A300Capt
Freight Dawg
In case the keys are locked inside.
Duhhh! (In my best teenage girl attitude)

In case the keys are locked inside.
@Screaming_Emu
Might I suggest a google search of Myanmar.
Unless you are Rohingya, I really wouldn't be too concerned about landing in Myanmar. You need to get out a bit more if places like that worry you.
Thank you. I completely missed the sarcasm, hence my confusion. I hadn't heard the reaction by the battery lobby and airlines. That's so BS right there.I believe he’s being sarcastic. We all know that the LiOn batteries lit off and continued to burn. Lobbyists and airlines tried hard to spin the narrative into we don’t know what kind of fire could bring down a 74 with fire suppression activated but we can’t prove it was LiOn batteries. So we now can keep shipping unsafe amounts in cargo aircraft because no one cares that a couple freight dawgs died. Profits over safety.
Scary stuff.
Not entirely the LiOn part, the closest diversion was Myanmar....
I used to brief for the type of emergencies that required "land ASAP" in the Hawk, we'd access and limp as close to friendly lines as possible.
Dealing with an onboard fire might be more desirable than say land somewhere where they are known to set you on fire...
I can’t speak for UPS or the MD, but I can tell you that on the main deck of a 747F, an airline with a nude guy holding a beach ball on the tail has absolutely no fire suppression. Depressurization to 25,000 ft and hope for the best.
https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-...ge-lithium-batteries-suspected-some-accidents
(PRBA is the rechargeable battery association which is a lobby group in Washington DC. Members include three large cargo airlines)
"The PRBA also noted that it has yet to be proved that lithium batteries caused two of the key accidents the FAA cited in its report, the 2006 UPS DC-8 fire in Philadelphia and the UPS 747 crash in Dubai. “The FAA assumes that ‘bulk shipments of lithium batteries (primary and secondary)….were likely contributors to two of the freighter fire accidents that occurred on U.S.-registered airplanes.’ This assumption is unfounded. In fact, the NTSB’s report on the 2006 UPS airplane incident does not identify any ‘bulk shipments’ (e.g., pallets) of lithium ion or lithium metal batteries on board the aircraft. While it is true there were several large consignments of lithium batteries on the UPS plane involved in the Dubai incident, there is nothing in the UAE GCAA reports that indicates bulk shipments of lithium batteries were ‘likely contributors’ to the accident.”
That's bad, right?Have you studied Swissair MD11 or UPS 6? When there is a legit out-of-control fire on a commercial airliner, your time in the air is limited. You don't have the convenience of continuing flight and going to where you'd rather go. At some point you'll either be incapacitated by smoke/fire or the airplane control cables/wiring will burn through and render the aircraft useless. Both cases you'll come crashing down.
We understand. You're scared of some rather friendly people because you read a news report online but have never been like a few of us have.@Cherokee_Cruiser ,
You quoted me, but you didn't read what I wrote.
It's evident the others did the same.
Everyone knows. The pilots care but everyone else says we aren't worth the money to solve the issue.Does the industry know or realize that only works for oxygen driven fires, not and chemical reaction types? I don't know how I'd feel about going up to FL250 with Lithium Ions going off in the back. I imagine the industry lobbysists et all know... they just don't care, and that 2 pilots dying once in a while is an 'acceptable' risk.
Wow that's ridiculous to read. Another accident that is little known because only 2 freight dogs died just months after UPS 6, was a 747F for Asiana Cargo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_991
These lobbyists can say what they want, but Lithium Ion batteries caught fire and took over while the crew was trying to return to land.
Everyone knows. The pilots care but everyone else says we aren't worth the money to solve the issue.
Human lives are only like 3.5 mil. 4 freight dogs are cheaper than the aircraft or engines.
300 humans on a pax bird, now we're getting expensive. Hence the no lithium in the cargo hold.
You're right, and it's horrifying. Last thing I read for school indicated a life was worth around $7 mil, but I was curious as to what the current status is:
https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statistically-speaking/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
Note that the DOT says a life is worth about $6mil. The number varies pretty dramatically throughout the world as is evident from wiki.
To me this cuts to the core of the capitalist ethos - that literally everything has a price. Your life. Your family. The most so called, "priceless" art in a museum - everything. There is nothing that cannot be made into a commodity - life is no different.
And applying the cargo pilot exchange rate, it’s probably about half that.
@Cherokee_Cruiser ,
You quoted me, but you didn't read what I wrote.
It's evident the others did the same.
...until a fire leads to a failed emergency landing and 747 taking out a few city blocks...Everyone knows. The pilots care but everyone else says we aren't worth the money to solve the issue.
Human lives are only like 3.5 mil. 4 freight dogs are cheaper than the aircraft or engines.
300 humans on a pax bird, now we're getting expensive. Hence the no lithium in the cargo hold.
I mean...what do you suggest as an alternative? Summary execution of individuals judged to be responsible? Ritual seppukku? Life is an exercise in balancing risks, and not to marginalize the very legitimate concerns our resident freight dawgs have, but with one maybe two accidents worldwide related to this the most dangerous part is still the drive to work.You're right, and it's horrifying. Last thing I read for school indicated a life was worth around $7 mil, but I was curious as to what the current status is:
https://www.theglobalist.com/the-cost-of-a-human-life-statistically-speaking/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States
Note that the DOT says a life is worth about $6mil. The number varies pretty dramatically throughout the world as is evident from wiki.
To me this cuts to the core of the capitalist ethos - that literally everything has a price. Your life. Your family. The most so called, "priceless" art in a museum - everything. There is nothing that cannot be made into a commodity - life is no different.
I mean...what do you suggest as an alternative? Summary execution of individuals judged to be responsible? Ritual seppukku? Life is an exercise in balancing risks, and not to marginalize the very legitimate concerns our resident freight dawgs have, but with one maybe two accidents worldwide related to this the most dangerous part is still the drive to work.
JAL paid ¥780 million (7.6 million USD) to the victims' relatives in the form of "condolence money" without admitting liability. JAL president, Yasumoto Takagi (高木 養根), resigned.[14] In the aftermath of the incident, Hiroo Tominaga, a JAL maintenance manager, killed himself to atone for the incident,[32]while Susumu Tajima, an engineer who had inspected and cleared the aircraft as flight-worthy, committed suicide due to difficulties at work.[33] In compliance with standard procedures, Japan Airlines dropped the flight number 123, changing it to Flight 127 on September 1, 1985, with the route utilizing either Boeing 767 or Boeing 777. JAL later retired their last 747s in 2011.
In 2014, the Independent Pilots Association filed suit against the FAA to end the cargo airplane exemption from the flight crew minimum rest requirements.[19] In 2016 the lawsuit was dismissed by a Washington, DC court, which determined the FAA had acted reasonably by excluding cargo airlines from the rest requirement based on a cost vs benefits analysis.[20]
Bret Fanning, husband of first officer Shanda Fanning, filed a lawsuit against Honeywell Aerospace in 2014, alleging that its ground proximity warning system installed on the A300 failed to alert the pilots that their aircraft was dangerously close to the ground.[21] Fanning claimed that the GPWS did not sound an alarm until one second after the aircraft began to clip the tops of trees;[21]however, the NTSB determined from the aircraft's flight data recorder that the GPWS sounded a "sink rate" warning when the aircraft was 250 feet above the ground, 8 seconds before the first impact with trees.[7]
I dunno man-I notice none of the various pilot unions have made this a bigger issue than compensation in their negotiations so I guess everyone’s got their price.True. And I don’t know what the right balancing act would have to be to unscrew this aspect of our culture. Money is certainly a convenient metric by which we can measure the “value” of things - human life included, still I find it horrifying. I think it's indicative of another problem that goes much deeper - we use money as a way to hide from who is really responsible for tragedy.
Notice nobody goes the other way, right? Using the $7mil cost per human life we can say that the $12.8 trillion dollar collapse of the economy 2008 is equivalent to 1.82 million deaths from a financial standpoint. We'd hang you at the Hague if you and your people were personally responsible for that many deaths. So we know that "life" is intrinsically worth "more" but by commoditizing it, and putting a price tag on a human we're able to abrogate responsibility for the human costs of myopic decision making. "Well, you know, I've gotta look after the business, and this is cheaper - 'sides, we're not doing anything really unsafe, right?"
Ultimately I feel like people don’t take responsibility for lives that their decisions may take. As a society we’re always looking for someone else to solve our problems (see appeals to the government and the police or in our realm management), and those institutions are necessarily biased to try to disperse individual responsibility for as far from themselves as possible.
If the pilot doesn’t immediately divert and land asap with a fire warning the NTSB will mention that in their report. "The pilot's failure to properly execute an off-airport landing due to the fire directly lead to the loss of the aircraft and all the lives onboard." It’s much less common to see something like, “the accountant who prepared the report on the costs associated with fire suppression systems undersold the costs associated with an in flight fire and the executive who was reading the report put too much faith in him and elected to save the installation costs resulting in the total loss of the aircraft.” The executive probably doesn't feel personally responsible for the UPS crash - even though he directly is, through his actions or inactions. The accountant who made the report on fire-suppression costs almost certainly doesn't either. A classic example of this is the Challenger disaster. After the accident occurred so many people said, "we couldn't have possibly known or understood the ramifications of this" even when there was a guy practically SHOUTING that the o-rings were unsafe.
You know as well as I do that there are operators that gladly ignore weight and balance limitations, weather rules, and maintenance requirements because they know they can get away with it and because it makes them more money. The reality is though that when Bob's Air Taxi and Fish and Chips smashes an airplane in due to CFIT, or whatever, that the people who are really responsible tend to make themselves disappear. The people in the training department all say, "he complied with the FAA mandated training!" The people in the maintenance department say, "we had the airplane maintained I.A.W the manufacturer's instructions," and managers say, "hey we never pushed him to fly and we always followed the rules and never cut corners." The people truly responsible almost never face any real consequences other than perhaps losing their jobs and even that's rare - the DO who pushed for fuller planes and more flights in constant emails never gets in trouble "that's what DO's are supposed to do, right?" The CP who upgraded a guy before he should have never get's in any real moral trouble because "hey we have spots on the schedule that need to be filled," the dispatcher who was constantly pushing people to "go go go" never get's into any trouble because, "hey that's her job, she's there to move lazy pilots along," and the pilot - who in a moment of weakness or following a pattern of behavior accepted something he shouldn't have took the flight gets the blame dropped on his shoulders. I have no doubt that the rest of the "business" world is exactly the same - it's the confluence of money, power, and tight margins that makes people not want to actually stand up and say, "hey, I'm the guy who was responsible for this accident - me, personally."
That culture permeates our society and I don't know how to fix it. You joke about ritual Seppuku above, but I recall a story about JAL123 from the 80's:
I don't think that's the right way to handle it - but damn, at least their culture has the sense of self-responsibility for the accident. Contrast this with the aftermath of the UPS crash in BHM.
In my limited career, one of the biggest things I've seen has been a lack of ethics at all levels. This varies wildly from company to company, and some are better than others, but people don't take the ethical and philosophical ramifications of their actions (or inactions) seriously in this industry - and honestly I'm suspicious from anecdotal reports from friends and family that it's most industries. This makes sense, though right? We have no mandatory ethical training during flight training. The only real requirement that pops up anywhere is the requirement that we be of "good moral character" - which is funny because I know plenty of ATP rated pilots who were wife-beaters or who cheat on their wives, or who do all sorts of other heinous things.
I'm not taking an "I'm holier than thou" approach to this either - I've done a lot of things in airplanes that looking back I consider as "unethical." Speaking of "holier" this isn't a religious thing either - some of the least ethical business owners and aviators I've ever met have been Bible-thumpers - that's not an indictment of all of them (some we're super ethical and awesome), I'm just saying it has no-bearing on how someone practices their professional ethics. So this isn't one of those sorts of claims.
As an industry, I think we need to teach people about the cascading consequences of their actions or inactions. We need to foster a culture where everyone feels responsible for the whole - rather than just the parts of the operation they touch. How we fix this culturally is a mystery to me. I guess it's easy to show up and say, "dis is mess'd up, yo" and not provide any solutions - but sometimes in order to solve a problem we need to be able to identify the problem.
I dunno man-I notice none of the various pilot unions have made this a bigger issue than compensation in their negotiations so I guess everyone’s got their price.
I guess it’s just a little difficult for me to get too spooled up about this when in the big picture guys continue going to work, cashing their 6 figure paychecks, and posting about it from li-ion powered mobile devices.
I dunno man-I notice none of the various pilot unions have made this a bigger issue than compensation in their negotiations so I guess everyone’s got their price.
I guess it’s just a little difficult for me to get too spooled up about this when in the big picture guys continue going to work, cashing their 6 figure paychecks, and posting about it from li-ion powered mobile devices.