Aeroflot deactivates brakes on nine aircraft, relies solely on reverse thrust
aeroxplorer.com
aeroxplorer.com
There is a possibility the brakes are still available and not worn through, and this is a preemptive measure to leave enough brake material to handle an emergency rejected takeoff while avoiding "unnecessary" braking on landing by using the reversers instead. It's still ridiculously dangerous and bad, of course, but a different situation from "they're running the aircraft with no brakes."
There's a little wire embedded in the pad and eventually as the pad wears thin the wire completes a circuit with the rotor, and lights up the aerospace version of the Check Engine Light.
The brakes on these planes certainly have some remaining life but they're technically unserviceable as per the airworthiness policy that Boeing/whomever produced as part of the approved maintenance program for these aircraft.
Whether the Russians follow that policy is another question. When I was in the Air Force we saw lots of Russian military Antonovs and they, uh, weren't in good shape.
The pad itself is never changed on the flight line. It's quicker and easier to change the entire assembly and have the worn brakes rebuilt in a second line shop.
Often that 2nd line is subcontracted out.
On this page, the black cylinder is the sensor and white body is the connector: https://www.autozone.com/brakes-and-traction-control/brake-p...
Most of the times in my heavy travel days that I thought "do I really want to get on this deathtrap", it was Aeroflot.
why does it use such a vague light. are they afraid one more specific light for "brake pad warning" lamp will just make the cockpit untenable?
I was just being cute. There are typically very precise warnings and indications.
I assume you mean OBD (on board diagnostics), not Ol Dirty B*stard, who has a very different set of codes.
Aeroflot is disabling 1 out of 4 brakes, not all 4. Nobody is actually trying to stop a plane with just reverse thrusters.
…They’re disabling brakes?
I don't know if that claim is actually true, mind, but it sounds like a problem that has multiple levels of solutions still to go before it becomes catastrophic.
As the saying goes, the first casualty in war is truth.
edit: I mis-read your post and got the reverse intention. Here's the reverse answer.
By presenting Russia as on the brink of implosion, it gives the impression that the Ukrainians just have to hold on for a little bit more and everything bad will go away.
It would be hard to convince people about things they don't believe in already. Propaganda works by amplifying what people already want to believe and by giving tools for people who already want to believe in something but don't know how to back their beliefs with arguments. This leaves people who don't believe in the thing surrounded by people who wouldn't otherwise have strong rhetorical skills suddenly tooled with a barrage of pre-canned arguments and "facts" to disarm any fruitful conversation.
A consequence of this dynamics is that often even pure factual presentations of an event gets spontaneously turned into "propaganda-like" discourse without necessarily any active involvement by state agends
I know it's cool to harp that Russia is doomed, but propaganda is bad regardless whether it's coming from the Russians or the west.
Why use throwaway btw?
1 out of 4 brakes _so far_...
1. There’s no info on that Russian slide about actual planes flying without any breaks at all. There’s a manufacturer defined minimum equipment list that allows planes to have some breaks (actual number depends on the type of a plane) disabled for, let’s say, 10 days at the most.
This is absolutely normal as planes cannot be serviced constantly (they fly back and forth, duh). As long as you don’t exceed the allowed number of breaks disabled, you’re fine.
2. The slide just warns about possible adversary effects (off-axis skid and longer landing distance) if some of the breaks are disabled. This is expected, somewhat corrected by algorithms, etc.
3. No one is telling planes to fly without any brakes.
4. There are different types of “breaks”: the ones used in a landing and the ones for an end-of-runway “stop” are not the same.
5. If the adhesion index is lower than required for the specific landing (weight, fuel leftover, etc.) even the brand-new “brakes” are to no avail. Again, another parameter out of many.
tldr; it is absolutely safe to fly those nine Aeroflot planes that — at the moment of the slide — had some breaks disabled (not to mention another thousand of other Russian passenger planes).
==
More importantly, there is absolutely no shortage of airplane parts in Russia — they’re just delivered in a more “wink-wink” obscure way.
I guess it’s just the same as there’s no problem there and in China to get modern GPUs that US “ordered” nvidia and amd not to sell :-)
Or mastercard/visa/swift “blocking”: even kids in Russia now have foreign virtual cards that are topped-up via p2p crypto in a matter of minutes so that one could buy anything digital (and physical via mail forwarders) online and rendering that great — mostly pr/perception based —“exodus from Russia” obsolete.
That sounds like a hazard in itself, airlines being forced to buy parts outside of official supply lines makes it much easier for unscrupulous sellers to substitute counterfeit parts.
Given these are rather old planes, with a wide international distribution, I'm kind of expecting it's not too hard to find second hand parts cannibalized from retired planes and coming from neutral countries.
They were even able to smuggle parts to keep some of their F14s flying. In comparison, civilian airliner parts surely are easy to get.
Cuba is flying Russian except for a few ATR 72. I guess finding parts after 60 years to keep these Super Constellations flying is beyond reasonable.
These two countries are in a bit of a pickle actually. Parts can only help you up to a point, they will need new planes. With the EU and US mostly aligned and inter-dependent anyway, if you are under embargo, the only place you can get a full aircraft is Russia, but their industry is lagging behind (particularly engines and avionics). Their most modern planes cannot be built without using western parts currently.
China might be another provider in the future, but they are still dependent on foreign parts, engines in particular.
And in both cases, while they have regional jets (ARJ21 and Sukhoi Superjet) and 737/A320 equivalents (Comac 919, Irkut MC-21), the long range offer is more sketchy (Soviet era IL-96 and still in design phase Comac 929).
Iran is flying mostly western planes, and there were plans to buy more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air#Future_fleet_plans
DPRK is only flying Russian planes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Koryo#Current_fleet
As a reminder, Russia lost overnight 78 planes:
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-sa...
(Of course, Russia also seized planes that were on its territory )
And due to other sanctions and boycotts, lessors are unable to keep their contract up and be paid from Russia (so, Russia is either forced to return the plane, or seize more... Since they already got comprehensively sanctioned, there's not much point in the former)
Also, of course in the long term some countries are going to try to rely more on domestic/friendly production, but Sukhou planes apparently have lots of foreign parts, so switching to use only Sukhou isn't feasible nor a silver bullet
Not a single person I know much less their kids has "foreign crypto virtual cards" etc. Ofc even if they had they would be locked out of transacting with any serious business that doesn't take crypto.
The exodus is real, ask Armenians, Kazakhs, Georgians Finns or by now probably Argentinians. 30% of all people I know left. The government declared amnesty for any criminal who agrees to serve in the army for some time, and people know that all those murderers and rapists are coming back to the streets and dark alleys when Russia is kicked out of Ukraine. (Some people want to leave but stay because in their head they think everyone abroad except China hates them for actions of Putler, which is part of Russian propaganda designed to slow down brain drain.)
The exodus is very real, and documented via social media so vividly. You can even go to the local social media pages (e.g. Thais, Indonesians, Argentinian social media pages / language ) and get local perspective and demeanor vs the Russian and Russian adjunct countries. It’s so interesting that English has become a neutral language for business and marketing but all the real “work” is done in either or language.
People I know tend to find proper jobs though, it's not impossible. But better do it in EU/US/AU etc, in Argentina even locals often resort to crypto due to economy
Also, you have places where russian propaganda (be it fsb, gru or subcontracted to wagner's troll farms) in past 2 decades was very effective in making non-trivial part of population firmly on Putin's side (and also anti-vax, anti-EU and so on in usual divide-and-conquer psyops manner).
I mean, back home in my backwater Slovakia some recent polls showed 50% support of russian invasion in their neighbour. In the nation which was enslaved for 4 decades and occupied for 2 decades by soviet union and damaged beyond repair due to this, with usual shooting/electrocuting people on the borders trying to just run away, secret police arresting non-conforming people, snitching etc. It's... mostly less smart part of population for sure, but still.
The 30% number is among people I have known in life (friends/acquaintances, those who actually left, not counting those planning to leave, that'd be like 70%). I have not checked other stats but I wouldn't be surprised
The cards are not “crypto” — they are very much ordinary virtual (or even physical) visa/mastercard ones.
You use p2p crypto to top-up them with real dollars from RUB.
It takes around 5 minutes to get a virtual Visa card. And if you want to get a physical one (for traveling), there are a lot of countries (even NATO ones) where you can get one with no problem at all.
> any serious business that doesn't take crypto.
Again, you’re not paying crypto. You use ordinary cards to pay in any store that you like.
Yes even in Iran people manage to buy foreign goods and find ways to work around sanctions. But if you say "Russia is becoming like Iran/North Korea" and "Russia is thriving" are the same then I rest my case.
Yeah-yeah. That’s why Turkey launched direct rouble to lira payment app just a couple of days ago :-)
https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/93267/
Not to mention number of banks in Turkey alone that have no problem opening accounts to Russians
Very much sounds like "fake it till you make it". But sometimes the facade goes down before you make it.
And the other side is people elsewhere in Russia who are not above politics but whose politics are based on watching TV.
The remaining people may well be a minority. Perhaps more than half of people support Putin. That's why it's futile to change from below, if thinking people want revolution they would have to fight their own zombie neighbor first.
Ramping up production, factories every day, not gonna lose to Ukraine smells like another dose of fantasy agitprop itt but I'm v curious to hear more about Israel funding!
And you misread my comment, at least regarding Russian hate by Westerners. I do not see Western people hating Russians in any meaningful way. But I see Russians definitely thinking so. Because that's the image Putin wants them to have. Us vs them.
The dynamic and parking brakes use different actuator systems, but rely on the same rotors and stators on the undercarriage. Those are the consumbale parts that are sanctioned.
In general it is permitted to dispatch an airliner with one or more brakes unavailable, depending upon load and airport conditions, but it's meant to be an interim measure pending brake replacement.
In Armenia, at least when I visited in December, I was told that "if you want an Armenian card, it can be done in 2 days for 25000 rubles that you put in your account". Not sure which bank it was.
I also know people who opened cards in Indonesia and Turkey.
If you’re not, then it’s prudent not to tell any actual “names”.
The brake question is irrelevent. This will put unimaginable stress on the already taxed engines, which are orders of magnitude more expensive and complex to maintain. It's not something that is possibly sustainable at all. Typical magical thinking. "Well we can see the brake pads are running low, and we can't get any more. We can't see the fact that the engines are about to explode, so we'll just go with that."
It's quite imaginable. Already "most of the work of stopping a commercial aircraft is done through the use of thrust reversers", so it's not all that more than they do now.
> We can't see the fact that the engines are about to explode,
There's nothing magical about thrust reversers which make it impossible to inspect for increased engine wear and tear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_reversal describes thrust reversal nicely:
> On aircraft using jet engines, thrust reversal is accomplished by causing the jet blast to flow forward. The engine does not run or rotate in reverse; instead, thrust reversing devices are used to block the blast and redirect it forward.
Take a look at the video of "A target-type thrust reverser being deployed" for an example.
This is why we have to bother with pushback for jet aircrafts unlike the convenient powerback we have for props.
Looking forward to the operator guidelines on why flying on one engine is required in the near future.
Just like in 50s there was massive campaign against Colorado potato beetle, which was presented as being dropped from evil capitalistic American planes to harm crops... although the bug was already in Europe for decades and spreading eastwards on its own.
The thing is, these propaganda campaigns are often quite successful, many people back there still believe this is what happened.
However, no doubt much easier to keep a gate area clean, as opposed to a whole runway.
Some of it is even captured on video https://youtu.be/zG_u_B5d7cQ
I’ve personally been responsible for a part getting pulled off another engine from another airline and swapped for one that got its electrical connector damaged so the engine would ship on time.
There is a whole industry of buyers and sellers of 2nd hand aircraft parts.
In this case, Aeroflot just cannot get more parts, period. The market for new parts is completely closed to them right now due to sanctions, and secondhand parts will only get them so far. We're talking about brakes here, which wear out to uselessness, so I doubt there's even much (if any) secondhand market for those. Once all the "Boeing brake pads" wear out and run out in Russia, that's it. They can't get new ones without someone violating sanctions. Well, unless they manage to bum spares from countries like China that aren't sanctioning them, or unless someone local can manufacture them to the correct specs.
Regardless, these other options get more and more expensive as time goes on.
This will likely happen except for the correct specs part. Sure, it will be manufactured to fit, but it likely won’t be able to be made to the same standard as the official Boeing part.
The impact of this could be absolutely nothing, or maybe Aeroflot planes just end up on runway excursions more often. It could also lead to catastrophic failure and separation of the landing gear bogie causing all sorts of additional trouble.
Everybody I know tried hard when travelling from Europe to Asia to avoid using them, even when they were often the cheapest.
Some regional Russian carriers were pretty bad, but Aeroflot was not.
Then buy second hand planes, engines parts etc from dealers that may only check 1 level deep or be willing to risk getting sanctioned themselves.
Then strip them and send them to their overhaul locations.
Certain Colombian groups used to do it in the 80s when they needed their private jets overhauled but found their organization was sanctioned. surprised picachu
Engines are leased at different thrust ratings depending on what the airline needs. Mostly fly out of long runway airports in fairly cool, low altitude (ie dense air) locales lots of thin, svelte passengers who have little luggage, on fairly short trips with not much fuel needed onboard? You can get away with a lot less thrust than an airline that caters to overweight tourists flying out of Las Vegas with luggage loaded to the gills with trinkets.
The lease usually includes everything needed to make the plane go VROOM when the pilot pushes the loud lever, including live monitoring of telemetry for performance and repair issues; a plane might get scheduled for repair, with parts routed and mechanic time scheduled, mid-air...
It's a perfectly normal practice...that ground to a halt in Russia with economic sanctions, and was why a bunch of people in the airline industry sat up and took notice when the sanctions started rolling in. In theory leases could be up a few days after sanctions started and the plane would be dead on the tarmac (or maybe they get a minimum amount of thrust, enough to fly the plane mostly unladen. Not sure. I don't know the industry well enough.)
There were stories that Russian airlines were looking to, or expected to, hire hackers to hack into the engine FADEC units to re-enable them when the leases were up / change their thrust levels, etc. What could possibly go wrong with hiring people to hack your plane's FADEC units...
This is on top of all the airframe leasing, of course. Lot of people expected planes that were leased by Russian airlines to suddenly fly only domestic routes, or routes to countries with friendly governments bribed by Russian oil, grain, and loans who wouldn't allow a repo team to do their thing.
I hope it's fully airgapped at the very least...!
It seems like a system that can't be easily changed mid flight and it's leased from the manufacturer as an alternative to buying the 'upgrade'.
Overhaul is often defined in terms of thrust ratings. Customers engine comes in, dyno’d (test cell) current thrust level is established. A plan is put to the customer based on their requirements, work is then done, dyno’d again and then signed off with the new plug installed.
Why would you do this? When engines are made, from automotive engines through to sophisticated jet engines, they all have a rated power number but minor variations in tolerances etc add up to make the actual power number.
In a jet engine, you have two or more on a plane, if one engine is slightly more powerful the plane will naturally try to fly in circles.
I think the parent comment gets a lot of things confused, for example you don’t rent a thrust rating. You rent an engine, at a thrust rating and will need to return it at that same thrust rating after you’re done (ie a mandatory overhaul of the engine and scoped to a particular rating).
Often the engines are owned by leasing companies or banks. Have a look next time you fly, there may just be a “Bank of Honk Kong” sticker on the side of your engine.
Or will they get picked up by those little cars and pulled right after landing?
Also, reverse trust is hard to maneuver with considering you will immediately start reversing once you've stopped moving. Unlike a brake that has a stop as an "end state". If they really start taxiing using that it'll lead to collisions at least, I'm sure, because of unintended reversing.
It's a harebrained plan as presented here IMO.
But perhaps it's more nuanced? Just not using the brakes unless you really need them? This is what we used to do at the gliding club too, since brake pads are expensive and our runway was 5x the length needed for an unassisted rollout.
I don't think the margins are ever that high on airliners though... It still sounds very dangerous and has the risk of pilots getting confused.
(and when the inevitable accident happens, the victims' suffering will at the same time be acclaimed as heroic sacrifice and a called out as a direct attack by "evil nato, how dare they not give us what we need for business as usual". Chances are less people will die for this propaganda stunt than in the apartment bombings)
The reversers are no joke, especially when the aircraft is heavily laden.
Thrust reversers may be used solely in an emergency that renders the brakes inoperable, but such situations are so exceptional they aren't useful for any general observations.
An aircraft that can't land safely with just brakes would not be certified to fly.
Yes. That doesn't contradict what I wrote.
The thrust reversers also greatly reduce the stress on the tires, another critical and expensive item. There's also the enormous heat generated, which stresses the rest of the landing gear and the bearings.
One of the certification tests is the airliner is landed with flaps up, at max landing weight, and no thrust reversers.
The tires inevitably blow and catch fire, and the airplane literally grinds to a halt, with a raging fire on each truck. The firemen have to wait a specified amount of time before they can put the fire out.
While this is "landing safely", at minimum the landing gear is wrecked, and I suppose some of the fuselage panels.
The thrust reversers are an expensive piece of machinery, with a lot of engineering expended on them. They are not a "would be nice if" piece of equipment. The brakes are a backup system for the thrust reversers, not the other way around.
Absolutely *NO!*
Thrust reversers are always supplementary to the brakes, the brakes are always the primary means of bringing the aircraft to a stop on the ground. If the tires blow, the brakes burn out, and the landing gears are a goner in an emergency landing then so be it, that is all part of the design specifications.
Why is it like this? Well what happens when the aircraft loses all engines? This has happened many times, and far more frequently than failures concerning the brakes. If an aircraft is not designed and certified to land safely with just brakes, it means an aircraft with all engines out can't land safely. That is absolutely unacceptable.
Incidentally, plenty of flights land nominally without using thrust reversers depending on the situation. Using them is preferred because the brakes are worn out less and the aircraft spends less time on the runway, but if the pilot in command appropriately decides to land without thrust reversers that is still perfectly safe without any of the fireworks.
Thrust reversers are marvels of engineering, that is never in doubt, but they are never the primary means of stopping an aircraft.
The planes probably still have brakes, just the pilots are told not to use them when landing - this would make them last much longer, but still be available.
Not at all. Thrust reversers, depending on engine model, can take a few seconds or more to engage, and the engines themselves can take even longer to spool up thrust from idle or to spool down when no longer needed.
Not an aircraft mechanic, but just making an assumption based on the similarities in cars
There's a Minimum Equipment List that specifies the minimum stuff a plane needs to be safe to fly, and under what conditions specific equipment can be bypassed or non-functional. I seriously doubt that overworn brake pads can be mitigated or ignored according to the MEL, and a pilot should be sweating bullets signing off to fly a plane that doesn't meet the MEL.
...at least in the modern, developed world. Which Russia is increasingly neither...
Never underestimate the power of snipping off a sensor and soldering in a resistor in it's place :P
...And if only they had better leadership!
At least, I sure hope.
The plane is always using brakes. Reverse thrust reduces landing distance by about 15%, and its main task is to reduce the load on the brakes and prevent overheating of the pads (which lose their effectiveness at high temperatures) and wheels (which would otherwise blow the fuse and release air from them, to prevent explosive destruction). All landing distances that are indicated in the manual and that are calculated by the [onboard] computer are calculated for serviceable brakes and WITHOUT taking into account the use of reverse thrust.
With “brakes disabled” - how can you be sure that you will stop within a runway of a given length? There is no such data, no one has tested it. There are procedures for brake failure, but this is an emergency, there are no landing distances for these procedures, and in any case, pads are still used for emergency braking (it’s just that compressed air/nitrogen is supplied to their actuators instead of hydraulic fluid).
"Many parts in (western made) Russian passenger aircraft that would normally be easily replaced are rapidly wearing out with no replacement parts in sight due to the import of spare aircraft parts from Boeing and Airbus being banned since March 2022. "
I wonder what other parts are wearing out.
Random site[0] says,
>In general, airplane brakes can last between 1000-2000 landings before they are changed. An active airplane makes an estimate of two landings per day; this means the airplane needs to be changed after 18-36 months.
Even at multiple brake pads(?) per plane, that does not sound an insurmountable amount of shady dealings required to keep planes operational if you have 1.5 years of <ahem> runway for your maintenance window.
[0]https://www.highskyflying.com/how-often-do-airplanes-change-...
https://www.aerotime.aero/articles/31395-here-is-how-iran-sm...
How strict is that manufacturers' control over spare parts?
“half-butted homegrown clones for parts”, my ass. How about an actual brand new twinjet airplane with carbon fibre reinforced polymer wing (consumes less fuel then Boeing/airbus alternatives) like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irkut_MC-21
SSJ For example (I read yesterday), was planned to build 24 this year. In first half an year they built 2 and plan was revised down to 6
A big reason this may not be true for aircraft parts is that in most countries buying unapproved aftermarket parts is illegal at least for commercial airlines. Not so for autombile parts.
i read blog of some russian plane mechanic. he did write that they get parts of "whatever" origin to use on airbuses/boeings.
i think they also canned a lot of safety regulations with regards to airlines and airplane maintenance
Response was, well, the plane had crashed once, killing some people on board, including some staff. So they are commemorated here. But the plane is fine.
Anecdote aside, it's fair to say Russia has a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to safety.
E.g. I was reading a book recently by John le Carré and had to stop after reading about 50 pages. I simply couldn't continue. E.g. there's a scene where Russian traitor comes to "Chechen" restaurant in the center of St. Petersburg, and orders only a glass of vodka.
Firstly, there are no Chechen restaurants. Especially in the center of St. Petersburg. I don't know why, but anybody living here in Russia wouldn't be able to find any Chechen restaurant in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Russian, Ukranian, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever, but not Chechen. Secondly, not all Russians drink vodka, not even majority. Vodka is considered a drink for poor and alcoholics. I don't think it's true, I think that vodka is superior to many other spirits, but that's the typical Russian stereotype. Thirdly, Russian people never order just vodka. We always drink vodka together with substantial food. Not only it is considered a very poor taste to drink vodka without food, it's also absolutely not enjoyable to consume it this way.
And on the cover of the book it was written that the story is very close to the truth, which makes Le Carré special. OMG.
So, this whole story about a shrine in a plane is bullshit.
In case anyone was curious, there is a halal cafe called "Брат" ("Brat", meaning brother) in central Saint Petersburg which serves Chechen food and is advertised occasionally as a "Chechen restaurant". You can read the reviews on Google yourself: https://goo.gl/maps/wLi8qCoP8MaQy9Vv9 "Вкусно, как в Грозном!" ("Tasty, like in Grozny!")
Or on Yandex: https://yandex.ru/maps/org/brat/1450497326/reviews/?ll=30.38... "Нам его посоветовали как «чеченское кафе»." ("It was recommended to us as a "Chechen cafe".")
(There is also another cafe called MaggroZ.)
And what about vodka in Chechen restaurant?
Do you think every American drives a pickup truck and owns 12 guns? You probably don't, because you're not a fool; similarly, most Americans don't think that Russians live their lives swizzling vodka in Chechen restaurants. Le Carré is a novelist, not a biographer.
You won't find many Russian authors vilifying USA habits and culture. Not among popular ones, for sure. Nor the Russian movies. That makes a difference.
When there's a Russian in the US movie, I mentally prepare myself for a cringe. Usually, it would be a unreasonably aggressive person, killer or terrorist, or just a bad person. Drinking vodka like water, beating women, etc, etc.
You'd have hard time finding anything resembling this in Russian books or movies about USA.
What's up with these emotive labels? Lots of people (myself included) enjoy klyukva - it's an awesome source of hilariously absurd content.
But you'd be surprised how often it actually leaks into supposedly serious reasoning, constantly making you question exactly how far (not even "if") the person you are talking to is detached from objective reality and what are their assumptions. There are quite a few examples of this even in this comment section.
Obviously this is not really unique - likely an extremely common view of foreign cultures people aren't really exposed to. The example with Americans isn't representative though since we are all exposed to this particular culture.
Even more so in Moscow.
Second surprise for you - there are plenty of russians who are poor and alcoholic. There are plenty of russians that drink vodka.
And while it is a poor taste, there are quite a few people in russia with very poor taste.
Even your link proves that it's essentially not the case. Google finds the word "chechen" only twice and then just makes a fair guess that you were actually looking for Caucasus cuisine. Same for Moscow.
> Second surprise for you - there are plenty of russians who are poor and alcoholic. There are plenty of russians that drink vodka.
As is everyone else. What's the "surprise"? Parent wasn't arguing that there are NO people who are alcoholic, poor, or simply drink vokda, were they? They were moking a stereotype.
It's funny that you say this because one of the strongest memories I have of a former Russian co-worker was him telling me that "when you drink vodka, the food must be right there. You drink, then you eat right away. That is the only way to do it." And I tend to remember it as I'm taking a shot of vodka and it always makes me smile.
Alex, I'll have a drink for you tonight :-)
2. Much of restaurants in Russia are indeed Chechen owned. Great many of Japanese, Chinese, Korean restaurants, and street food in general in Russia have Chechen owners.
That the real Russia.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-max-crashes-faa-ea8fac0ad2...
https://simpleflying.com/qantas-flight-1-runway-excursion-an...
> However, the aircraft took on severe damage. Its nose and right wing collapsed, and the two right wing engines were damaged. While Qantas did not disclose an exact figure, it cost the carrier less than AU$100 million in repairs, which was significantly cheaper than buying a new 747 at the time.
> Repairing and returning the aircraft to service also helped Qantas maintain its record of having no hull-loss accidents upon the rise of the Jet Age at the time, which also meant the carrier could uphold its safety reputation.
Source: am a millennial, the math checks out for me
There are only two countries that have allowed smoking on planes in the past decade: Cuba, and China.
Both have banned it. China was the last to do so, with their ban on pilots smoking that only began getting enforced in 2019.
It’s pretty common so long as it’s economic. Otherwise, they’ll get stripped for parts.
Yet.
You don't want to be in the first one that does.
Planes have gone down for much stupider reasons. Even serious airlines like KLM (Cityhopper) and Air France have flown perfectly good aircraft into the ground. It doesn't have to be faulty, human confusion is enough.
Going outside of normal procedures like this reduces redundancy and increases the chances of confusion and error.
The GP has a point. If the trip is necessary, planes are probably the safest way to do it. And as they become unsafe, the alternatives are prone to doing the same on an even quicker rate.
russian railways isnt dependent like Aeroflot on EU/USA aircraft for their operations. maybe there will be more train travel until the indigenous industry supplies the necessary aircraft / spares?
Yes there are risks everywhere, but what you are putting on display is Normalization of Deviance [0], which reliably gets people killed. With luck, it won't be you that is killed before the entire fleet is grounded, but at this point it is just luck, maybe with better odds than Russian Roulette.
I wonder if there is a reference later in the movie? Either that or it was another movie and the reference was about sending you to the middle of no where, because, as you said, it’s out there.
No. Not really. Russia has the means to produce brakes for their trains. They do not have the means to do the same for these airplanes.
So the reality on the ground is that the trains have brakes while the airplanes don't (or they have breaks but with rapidly aging out of compliance parts.)
I meant in terms of riders' perceptions of safety, not industrial capacity. That being said, it astounds me that Russia can't fabricate replacement breaks here: we're talking about a country with some of the best metallurgists in the world and a domestic aerospace industry; what gives?
After all, even the simplest analysis for an aviation supplier has to be "can we make enough money selling these replacement brakes to cover the cost of setting up a manufacturing, quality control, and distribution system?"
But that is what I am saying. The apples-to-apples comparision is “airplane with questionable/no brakes” vs “train with brakes”. There the “apple” is “as the thing is right now when you want to travel”. The proposed comparision with “train with no break” is not apples-to-apples because there are no breakless trains servicing the route. It is not a hypothetical comparision with some hypothetical train service and hypothetical planes. It is the comparision between the realworld situation on trains and airplanes right now.
The discussion about industrial capacity just illustrates how this difference have happened.
A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters. I don't believe that you can engine break on a train to a comparable degree.
I'm pretty sure a plane at V1 can't break using thrusters.
they will be shortly
and you won't hear about it unless you're on it
Russian warships in the Black Sea have been "catching fire" at a suspiciously high rate since February 2022. Same for petroleum facilities and ammo dumps near the Ukrainian border. We all know what really happened, but the Kremlin can spin a line and nobody who saw what actually happened is brave or foolish enough to contradict that line.
meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media and 99% of the country's area is essentially empty
There are myriad of reasons why this is not realistic, but if I were to pick the most obvious, that would be
1. No, there is no "complete control of the media", IDK why people assume it to be the case. Broadcast federal tv has to be politically correct, but not too much beyond that.
2. Planes are tracked and people usually have relatives or something.
3. Planes fly through established routes and air corridors - they have a specific destination and don't fly over random wilderness all over the map.
Traditional mass media, sure, but there are a lot of people that have to know about a plane crash, and containing that information, even in Russia, is nontrivial.
That said, few weeks ago major internet providers in Russia started to roll out VPN blocks with DPI. There are other obvious signs that Russia prepares for the external Internet cut off. So I wouldn't bet for this situation to continue for much longer.
I feel like it's hard to hide a plane that's designed for international travel in a highly regulated industry.
1. What are the alternatives? Spend five days traveling by rail?
2. It's probably still safer, per mile traveled, than my driving commute, and I don't give climbing into a car a second thought.
maybe at the start when everything was within its specified flying hours
but after a few years it's going to be way worse
I suspect you'd see fewer people driving if it was 1 in 10
I don't. The cohort of people that make risk assessments with regards to routine every-day things and change their plans accordingly is minuscule, and most places around the world do not have an equivalent form of transportation.
Even with minor/un-needed activities people tend to ignore risk. Every cigarette smoker over a long enough period will develop health problems and eventually die faster than they would have otherwise, but it's still a thing; and it doesn't offer the advantage of actually facilitating getting to work on time and feeding your family.
Everybody dies, and I need to get to work/see grandma/go to the grocery. People drove about as much in the 60s, when the per-vehicle mile travel deaths in the US were 5 times what they are today.
Tu-104 is the best plane in the world / In only 5 minutes it will bring you to your tomb.
Should've gone via train / Should've gone via train.
Government says it’s ok, so it must be ok. That’s all people think.
I can only hope this happens before western planes start dropping out of the sky due to missing parts.
I enjoyed this snippet from Wikipedia:
> In March 2022, there were rumors that Boeing would request an exemption from the U.S. Aircraft Safety and Certification Reform Act of 2020, a safety reform law passed in response to the MAX crashes. The act requires airliners to be fitted with an engine-indicating and crew-alerting system (EICAS) if type certificated after December 31, 2022. [...] In December 2022, the U.S. Congress agreed on a bill allowing Boeing to certify the MAX 7 and MAX 10 without EICAS, but it must install a third angle-of-attack sensor in all 737 MAX types as previously demanded by European and Canadian regulators. The company also must install a switch to disable the stick shaker, which distracted pilots during the MAX crashes. Boeing would have to retrofit these design changes to all 737 MAXs already delivered in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. within three years of MAX 10 certification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_MAX
This all sounds like a great idea to me. What could go wrong?
Russians are... different from us. The vodka stereotype is real and combine that with melancholy and religion they are all kamikaze.
Not in war. Not in peace. Not in travel. Not in home.
Most Western countries obsess about proventing deaths. The USA does as well, except among poor people and gun victims.
I suggest you look at the actual causes of death in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm#secti... Considering typical health outcomes in the US, obesity and the life choices people make, I don't think you can honestly say the US obsesses about preventing deaths. Of course, improved health care access and personal health wouldn't materially change the numbers, just the ages where those end of life diseases finally win.
A magnitude less than the causes there, car crashes are around 12.9/100,000, and guns are at 10/100,000 (54% suicides, 1% "accidents") - and the US car death rate is significantly higher than Europe or elsewhere, very preventable with more stringent driving tests and lower blood alcohol level allowances.
if you think that's the key difference between driving in Europe versus the United States then i'm not sure what to tell you.
Distances are longer, traffic is denser, speed limits (in general) are higher, and the ability to drive from one place to another is more valuable given the lack of public transportation options, so there is a larger onus to drive even if you consider yourself unskilled or lesser-abled.
there is more to it than drunk driving and poor training regiments. furthermore drunk driving is an extraordinarily bad metric to compare countries given the varying BAC regulations throughout the world. Drunk driving in one place may very well be legal in another.
> varying BAC regulations throughout the world. Drunk driving in one place may very well be legal in another
when I wrote:
> lower blood alcohol level allowances.
I.e. reform it to be less permissive...
The US maternal death rate is sky high for a western country with reliable statistics.
But IDK what would be a proper term for a cituation when a person doesn't like something about the politics of higher government echelons and starts filling blanks by projecting it down to every comissioner, manager, certification auditor, mechanic or even every household?
Russia's a big country like.
Flying is such a unnecessary hassle, I don't really want to go somewhere dealing with airport shenanigans and nightmares. I'm not rich enough to fly private.
Besides, flying has basically become like taking a public transit bus. It is unclean and passengers can be unruly (experienced an incident where person had to be arrested and removed from plane - drunk guy threw up in the aisle, etc.). I have flown 300k plus miles, and I'm done unless its an emergency.
I guess the brakes involve more rapidly consumable items, but this seems like a decidedly suboptimal solution when it knocks a good portion of operating life off an expensive precision jet engine. Sucks to fly in Russia, I guess.
All the reverser is is a couple of hydraulically operated clamshells that close over the exhaust stream forcing it to the side rather than back.
Ironically, it doesn't actually "reverse" the thrust. The exhaust stream impinges on the clamshell, pushing the airplane backwards.
Clamshell and bucket type thrust reversal systems are one way of achieving reversal. The latter are mostly seen on low-bypass turbofans. Large high-bypass engines often use a cold-stream reversal “cascading” system that is more complicated and includes both shunting of the exhaust vector and blocking air intake into the combustion stage. You’ll see this in action on engines where the rear cowling slides backwards to uncover the cascading vanes.
Turboprop airplanes have variable pitch propellers, I don't know if they can change the pitch enough to get reverse thrust.
Judging things by their apparent simplicity can be misleading - consider a wing, for example... There's a bunch of non-obvious things you can get wrong.
In my opinion, Russia is sometimes a little slow to react, but once the shit hits the ceiling (aka things come to the attention of the top leadership) they fix their shit up pretty quickly.
Edit: don't wanna say it, but it DOES sound like Western propaganda. Unless I see planes falling out of the sky in Russia, I will not believe this is a big issue for Russia.
After that engineering is done, they have to set up a supply chain, a manufacturing line, a quality control system, installation instructions (if they're copying something this may not be needed), and an ordering system. By this point, we'd be well into the millions of dollars if this was done in the US.
And all of this has to be financially worthwhile over some time horizon, unless the airline is also going to foot the upfront cost of all this. And bear in mind that resources dedicated to this may have to be taken away from parts they're already building and making money on.
So with all that, how likely is it to happen? I don't know but it's an interesting question.
One other thing:
>>> And all of this has to be financially worthwhile over some time horizon, unless the airline is also going to foot the upfront cost of all this. And bear in mind that resources dedicated to this may have to be taken away from parts they're already building and making money on.
I think you're neglecting politics. My understanding is Putin is trying to maintain as much of a "business as usual" atmosphere in Russia as possible, and that probably means Russian airlines (which I believe are state-owned) will have a strong incentive to do what they can to keep flying (on top of the pressures of the existential business risk of being unable to continue operations). The main complicating factor that I see isn't a financial calculation, but competition with military production priorities.
Also, I found an article (https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-airline-aeroflot-sen...) that says Russia is starting to send Western planes to Iran for maintenance, since Iran has been manufacturing its own parts for the planes, due to its own sanctions.
They can fix any of these problems, but not all of them. The war effort will likely get a priority.
If Russia starts having "civilian aircraft incidents" due to NATO missiles, there will be also a convenient "well established precedent" that the Russian airplanes are falling out of the air anyways.
That perception of airplane safety may be (is) more relevant than the hard facts.
May increase incidents on the ground, though.
Not exactly a reliable source.
Will check it out, thanks.
These sort of statements by the Russian government truly invoke Chernobyl-like images in my mind ; deception piled upon lies piled upon misinformation with a cherry of whataboutism on top.
Of course, like it was said many times before, war economy works - until it doesn't. It will be very hard to time such collapse: it might be next week, next month or even not before the war itself ends.
US propaganda: “Russian airlines are unreliable and are making some questionable maintenance decisions.”
IE: Russian airlines can't even afford/acquire new brakes -> sanctions are working and their economy is crumbling -> the war will soon be over and Putin will be lose power.
Both methods take a tiny kernel of truth and spin it to be much more meaningful than what it is, but allowing the reader to make the final connection is much more inception-like and thus much more effective.
https://jordanrussiacenter.org/news/what-russians-think-when...
Such an accident would solely be the fault of the (well known) piss-poor safety programs in Russia.
They have the option to just, you know, not fly their Boeings and Airbuses. There's no NATO brainwashing machine forcing them.
I can't get myself into a headspace where any amount of mental gymnastics is going to somehow make an airline crash the fault of the sanctions. Can you elaborate on your thought process? I'm genuinely mystified.
Are you proposing to permit sending parts to repair stolen planes?
Really dumb way to doom the US dollar and the world banking system. I guess Russia took a few planes as consolation? https://www.reuters.com/world/yellen-says-legal-obstacles-re...
The supply of massive amounts of lethal aid suggests a policy decision that that’s exactly what we need, in the immediate term. (We don’t, OTOH, need civilian lives lost, but there is no such things as non-dual-use aircraft components.)
Also, Russia could just not fly planes if they aren’t safe.
Not stealing western planes would be good too.
Making their life less convenient is literally the point of sanctions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Iranian_aviation_accid...
For example, if you'd like to fly an Airbus A300 (first flight 1972), the only ones left in passenger operation are in Iran.
Supplying them with parts for stolen place is next level of cuckoldry.
- have sanctions, more Russians die, and fewer Ukrainians die because the war ends sooner
- the opposite
Then your suggestion seems to value Russian lives over Ukrainian ones.