Incident: Ethiopian B737 at Dire Dawa on Jan 9th, swarm of grasshoppers
avherald.com
avherald.com
The pictures are intense!
Edit: The original title was way more focused on the fact this is a Boeing 737; I feel the new post title is a good compromise.
BTW: I think this is gaining traction because it's a 737; however, can most airplane windshield wipers clean a thick layer of dead, crushed locusts off the windscreen?
I would argue that we should change the title to "airliner." I think the title is meant intentionally to capitalize on the notoriety of the model of airplane, when this incident is not specific to that model.
The description is sometimes updated when more information comes in.
Pretty much any rubber bladed windshield wiper will not be able to clear them after they dry out and at several hundred miles an hour with equatorial air temperatures that will happen very quickly.
> That wind made me it's bitch.
I learned to fly with the RAF as an air cadet. I vividly recall the first lesson in which my instructor whipped out a piece of cardboard, covered the windscreen, and said “land”.
It turns out that as long as you’ve ILS, you can do it with zero vis.
It looks like they had ILS available: https://worldaerodata.com/wad.cgi?id=ET86469
I can’t help but think a blind landing is safer than depressurising a cabin full of passengers.
Even when flying on instruments you still land visually, unless the aircraft is cat iii / autoland capable, the crew is certified and current and the airport has cat iii procedures in effect. Probably they didn't have one of these and didn't want to land with zero visibility.
Depressurizing at 8500ft is a good choice, the cabin is normally pressurized to the equivalent of 8000ft outside air pressure. So what they did was basically open the outflow valves and passengers wouldn't have noticed a thing.
Doing it in a commercial airliner full of passengers would absolutely be a last resort.
As an absolute last resort in a small piston you can try to do what we learned to do in case of a night landing where all lighting etc fails: Fly it slightly nose up, no flaps, with a 100 ft/min descend and wait until you hit the runway. You will basically fly it into the runway at a speed that doesn't break anything. Only works for small planes on a big runway.
The legality doesn't matter much if you are doing it in an emergency (say unforcast fog shutting down all runways within the aircraft's remaining range).
We're talking about 1000ft above Mexico city amount of altitude, here, not Mt. Everest. Any inherent risk from that is below the threshold of what's quantifiable. Skydivers routinely jump from 10,000ft.
All available categories have a decision height > 0ft: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#ILS_...
The plane approaches, flares, and lands and keeps the plane on centerline (in some cases). Most (if not all) currently flying 737s are capable of this. The question is of course if this particular airport was ready for that (if not, I'm not sure if the autopilot would allow this) and whether the pilots were certified for this.
https://thepointsguy.com/guide/aircraft-operating-foggy-cond...
It's another thing entirely to do it in a passenger airliner, and "depressurizing" at 8500' is nothing, you don't even need oxygen at all below 12,5 and even then only occasional usage for required crewmembers until 14,5.
Section 2.17. Volcanic Ash Encounter
"The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash [...] resulting in the failure of all four engines. [...] The cloud sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers [...] After landing, the flight crew found it impossible to taxi, due to glare from apron floodlights which made the already sandblasted windscreen opaque."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/pilots-awarded-medal... / http://euromaidanpress.com/2017/07/29/ukrainian-pilot-miracu...
"Soon after take-off, at 1,300 metres above the ground, the aircraft’s nose was pummelled by hailstones the size of golf balls, shattering the windscreen and leaving the pilots unable to see." "The pilot made a decision to return and was able to land by tilting the airplane to see the runway through the side window and by good coordination with the airport’s dispatchers."
> As Flight 9 approached Jakarta, the crew found it difficult to see anything through the windscreen, and made the approach almost entirely on instruments, despite reports of good visibility. The crew decided to fly the instrument landing system (ILS); however, the vertical guidance system was inoperative, so they were forced to fly with only the lateral guidance as the first officer monitored the airport's distance measuring equipment (DME). He then called out how high they should be at each DME step along the final approach to the runway, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. Moody described it as "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."
As for the windscreen, I'm not sure if the 737 checklists include "depressurize and clean manually" for bug strikes, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did have instructions for general "windshield is obscured" conditions.
It does not say it was a 737MAX, which would be quite improbable as they're still grounded.
Reacting just because it says 737 feels to me kinda like reaction becauase it says PC or Mac.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/01/dozens-of-boeing-jets-ground...
Where are you reading comments at, though? Surely you don't mean this HN discussion ...
I once drove through a thick locust swarm in the Kimberley region of Australia and my car was covered in a thick bug splat paste in very short order, to the extent that I lost forward visibility and had to pull over. Even after the swarm passed and I got out to try and clean the windshield by hand using a towel, the 'paste' just smeared thickly and I needed to scrape it off with a plastic knife and some water.
And that was stationary and standing outside the car on the side of a road. I can only guess at how futile it would be leaning out a window with one arm holding a (presumably) paper towel in blasting wind.
* The only relevance is that the ability to open windows / reach other windows to clean them during flight depends on the airplane type. So it's actually a plus for the 737, in this case.
https://scandinaviantraveler.com/en/aviation/ask-the-pilot-c...
(i.e. similar to initial dismissals of the MAX)
Good job on the pilots getting the plane safely down in some pretty crazy circumstances.
The visibility can be lower with special procedures, extra training, and things like a HUD. But it will not go down to zero.
To land in zero visibility you need "autoland" which requires an aircraft certified to do that (multiple autopilot computers etc), crew certified and current (having done it recently) and special procedures at the airport. In that case the autopilot will control the aircraft all the way to rollout.
This is roughly what we learned as a contingency in a small plane when you had a night landing without lights. You need the long runway because it takes some time to get down so you're going to waste some length trying to touch down gently.
Like in this video where the plane lands itself at Amsterdam : https://youtu.be/Q0BNpgphL7s
You can hear the autopilot disconnecting at 1:38, almost 25 seconds after touchdown.
Is it hard? Yes, and more dangerous, but entirely doable.
Most airplanes can also land automatically on most airports.
When flying on instruments you still land visually at the end.
Instrument flying isn't more dangerous, actually all airline flights are instrument flights even in good weather. They're safer due to much higher margins compared to visual flying.
Not a lot of airplanes can fully autoland, and they definitely cannot do it on "most airports", it requires special ground equipment and special procedures.
>When flying on instruments you still land visually at the end.
If you can, of course, if you can't, you'll land with instruments.
>Instrument flying isn't more dangerous
Instrument landing without visual is more dangerous
>Not a lot of airplanes can fully autoland, and they definitely cannot do it on "most airports", it requires special ground equipment and special procedures.
Almost all commercial operations and commercial airports can. Your tiny Cessna is not really important here and you don't need instrument rating to fly one.
It's not recommended, but if a plane is in the situation where the windscreen is opaque and the alternative is to circle until they run out of fuel then crash, landing blind is at least better than that.
On a positive but albeit repugnant note, some people are finding these locusts very tasty. I haven't tried though.
Thinking on the opposite direction, wouldn't it be interesting to have unmanned drones to eliminate locusts with ballistic impacts?
Do they mean "alternate destination"?
e.g, if you planned to go to Alices house, then Bobs house but Bob wasn't home so you went to Eves house.
Your ultimate destination was Eves house.
Seems it's a multi-leg flight. I wonder how the people who wanted to disembark/get on at DIR felt...
But seriously why don't planes have wiper fluid?
Engineer 2: “Let’s just pretend it’s a write-off.”
Engineer 1: “Agreed.”
So I would expect just the opposite, namely that the engines would have to be stripped down to components and cleaned thoroughly. Now way is an exterior power wash is going to do the trick.