The sinking of the el faro

[cat in january]

Long time ago I spent a lot of time working with Mike on local ferries. He was a friend of mine. He was a real by the book captain. I have not read the article yet, will soon. The loss hit the local community hard. Feel for his children knowing how poorly the unfolding events reflect on him.

[abraham]

That article was so well done. I really thought it was going to transform journalism. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case. I would love to see more stories done like that.




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I think the online version of the ISIS files article is pretty good so far. I haven't finished it though. The annotations and additional documents are pretty interesting to look through

[iceman]

Stories need to have visual interest to work in that format. Not all do. The Washington Post stories on the 1968 riots qualifies, and especially so if you know DC. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...=.f8e4b4e8e6cb

^^that story was impossible for me to find by google, I had to go through posts here to find where I posted it the day it came out, so save the link if you want to see it again.

[wyeaster]

i hate flying no matter who is in the cockpit

[PNWbrit]

^^that story was impossible for me to find by google, I had to go through posts here to find where I posted it the day it came out, so save the link if you want to see it again.

It's the first Google hit if you search > 1968 riots Washington post

[plugboots]

i hate flying! fuckin 3 stooges in that cockpit

I’m kinda giving away the spoiler but... pitot tubes ice up, so they crash the plane?
What in the actual Jesus Fucking Hercules Christ.

[Art Shirk]

I’m kinda giving away the spoiler but... pitot tubes ice up, so they crash the plane?
What in the actual Jesus Fucking Hercules Christ.

Between the three of them, to not put the nose down to clear the warnings in any meaningful way between 37K and 10K is crazy to me. Instead, that idiot kept pulling back.

What seemed odd to me though was:

(1) there must be absolute best practices for safety protocol and tools in cockpits. How is it that Airbus and Boeing have differences and market them as different sales value props???? It seems the rules around dual engagement of the stick caused some added confusion here;

(2) maybe I misread, but it seems like a major safety issue to have the stall warning disappear when the plane is being pulled back so far that the data doesn't register. When the moron finally put the nose down for a moment, the system started registering data again, knew it was in a stall position so it yelled out the STALL warning. If I am yanking back, hear nothing and then nose down and hear STALL, I may under duress yank right back again.

[powpig]

I guess El Faro means something different to me than the rest of you.

[jono]

Between the three of them, to not put the nose down to clear the warnings in any meaningful way between 37K and 10K is crazy to me. Instead, that idiot kept pulling back.

What seemed odd to me though was:

(1) there must be absolute best practices for safety protocol and tools in cockpits. How is it that Airbus and Boeing have differences and market them as different sales value props???? It seems the rules around dual engagement of the stick caused some added confusion here;

(2) maybe I misread, but it seems like a major safety issue to have the stall warning disappear when the plane is being pulled back so far that the data doesn't register. When the moron finally put the nose down for a moment, the system started registering data again, knew it was in a stall position so it yelled out the STALL warning. If I am yanking back, hear nothing and then nose down and hear STALL, I may under duress yank right back again.

To 1, the fact of these differences isn't such a concern in itself because pilots' model-specific training should keep confusion from being an issue. But obviously one approach is objectively better and should be adopted. It's not the one Airbus is using. The article skims over a couple other Boeing/Airbus differences, too. Probably because it's so deep in the weeds that only those who are deeply invested really get the nuance, so it's hard to separate truth from homerism in comparing unlikely scenarios. But nothing about this makes me happy to board an Airbus.

Of course, two company babies at the controls is a huge issue, too, which serves as a strong example of some of the "average pilot" issues he discusses at the end. Those guys just wouldn't have had the non-automated experience that many other pilots would have and Dubois didn't have a hand on a stick.

On point 2, the system should know (or use) angle of attack much better than it does--if stall warnings are based only on sensors whose data stops indicating a stall beyond some angle of attack, then pitch warnings could pick up at some point. But predicting when that's true requires more system integration, with more complex failure modes. (Stall is an aerodynamic condition, after all, so it could never rely on pitch alone.)

This would never happen the same way in daylight because they'd look out the window and see Something to indicate their pitch--even if it was nothing more than the angle of water/ice passing by the windows. And Bonin's impression that they were going too fast was almost certainly because he'd been flying nose-up for so long that he mistook gravity for forward acceleration. Airbus could provide a system of accelerometers to provide a separate model of the plane's attitude (separate reduces complexity of failure modes), but how often would that create more confusion rather than less? They were already ignoring GPS, it seems.

The author's point about where we're headed with automation is well made.

[Supermoon]

The more I read about these disasters, the less it seems to be about some system that needs updating and the more it seems to be about putting these pilots and captains in high stress situations and evaluating their decision making.

Neither the El Faro captain or the Airbus pilots had an understanding of the risks they were facing.

The El Faro captain didn’t take extreme weather seriously enough, and the pilots fell into a major panic over a problem that would fix itself in a short period of time.

Both of those are major training failures but not how people talk about it. Sure maybe the pilot wasn’t good on the stick, but there was zero reason for him to even touch it.

[jono]

The autopilot disengaged, so he did need to fly the plane at that point.

[Supermoon]

The autopilot disengaged, so he did need to fly the plane at that point.

Oh. When I read it I thought HE disengaged autopilot.

[AdironRider]

I only have a sport private license, but I honestly cannot fathom how they didn't recognize the stall. I mean I learned that stuff on like lesson 2.

[2nd mate]

When you start going to see this is one of the first photos you see that makes you comprehend how dangerous a hurricane is. Every bridge I have ever been on has it, page 1-15 of the Mariner's Weather Handbook(NOAA.)

[iceman]

It wasn't like Cap was an ignorant guy, he knew what hurricanes can do and he knew it was a fluid forecast and he went to bed for the whole night. Something was going on that we'll never know.

[zartagen]

The autopilot disengaged, so he did need to fly the plane at that point.

Well, not really. The plane was trimmed out and would have continued in steady, level flight with no input from the pilot. At least that's what I got from the article.

"The airplane was in the control of the pilots, and if they had done nothing, they would have done all they needed to do."

[iceman]

Yeah those maniacs literally wrestled control away from the plane and drove it straight into the ocean while it tried to warn them.

edit: well they didn't literally "wrestle" it. They wrested it.

[PNWbrit]

I. Something was going on that we'll never know.

The article makes it pretty clear what. Guy had been busted before for caution and costing the corp $$$. And now again as master he was asking for approval to change route, while hoping for promotion to the big Alaska job. So he didn't push the point.

[2nd mate]

The article makes it pretty clear what. Guy had been busted before for caution and costing the corp $$$. And now again as master he was asking for approval to change route, while hoping for promotion to the big Alaska job. So he didn't push the point.

just to clarify:
He was fired from a different company, not TOTE.
He was trying to get a job on the new vessels under construction, that would replace his current ship in the PR-US trade. Not the AK run.
That being said...I agree with you about the pressure he was under due to his situation and prior experience.

[MultiVerse]

The article makes it pretty clear what. Guy had been busted before for caution and costing the corp $$$. And now again as master he was asking for approval to change route, while hoping for promotion to the big Alaska job. So he didn't push the point.

Corporate played its part but such an analysis oversimplifies the chain of events, even though we can all sympathize with succumbing to pressure from corporate oversight.

It's one thing to say but for a change of route the El Faro wouldn't have faced the brunt of the storm. However, there wasn't just one decision point. The captain made a series of bad decisions. They could have changed course as the situation grew worse with the captain citing the crew warnings and the subsequent weather reports as a reasonable explanation. What's alarming about the story is how dire things became before the captain fully comprehended the situation.

And even when the die was cast, the crews survival was hampered by an ongoing series of bad calls all the way through to the end.

[Supermoon]

Yeah. It’s the series of bad calls that fucked them. No one decision was the one that did it. Each decision compounded in itself. Just like in the Air France case.

[iceman]

Well I have to believe the whole thing might have turned out very differently if he had not made the decision to go to bed for the night. It doesn't make sense, no one would do that.

[Supermoon]

Yeah. That’s a weird one.

[PNWbrit]

Yeah. That’s a weird one.

We may have overlooked simple incompetence...

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[plugboots]

I read it that he was playing macho: “I’ve seen worse, I did this in Alaska” etc.


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