by boxley 3/25/15 9:33:52 PM Reply	thats not much of a booger :-) Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #400,415 by Ashton 3/26/15 4:50:54 AM Reply	Numbers-porn; you're usually not so easily deflected to the simplistic ploy. Am I weird (too) then, to simply re-state The Problem (even though this glaring design disparity might prove irrelevant in this crash, IF.. another terminal-sociopath? is ultimately proven to be the cause.) Side-stick -vs- Tandem physical-yoke Ya gets only one reply: WHICH design ??? guarantees that BOTH Operators Know Instantly: what THE-OTHER-IS-DOING. Ain't that a fucking-DUH! comparo? (My view of Airbus, CIEIO on down: is that their intransigence in this obvious, massive conceptual flaw is Shrub-grade naked Stubbornness.) Juvenile gutlessness to admit it IS a naked-flaw. Their weepy-egos -VS- more of The Same cross-purpose clusterfuck when the next eerie/brand-new, What Broke Now? event is escalating into complete puzzlement ... and one or both: flailing at the controls. Maybe another game of darts, and skip that extra pint? :-0
Post #400,417 by Another Scott 3/26/15 8:15:46 AM Reply	Hardware can't guarantee that one knows what the other is doing. As long as there is a pilot and a co-pilot and each are tasked with being able to fly the plane, the controls must permit it. The side stick vs yoke issue is red herring, IMO. What matters is conversation in the cockpit and the training (and mental stability) of the people. Remember what Scully said in his Airbus over the Hudson? "My airplane." That's all it takes. The Space Shuttles had sticks: FWIW. Cheers, Scott. (Who hopes the initial story about what happened doesn't end up being incorrect - we don't need wild speculation in cases like this.)
Post #400,419 by boxley 3/26/15 9:26:40 AM Reply	especially when one pilot is locked out the cockpit and the other has no response Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
Post #400,425 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 11:21:06 AM Reply	Coupled controls do help, though. Tragically not in this case, but in general.
Post #400,426 by pwhysall 3/26/15 11:50:15 AM Reply	[citation needed] When have coupled controls actually averted an actual disaster that was actually happening? Or is this a tiger-repelling rock? Genuine question.
Post #400,430 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 12:59:51 PM 3/26/15 1:01:47 PM Reply	Read with comprehension much? Read the Subject Line of the post to which I was responding and then try to tell me that I need a citation. Er, okay, maybe I do for people on your side of the Atlantic. I keep forgetting that English is a foreign language to you. Edit: In case you still don't get it. Having coupled controls does let each pilot know what the other is doing with the control stick. How can you not see that? Edited by mmoffitt March 26, 2015, 01:01:14 PM EDT Edited by mmoffitt March 26, 2015, 01:01:47 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #400,432 by pwhysall 3/26/15 1:21:03 PM Reply	Just answer the question. I'm not disputing that coupled yokes are coupled. Clue: snark is best delivered without a massive helping of comprehension fail.
Post #400,434 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 2:59:27 PM Reply	Okay. I'll play. Have coupled controls ever saved lives? You bet your ass they have. There is no question they have saved lives, hundreds if not thousands of them. Ask any primary flight instructor.
Post #400,445 by pwhysall 3/26/15 3:47:09 PM Reply	Assertion. Dude. Facts. Please. This is just you saying words. I notice you've broadened the scope to training, which is of course a speciality area and one unrelated to what we were talking about, which is regular commercial flights.
Post #400,453 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 4:50:23 PM Reply	You brought up a question I did NOT make a comment about.
Post #400,439 by Ashton 3/26/15 3:34:05 PM Reply	'The side stick vs yoke issue is red herring, IMO.' [Fail] Are you (too..) actually not grasping the necessity that BOTH 'operators' need the clearest/quickest INPUT-info of what each is 'doing' ??? ..that any 'speaking' ... is slow, imprecise and useful only when you--in FACT--have the time for filling-in other details (like switch flipping elsewhere, and such as have no tactile input.) Q. for you, too: Ever fly a light plane, however briefly? How did that compare with what (any old eidetic memory had amassed from) n-second-hand descriptions? Boggled at your two opening didactic sentences: as. if. you. really Knew :-/ This ain't bloody physics/all by-itself.
Post #400,447 by Another Scott 3/26/15 4:12:07 PM 3/26/15 4:15:31 PM Reply	Flying - no. As a kid I knew a scout leader who was a pilot. He took me up in his Pipe[r] Cub (or similar) for a brief jaunt around the airport, but I don't recall handling the controls (if that were even possible). It was a weird sensation, being so close to being exposed (just a thin skin of aluminum...). If you have two people operating the same controls, there's a problem. That's why "my airplane" is vital. The only example that MM can point to where the non-coupled sticks in an Airbus was an issue (AFAIK) was the Air France 447: In a July 2012 CBS report, Sullenberger suggested that the design of the Airbus cockpit might have been a factor in the accident. The flight controls are not linked between the two pilot seats, and Robert, the left seat pilot who believed he had taken over control of the plane, was not aware that Bonin had continued to hold the stick back, which overrode Robert's own control.[237][238] Reference 238 says: "CBS News aviation and safety expert Captain Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger explained that he believes that the disappearance would have been less likely to have happened if the plane had been a Boeing instead of an Airbus. This is because the control wheels [in the Boeing] are larger and more obvious. Sullenberger showed CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann the difference with an Airbus simulator. There's a small movement on the Airbus flight controls called a sidestick, which raises the nose of the plane and instructs it to climb. Pilots rarely perform the maneuver at high altitudes because it can be very dangerous, but that is exactly what the pilot of Flight 447 did." (Emphasis added.) If you have two pilots manipulating the stick/yoke, you're doing it wrong. No matter how the two yokes are designed. Robert should have said, and meant, "my airplane". And a pilot who pulls back on the stick/yoke at high altitude is doing it wrong. Having coupled controls wouldn't have prevented him from doing so. IOW, the problem isn't the design of the plane, it's the training and communications of the pilots. Yes, of course, one can try to design around mistakes and miscommunications like these, but it's not going to fix the underlying problem. The money spent on hardware would be better spent on training and evaluation and implementing best-practices. IMHO. Cheers, Scott. Edited by Another Scott March 26, 2015, 04:15:31 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #400,451 by drook 3/26/15 4:39:05 PM Reply	And doing that makes all the planes safer -- Drew
Post #400,454 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 5:02:01 PM Reply	Nobody's ever claimed that! And a pilot who pulls back on the stick/yoke at high altitude is doing it wrong. Having coupled controls wouldn't have prevented him from doing so. No, it wouldn't have. BUT if the control sticks were coupled, there would have been a tactile indication to the pilot in the left seat that the pilot in the right seat had yanked the control stick back. That would have led to the left seat pilot taking corrective action. Because there was no indication coming from the decoupled control sticks, the left seat pilot wasn't clued into the primary problem. You do understand that, right? You further understand that it is right and proper to call an engineering decision that reduces safety "a design flaw", yes? It's not the only design flaw with an Airbus, but it is a spectacularly stupid one.
Post #400,456 by Another Scott 3/26/15 6:20:21 PM Reply	You did read the rest of my post, right? :-) Wikipedia on the A320 Family: From 1959 through 2013, the Airbus A320 family of jets experienced 14 fatal hull-loss accidents for every million takeoffs, one of the smallest fatality rates of any family of jets included in the study. These incidents are very, very rare. They are tragic, but it's not a dangerous airplane so it can't be a dangerous design. Every airliner has engineering compromises. Money spent linking the sticks and providing feedback, and so forth, is money that can't be spent on other things - like more rigorous training about cockpit communications - that may cover many more types of pathologies that can lead to accidents. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
Post #400,473 by mmoffitt 3/27/15 8:50:39 AM Reply	So coupling the controls was too expensive? You are really reaching on this one, Scott. ;0) I'd be willing to bet there are a couple of hundred families that might disagree with you.
Post #400,421 by pwhysall 3/26/15 9:48:23 AM Reply	Appealing to facts not in evidence Intuitively, you're right. In terms of practical results in reality, you're right, but it just doesn't matter. You can "duh" yourself hoarse; the facts are that, for all practical purposes, it doesn't matter. The stats don't lie. Two millionths of one percent separates the two brands. You know what really saved a shitload of lives? It wasn't dual yokes, that's for sure. In fact, it wasn't anything nerdy at all. It was boring old Crew Resource Management.
Post #400,435 by Ashton 3/26/15 3:12:43 PM Reply	You're in-lurve with modrin TLAs like "CRM"--as if That 'cooks the rice' On a TANDEM control pair you need no slowed-down/intellectual-palaver-filtering of words: to grasp: EXACTLY what the other person is attempting to do ... as. it. happens ['it' being: his/her exact inputs to the attitude control System.] You can't get this information Quicker nor more accurately. Why you persist in calling this irrelevant--have you ever 'flown' anything?--in face of those who regularly count on Mr. Bernoulli to counter the effects of Mr. Gravitational Attraction ... remains {sheesh}-grade puzzling, here. Conflate abstract 'Stats' with ... the visceral-experience of an actual process within real-time ...one more time? and I'll approach Her Majesty's Master-Debater Accreditation Service about some demerit Awards. Maybe we each inhabit separate \| parallel universes and that's why communication always was doomed, species-wide (?)
Post #400,438 by drook 3/26/15 3:22:40 PM Reply	Thought experiment Suppose the evidence clearly showed that fly-by-wire was conclusively and significantly safer than manual control of flight surfaces. ("Safer" defined as "less likely to crash.") In the case of a single pilot, an electronic control stick is the correct setup. When there are two pilots, who in theory should be taking turns, you have the possibility that they are trying to do different things. They shouldn't be doing that at the same time. With manual linkages that can't happen unnoticed. Is the likelihood of that failure mode greater than the increased safety of fly-by-wire? Sure, it "feels" wrong to imagine pulling up on the stick and it doesn't do anything because someone else is pushing down and you don't know that. But if that happens, you know that half the people in the cockpit are trying to do the wrong thing. In that case I just might prefer that the "expert system" figure out what to do. -- Drew
Post #400,442 by Ashton 3/26/15 3:45:21 PM Reply	Excellent point; shall need some pondering.. but for the moment, the massively-nested algorithms are unfathomable by human jelloware: in any realistic time frame for decisions. We have to rely on homo-sap final Deciders, for an unknowable time-frame. While we're awaiting the First truly comprehensible Fail-Safe Source Code, I aver that: FEELING what is happening, immediately! beats all [word]-exchanges: for deciding whether you need to cold-cock a loonie sitting next to you? and fly this thing out of trouble or ... just TELL HIM/HER why you are bloody-sure it is a Mistake. And then cold-cock if you get back gibbering ƒeare-filled nonsense. We may get "there"; we sure Haven't Yet.
Post #400,446 by drook 3/26/15 4:08:02 PM Reply	Look at the latest research on self-driving cars They're finding that for years we've been solving the wrong problem. We've been trying to take people completely out of the equation until we need them: construction zones with poor/inaccurate markings, unusual weather conditions, unexpected mechanical failure, etc. What they have figured out is that people are really bad at maintaining alertness when completely disconnected from the process. What works better is a drive-by-wire system where the driver makes general inputs - go, stop, lane change - but the car decides what to do with the engine, brakes and steering. Computers are better and faster than all but the very best drivers at this level of control. Fly-by-wire systems seem to have learned half that lesson. The pilots provide input saying "go higher" or "turn left" and the system decides what to do with the flaps and engines. But auto-pilot has been in use for so long that we've come to expect it. Maybe it would be better to leave the fine control to the systems but make the pilots actually fly again. -- Drew
Post #400,443 by pwhysall 3/26/15 3:45:48 PM Reply	OH NOES A MODERN TLA! IT MUST BE SHIT AND RUBBISH CRM was developed in the wake of the Tenerife crash (two Boeings, fact fans!) and other fleshoid-based fuckups. In 1979. "Modern". Heh.
Post #400,455 by mmoffitt 3/26/15 5:07:06 PM Reply	Yep, two Boeings wrecked by a European.
Post #400,457 by pwhysall 3/26/15 6:43:39 PM Reply	And this is why you fail.
Post #400,503 by Ashton 3/28/15 8:05:05 AM Reply	(The CRM idea isn't bollocks, of course) But as a deflection of this issue: it is. Yah, know about that Nederlander #1 pilot's self-cleared take-off ..and the wimpy PNF who didn't say NO!! ... thus everyone, mostly, died. We were talking about, not crew sociology generally: but about the Value / Or Not, of instant feedback when two pilots are (hoping they are..) helping each other fly the plane, while under great stress. And, (as re the universe/the whole-fucking Cosmos and Everything ... you were explaining how you already had all-that-flying-stuff permanently Sorted, too. And I was saying: when you are that presumptuous, and essaying Certainty of such stuff too: you are daft. So maybe no next plane will stall out exactly as ... when a CRM-certified loon like Bonin was killing F. 447 all. the. way. down. Maybe. But with that side-stick still permitted.. any compulsive Still Could. And, freaked-out? fucking-May. Ta ... next we take on the detection of secret-psychotics with epaulets and enough daily-patter to seem 'normal'. Easy-peasey problem, eh?
Post #400,444 by pwhysall 3/26/15 3:45:49 PM 3/26/15 3:47:53 PM Reply	Dupe oops Edited by pwhysall March 26, 2015, 03:47:53 PM EDT Expand All History

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