How in the world would any common Russian trust an airplane in this current sanctioned state in Russia and fly in one?!
Are people that brainwashed to trust their leader to get on a plane that doesn’t have brakes?!
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.
[0] https://apnews.com/article/boeing-max-crashes-faa-ea8fac0ad2...
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.
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.
I live in Texas and let me tell you I believe I know exactly how you feel. A lot of people's entire perception of this state is based on agitprop headlines they consume. To the point where the other day, on HN, everyone is an expert on Texas energy production and policy desperate to dunk on the state based on a headline about a temporary spike in wholesale energy prices.
Actually, surely it’d be a badge. Anyway, I automatically get the badge… right, pardner?
My point isn't about being an expert or not, it's about the ability to have honest, reasoned, and researched conversations.
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 :-)
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?
I am not saying what is or isn't possible in russia or how chechens are viewed by russian populations, but the whole concept is more than fine elsewhere.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
Rotten from the top down.
Btw, it's a reference to Orwell.
And secondly, there was no constructive criticism or even any mention of "fascism" or "invasion".
Following your own logic, I could - just for the sake of example, mind you - claim that you come from hellish slave-hole where people eat babies and then justify it with actually literally the same slogan as you did. Would that be as fucking stupid? Yes, it would.
Now, should I expect you to accuse me of whataboutism for trying to build a consistent logical framework?
Eh, I think we all saw how "prepared" Russia was.
In any case, I think the following factors are definitive here:
- No one really considers the current situation as "permanent". The war will be over at some point and life will go on. So investing in manufacturing of those specific parts might prove a waste.
- This is specifically an issue with parts for foreign aircrafts. Is it even worth producing parts for foreign crafts?
- There are ways to evade sanctions and smuggle parts and right now, to some degree
- Russia passed a legislation allowing 3rd-party parts and signed a contract with Iran on airplane maintainance and parts supply - Iran already has an expertise and industrial capacity operating in somewhat similar conditions. Iran also has more experience smuggling.
Obviously, that work had started many months ago, not just now.
When that failed to work, they didn't seem to have any idea what to actually do next, besides claiming the attack on Kiev was always supposed to have been a feint and the real goal was always to grab a few chunks of eastern Ukraine.
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.
This could be true; it's also not particularly reassuring as a passenger :-)
(Not doubting you specifically, but it'd be nice to have one of the many pilots on HN opine here. My understanding as a passenger is that commercial airliners use breaks because the margins are very narrow, especially in the presence of a tailwind or busy runway designed with breaks in mind.)
Accelerate-stop is the distance needed to accelerate to V1, lose an engine instants before that, take the first action to abort at V1, and the resulting accelerate-stop is the distance between the start and end of roll. On an uncontaminated runway, this is computed without thrust reversers. On a contaminated runway, you can compute it with thrust reverser on the assumed non-failed engine(s).
Accelerate-go is the distance needed to accelerate all engines to just below V1, lose and recognize the loss, continue to Vr, rotate, climb, accelerate to V2, and reach 35 feet above the ground at V2.
When the accelerate-stop and accelerate-go are the same for the chosen V1, we call that the balanced field length.
Brakes are critically needed to achieve anything close to the book accelerate-stop distance.
Technically I think the takeoff speed is VRotate, where the plane is rotated and actually starts to leave the ground.
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.
they will be shortly
and you won't hear about it unless you're on it
meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media and 99% of the country's area is essentially empty
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.
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.
This is why recent prigozhin roadtrip to moscow completely didn't happen at all according to russian media ? or is it just a case of been "politically correct" ? and tv station absolutely not given talking points by kremlin ?
Some details could have been hidden, like shot down helicopters or killed soldiers. But claiming that it didn't happen is just lies.
Now explaining those events is another matter. And that's where propaganda will kick in, for sure.
How exactly did it come to existance though? It honestly feels like some kind of gaslighting. Putin did a whole speach on TV and this was a hot topic for weeks. Popular Z-bloggers were all over this matter even longer.
Prigozhins hairwigs meme didnt come to existence by accident either, you know.
I really feel like you might want to reconsider interactig with Russian media through what I assume are 3rd-party reports.
zbloggers aren't media. i am talking about official media
just FYI i saw live feed of special news edition in 2am moscow time on ort and live feeds of putin speeches.
prigozhin owns me a bucket of popcorn
Who exactly told you this? I assume you don't personally interact with Russian media? You can check that what you claim is not true with just a few keystorkes. Do you need a list of popular media outlets in case you can't find on your own?
I am honestly curious why are you so sure of this, because I see these kinds of extremely confident claims about "did not happen according to Russian media" on the other side of the language barrier way more often than you would expect from random assumptions.
There must be someone who feeds you this idea.
> and tv station absolutely not given talking points by kremlin ?
I am not sure I completely understand you here. They report from the perspective and the angle of Russia, just as their western counterparts (e.g. NY Times, Washingtonpost, BBC) report from their geopolitical angle and perspective. Please elaborate.
after those two days it went to "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia"
>There must be someone who feeds you this idea.
i am native russian speaker (not russian. never lived in russia). nobody feeds me anything. i been tracking russian media for past two and a half decades. after prigozhin voyage reporting was about attorney general ending criminal investigation "because it was inproperly started" and few pr shows with putin about his unity with people and stuff.
in any other "normative" country there will be non-stop discussion in all media for weeks about what happened.
>I am not sure I completely understand you here. They report from the perspective and the angle of Russia, just as their western counterparts (e.g. NY Times, Washingtonpost, BBC) report from their geopolitical angle and perspective. Please elaborate.
In Russia media is controlled by kremlin. It's "widely" reported what are the general talking points are delivered by kremlin to media and what topics should be suppressed.
You want to say that white house and american media companies have same relationship ?
It was a hot topic and it is still discussed from time to time (though more hot topics have appeared since). I'll try to get you some links when I have enough time and if I won't forget. Damn, I should really implement that media tracking and cross-referencing project concept I've been fiddling with - that's just a perfect usecase for it.
> In Russia media is controlled by kremlin. It's "widely" reported what are the general talking points are delivered by kremlin to media and what topics should be suppressed. You want to say that white house and american media companies have same relationship ?
What I want to say is that journalists employed in "big" influential media have a VERY good sence of what optics and points are appropriate and politically correct to report or not, without any explicit control.
A perfect example of this would be the matter of neo-nazi militias influence in Ukraine that was rather extensively discussed and reported on in western media (that's how I personally figured there is a certain ground truth to it, first taking it seriously after BBC and Radio Free Europe reports), until it suddenly became a no-no-hush-hush topic and "Russian propaganda".
It's called "post-truth" and sometimes even semi-officially acknowledged as "editorial policy". And it's EXACTLY the same in Russia.
EDIT: That was easier than I assumed. Thanks to google for "<topic> site:<website.tld>" query format, and thanks to the fact that news-sites have tags:
https://iz.ru/story/miatezh-evgeniia-prigozhina
https://ria.ru/person_Evgenijj_Prigozhin/
https://www.kommersant.ru/theme/3482
https://www.rbc.ru/tags/?tag=%D0%95%D0%B2%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%BD%...
How do you recocile that with the journalists assassinated, arrested, and/or driven from the country?
Of course the ultimate goal would be total control, so they counter similar situation (or putaine giving some speech live in tv) with ie 1 minute delay to counter any 'mishaps'. So they are going there, but slowly, ineffectively, at least for now.
Russian state can't unroll all freedoms immediately, their main goal was to paint war as "nothing is happening, just minor security cleanup". Putaine's clique is, just like any dictator, scared shitless of people revolting en masse, there is nothing more important for them than keeping the power and stealing all those juicy billions in resources and services flowing. But for majority of russians to revolt, they would have to go quite a bit beyond FUBAR, population is trained with patriotic spin to suffer incompetence of its leaders for generations.
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.
In the context of the Russian war, the Russian government stole a bunch of planes being leased to Russian airlines by foreign companies and assigned them Russian tail numbers. With that paucity of transparency I'd say it's even easier to hide a plane wreck over there.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Russia's a big country like.