Hangar Talk
- Mike Dickey
- 23 hours ago
- 4 min read
"You’ve got to expect things are going to go wrong. And we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected."
— Neil Armstrong, 2005
Back after a long weekend in NYC. I have to admit that I never took the computer out of the bag until I had to pay a bill on Monday morning. One can see the headlines there, the cupidity and kakistocracy of the present moment--one just can't feel it the same way in Manhattan, as if the whole city is protected by a dome of political sanity. Not what one would expect in a constantly moving anthill of 8 million people, but it's been our happy experience so far.
Hoping to keep the good vibes flowing now that we're back in Corning, I'll stay away from DJT and the Global Catastrophe. The Mighty Columbia returns from its annual on Thursday, so let's talk about airplanes.
There were a couple really fascinating aviation articles I read over the weekend, one with a happy ending and one not so much. That's a constant takeaway about flying--when it goes badly, it can go fatally badly in a matter of moments.
But first, let's talk about the Jet Blue Airbus that momentarily tried to fall out of the sky off Florida's west coast, plunging 5,000 feet and pinning folks and beverage carts to the ceiling before abruptly leveling off and resuming normal flight.
The article itself is paywalled, and I don't love you enough to subscribe so the link above takes you to a summary (and, of course, you can click a link in the link and buy the article if you'd like).
These instances of airplanes dramatically plunging out of a seemingly normal cruise profile aren't all that new. What was different here, however, was the lack of any of the usual reasons this happens. There was no turbulence, no severe weather, no mechanical failure of the flight control or fly-by-wire systems. The autopilots seemed to be working fine.
So what happened? After a lengthy investigation, the engineers finally concluded that a proton that had been hurtling through space was able to enter the earth's atmosphere, where it passed through the body of the jet and into one of the two flight control computers, knocking a neutron out of the nucleus of a single atom and thereby causing a bit to "flip" from one coded data point to another. The flip caused the computer to think the airplane had pitched up, and it shoved the elevators into a nose-down position to correct an emergency that wasn't happening. The only reason this didn't end with the plane crashing into the Gulf was that the system incorporates a back-up that detects an error by the main computer and overrides it. That's why they fell for several seconds, then leveled off.
Ever heard of such a thing? Me either. And yet the investigators were able to isolate this cosmic hazard that leaves no evidence behind of what happened. The upshot here is that a single displaced bit of nucleus from a single atom in the wrong place at the wrong time can cause a catastrophic failure of a plane's flight control system. It calls one up short, eh?
The second story was a little less uplifting.
It seems the crew of a New Mexico medevac flight missed a rather important NOTAM (notice to airman--a series of advisories and warnings you're supposed to read before you go flying) about an exercise at White Sands Missile Range that involved jamming GPS signals. The aircraft commander was 30, and the first officer was 22, so these were guys who grew up in a world where you always had GPS, always flew the magenta line to your destination and then had the option of letting the autopilot fly the GPS approach into your destination.
In this case, the flight was at night over some pretty rugged mountains near Ruidoso--I've flown in that space many times, and it features a range of huge peaks rising out of the desert floor.
When their GPS quit working, the pilots asked for a vector from Albuquerque Center, not realizing what was happening. Apparently Center received a bunch of similar calls from lost airplanes feeling around in the dark with no GPS, and the controllers found themselves overwhelmed.
The medevac crew, after droning along for several minutes on a heading meant to keep them from flying into a mountain, picked up a visual on the field and told Center they'd transition to an ILS (based on a ground-emitted beacon at the end of the runway). Center was no doubt relieved--in my experience they're always eager to relinquish control as you approach the field, and let the pilots figure out how to get on the ground.
But there was a complicator in this instance--between the field and the plane was a very, very tall mountain, which on a moonless night is just a dark patch in one's flight path. Been there, done that--it's scary as hell when you're looking at the lights of a city or an airfield, and a large chunk of rock between you and the glow suddenly blots it out.
It sounds like that's the last thing these folks saw, because the flight ended with what's called in the flight safety business a "controlled flight into terrain". Basically they smacked the mountain, after realizing too late they were in trouble and trying to climb at full power on the same heading rather than turning around. I suppose it beats dying of cancer.
I'm not blaming these guys for displaying fairly limited proficiency when the GPS guidance disappeared. I flew at the controls for the first time in 1985, and for around half the time I've been at this we relied on TACANs and VORTACs and NDBs and even LORAN in some of the older planes I flew, radio beacon-based systems that required you to extrapolate your position based on azimuth and distance from the transmitter. And we studied paper maps like our lives depending on it. And we looked outside a lot. You can get away with neglecting all that with a glass cockpit and a strong GPS signal, but when all those things go away you'd better have another plan.
I have a total of two phone calls today, but plenty to do now that I'm my own legal assistant. As much fun as it's been talking about airplanes, I reckon it's time to don the powdered wig and start plying my trade.