Water landing in the Hudson

[michaelharadon]

Mods, maybe keep this one here for a while. It's a very interesting article with a little something for everyone in it.

http://www.vanityfair.com/style/feature ... rentPage=5

[michaelharadon]

Sorry about the screw up. Click here instead: http://www.vanityfair.com/style/feature ... rentPage=1

[Tom Crawford]

Personally, I thought the link to Gisele Bündchen was a nice deversion.
I must confess I didn't read the article because, no offense, enough has been written and said about the whole event. Bottom Line, Sully did a hell-of-a-job. Air Force training.... Tom

[michaelharadon]

I posted the article because of the fascinating way the myriad of aeronautically related factors far beyond Sully and his training (hugely important though they were) combined to make the event what it was.

[tom d. friedman]

guess who introduced the canadian goose to the u.s.???? car mogul henry ford!! thanks hank!! those danged geese are mean as can be!!! & their bite hurts enough that i'm not ashamed to tell you it will draw tears from the biggest macho man!! i was steelhead fishing a few years back when 2 of the jerk birds attacked 2 fishermen about 100 yards down from me while wade fishing on the vermilion river. those winged pricks were attacking those fisherman, they tried not to hurt them, & were trying to shoo them away to no avail. i finally shouted to them to punt them like a football & assured them i wouldn't tell the park ranger. on average a canadian goose processes 30 lbs of crap a day, & they literally ruin any grass land they call home. that's the tip of the iceberg. captain sully performed his job 1st class, & i'm sure he'll agree those birds are a hazard to civil aviation, & a plain old pain in the neck.

[fotobass]

Thanks for posting that...I'm not a VF reader, and I would have missed it.

[John Dupre]

One thing not mentioned in Langwiesche's article is that there is a fail safe system on the engines that may actually have contributed to the ditching. Apparently when there is an anomaly between the power setting selected and what the engine is actually producing the fuel control automatically selects the last known position where the fuel control and actual power agreed. In the case of 1549 that was idle. So one claim I have read is that at least one of the engines may have been capable of developing more power if the fuel control could have been set to maximum but the computers wouldn't allow it. This assumes that the engine was running well enough to produce more power. The Eclipse jet has a similar feature and it has been a problem once or twice with engines reverting to idle when higher power was selected.

[Ed L]

No, it wasn´t his Air Force training; it was his GLIDER training, the NYT said so....

[Glyn]

One thing not mentioned in Langwiesche's article is that there is a fail safe system on the engines that may actually have contributed to the ditching. Apparently when there is an anomaly between the power setting selected and what the engine is actually producing the fuel control automatically selects the last known position where the fuel control and actual power agreed. In the case of 1549 that was idle. So one claim I have read is that at least one of the engines may have been capable of developing more power if the fuel control could have been set to maximum but the computers wouldn't allow it. This assumes that the engine was running well enough to produce more power. The Eclipse jet has a similar feature and it has been a problem once or twice with engines reverting to idle when higher power was selected.

With increasing use of computers controlling virtually every aspect of the engines this is a worrying thought.

[michaelharadon]

With increasing use of computers controlling virtually every aspect of the engines this is a worrying thought.

How big a deal could it be to provide the cockpit with an override?

[Jiggersfromsphilly]

One thing not mentioned in Langwiesche's article is that there is a fail safe system on the engines that may actually have contributed to the ditching. Apparently when there is an anomaly between the power setting selected and what the engine is actually producing the fuel control automatically selects the last known position where the fuel control and actual power agreed. In the case of 1549 that was idle. So one claim I have read is that at least one of the engines may have been capable of developing more power if the fuel control could have been set to maximum but the computers wouldn't allow it. This assumes that the engine was running well enough to produce more power. The Eclipse jet has a similar feature and it has been a problem once or twice with engines reverting to idle when higher power was selected.

Wasn't there a similar problem on the Aerobus that mushed into the woods at the end of the runway in Paris?

[JDK]

With increasing use of computers controlling virtually every aspect of the engines this is a worrying thought.

Yes and no. We are suspicious of the 'disconnection' of computers, but stuff like Three Mile Island are systems failures, rather than human or computer failures.

It would be interesting to have data on aircraft accidents certified to have been computer failures, as against accidents certified to be the soft pink 'onboard computers' or the soft pink ground 'fixy computers'.

Training, cables/rods, fly-by-wire or computer, it's all still garbage in = garbage out.

Thanks for posting it, but I lost patience with the article when it started bitching about the geese being 'dumb' at the start of page 1. They aren't stupid or smart, they're just geese, and they produce a lot less sh1t than humans. You may as well complain about the rocks in clouds. They're going to make a mess, so it's up to us to figure out strategies to avoid them - otherwise game over.

[the330thbg]

but I lost patience with the article when it started bitching about the geese being 'dumb' at the start of page 1. They aren't stupid or smart, they're just geese, and they produce a lot less sh1t than humans. You may as well complain about the rocks in clouds. They're going to make a mess, so it's up to us to figure out strategies to avoid them - otherwise game over.

LMFAO.., I agree.., right on the nose!!!

I can just imagine what the GEESE would say about what the humans are doing to this planet!!!!