Or, you know, the exact opposite of this?

As someone who has also watched most of those docs, I can only think of one where the inability to overrule the pilot was the primary contributing factor, that was "Tenerife" (the senior pilot on KLM).

There was one other crash where it was felt that the issue of seniority may have contributed, but to a much lesser degree. There have been a few others where training was inadequate because of technical upgrades, etc., but these were not due to the problem you are referring to and I cant think of any other disasters that were because of seniority issues specifically.

No love for my Payne Stewart theory? And LOL me for wanting to ignore stolen passports because I want my armchair read to be correct.

I hope the comparison I'm about to make doesn't sound ridiculous, but:

I was screwing around with helium one day, because breathing in helium and talking is hilarious, especially when you're big and fat and this tiny cartoon chipmunks voice comes out of your mouth. I took a hit of helium, and sang the first line of a song. Everyone LOL'd, so I did again and sang the second line. Then, suddenly, down I went, out cold. Never saw it coming. Of course, I was completely starved of oxygen, but I never felt out of breath, because my lungs were still "breathing", I guess--there was just no oxygen in WHAT I was breathing.

As soon as I hit the floor, I was unconscious but still breathing, and I came to immediately upon the resumption of breathing normal air. But imagine I wasn't on the floor of my house, but in an airplane seat thousands of feet in the air. I'm not going to come to immediately, and I'm going to be dead before this plane returns to a breath-able altitude.

That made me sad, seemed like a great dude and really passionate about flying. Pretty sure that you can at least rule out pilot suicide based on that alone.

The pprune forum had a link to a newspiece where a North Korean missile had accidentally flown just a few miles off a Chinese passenger plane a couple of days ago. That would obviously be the most far-fetched theory ever, but holy **** that would be sick.

It was outside of an air traffic control area when it went down. If it were not, someone would have noticed when it fell out of it's assigned altitude. They carry altitude transponders that transmit their altitude to air traffic control.

Yeah, it's not like those are trained people in great shape who slowly make that ascend in a matter of weeks to get used to the thin air.

The Tenerife disaster is a great example, as you mention, in which junior officers failed to more forcefully contradict their more senior, experienced captain.

Another good example is the Birgenair 301 disaster in which the pilot’s pitot tube was clogged giving faulty airspeed readings. Despite his vast experience (24,000+ hrs in the cockpit), the pilot chose to take off rather than abort the takeoff, despite still having time to do so. Then at altitude, he got confused by the mixed signals when he had overspeed readings but then the plane stalled. Despite the stick shaker going off, he cut back on power and never did realize what was going on despite first officer telling him he needed to get nose down, and reserve pilot behind him pointing out the attitude indicator showing maximum nose-up condition. This was a classic crash which again put focus on flight deck culture (here a Turkish crew), as the co-pilot could have pushed the nose down himself rather than defer to the captain, even though he knew they were stalling.

To a lesser extent, the Air Florida 90 crash also illustrates the issue, in which the first officer (with less than half the flight time as the captain) points out the icing concerns but captain takes off and doesn’t comprehend the dangers until it is too late. That captain was experienced, but had past judgment issues raised against him, so not the best example of the phenomena.

There is a great example involving a Russian crew, although the flight number escapes my memory, in which a very experienced senior captain doesn’t understand what’s going on and the other flight deck members realize the situation fully but are not bold enough to contradict the captain or take control of the aircraft. Much of the blame was placed on the role of strict hierarchy in the airline’s culture.

And there’s also United flight 173 in which a very experienced crew led by one of United’s most senior captains (27,000+ hrs) became so fixated on a faulty landing gear indicator light that they actually ran out of fuel and crash landed in a neighborhood. All that experience in the cockpit, and nobody paid attention to the basics of flying the aircraft.

My point here was simply that some of aviation’s major blunders occur with a very experienced pilot at the controls. Of course, inexperienced pilots screw up, too, but that tends to amaze me less. I didn’t intend such an innocuous point to be controversial.

Vishnu, the only debate that I would have is with your statement "it's actually amazing to me how many of them seem to have "the most experienced pilot in the airline" at the controls, making one or more bad decisions, often while his junior officers try to coax him into responding appropriately.", when in fact there are only a tiny fraction of the crashes where this is true.

The vast majority of disasters are not pilot error, but are mechanical in nature. I would agree with your use of the word "some" in your last post. I'm not trying to be controversial.

My statement does not imply that pilot error accounts for the majority of disasters, or even a large minority. My statement merely implies that it is amazing to me how many crashes that do involve pilot error are with a very senior pilot, and of these, many involve junior pilots deferring to this pilot against their own judgment. I listed a few such examples. Those examples in themselves are a bit amazing to me (there are more, those were just off top of my head). I did not mean to imply that pilot error is either common or likely in this case. It was meant as an observation of my own reaction to air crash investigations, and I apologize if it came off otherwise. I understand how it might have.

Edit to add: I just remembered that Aeroflot crash in which the Russian pilot lets his kids play at the controls of a plane full of passengers and the kid knocks the plane's autopilot off by pushing stick too far, and pilot doesn't realize it until its too late to recover. I know this is just an anecdote, but another example of a senior captain doing something very stupid! But he was a Russian, so not surprising these days. The point really isn't about "stupidity, though, it's about even the most senior folks are prone to lapses and blind spots because we're all human.

You don't need to apologize to me, I always wanted to fly a plane but they won't let me, lol. I understand how you feel and yes, some decisions made in the cockpit amaze me. How about the Russian crash where the pilot let his kids fly?

Woops, slow pony!

I don't get it, can't we use satellites to survey every inch of ocean where it could plausibly be? Short of that, use an application of Bayes theorem to scour through high probability areas?

everest with out oxygen takes a few months of acclimatization. If you put someone from sea level and dropped them off at the top of everest they would be dead very quickly. Now if one of the passengers had just climbed everest then yes, they would not pass out and get the full ride.

FWIW...

But 17,500 ft, and you're good to go. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British...ys_Flight_5390)

didn't even think of how cold it is and rapid change in pressure, everest isn't saving them.

right, but how long did it take from the time you first started breathing helium until the time you passed out? It couldnt have been 5-10 seconds

also, why would you die before the plane returns to a breathable altitude? You should only be at un-breathable altitude for like less than a minute.

Here's another source:

I think its safe to say that you'll be out cold within 15 seconds at 37,000 ft due to decompression, hypoxia, and cold, and dead within a minute. That's probably a generous best case scenario. Would be a pretty horrible few seconds regardless. [Not as horrible as the few seconds after one gets a dementia diagnosis, though. ]

vishnu,

I actually just finished reading that link, lol! Sounds like its mostly the decompression that gets you, especially if its explosive. And that its impossible to not have your lungs exhale.

I did find this tho as well, which was interesting. Plane explodes at 31,000ft and a couple people were actually found alive at the crash site (tho died before help could get to them)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

I've been in an altitude chamber at 25,000 feet off mask to experience hypoxic effects, and was fine as the instructors had me do various math and word problems. It was probably 2-3 minutes and the instructor had me go back on oxygen, and said I was one of the minority percentage of folks whose first symptom is probably passing out (which isn't so good really).

Alobar, Pan AM 103 is a good example. Thanks for reminder!

Looking at an air pressure calculator, the difference between 31,000 ft (31% sea level O2) and 37,000 (24% sea level O2) might be significant. Moreover, that's another 6000' to fall through at 30,000+ ft conditions, which I think is the most critical factor. All speculation by all of us, I guess. I sure wouldn't want to try it and find out.

if they are still dressed in proper gear for everest, I don't think the cold and winds @ 30k would be unbearable.

NTSB spokesperson confirming what most experts are thinking or saying...

"Whatever happened, happened very quickly. For them to have lost two-way radio communication with (air traffic control), two-way radio communication with the company, and to lose any kind of radar data with ground control facilities means that the airplane was compromised in a very quick manner and it may have been well beyond the control of the crew to keep the airplane under control and make any kind of emergency distress call or emergency landing."

Is there any speculation or does anyone know how everything can just go out at once?

yeah, good point. I guess if the plane is going to decompress you better pray you are like 40K feet cuz then you are less likely to worry about it.

One of my biggest fears is to die in a plane crash, and its entirely because I don't want to experience the sheer panic of the decent. Which ironically it might not be even if you dont pass out. Reading other articles about plane crashes and stuff while trying to find info about this, I read numerous talking to survivors of some wrecks saying the people were just sitting there like it was no big deal, or instead of fleeing the plane after impact just milled about and were casually trying to gather their carryons (And all died in the raging fire).

The people on board on fake passports definitely suggests terrorism, but if the plan is just to fly the plane into the deck, why not radio tower and explain that first? Like "Hi we have hijacked this plane, now we are going to kill everyone on board, here is our list of grievances, death to the CCCP" or something. It's not like they can do anything about it.

Edit: Could just be a bomb I guess, but then why do you need two people on the flight?