• EmmaGoldman [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    I’m normally the one voice explaining how that thing that looks scary is actually not that big of a deal.

    Nope, this shit is fucked. Airlines need to be much more tightly regulated and inspections need to be much more in-depth.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      I’ll try to keep things calm. From a pilot’s POV:

      -Flight attendant says a passenger says the wing is falling apart.

      -What? Oh, the slats.

      -Parts coming off the airplane can damage other parts (I.e., be sucked into an engine, causing more immediate problems). Divert and execute a precautionary landing.

      The plane isn’t going to fall out of the sky (unless the wing really does start to come apart) The slat is a movable part that extends the wing’s surface area to produce more lift on takeoff and landing thereby reducing required runway length. When it comes down to it you don’t really need the flaps and slats to land. Just find a nice long runway you can haul ass into. I’ve had the slats go kaput on me once. Never had them fall off though

      There are guys flying these planes younger than the planes themselves. The only real thing we can learn from this is that airlines cling onto aging airplanes, which was already an open secret anyway. Nothing’s gonna change until someone dies, but the dying is not gonna be coming from the slats coming apart.

      My first job I flew planes older than my dad.

      • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        There are guys flying these planes younger than the planes themselves. The only real thing we can learn from this is that airlines cling onto aging airplanes, which was already an open secret anyway. Nothing’s gonna change until someone dies, but the dying is not gonna be coming from the slats coming apart.

        My first job I flew planes older than my dad.

        Air Zimbabwe still uses the Boeing 737-200s with the Pratt & Whitney low bypass turbofan engines. The same engine that the Boeing 727 used, as well as various military aircraft from the 1960s. Everytime they fly close to where I live, I get a heart attack because the engines are so damn loud. It’s honestly a miracle they still fly, but the airline is forced to use them because Zimbabwe is broke, and because apparently the 737-200 has the ability to land on gravel runways with an “unpaved strip kit” you could get from Boeing. According to Wikipedia, the kit consists of a vortex generator in front of the engine, and a gravel deflector on the nose landing gear.

        • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          4 months ago

          Ahh the -200s. These types of operations operate under the assumption (almost always correctly) that when an engine dies it will only be one of them.

          Honestly though the more pressing issue is the insane amount of pressurization cycles they’ve gone through over decades of usage on regularly scheduled commercial flights. Given enough time, probably another 2-3 decades of usage, eventually the pressure bulkhead is just gonna blow and take out part of the vertical stabilizer with it. And that will kill you. Well maybe not everyone but just about in that range.

          Incidentally this is why Cessnas have greater longevity than airliners. They aren’t pressurized so there is far less stress on the airframe.

          • aaaaaaadjsf [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            4 months ago

            I remember going with a plane nerd to visit the airport to take photographs of it, after he saw it on flight radar. Seeing it on the runway and take off was like going back in time in a way. It’s a cool looking plane, I’ll give it that. And the sound is cool when you are watching it take off. Not so cool when it wakes you up though.

  • Kaplya@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Remember 2 years ago when Western countries began to sanction Russia, all the libs on Twitter were gushing about how Russian planes will soon fall out of the sky in 6 months because no Western spare parts?

    Meanwhile, Russia has started serial production of its domestic made MS-21 airliner. I wonder if there is a market for the third world countries now that Boeing’s reputation is falling apart?

      • Kaplya@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        And the Indonesian and Ethiopian pilots during the first 737 MAX scandals in 2020.

    • BynarsAreOk [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      It is not that rosy of a picture for them. Russia is having to cannibalize some of its fleet for spare parts and everything else had to be sourced from the black/grey markets which is like yeah sure grifting or whatever but there is a point to be made that aviation safety does rely on quality control and you can’t just replace stuff that easily. Yes of course the ability to manufacture and sell these parts is tightly controlled, imperialism and all, but it is all fine and good until the first accident isn’t?

      To be clear I don’t think those libs were arguing in good faith back then, but I also don’t think having a fleet of western aircraft maintained by parallel market parts is particularly good principle either.

      If anything I’d say this is very much against any sort of leftist principle for me, air travel is not essential and these are capitalist business, the idea of even putting innocent workers safety at risk for a modern convenience like that isn’t a win, maybe they could have just taken that L, reduced air travel to the upmost essential only and then used this opportunity build some trains or something.

      Instead when you read up on what Russia is trying to do to keep the whole thing running it is just old porky time we’ll do anything and it is literaly the quote from farquaad-point

      • Kaplya@hexbear.net
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        4 months ago

        It is not that rosy of a picture for them. Russia is having to cannibalize some of its fleet for spare parts and everything else had to be sourced from the black/grey markets which is like yeah sure grifting or whatever but there is a point to be made that aviation safety does rely on quality control and you can’t just replace stuff that easily. Yes of course the ability to manufacture and sell these parts is tightly controlled, imperialism and all, but it is all fine and good until the first accident isn’t?

        Of course, every sanctioned country does that. What are they supposed to do? They are being sanctioned with the purpose of stifling their economy, of course they don’t have the luxury but to take measures to mitigate that problem as far as they can take it.

        And it’s not like Russia is not doing anything about it. The state placed an order of 500 domestic built airliners over the next 10 years, of which a planned production of 270 MS-21 over the next 8 years (6 will be built this year, and by 2030 the production is supposed to ramp up to 70 units per year, which is ambitious to say the least). The goal is to completely replace foreign airliners with domestic made ones.

        maybe they could have just taken that L, reduced air travel to the upmost essential only and then used this opportunity build some trains or something.

        They’ve not been allowed to fly into most of Europe and the US, which were the major flight routes for Russia. The flights are already reduced thanks to the sanctions.

        And trains are being built. The import substitution will take time because they still used Western parts for their carriages, but it’s only a matter of time before these parts are fully localized.

  • operacion_ogro [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    4 months ago

    Between this stuff and the people who are trying to open emergency exits during flights, flying is starting to make me nervous. It’s already claustrophobic enough without these incidents on top