BOEING 767F crash near Houston in the bay Atlas cargo

Huckster79 said:
So even as rare as crashes are, even one cargo plane where info is not recovered could be risking the lives of thousands of others hopping on a passenger version. 100% success in getting data should be the goal and we shouldn’t easily accept anything less...
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I see it differently. I can think of one crash in recent years where the black boxes and/or wreckage didn't give us a very good idea of why an airplane was lost. That was MH370, and I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that one was a murder/suicide committed by someone in the cockpit.

I don't think the additional expense would be justified.
 
Tantalum said:
That was my thought.. why not plug *some* kind of system into existing infrastructure...
-maybe a dozen or so others

^just take a snapshot ever 5 seconds and fire that off somewhere...
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A single data burst sent on-demand, based on certain automated triggers occurring could be an alternative.

But, depending on what/how much data you want sent could be problematic. Possibly cut it back to a 3-5 min data snapshot, only sent when certain set conditions occur. Data is easier than voice, but it could be done.

Cost may still be an issue.
 
There are legal/privacy issues related to the CVR that would have to be considered before that info can be broadcast or recorded off-aircraft. I don't think that telemetry data from aircraft sensors would have similar considerations. I'm not sure if this would only affect US flagged aircraft or aircraft in US airspace.
 
Some additional info and ownership succession about the airframe I saw on YT(source SGOTI)
-1992 built
-China Southern Airlines
-Lan Chile (now LATAM) 1997
-CIT Leasing
-Atlas (2016..presumed date of freighter retrofit)

-approximate hours 90K TT, 28K cycles (unverified).

Nothing really significant there on the use and time front. Airplane was long in the tooth but not horribly so. 50K LOV for a 76. Mx throughout the ownership succession is the biggest variable of course.
 
Huckster79 said:
100% success in getting data should be the goal and we shouldn’t easily accept anything less...
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If I could develop a flight data telemetry system that was 100% functional 100% of the time I'd be a rich man. If I could get it on the MEL for all part 121 operations I'd buy Bill Gates.

I could get behind a deployable flight incident recorder similar to what's on some military airplanes but I sure as **** wouldn't want my flight canceled because it was down - which pretty much guarantees we won't see them anytime soon.

Nauga,
WDTSFAL
 
Larry in TN said:
This is the cockpit of a B767-300F. The lavatory is on the right.
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Ok, thanks. The reason I asked is that about 15 years ago I worked with a guy that formerly flew cargo on Northwest Airlines. I don't remember what plane he flew. He told me that not all of their cargo planes had lavatories. So to get by that problem the company supplied disposable ''pee'' bags in the planes. Yuck.
 
Zeldman said:
Ok, thanks. The reason I asked is that about 15 years ago I worked with a guy that formerly flew cargo on Northwest Airlines. I don't remember what plane he flew. He told me that not all of their cargo planes had lavatories. So to get by that problem the company supplied disposable ''pee'' bags in the planes. Yuck.
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Better hope all you have to do is pee!
 
nauga said:
If I could develop a flight data telemetry system that was 100% functional 100% of the time I'd be a rich man. If I could get it on the MEL for all part 121 operations I'd buy Bill Gates.

I could get behind a deployable flight incident recorder similar to what's on some military airplanes but I sure as **** wouldn't want my flight canceled because it was down - which pretty much guarantees we won't see them anytime soon.

Nauga,
WDTSFAL
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Keyword: Goal... Our goal should be 100% no crashes as well, Our mechanics and our goal in operating our engines should be a 0% engine failure rate... Never going to happen in reality but should be our goal...
 
Huckster79 said:
Keyword: Goal... Our goal should be 100% no crashes as well, Our mechanics and our goal in operating our engines should be a 0% engine failure rate... Never going to happen in reality but should be our goal...
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There are goals and there are requirements. Airplanes and subsystems are designed to requirements. The difference in cost between designing to a realistic requirement and a to a probability of failure of zero point zero is something approaching infinite.

Nauga,
with requirements and desirements
 
Do you think there were the same arguments against putting black boxes in to begin with... bet there was...
 
Huckster79 said:
Do you think there were the same arguments against putting black boxes in to begin with... bet there was...
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Probably. But black boxes solve 99% of the problem. Let's say we could raise that figure to 99.9% by adding billions in onboard, space based, and ground based infrastructure to automatically download that information. At what point do we say "It just isn't worth it."?

If there was economic value, the airlines would already be doing it.
 
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Cap'n Jack said:
Isn't some of the infrastructure in place with the WiFi so many planes have for passengers? That goes up to satellites and then to...wherever.
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Most WiFi on airliners is still ground based, for what it's worth.
 
Tantalum said:
That was my thought.. why not plug *some* kind of system into existing infrastructure. On any given flight you have 200 clowns watching TV, surfing Facebook, doing email, etc. The G1000 stores loads of data on the tiny memory disk.. I doubt we'd need GB of data.. just send a small .txt or .csv every 5 seconds with a handful of core data points

-lat/long
-speed
-heading
-altitude
-VS
-maybe a dozen or so others

^just take a snapshot ever 5 seconds and fire that off somewhere. A groundbased system can then parse the data out of the cloud if and when needed. You could honestly buy a sat phone, raspberry pi, GPS receiver, and a half intelligent person could code this up themselves

But I digress...

**BACK ON TOPIC:
-The weather is obviously a HUGE clue.. however, it could be a red herring. The fact that things came undone so fast is what is fascinating.. I hope they find the CVR and blackboxes soon..!
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Because that data could be used in a punitive way against pilots, in terms of fuel burn, not getting short cuts, not getting places on time for deviations that HQ monday morning QB's. Even FOQA data (which is downloaded from the FDR), is tightly controlled. The company is only able to see very limited information, nothing that would identify a crew.

To send data out in the blind, would be a battle to say the least.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Because that data could be used in a punitive way against pilots, in terms of fuel burn, not getting short cuts, not getting places on time for deviations that HQ monday morning QB's. Even FOQA data (which is downloaded from the FDR), is tightly controlled. The company is only able to see very limited information, nothing that would identify a crew.
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I think that depends on the carrier. I know that certain crews can get a call from FOQA...
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I think that depends on the carrier. I know that certain crews can get a call from FOQA...
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Carriers I flew for only allowed the union to have access to identity data. So if you got called it was from the union gate keeper. The rest is accessible to typically the safety dept. I have seen some straight up crazy s&@t from replays.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Most WiFi on airliners is still ground based, for what it's worth.
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What were we using when I flew to Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Spain, Italy, China, etc to connect the local plane WiFi to the rest of the world?
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Because that data could be used in a punitive way against pilots, in terms of fuel burn, not getting short cuts, not getting places on time for deviations that HQ monday morning QB's. Even FOQA data (which is downloaded from the FDR), is tightly controlled. The company is only able to see very limited information, nothing that would identify a crew.

To send data out in the blind, would be a battle to say the least.
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It need not be sent “blind”. Encrypt it, route it to a particular server, have procedures and passwords that limit access. It is a valid, but addressable, concern.
 
When I worked for the meatball making turbine engines, the subject of processing FDR data was a hot topic. We wanted the data because there were a lot of things we thought the data would be able to tell us about the engines and solve problems. The airlines were afraid we were going to void the warranties, and the pilots were afraid the airlines were going to blame the pilots for voiding our warranties. Of course, the engines were all FADEC controlled and so they had protections in place such that there wasn't much we could do. In fact, we found from data that one aircraft OEM's autothrottle strategy would break engines, and there's nothing the pilots could do about that.

I suspect there's some level of reality to the fears, but a lot of it is paranoia. I can say that at meatball we had no intentions of voiding warranties, and in reality we could've used the data to potentially make things more reliable and thus reduce the power-by-the-hour costs (or at least reduce our power-by-the-hour costs). Those contracts were pretty solidly written.

The CVR is more where I take issue as I think the conversations should only matter when a crash happens, or if there's some sort of HR violation question.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I know that certain crews can get a call from FOQA...
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FYI: FOQA, FDR, and CVR data has several US statues protecting its use. From my experience, it was probably data from a QAR, ACARS, or a HUMS system that led to the call as this data is not regulated and routinely downloaded and reviewed.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I think that depends on the carrier. I know that certain crews can get a call from FOQA...
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To my knowledge FOQA gate keepers are union. They obviously share information with the company but it’s all de identified. When you get a call from a gatekeeper, it’s mostly just to talk about what happened. I’ve got two buddies in the FOQA department at my airline.
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
Most WiFi on airliners is still ground based, for what it's worth.
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The entire United Airlines mainline fleet uses satellite internet. The United Express fleet uses a terrestrial system. Southwest's fleet also uses satellite. Any intercontinental long-haul aircraft would have to use satellite internet to provide service over the oceans.

In any case, freighters, such as this Atlas airplane, do not have internet service.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
When I worked for the meatball making turbine engines, the subject of processing FDR data was a hot topic. We wanted the data because there were a lot of things we thought the data would be able to tell us about the engines and solve problems. The airlines were afraid we were going to void the warranties, and the pilots were afraid the airlines were going to blame the pilots for voiding our warranties. Of course, the engines were all FADEC controlled and so they had protections in place such that there wasn't much we could do. In fact, we found from data that one aircraft OEM's autothrottle strategy would break engines, and there's nothing the pilots could do about that.

I suspect there's some level of reality to the fears, but a lot of it is paranoia. I can say that at meatball we had no intentions of voiding warranties, and in reality we could've used the data to potentially make things more reliable and thus reduce the power-by-the-hour costs (or at least reduce our power-by-the-hour costs). Those contracts were pretty solidly written.

The CVR is more where I take issue as I think the conversations should only matter when a crash happens, or if there's some sort of HR violation question.
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My previous airline’s taxi SOP was to use the reversers before the brakes to save on brake replacement costs. So we were always taxiing around with a reverser popped coking the crap out of our engines. Anytime I had another CRJ driver jumpseating they either laugh or just shake their head.
 
ARFlyer said:
My previous airline’s taxi SOP was to use the reversers before the brakes to save on brake replacement costs. So we were always taxiing around with a reverser popped coking the crap out of our engines. Anytime I had another CRJ driver jumpseating they either laugh or just shake their head.
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Interesting. My airline’s SOP is the complete opposite. In fact, the only time we’re supposed to pop the reversers is when the aircraft is going to go off a taxiway, into a ditch, into a terminal or basically anytime you think the plane won’t stop even though you’re applying brake pressure. As you know, you’ll cook the CRJ brakes, especially when light. I try to single engine taxi whenever possible.
 
jordane93 said:
Interesting. My airline’s SOP is the complete opposite. In fact, the only time we’re supposed to pop the reversers is when the aircraft is going to go off a taxiway, into a ditch, into a terminal or basically anytime you think the plane won’t stop even though you’re applying brake pressure. As you know, you’ll cook the CRJ brakes, especially when light. I try to single engine taxi whenever possible.
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I’ve been told there is a limitation in the actual CRJ manuals against popping the reversers during taxi unless for an emergency as you described. But my airline removed that limitation from our version of the AFM.
 
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Bell206 said:
FYI: FOQA, FDR, and CVR data has several US statues protecting its use. From my experience, it was probably data from a QAR, ACARS, or a HUMS system that led to the call as this data is not regulated and routinely downloaded and reviewed.
Click to expand...

A friend of mine who flies for a major airline said he "got a call from FOQA" because, as I understand it, he got a TCAS RA and didn't cut off the autopilot. They wanted to make sure that he had the traffic in sight visually (which I guess allows you to not follow the RA). Now, if he's in the same situation he just cuts off the autopilot even if he does have the traffic in sight so he doesn't get the call. ;)
 
Cap'n Jack said:
Isn't some of the infrastructure in place with the WiFi so many planes have for passengers? That goes up to satellites and then to...wherever.
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The flight deck electronics, avionics, fly by wire, engine controls, etc. have to be on a completely separate isolated system from the internet enabled stuff in the back. You don't want a way for hackers to backdoor their way into an airplane, let's say during a CatIII ILS.
 
Todd82 said:
The flight deck electronics, avionics, fly by wire, engine controls, etc. have to be on a completely separate isolated system from the internet enabled stuff in the back. You don't want a way for hackers to backdoor their way into an airplane, let's say during a CatIII ILS.
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That would be ideal, but not an insurmountable problem. How do the engine manufacturers or whoever, get their "pings" out, like on MH370?
 
If you've never been around a major accident site...

"On Feb 28th 2019 the Sheriff posted a photo (see below) of the Houston Police Dive Team engaging in a grid search on hands and knees at the crash site with appreciation."
atlas_b763_n1217a_houston_190223_4.jpg


atlas_b763_n1217a_houston_190223_map.jpg
 
Bell206 said:
If you've never been around a major accident site...

"On Feb 28th 2019 the Sheriff posted a photo (see below) of the Houston Police Dive Team engaging in a grid search on hands and knees at the crash site with appreciation."
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Apologies upfront.. but I couldn't help but be reminder of this when you posted that:

...combing the desert
upload_2019-2-28_21-38-20.png
If you don't get this reference we can't be friends.
 
Juliet Hotel said:
The meatball?
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There are three major companies that produce turbine engines for big airliners.

If you look at their logos, one looks like a meatball. Hint: It doesn't have an eagle or the letter R in it. ;)
 
^they also build toaster ovens, refrigerators, MRI machines, and nuclear reactors for submarines
 
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