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Comment by mwint | Hacker News Reader

Is there an uptick in aviation-related near-incidents lately? Difficult to tell if it’s real, coincidence, or just HN has developed an interest lately.

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I'm not a domain expert but a perusal of https://avherald.com/ might indicate if there is an uptick or not.

I think Simon is rate limited, and posts as much as he can from a much larger sample size. So probably not useful in terms of identifying frequency trends.

Something very similar happened to a Qatar Airways flight a few days ago, coming as low as 800 feet from the ocean. Scary stuff.

First time seeing this one. Indeed, quite scary:

> FlightRadar24 tracking data shows that, after taking off at 2am, the Qatar Boeing 787 started losing altitude only a minute later, when the plane was at 1,850ft.

> The aircraft then suddenly dropped 1,000ft in 24 seconds.

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/qatar-p...

That's wild, per the article the first officer was flying and simply got disoriented. Aircraft was recovered by the captain. That's the sort of thing you would expect to happen to a newly-minted private pilot in a cesna, not a commercial pilot in a fully-loaded 787!

My own airline had an incident recently where one of our senior captains became so disoriented taking off at night over water that he thought every flight instrument onboard had become unreliable (VERY unlikely). He dove toward the ground but fortunately managed to land before a disaster occurred. His First Officer stated that she knew the problem wasn’t the flight instruments, but didn’t correct the captain adequately.

You’re right, these experienced pilots should know better, but incidents do happen.

What is inconceivable, even for layperson, is that when in doubt you should always gain altitude, not lose altitude.

If you don't know you're going down, you might think you are upside down and going up. Disorientation is a strange thing.

In addition to what huslage said, there’s something called an aerodynamic stall: in very oversimplified terms, if you go up too steeply without adequate thrust your wings will produce dramatically less lift all at once.

Or even worse, and more likely, just one one side (wing drop). Then you're really doomed. Happened recently on an ATR I think.

I did some flying with a hood - no ability to see outside but I could see instruments. It was uncanny, and I got totally disoriented.

The only thing that saved me is that as a former sim jockey I was used to flying just on the instruments and I knew it was very unlikely that they went wrong just as I was flying blind. So I focussed on the instruments and ignored the feeling that the plane was literally flying on its side.

It is very unsettling.

Interesting, link:

https://onemileatatime.com/news/qatar-airways-pilot-loses-si...

I've been wondering the same thing. Could it be the FAA really dropping the ball or the airlines are struggling to manage?

My theory is pilots and maintenance crews are stretched way too thin after the pandemic layoffs and subsequent post covid boom. Therefore, more mistakes are happening.

I have no data to confirm, but as a relative of a pilot, they are reporting taking a lot of "green slips" (uncovered flights) and experiencing some pressure to come in while fatigued, which they are resisting successfully as they have enough seniority and $ to not make it worth it.

Wonder whether a corollary of that would be that more inexperienced pilots are succumbing to the pressure and coming in while fatigued.

Juan Brown of the blancoliro channel on youtube had been talking about this near the beginning of the pandemic. The flying industry came in and asked for a large number of long time pilots to early retire at the start of the pandemic, and I believe a large number did. Then somewhat quickly demand bounced back causing a pilot shortage, leading to the industry putting out a call for new pilots.

https://simpleflying.com/southwest-airlines-lowers-minimum-h...

> Effective February 7th, aspiring Southwest pilots will need at least 500 flying hours on jets or turboprop aircraft, down from the 1,000 the airline currently requires. The Dallas-based budget airline communicated the change in an internal memo addressed to pilots and later explained that the rationale behind this decision is the willingness to increase opportunities for an airline pilot career to more skilled pilots.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-is-there-a-pilot-shortage-c...

> And the military itself doesn't have enough pilots — a Department of Defense report from 2019 says the Air Force has seen shortfalls since 2006, and the service said it was short more than 1,500 pilots at the end of 2016 — "with the deficit expected to grow." By the end of the 2019 fiscal year, it had — to a deficit of 2,100 pilots, according to written testimony submitted to Congress in 2020.

> The military has also struggled for years to meet its own goals for training new pilots.

TLDR There is a pilot shortage. Lots of pilots retired or took buyouts during COVID when air traffic plummeted, and the pipeline is insufficient to meet the demand ramp.

Additional citations:

https://doav.virginia.gov/calendar-and-news/news/2020-june/s...

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/15/us-pilot-shortage-forces-air...

I'm not surprised. Getting a pilots license is an expensive endeavor. Then it's lots of years flying in backwoods places for low pay.

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