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Comment by qaq | Hacker News Reader

Embraer is very well designed aircraft the fact it was able to fly for so long after sustaining so much damage is a testament to its robust engineering and design.

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ERJ-190 has 0 in-flight deaths caused by aircraft failure. In 2006 an Embraer Legacy jet collided mid-air with a boeing 737; The boeing fell to pieces, the Embraer landed safely[1]. In 2019 an Embraer ERJ-190 flew with misrrigged control cables; the aircraft was under extremely high structural load until pilots got enough control to land it safely[2].

Embraer engineers are clearly doing something right.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gol_Transportes_A%C3%A9reos_Fl... [2] https://aerossurance.com/safety-management/erj190-p4kcj-main...

I won't comment on the robustness of the Embraer construction, but I should point out that the 2006 incident is not necessarily indicative of that; the two aircraft collided head-on, and the relatively fragile vertical winglet of the smaller jet severed the outer third of the Boeing's wing before breaking away, almost cleanly. The Embraer thus was able to continue flying while the 737 was doomed. Swapping the positions of the two aircraft would probably have produced an opposite outcome.

Wikipedia's account says that the Boeing lost "about half" its wing.

Admiral Cloudberg - https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/the-fickle-hand-of-fate-... - says "nearly in half". But from the scaled diagram of the collision in that article, your "outer third" seems more accurate.

Either way - for anyone familiar with Boeing's WWII bomber heritage, the glossed-over assumption that the Boeing's situation was hopeless really sticks out.

Yeah Embraers are widely considered to be the safest aircraft in the skies. The E-135/140/145 has literally never had a single fatality in over 30 years of flying.

A few years back I was flying to London, and when I got the ticket it was for an Embraer landing in London City Airport. I was excited about the airport as after flying many times to London it was the only one out of the five nearby airports I had never been to, but the aircraft got me nervous: I never heard of Embraer and it was smaller (I thought bigger=safer, maybe that’s still true?) than the usual Airbus and Boeing I was using regularly. Ignorance will do that, I wonder if this (ignorant customers) is still a factor when airlines buy aircrafts.

BTW the airline sadly put me in a different plane to a different airport in the last minute, no reason given.

The kind of passenger who knows what kind of jet they’ll be flying on has probably heard of Embraer. I do think this is an impediment to Comac tho

Most of my flights (within the USA) are on ERJ-175. I even switched airlines midway through the year and this was still true. I only see Airbus and Boeing for transcontinental flights.

London City Airport (LCY) has a very short runway with an approach right next to houses and apartment buildings. If the weather is very windy, especially with cross-winds, they are quick to cancel or divert flights.

I was once in a plane that had three landing attempts there aborted at the last second before eventually diverting to Southend Airport. The plane was bobbing around like a cork on the end of a string, quite a few passengers were airsick from the wild turbulence or screaming hysterically convinced we were all about to die.

That 2006 incident isn't a good example it's almost entirely due to the fact that a non-essential part of the Embraer neatly sliced a big chunk of the airliner's wing off.

Also pantsir is a shitty AA weapon. Like everything designed in modern Russia.

Except the E190 completely lacks manual reversion unlike the Boeing 737 NG. If it had, it would've been landable.

Probably the only winner in this situation, really.

Makes Boeing look extra crappy given recent events, too.

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