What Happened to Eastern Airlines Flight 980?
outsideonline.com
outsideonline.com
>"By taking the flight recorders and tape back to the U.S., they discovered, they had violated Annex 13 of the Convention on International Civil Aviation, a document that lays out the rules for international air travel. It says that wherever a plane crashes, that country is in charge of the investigation. Moving evidence to a different nation could be seen as undermining that authority."
This is totally infuriating. Bureaucracy, failed diplomacy, and "national pride" are standing in the way of a safety investigation.
Instead of asking for the US and Bolivia act like reasonable adults, perhaps we can appeal to ICAO to have ICAO investigate or ask ICAO to find some way to absolve the US of any wrongdoing for investigating, given that the Bolivian government has failed to properly investigate. I'm no expert in international treaties, but there has to be some provision in the law that would not penalize a country for investigating when the other country was willfully negligent and uncooperative.
Fang Liu is secretariat general of ICAO. Perhaps lobbying her for help might produce better results.
http://www.icao.int/ http://www.icao.int/secretariat/SecretaryGeneral/Pages/defau...
Imagine you are the secretary at the Bolivian Embassy. Your job is to answer phones and direct queries about visa applications. You get a call from random people saying they have the flight recorder from a plane crash. You know nothing about the plane crash (it happened ~35 years ago) let alone the rules governing investigations. Best case scenario, you take the caller's details and forward it to your supervisor who is equally ignorant and has his real work to do . . . the call is forgotten, no response comes.
This sort of scenario will play out in all government departments in all countries. Until the right person on one side or the other gets interested, nothing will happen. Unfortunately, the right people tend to be very busy and have probably not even heard about this development. Even if/when they do, it is a bit of a toss up how much they'll care. This is a really old plane crash, and the investigation has been closed.
With this appearing on HN, how long do you think it will take before the right people contact them? ;-)
Further, the CVR tape might not be spectacularly useful for a controlled flight into terrain accident in instrument conditions. There is a fair chance that the first problem the cockpit crew encountered was the impact.
On the other hand, it might show navigation equipment failures-say those VOR transmitters-and traffic control communication problems.
The flight data recorder could be more difficult but if there is a model number, more technical data would be available, again via friendly Google.
The issue with a non-official person reading is that any results are not "official" findings, so don't get official flight crash investigation status. However, since none of the official authorities in either country are interested, that's probably not important.
The only thing people should be concerned with would be if there are any criminal sanctions available if authorities get pissed off at being shown up for their lack of interest/incompetence/failing of some sort. It's standard in the US for authorities to strike back and shoot the messenger (sadly, literally in some cases).
Perhaps a low profile recovery and gentle leak of the information would be safer for those involved (e.g. tell the family members who are interested, like Judith Kelly). The internet will take care of the subsequent publication.
People are stupid, really stupid. And some of them have huge chips on their shoulders. Combine the two and you get magic.
I also recall: didn't Nat Geo do an episode on this on their Air Crash Investigations series?
[1] http://www.natgeotv.com/uk/shows/natgeo/air-crash-investigat...
An article from the two explorers goes into this in more detail, and it would seem a reasonable conclusion that it was one of the driving factors of the 'cover up'. Discovery of further illegal smuggling by Eastern Airlines would have likely resulted in bans and embargoes. https://operationthonapa.com/an-international-smuggling-ring...
This paragraph seriously misrepresents VOR:
"Meanwhile, the aircraft’s other navigation system, called VOR for very high frequency omnidirectional range, relied on localized radio transmitters that told pilots only where the beacons were, not where the plane was."
I suppose that's the hazard of having an outdoor writer describing aircraft systems. VOR plus air traffic control and standard instrument landing procedures would be perfectly adequate for that approach.
On the other hand, VOR maintenance is a thing, made harder by inaccessible terrain and budgets.
Once a year or two had passed, the interest waned. An airplane with an inexperienced crew flying into a mountain while trying to land in a thunderstorm with only primitive and inaccurate navaids looks like an unfortunate accident, then and now.
I've spent some time in La Paz, and other areas in Bolivia at high altitude. The effect in the human body is extreme. Sometimes you struggle to take ten steps up a slight gradual incline. It's insane.
La Paz and Quito are two airports I found particularly daunting to land at. Both surrounded by mountains at high altitude.
Despite this, from their research its become increasingly obvious what happened. Bad nav, bad nav, bad weather, bad ground crew, language barrier, bad practices, and bad company policy caused the plane to come down.
I understand that this format somehow works, but at the same time I can't escape the feeling of being served something out of an information mcdonald's, prepared and wrapped always in the same exact, proven and average way. And now when reading such a piece my brain screams "skip that stupid flashback and digression and that new character's introduction, say what you really have to say and let's end it here".
I don't have a short attention span, just no time for that!
Reading fairly carefully and stopping to think wherever I wanted to (though by the end I was being less attentive) it was 20 minutes of very solid reading. That is a long time to read an article.
I think hexane's TL;DR is fine. I don't think everyone should feel like reading this whole article is the best use of their time.
This is an unfair comment because I never met them - but I look at these expensive high-profile wanna-be high fame adventures and think these are simply people that have a lot of money and time and want to do something really cool. They even have a spreadsheet planning their next cool adventure.
IMO- imagine if their time was spent helping others instead of such high level of self gratification.
Parents who provide wealth need to provide and teach generosity and prioritize human giving too.
This is a case where dozens of human lives were snuffed out in an instant, and basically nobody ever figured out what happened. The story calls out clearly that there are friends and family still living who have lasting emotional scars. These guys donated their own time and money to investigate this incident, because they took a personal interest in learning more. Beyond that, the expedition itself was nothing to write home about -- it's not a summit of Everest, or even Kilmanjaro. Sure, I'm sure they got some enjoyment out of what they did, but is that wrong?
Finally, I don't see any sign that these guys are seeking your approval or praise for what they did, so I have a hard time understanding why you are so offended.
Your basic objection is you don't like how people choose to spend their time and money? And you somehow know better than them how it should be spent?