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Comment by keddad | Hacker News Reader

I flew from Moscow to Vladivastok recently, and it's a choice between 8 hour flight and a week in a train. The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies, and it's not like the trains can't fail (especially considering occasional train tracks sabotages). There are always risks, it's not that big of a deal.

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> The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies

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.

Oh, you may be surprised by the number of perfectly avoidable, not even cost-saving stupid things that cause train accidents around the world.

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.

> 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?

Russian Roulette is not that big a deal either, as long as it doesn't stop on the wrong chamber...

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalization_of_deviance

I first heard about Vladivastok when The Hunt for Red October came out. I have been fascinated with it ever since, hoping to make a journey someday. I love that this was just a mundane trip for you.

I hate to possibly be the bearer of bad news, but I can’t think of any plot points in that movie that involved Vladivostok. The action all took place in the Barents Sea and North Atlantic, after Red October left Murmansk through the Polyarnny Inlet. Vladivostok is on the other side of the country, many, many time zones away.

Holy crap you are right!!

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.

The real choice was between 8 hours, one week and not making it there at all

Isn't the in-between choice to drive or fly out of Russia towards Europe, then fly east on a non-Russian airline, and eventually take e.g. the Tokyo to Vladivostok direct flight?

The Russian airlines can't fly to most of Europe. They're sanctioned by the EU. You'd need to drive. But better option is probably just flying through Turkey. Turkish Airlines still operate in Russia. Turkish Airlines isn't sanctioned, so they can maintain their planes just fine.

This isn't _that_ relevant because China is there as an option but there are no flights direct from Japan to Russia, for the same reason there aren't EU to Russia flights right now either.

That would be prohibitively expensive and may require getting some visas which may in turn require further travel.

I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be? After all, people can sabotage airfields and airplanes as well.

> I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be

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.)

> 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.

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?

No one ever said that they can't. But going from zero to being able to buy replacement Boeing (or whoever the OEM was) brakes off the shelf is a process of many months (in the optimistic case) or years, not weeks.

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?"

Also, Russian manufacturing may have other urgent priorities right now. Wars (fought outside of the homeland) may be good for employment and industrialization broadly, but they often are the opposite for application of industry to civilian ends.

This would have made sense 12 months or even 9 months ago, but we're now 18 months into a war that Russia's government had otherwise been preparing domestically for. Again: what gives?

> 18 months into a war that Russia's government had otherwise been preparing domestically for

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.

They hadn't been preparing for it to last 18 months, and part of their preparation had been oriented at influence operations to preemptivelt disrupt Western unity and political response when the war qas launched. While I won't say that categorically failed (it still has tangible effects), it has been far from a complete success.

It’s an incompetent oligarchy where competence is dangerous and gets you sidelined.

Rotten from the top down.

And here come 2 minutes hate people

Where's the hate?

Are you serious? It's an obvious slander bs.

Btw, it's a reference to Orwell.

Yes, obviously it's a reference to Orwell. However, I see no hate. Criticism of fascist invasions and their perpetrators is not hate.

Firstly, if you understood that this is a reference, why are you trying to interpret separate words literally?

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?

It's pretty clear that the war was planned under the assumption that they'd just march straight into Kiev, maybe shoot a few hardcases, scare the rest with how awesome they were, and basically be welcomed as liberators by most.

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.

> I meant in terms of riders' perceptions of safety

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.

where from you got idea about "best metallurgists" ? and domestic aerospace industry is a boutique shop (especially when we are talking about civilian planes) that mostly relies on foreign components. their production goals are like 10 planes a year

maybe they can make train brakes, but they can't make bearings.

Trains are more vulnerable because they will always have long unguarded sections of track.

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.

> A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters.

I'm pretty sure a plane at V1 can't break using thrusters.

I believe this to be true (the article definitely states "Brakes are also necessary for aborting takeoffs", and V1 is the speed at which takeoff ~~occurs~~ edit: must be committed to), but this is only one instant of the journey. At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.

> At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.

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.)

There are two distances to calculate, called accelerate-stop and accelerate-go.

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.

There's definitely a difference between feasibility and what passengers should be guaranteed, yeah. Don't get me wrong, commercial airliners should have brakes.

I thought V1 was the decision speed, where you must takeoff unless the plane is literally incapable of leaving the ground.

Technically I think the takeoff speed is VRotate, where the plane is rotated and actually starts to leave the ground.

It's been a while, but isn't that V2? ISTR that V1 is the commit speed: above that point you have to take off since there isn't enough runway to abort.

V1 is the “takeoff decision speed” (roughly as you describe). Vr is the speed at which rotation occurs. Vmu is the “minimum unstick” speed (the lowest speed at which liftoff is possible). V2 is the takeoff safety speed, which is faster than liftoff speed, and the minimum target speed for initial climb.

Isn’t the issue more specifically that not having brakes to abort lowers V1, which is the speed at which abort is no longer an option?

That's how train brakes work, actually. They short-circuit the electric motors through an array of resistors (with cooling fans to keep them from melting).. This is effectively engine braking on an electric motor. Electric cars do this too but they have batteries to absorb the energy instead of turning it all into heat.

Good luck with this logic.

What is the alternative, curl up and cry? Doing anything (especially anything interesting) involves taking risks. Not to mention that I probably have more chances of being arrested or conscripted then actually suffering in an airplane accident, they are still quite safe. I don't think that worrying about everything, especially things as basic as an airplane travel, will do you any good.

One of the surprising things I've learned in this online world of ours is that some people simply worry about everything. I don't get it either.

> but they are certainly not falling out of the skies

they will be shortly

and you won't hear about it unless you're on it

Hard to hide an airliner crash in this day and age. Certainly over land, anyway.

Why would they want to hide it? Perfect opportunity to agitate a little more against "the west". From the perspective of someone who blows up apartment buildings to get a unifying war it's not really a risk, it's potential upside.

It's hard to hide a crash, but it's easy to downplay one. Threaten a few witnesses, pay off a few bereaved families and you can turn a catastrophe into a minor incident.

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.

I'd agree if it was almost any other country

meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media and 99% of the country's area is essentially empty

And that is exactly "klyukva leaking into seemingly serious reasoning" I was talking about here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37041836

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.

> 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.

How do you recocile that with the journalists assassinated, arrested, and/or driven from the country?

That's some control. One example - last year one brave lady from TV staff protesting IIRC via banners against the war in state TV. I hope she is still alive and well (for that part probably outside of russia).

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.

>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.

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 ?

> This is why recent prigozhin roadtrip to moscow completely didn't happen at all according to russian media ?

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.

>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?

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 ?

Now you are just moving goalposts (even up to claimig that bloggers arent media in the neighbouring thread) and base your argument on the fact that something does not fit your personal expectations.

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%...

https://russian.rt.com/tag/evgenii-prigozhin

https://rg.ru/sujet/6796

This is just lies. I tracked this situation and watched official TV. There was interruption at night with breaking news which informed about Prigozhin mutiny. Few hours later there was Putin interruption where he condemned this action and publicly called them a traitors. I don't think that there were many Russians who were not aware of this situation in this day.

Some details could have been hidden, like shot down helicopters or killed soldiers. But claiming that it didn't happen is just lies.

and after those 2 glorious day ? how much discussion on television ? "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" didn't came to existence by accident

I'm not a vivid official TV watcher, so I can't comment about it, sorry. My point is that every russian citizen is perfectly aware of what's happened that day, so hiding very important events is not possible, at least today. Hiding plane crash with hundred of passengers is not possible.

Now explaining those events is another matter. And that's where propaganda will kick in, for sure.

> "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" didn't came to existence by accident

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.

yeah, he made a speech when shit went down, and another one later about "we all are brothers" or whatever. after this media discussion stopped hence the meme "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" that was widely circulating in russian circles in the beginning of july.

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

The way regular people take videos of destroyed bridges, damaged warships.. I wouldn't say so. The videos regular folks filmed on incident locations were perfect for damage assessment to us western folks. Russian government may control media in general but social media and messengers are full of uncontrollable stuff (for now)

> meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media

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.

It is trivial. Official news will report that it was shot down or sabotaged by Ukrainian spies. I'm sure that the scripts and some stock footage are already prepared for when it happens.

"This marks the second time that the rebellious regime in Kyiv has shot down a peaceful civilian airliner over Russian soil." /s

That could happen 60 years ago, I guess. Nowadays everyone uses Telegram, everyone possesses smartphone with camera, there are bloggers with millions of subscribers who are outside of political control.

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 the planespotting community will eventually ask "hey what happened to that registration number ABC123" or "didn't Aeroflot used to have 80 777s, but only 79 have been seen in the last year"?

I feel like it's hard to hide a plane that's designed for international travel in a highly regulated industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Angola_Boeing_727_disappe...

We know it's missing, right? In the case the original commenter posted, they'd have to somehow prove it didn't crash.

Like the Malaysian 777, we know it's missing. No idea what happened to it or where it is. Even in the twenty-first century it's not impossible.

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.

2003 was twenty years ago, we didn't have Flightradar24 yet.

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