Thanks to Don Bateman, airplanes don't crash into mountains anymore (2016)
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I've been watching a lot of plane crash youtubes.
and Pilot Debrief https://www.youtube.com/@pilot-debrief/videos
both are experienced, detailed, serious, sober minded
If you start out with those two channels but also pay attention to youtube's suggestions for related videos, you'll get a good selection.
https://www.youtube.com/@flyingformoney777
I like his tone and he's technical like blancolirio.
I also found this video on CFIT in General Aviation to be quite compelling https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PBUVMCbmFQ
https://www.youtube.com/@AirSafetyInstitute
and
https://www.youtube.com/@74gear
The former is more into the science of air safety, they do case studies of crashes as well as go over technique, pitfalls, and pilot psychology. The latter is an active airline pilot, similar to mentourPilot just with a less refined and more relatable (to me at least) style. He does "reaction videos" - but in a good way - where he analyzes aircraft incidents from a perspective of a commercial pilot. And he regularly debunks ticktock misinformation.
Out of my memory, in Nepal alone all of the following happened despite ground proximity warning Tara Air 197 in 2022, Paki 268 and Thai 311 are some I can think of but I'm sure there's more.
Problem is: even if GPW is activated pilots may not be trained correctly to handle the warning, they may distrust the warning due to it being active concurrently with other malfunctions, lack of spacial awareness, puzzlement/stress, etc.
Yeah.
Hearing ATC repeatedly calling in and receiving no response is a gut wrenching experience.
And maybe I just watch way less news than two decades ago, but reporting of the air incidents is way lower, especially if it happened somewhere elsewhere.
The total number of fatalities also about halved in that time frame.
I think those data points explain at least part of the lower reporting.
I was just pointing out that better warnings did not eliminate the problem entirely as the title seems to suggest.
A lot less often than they used to, though.
Even more discouraging is the extremely backwards way of thinking that the old farts in GA have. There is nothing that the barnacles who cling to the walls of the FBO hate more than change, and they're the ones buying stuff.
Most of that equipment selection problem can be traced back to poor quality instruction and conflicts of interest in the industry. Unlike flying, there is no legal licensing process for diving. Training is mostly handled by a few different private agencies which set course curricula and certify instructors. Some agencies have minimal quality standards and will give an instructor card to almost anyone. And then most training courses are run by dive shops which also sell equipment, so instructors are pressured to not criticize anything the shop sells even when it's total garbage.
The 'certification cost' is just the threshold at which the FAA is fine with all the liability being offloaded on to them, for engines made and maintained to spec at least.
i.e. For this cost to actually decrease would require an entirely different society, one that doesn't settle things through the judicial/administrative system whatsoever. But then costs may increase somewhere else.
I can't wait to get my hands on the new jet powered plane coming to the club I fly with.
My airplane makes about 225 horsepower during cruise flight, for 3-4 hours on a typical leg. My car makes 25-30 horsepower in cruise.
Take the airplane engine that has done 1950 hours of weight-off-wheels time so far (including some takeoff/climb, but also some descent), turn that into x8 the auto hours and give an average speed of 40 mph and you get an implied 600K miles worth of total cumulative motive energy produced.
Most cars will need significant maintenance on the road to 600K miles or on their way to 2000 hours of operation at 75% of rated power (as do airplanes on their way to 2000+ hours of operation, of course).
Airplane engines are quite reliable. As easy to operate as a modern auto? No, but I’m not sure they need to be that easy, since pilot training and certification is quite a bit more rigorous than it is for autos.
Also, planes use engines differently. They basically run flat out for hours, while cars only use peak power when accelerating.
This is often said but isn't really all that true if you dig in. Most planes have a cruise power setting that is below that used for takeoff, often 65-80%. Further, engine are often de-rated so that max throttle means something like 80% of the engine's max horsepower. Those two factors along with variable pitch props on some planes which act like gears, mean that even planes often cruise at closer to 60% rated engine horse-power rather than 100%.
> I wondered if the same process could work for aircraft engines, and began the experiment of designing and modifying a V8 aluminum marine engine to meet FAA Part 23 and 33 requirements, then install it onto a Cessna 172 airframe
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34728405 [1]: https://airfactsjournal.com/2022/10/the-20-hour-cessna-172-e...
A plane crashed into the mountains[1], which must have been the only one in history of that region. Local songs were written, movies were made, and stories were told. Everyone knew about that.
It has always left a scary impression on me, especially whenever I visit my hometown, “if I die in a plane crash, it will be because it crashed into one of the mountains.”
A combination of radar altimeter (radio signal to ground return time) delta monitoring (how fast is terrain clearance changing) and early coarse GPS positioning combined with Russian DTM map data ... (purchased when US data was secret but USSR data was on the market post breakup).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_proximity_warning_syste...
Don Bateman’s terrain mapping device - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12261578 - Aug 2016 (27 comments)
Also:
Don Bateman, inventor of the GPWS, has died - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36104746 - May 2023 (21 comments)
Roy, ”What kind of Operating System does it use?”
Technician, “It’s uh, Vista.”
Roy, “We’re going to die.”
The site fails to render, barfs random elements over the screen, I haven't seen the broken jpeg placeholder in years. It's like seeing a picture of an old steam locomotive that exploded. It's utter destruction is almost art in itself.