Smells like yet another mission-critical system with single-point failure modes. The technology to design redundant, fail-safe and fault-tolerant systems has been around for 50 years. And yes, it's more expensive. With that said, anyone want to guess what this outage cost United?

(Written on 09/08/2023)(Permalink)

Reminds me of an early morning winter Lufthansa flight over the Italian Alps. The snowy alps were thrown into incredible black, white, and orange relief by the rising sun. After pointing this out, the pilot slowly dipped the wings back and forth for a few minutes to give us a spectacular view.

(Written on 03/03/2023)(Permalink)

Windshear / microburst / downdraft? Reminds me of an "elevator ride" that I took years ago along with a few dozen other passengers and crew in a PSA 737 on final approach to Oakland in stormy weather. We fell weightless for several hundred feet. The flight attendants were yelping, which is usually not a good sign. Anything not tied down was floating in front of us for about 3 seconds. Then we recovered and flew almost level with engines screaming for about another mile to touchdown. Got the left gear down on the runway but the right wing kept floating for about a thousand runway feet. Every spoiler and speed brake was deployed, and I think engines were reversed BEFORE the stubborn right wing finally settled softly to the runway. I would have kissed the flight crew on the way out but I think they were having skivvy issues.

(Written on 02/17/2023)(Permalink)

do svidaniya

(Written on 05/06/2022)(Permalink)

Not sure I agree with the "power tripping flight attendants" comment. The way a passenger should deal with a reasonable flight attendant: you do what they tell you to do. The way a passenger should deal with a power tripping flight attendant: you do what they tell you to do.

(Written on 02/11/2022)(Permalink)

... But there's booze in the blender And soon it will render That big-ass airplane that POTUS flies on

(Written on 09/24/2021)(Permalink)

Not nearly severe enough. Will it take the loss of an aircraft to get effective sanctions in place?

(Written on 08/27/2021)(Permalink)

What other federal laws don't they go with?

(Written on 08/20/2021)(Permalink)

The FAA allegation that Boeing is "not following its own (development) process" is a huge red flag. Documented standard operating procedures ("SOPs") are the heart of a quality management system. Not following their own procedures is a fundamental breakdown in safety culture. It is truly frightening. Finding software defects during a flight test is another red flag that the software development process at Boeing or its contractors is severely flawed. If Boeing had a strong safety culture, Boeing itself would have been shocked that their "defect containment", the heart of a safety-significant software development process, allowed a software defect to go undetected all the way through ground-based unit, integration, and system test and go on to cause a serious nonconformance (the “uncommanded pitch event”) during a flight test. Boeing itself should have immediately halted the certification process while it does corrective and preventive action on its software development process.

(Written on 07/02/2021)(Permalink)

One of my favorite SWA memories is boarding a flight that arrived late. The cabin was still being turned around by the crew as we came down the aisle. And there was the captain with a garbage bag, helping his cabin crew clean up the seats and gain back a few minutes of late time.

(Written on 06/25/2021)(Permalink)