and peanuts.... LOL!

So when a plane hits nasty turbulence, and I begin to wonder how tight my sphincter actually is, it's still all auto-pilot?

I posted a thread on here a few years back on being on a plane with a couple of aborted landings, right above the runway... would that have been pilot decision, or some computer telling him?

LMAO

Don't forget "watching for traffic."

TCAS does that for me... It lets me know when I need to look outside...

One thing to let the radar tell you its out there. Sometimes trying to find the traffic even know you know the altitude and direction from you.. Its harder than hell to see jets at times...

AP handles the turbulence better than we do. It can process and calculate the corrects at the speed of super computers. We on the other hand have to feel and see whats happening before we make changes...

No that was the pilot doing the go arounds. AP wont tell the pilot not to land.

How common are those aborted landings? We were literally no more than 150 feet above the ground on one, and even lower on the other.

I'm now blaming Myanmar (Burma). There are a bunch of kooks running that place with nothing better to do.

You had two go around on one flight? Wow. I've only been onboard for one, and that was a runway incursion (snowplow).

Depends? Did something run out in front of them? Winds? Another plane enter the runway... Too much speed?

Many different variables... I would rather go around then put it down knowing I will have a serious issue to deal with if I do...

Flying into Dallas.
There was a storm.
Pilot comes over the intercom and says, (paraphrased) There's a storm down there, we're gonna go into a pattern and wait for a window."
Less than two minutes later, "I think we've found one, so here we go."

We were low enough that I could count blades of grass, and suddenly he accelerates and climbs. The thing that scared the shit out of me was that during the climb, I could feel that weightless feeling at times, like we were actually dropping.

"Folks, it was raining so hard, I actually couldn't see the runway, we'll go around and try again."


So we're coming down a second time, even lower this time, and the wind hits us, and I swear to God the plane turned slightly sideways and one wing dipped way down.

Ended up flying to Tulsa, and then back... all to get from Austin to KC.

That sounds like a good time... Those days are challenging... Spring weather makes flying interesting...

It was:

http://www.theblaze.com/wp-content/u..._2-620x336.jpg

I already had developed a fear of flying (which is weird because in my younger days I loved it. In my low to mid 20s, it was my favorite thing in the world), but that really screwed me up.

Was not a fan.

Is that fairly common, and I've just never realized it?

Crosswind landings? Yes. I used to fly into Bozeman, MT all the time and it was just expected.

Helps if you're sober

Can't help it...

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/jfB4xyM7tMw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Almost a ground loop.

I (somewhat) understand aerodynamics. I (somewhat) understand physics.

I can't wrap my head around how these ****ing things takeoff, fly, and land so well. In many ways, my irrational fear ACTUALLY does lead me to worry about the damned things breaking apart midair.

That would be the two mile high club

That doesn't count as a landing.

That's too bad. I still look forward to flying, even with as much as I do.

I think most people who are afraid to fly are more nervous during take off than landing, which is backwards.

I'm more nervous on when the stewardess will eventually come by

I'm nervous during both, but yeah... moreso during takeoff. It seems anything I can remember from news stories are about planes which crashed soon after takeoff.

Crashes happen more frequently on landing.

Why is that?

The ground.

I assume the ground is the same whether you are 50 ft above it and taking off, or 50 ft above it and landing. So I'm curious why the landing is more dangerous.

Landing is just a controlled crash anyway....

You aren't helping my phobia...dick

Airplane is configured differently....

Taking off, you are accelerating, creating more lift, removing drag and climbing... Retracting landing gear, etc....

Landing you are introducing more drag and aerodynamic changes to keep the plane flying at slower speeds.

I could get really complicated on this, but that is the short and sweet version.

I was kidding. I would imagine a combination of the following (maybe Reerun can confirm):

On approach, your plane is going about 1.3 x stall speed. A good, sudden tailwind, and...

Engines are just above idle versus full power at take off.

Aliens.

Sorry.... o:-)

Come to OKC and I will take you flying and let you fly the plane.

:clap: good job.

Yeah, the pilot of my last flight must have been ex-navy. I think he forgot his plane didn't have a hook.

Watch what joystick you're grabbing sully

well, on takeoff you are never trying to touch the ground and the engines are going full blast to make sure of it. Even if something minor happens you'll probably still manage to not touch the ground.

You are touching the ground on every single landing. And yes, I am more nervous on landing than during takeoff. During takeoff I'm relaxed and enjoying the view.

Makes sense.

You can tell the difference between Air Force and Navy pilots.

I';ve tried to figure out over the past several years why I've developed this fear, when I used to enjoy it so much, and I really think it's a control thing. As I've gotten older, I've grown a fear of loss of control that I didn't care so much about when I was younger. So I've often wondered if I took some flight lessons, if that might alleviate it. It wouldn't give me the control, but I wouldn't be at such a disadvantage knowledge-wise.

That all makes complete sense.
I guess my biggest freakouts come during the portions of takeoff and climbing where I feel the plane dropping, and I'm thinking... "I knew those ****ing wings looked too small to carry this damn thing!"

Found it!

http://vietnam.craigslist.org/for/4372477162.html

Yeah, the way they say thank you as you file off the plane

Look at turbulence this way....


Hot air rises (creating lift) cold air falls (decrease in lift) That is what turbulence is, you are flying through different air temperatures causing a difference in lift.

Wind shears can cause turbulence...

Easy way to see turbulence is to take a Ziploc bag, fill it 3/4 of water with a couple of tea spoons of cooking oil. Shake. That it what the air looks like when you are flying through it... Hot and cold air mixing...

Nice

If the plane did go down in the Indian Ocean, it is starting to sound like it may never be found, at least not anytime soon. The airfrance flight a while ago had a small search area, they found debris after 5 days, and even with all that it still took 2 years to find it. The search area for this plane is almost the entire Indian ocean.

If they conclude that they will probably never find this one, I wonder if that'll spur governments and airlines to install technology that transmits information every few minutes so we never lose another one.

The funny thing I read today is that those pings we've been hearing about that lasted for about 4 or 5 hours were signals to the satellite saying "I'm ready to transmit location data", but those pings were never acknowledged by the satellite because the airline did not subscribe to some kind of premium service.

:doh!:

I can't believe this isn't already in place.

If there's concern about bandwidth, I'm sure we can do something like twitter, all we need is latitude and longitude. Thats it. Maybe elevation if there's room. The black box will give us everything else.

Oh shit! ROFL

You don't have to transmit a huge amount of data. A location every 5 or 10 minutes would have given us a lot to go on here.

It does some logical considering the engines in this case had more contact with the world than the actual plane did.

Doesn't the black box transmit coordinates?

black box does not transmit anything. All it does is chirp for about 30 days if it detects water. Ships also have to be very near it to detect that chirp.

Really? I thought that thing did much more than that. Hell my cell phone does much more than that.

yep.

When the airfrance flight went down, they searched frantically for a couple months hoping to hear the chirp. They then slowed down and went to another method of searching because they knew the black box's battery was dead by then and would no longer be chirping.

At that point, they sent a few robot subs to the area, they weren't actively trying to find the plane, the subs just methodically scanned the ocean floor for a few months, then some people combed through the scans of the ocean floor for a few more months, and searched the areas of the ocean floor that looked interesting, until they found the wreckage 2 years later. They then had to send down subs to comb through the wreckage until they physically found the black boxes.

That method wont work very well for this flight because the robot subs only scanned 2,400 square miles and it still took 2 years. It would take too long to do that for the whole Indian Ocean unless they can find some floating wreckage to narrow it down.

Malaysia Airlines loses contact with plane carrying 239 people
 

Why in the hell is this only offered as a premium service?

No shit

Sounds like they are trying to use some clever math on those pings. Apparently it doesn't send them to just one satellite, but many. They are trying to figure out which satellites got the pings, which did not, exactly what time to the second they got the pings, and where the satellites were in orbit. They won't get a pinpoint of the plane with just that, but maybe they can narrow the Indian ocean down to just a smaller piece of it.

could have been a windshear or microshear warning. The only flight I've been on i was worried about was a landing in Tennessee where I was in a small commuter and the flight attendent started crying, same deal, multiple go arounds at 100-150ft

Depends, do aliens have Obamacare?

Try sitting in the tail of a close to over loaded Beaver that's trying to land on a remote river in Canada with a stiff crosswind. The pilot seemed ok with nearly being blown into the trees on the first 2 passes, but the native whore in the passenger seat was crying and the rest of us were trying to kiss our asses goodbye before being Shish Kabobbed on a pine.

They're also apparently using them to correlate with military radar hits of unidentified objects to get a better picture of location and velocity.

I felt really bad for her. Her seat was a little fold down jump seat on the cockpit door, so all dozen or so of us were just staring at her the whole time.

Okay, it's looking more and more like someone stole this thing.

[Excerpts from article]

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/14/world/...ane/index.html

Washington (CNN) -- Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 made drastic changes in altitude and direction after disappearing from civilian radar, U.S. officials told CNN on Friday, raising questions for investigators about just who was at the controls of the commercial jetliner that went missing one week ago with 239 people on board.

The more the United States learns about the flight's pattern, "the more difficult to write off" the idea that some type of human intervention was involved, one of the officials familiar with the investigation said.

The revelation comes as CNN has learned that a classified analysis of electronic and satellite data suggests the flight likely crashed either in the Bay of Bengal or elsewhere in the Indian Ocean.

The analysis conducted by the United States and Malaysian governments may have narrowed the search area for the jetliner that vanished en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, leaving little trace of where it went or why.

The analysis used radar data and satellite pings to calculate that the plane diverted to the west, across the Malayan peninsula, and then either flew in a northwest direction toward the Bay of Bengal or southwest into the Indian Ocean.

The theory builds on earlier revelations by U.S. officials that an automated reporting system on the airliner was pinging satellites for up to five hours after its last reported contact with air traffic controllers. Inmarsat, a satellite communications company, confirmed to CNN that automated signals were registered on its network.

Taken together, the data point toward speculation of a dark scenario in which someone took control of the plane for some unknown purpose, perhaps terrorism.

That theory is buoyed by word from a senior U.S. official familiar with the investigation that the Malaysia Airlines plane made several significant altitude changes and altered its course more than once after losing contact with flight towers.


The jetliner was flying "a strange path," the official said on condition of anonymity. The details of the radar readings were first reported by The New York Times on Friday.


Malaysian military radar showed the plane climbing to 45,000 feet soon after disappearing from civilian radar screens and then dropping to 23,000 feet before climbing again, the official said.


The question of what happened to the jetliner has turned into one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history, befuddling industry experts and government officials.

Suggestions have ranged from a catastrophic explosion to sabotage to hijacking to pilot suicide.

The sabotage theory got a boost Friday from The Wall Street Journal, which reported investigators increasingly suspect the plane's communications systems were manually switched off.

Investigators are trying to determine whether the satellite communications system that pinged for hours stopped functioning because "something catastrophic happened or someone switched off" the system, the newspaper reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the jet's last known position.

The pings stopped at a point over the Indian Ocean, while the jetliner was flying at a normal cruising altitude, according to the newspaper.

If it wasn't for the zig-zagging from one point to another that all planes evidently do when traversing large bodies of water I would say the chances are extremely likely that this plane had a fire in the nose that took out the transponders and rendered the plane more difficult to control as it spread backwards through the plane until eventually - lost because of a lack of operating navigational equipment - it runs out of fuel and crashes with a bunch of dead people on board.

But if they confirm it was taking a deliberate course maybe what really happened was another United 93 situation where the passengers finally managed to take over the cockpit and force whoever had the aircraft to ditch.

I didn't have time to care about her as I was sitting on a wooden bench that appeared to be holding the plane together. LMAO

I think a fire of some sort does remain a reasonable option.

If the plane was unpiloted and the elevators were locked at a particular shallow angle, I could see the thing ascending until it stalled, and then diving until the elevators pulled it back out. It could do that a couple of times before it hit the water. But the article I linked seems to imply that perhaps there was some level flight in there as well, which wouldn't happen.

I also wonder about the pinging stopping. If someone stole it, would they eventually figure out that there was pinging and stop it?

I was reading a forum for pilots. Some thought the altitude change could indicate there was a significant malfunction and they were struggling to control the plane. Others had a more gruesome theory. They said if the pilot decompressurized the cabin, he could take the plane to 45,000 feet... the oxygen masks would not work at that altitude and it would kill all of the passengers. I don't know if that's true or not.

Whoa. That would be a pretty evil thing to do.

Dude.


I was on a flight out of ny right after 911 and it fell so hard the flight attendents fell down.

Freaked us the Hell out
Posted via Mobile Device

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>BREAKING NEWS: Investigators conclude missing jet hijacked, official says <a href="http://t.co/b9JgqwAznv">http://t.co/b9JgqwAznv</a></p>&mdash; Fox News Alert (@foxnewsalert) <a href="https://twitter.com/foxnewsalert/statuses/444685680950919168">March 15, 2014</a></blockquote>
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Just saw that too. Can't find any TV coverage this time of night. Probably have to wait till morning now. Unless of course someone @Cnn wakes the f@ck up!

The news just reported that the plane was hijacked.

A Malaysian official says investigators there have concluded the missing Malaysia Airlines jet was hijacked and steered off course, the Associated Press reported late Friday.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that hijacking by one of the pilots or someone with flying experience was no longer a theory. “It is conclusive.”

The official said no motive has been established, and it remains unknown where the plane was taken.

The conclusion appears to back up the latest speculation picking up throughout the day: Whoever was flying the plane as it vanished may have known what they were doing.

That surmise picked up steam after Reuters, citing undisclosed sources from Kuala Lumpur, reported that military radar suggests that the Boeing 777 took a path between known “navigational waypoints” as it flew westward following its disappearance, “using airline flight corridors normally employed for routes to the Middle East and Europe.”

“This indicates that it was either being flown by the pilots or someone with knowledge of those waypoints, the sources said,” according to Reuters. It also quoted a “senior Malaysian police official” as saying that “we are looking at sabotage, with hijack still on the cards.”

But a later report in The New York Times points to a more erratic and possibly tragic fate for the plane. The Times said radar signals captured by the Malaysian military indicate that the jet made dramatic swings in direction and altitude — including at one point soaring to 45,000 feet, higher than the Boeing 777’s approved limit.

From tonight's AP story posted above: How ironic you brought that up.
But a later report in The New York Times points to a more erratic and possibly tragic fate for the plane. The Times said radar signals captured by the Malaysian military indicate that the jet made dramatic swings in direction and altitude — including at one point soaring to 45,000 feet, higher than the Boeing 777’s approved limit.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Malaysian Prime Minister Razak scheduled to speak at 1 am ET press conference about missing Malaysia Airlines jet - <a href="https://twitter.com/dailytelegraph">@dailytelegraph</a></p>&mdash; Breaking News (@BreakingNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/BreakingNews/statuses/444694303924043776">March 15, 2014</a></blockquote>
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The pilots were responding to that report... they were questioning why someone would take the plane that high. The theories were either lack of control due to a malfunction or trying to kill everyone in the cabin.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0...ir-piracy.html

Bloomberg is reporting the plane has been traced closer to the coast of Australia... away from where all the searches took place. Haven't seen anyone else verifying this yet though.