East Hartford Police say that Glock 17s can’t shoot straight!

[ReluctantDecoy]

Michael Crichton (sp?) was an amazing author that filled a ton of facts and reality into his books. Usually science, but a lot of good stuff mixed in with fantasy.

One of his books was Airframe - about an airline crash. It was a newish jet and the pilot's son was on board and a Jr pilot so the pilot lets Jr. ride the stick for a while and Jr. crashes the plane. It's all then shrouded in this Japanese secrecy, IIRC. (I forget if just the pilot was Japanese or the airline was as well.)


AAAAaaaanyhow, the point was during a crash, the manufacturer ALWAYS takes blame. They work HARD to take blame. Because then they make the airline look better and have a better chance at selling said airline more planes in the future. If they told the truth, the airline, and then the airplane manufacturer, would take a beating.

I suspect anything Glock did is similar and we'll never know.

It's kind of situational. Boeing was taking most of the heat on their 737 Max crashes, but did punch back that pilots were not operating the fly by wire systems correctly. It created a beef with the pilots union and went back and forth with the finger pointing for a while. While it's true that the manufacturers need to save face in order to keep selling the airline planes, they also need to keep safety rep up so that the entire global airline segment doesn't lose confidence in your product. So there's probably a calculus the manufacturer does in each scenario to determine which is worse for business, taking the blame or not. Long term liability probably plays a big role on that end. It's probably a similar situation to when car companies decide to recall.

 

[citoriguy]

It's kind of situational. Boeing was taking most of the heat on their 737 Max crashes, but did punch back that pilots were not operating the fly by wire systems correctly. It created a beef with the pilots union and went back and forth with the finger pointing for a while. While it's true that the manufacturers need to save face in order to keep selling the airline planes, they also need to keep safety rep up so that the entire global airline segment doesn't lose confidence in your product. So there's probably a calculus the manufacturer does in each scenario to determine which is worse for business, taking the blame or not. Long term liability probably plays a big role on that end. It's probably a similar situation to when car companies decide to recall.

With the COVID pandemic, civil unrest, and upcoming election, I completely forgot about the 737 MAX issue. Are they cleared to fly yet? With the amount of scrutiny they’ve received, it is probably the safest airplane model out there, no?

 

[AHM]

Michael Crichton (sp?) was an amazing author that filled a ton of facts and reality into his books. Usually science, but a lot of good stuff mixed in with fantasy.

One of his books was Airframe - about an airline crash. It was a newish jet and the pilot's son was on board and a Jr pilot so the pilot lets Jr. ride the stick for a while and Jr. crashes the plane. ...

Huh, loosely based on a real tragedy: Aeroflot Flight 593.

Made me think of an anecdote of a (different?) Soviet crash.
The control yoke pivot was some inches below deck level,
and there was an open conical depression in the deck
allowing the yoke to be moved fore and aft.

A foreign object (dropped binoculars?) fell into the cone, jamming the controls.
It could have been removed, except that the flight forces prevented the crewmember
from reaching down to free it, or they didn't realize what was jamming the yoke.

A little like my roommate who let the cat roam the passenger compartment
on the way to the vet's. It of course hid behind the brake and clutch pedals,
and took more than a little nudging to dislodge. It was gonna be a Flat Cat
if my roommate had had to stop.