good question! The F16 has a joystick on the right side, the FA-18 has a stick in the middle.

Here is one person's comparison of F-16 vs FA-18. Scroll down to [/i]SIDE STICK VERSUS CONVENTIONAL CENTER STICK[/i].

OMG I'm sitting here at home and this guy is REVIEWING FIGHTER JETS!!! My life has officially become 2 degrees more boring...

I know back in the day there was a lot of resistance from American airline (as opposed to American Airline) pilots to the FBW approach. If the yoke is linked directly to the control surfaces there'd be some tactile feedback through the yoke. You could feel what the AC is doing. There's also the simple notion that most of us aren't comfortable ceding control to a computer. I suppose the advantages of FWB finally became great enough to offset those concerns. Keeping a control column in place with FBW is probably just a Boeing trademark at this point.

Thought you might find this article interesting:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jeff-s...media&ir=Media

Yesterday morning I talked with a colleague about the safety culture in Aviation and about how the biggest "Dutch" air disaster in history (KLM Flight 4805) led to the introduction of CRM.

Only a few hours after that the now second biggest "Dutch" air disaster took place in the Ukraine (MH17). "Dutch" because over half the passengers were Dutch, and it was codeshared KL4103.

Dutch news articles about why the flight went over a "war zone" vary. Some say that the Ukraine wasn't declared a war zone yet, other say that that war zones are not shunned by airliners, since they fly above 30.000 feet, which was thought to be safe from war activity.

Could you shine a light on this? Are certain airspaces forbidden for airliners? Might this attack cause a change in Aviation rules on which zones are and are not safe to fly over?

I seem to have quite a few posts stack up without responses, so let me get to them...


I won't disagree with this list (although I've never heard of "low-flying and strip training"), but I particularly like the first item. I would encourage you to get some aerobatic training at some point. There's no rush on that (go ahead and get that instrument rating), but it will greatly enhance your stick-and-rudder skills and give you additional confidence.

Good suggestion. I used to help my local mechanic (Front Royal, VA) do the annual inspection on my Cherokee 180. By "help", of course, I mean I mostly observed. It's a good way to get to really know your plane.

I used to do this a lot and I also visited my local ARTCC (Washington Center, located in Leesburg, VA). Just a fun thing to do while you see things from the other side.

Thats a big part of it. The earliest planes had control sticks which moved mechanical linkages to the control surfaces. When larger, transport category planes made the scene, larger control columns with a yoke (steering wheel) were needed because of the greater control forces required (before the advent of hydraulic assist). General aviation manufacturers started to use the control wheel to mimic the big boys and also provide a more familiar control to the masses they were marketing to.

When fly-by-wire made the scene, the big control wheel became unnecessary. Using a side stick frees up a lot of room and provides an obstructed view of the instruments. The Boeing 777 was originally going to have that configuration but pilots at the big launch customer (United) wanted the control column configuration that they were used to.

The feel on FBW airplanes (this includes the 777 and 787) is artificial. But even non-FBW planes have some artificial feel incorporated. I remember from my days of teaching systems for the CRJ that there were springs incorporated in the flight controls to add the feel of aerodynamic load. That's because, with hydraulic assist, pilots don't actually have to muscle the plane anymore.

I loved that article! It says so much about the glib way that USA Today handles a complex topic. That rag gets so much wrong on a regular basis. Aviation (both commercial and general) is an easy target and it has the added benefit to the media (and I include TV in this) of having a real visceral impact on their readers/viewers. Nothing sells like a plane crash.

Thanks for posting that.

Yes, we definitely have airspace we avoid. I've flown in that part of the world several times (flying to Kiev, Moscow or Mumbai) and we're very careful about exact navigation. I'm sure we're going nowhere near that war zone now, but that's a decision made by the company.

We also eliminate certain destinations as a result of world events. For example, we no longer fly into Cairo, a place I've been a half dozen times.

It seems like a typical observation made in hindsight, but it seems unwise to fly through airspace where two planes have been shot down in the past couple of days.

W0X0F, do you have any idea which (if any) airlines were avoiding this flight path? I know some (if not most/all) were avoiding Crimea, but not this particular part of Ukraine, right?

Would the pilots have been aware there was a missile coming at them?

which leads to the obvious question: W0X0F, does your training include chaff and flares and the corresponding maneuvers?

Guys we're dealing with a passenger plane here, not some military jet...

I have no special knowledge of flight restrictions in that part of the world. I'd probably look into it if I had a Mumbai trip scheduled.

No. AFAIK, only military jets have the ability to sense an inbound missile.

Not at all. It's never even been mentioned.

With the control stick being on the right, does left-handedness disqualify you from being an F-16 pilot?

Dutch Wikipedia claims a quarter of all airlines avoided the airspace over the east of Ukraine... no source given though.

There is some kind of collision warning system on board though, right? That works in conjunction with the transponder or something?

Yes, you're thinking of TCAS, but that only shows transponder equipped aircraft (and, of course, the transponder must be on). Not of much use with incoming missiles.

The FAA and ICAO seem to have put out notices to avoid Crimea, but not the main area of eastern Ukraine to the north of there, which is where MH17 came down. Some airlines were re-routing and some weren't. There was a height restriction, which MH17 was obeying. Airlines often have to fly over conflict areas, because life must go on.

Passenger jets have been overflying Iraq and Afghanistan these many years. There was that British flight over Afghanistan a while back, and the captain saw lights on the ground -- well, you see those everywhere -- and got on the PA and said, 'If you look to the right-hand side, you can just see the laptop screens of the SAS as they tap out their memoirs.' (Cited in The Wisdom of Psychopaths by Professor Kevin Dutton, research psychologist at Magdalen College, Oxford, who was a passenger on that flight.)

I would guess that if being right-handed isn't a problem for flying an Airbus from the left seat there should be no problem for a left handed pilot with right-side controls.

I know this was a joke, but considering the prevalence of this type of incident one would almost be inclined to think this could be an option. To put it another way, I bet a lot more money and time has been invested in preventing accidents that are much less common than this.

what? 3 maybe 4 in 30+ years???

Actually while looking into this I saw that El-Al has a missile defense system installed in their planes called Flight Guard. I wonder if other airlines will install it now or is the risk still seen to be too small.

Can't believe no one posted this yet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZRKm6PG918

That looks fun assuming you weren't trying to walk down the aisle.