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I just solved the mystery of every mysterious plane crash ever: gravity, the insidious creation of none other than the dastardly Sir Isaac Newton!
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Aug 1, 2015 21:26
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Sweet, right on time for my plane trip in three days
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Aug 1, 2015 21:43
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Kurtofan posted:Sweet, right on time for my plane trip in three days I look forward to reading about it here!
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Aug 1, 2015 22:24
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Kurtofan posted:Sweet, right on time for my plane trip in three days If you see any apples about, start screaming and waving your arms and doing William Shatner impressions.
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Aug 2, 2015 07:27
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The clouds... Majestic The air... Thin... Or is it my charisma?... The ground so close... So close...So..
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Aug 2, 2015 11:11
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Dr. Benway posted:Apologies. I have been and will be away from my computer until Mon. Here's the websluths thread : I'm looking forward to this. I went about a dozen pages in, but I'm too tired to sort between clever sleuthing and paranoid conclusions. That said, it looks like a good rabbit hole either way.
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Aug 2, 2015 11:46
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Welcome back to the tale of I-TIGI, everyone. Last time: a plane had seemingly disappeared into thin air while on approach to Palermo, only for debris and bodies to show up floating in the sea the following morning. Now... Things start to get weird An investigation of the crash got quickly underway, and the debris, bodies, and, most importantly, Cockpit Voice Recorder and Flight Data Recorder were collected. From the beginning, things didn't quite add up. For starters, both the CVR and the FDR showed no anomaly or deviation from normal up until they cut out because of loss of electrical power. The CVR even cut off in the middle of a word spoken during a normal chat between the pilot and first officer: quote:"Granted, my hair is already white... It's logical... We didn't meet many times on Monday, if we had... Now, listen here... Lo-" The final word, "look", was the point of some contention. Had the man who'd spoken it perhaps spotted something outside the cockpit, and was pointing it out to his colleague? Or was it simply a normal sentence ("look", "guarda" in Italian, is often used in colloquial speech in-between sentences)? We'll probably never know. Secondly, autopsies performed on the bodies that were recovered showed that the cause of death was "major blunt force trauma", i.e. the passengers and crew hitting something at high speed, namely the plane's debris itself, or even the surface of the ocean. There were also signs of a rapid decompression, signifying that they were subjected to a quick pressure drop, going from normal cabin pressure to outside air pressure (at 25000 feet, more than 7500 metres) in a matter of seconds. (Mercifully, this would probably have caused instant loss of conciousness, so the people aboard wouldn't have been aware of anything that was happening.) Thirdly, the debris were scattered over a relatively large area, meaning that the plane hadn't broken up on impact, but was already in fragments when it hit the ocean. All of the above brought the investigators to a logical conclusion: I-TIGI had suddenly and unexpectedly broken in mid-air. But how? The answer, sadly, came from careful analysis of the debris: traces of explosives were found on several pieces. (Interestingly, over the years several pieces of debris not belonging to I-TIGI turned up in the search area, including two life jackets and a flight helmet from the US Navy, and a fuel drop-tank of the kind that fits F-4, F-5, F-15 or A-7 planes. This may not be significant - the area was (and still is) often used for NATO exercises, involving also US Navy and US Air Force planes - but it's something to keep in mind.) Also, as is routine in these cases, investigators started gathering the logs of all nearby radar stations. The radar tapes they collected showed some radar "pings" that could have signified that there were other aircraft close to flight IH870 at the time of the crash, but to be fair could also be spurious returns. More interestingly, though, the tapes from some of the radar stations had been "misplaced" and were nowhere to be found, as were the operating logs for the night of the accident. Then there were some witness testimony to take into account. That night, two Italian Air Force F-104 fighters (a standard one-seater, and a TF-104 two-seater trainer variant, with a trainee pilot and two instructors, respectively, on board) were returning to Grosseto AFB from a training exercise near Verona, and their course brought them close to flight IH870 as it was passing Florence. The TF-104 (the instructors' plane) broadcast a "code 73" emergency, which means "general air defense alert". Upon landing at Grosseto, according to witness testimony, the trainee pilot was "visibly shaken", but he never discussed it with anybody. Also according to witness testimony (a general of the Carabinieri who was visiting a French Air Force Base in Corsica), there was a lot of military activity on the part of the French Air Force that night. What does this all add up to? We'll see next time, as we examine the political situation and a baffling discovery (also, people start dying). Mikl has a new favorite as of 12:00 on Aug 2, 2015 |
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Aug 2, 2015 11:51
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MetaFilter has a nice post today on Delta 191, the plane that 30 years ago today crashed just short of DFW because of a microburst, an intense downdraft smashing it into the ground.
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Aug 2, 2015 22:13
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Screaming Idiot posted:I just solved the mystery of every mysterious plane crash ever: gravity, the insidious creation of none other than the dastardly Sir Isaac Newton! Air crashes are hard for me to be unnerved by; you're in the air, I'm more amazed people aren't constantly crashing in to the ground mysteriously
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Aug 2, 2015 23:07
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Air crashes are fascinating to me because there seems to be such a razor-thin edge between "everything's fine" and "in about 30 seconds, everyone on board is going to be scattered in unidentifiable pieces in a 1/4-mile radius," and often even the best trained and most competent pilots can't do anything to change that outcome once things go bad.
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Aug 2, 2015 23:51
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pookel posted:Air crashes are fascinating to me because there seems to be such a razor-thin edge between "everything's fine" and "in about 30 seconds, everyone on board is going to be scattered in unidentifiable pieces in a 1/4-mile radius," and often even the best trained and most competent pilots can't do anything to change that outcome once things go bad. The best-trained and most competent pilots do change those outcomes. I'm pretty sure that's a pilot's real job: to keep his cool and do what needs to be done in that thirty seconds of truly critical time he'll see once in his career. Remember that when you're reading about air disasters, you are carefully selecting for the times when things went as badly as they possibly could, and you're not reading about the 500 other times when the flight crew's training and experience allowed them to quickly react to a problem and avert a disaster. Edit: Listen to the traffic between Sully Sullenberger and the tower, if you haven't done so. "Nah, Teterboro's too far. I'm just gonna go ahead and land in the Hudson. Ain't no thang."
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Aug 3, 2015 01:30
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Centripetal Horse posted:The best-trained and most competent pilots do change those outcomes. I'm pretty sure that's a pilot's real job: to keep his cool and do what needs to be done in that thirty seconds of truly critical time he'll see once in his career. Remember that when you're reading about air disasters, you are carefully selecting for the times when things went as badly as they possibly could, and you're not reading about the 500 other times when the flight crew's training and experience allowed them to quickly react to a problem and avert a disaster. It's amazing how everyone (towers, etc.) is so calm. I know that's their jobs to be calm and I'm glad for it, but it's still amazing to me. At my job, we have a few "emergencies" a week, and it really only involves someone passing out from low blood sugar combined with fear of needles or some such. It's pretty easy to stay calm with that kind of thing and I still see people panicking over it sometimes. This is only 3 and a half minutes long. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mLFZTzR5u84
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Aug 3, 2015 01:54
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Sully Sullenberger is the only known natural enemy of Ghost Flights  Speaking of which: Soon.
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Aug 3, 2015 02:33
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That's the problem with preventative measures. The accidents that tend to happen are big and flashy, because they are catastrophic enough that they were able to bypass all the safety mechanisms and gently caress poo poo up. Like I was on a cross-country flight that started to depressurize when one of the door seals started to go. The pilots declared an emergency, dropped altitude, put on oxygen masks just in case and landed us perfectly fine. The plane never depressurized to a point where the oxygen masks for passengers dropped, and really the only effect on me was I lost a day of vacation while they tried to find flights for everyone. In that case it was just someone had to fix the plane. If it was an inexperienced/overworked pilot, a plane in poor repair, etc maybe I'd be dead on some spooky ghost flight Also, another example (which annoys the poo poo out of me) is loving seatbelts and the people who go "well my cousin's friend's uncle was thrown clear of a burning car because they weren't wearing a seatbelt so they're bad" and ignore the thousands of lives seatbelts save every day.
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Aug 3, 2015 17:41
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ranbo das posted:Also, another example (which annoys the poo poo out of me) is loving seatbelts and the people who go "well my cousin's friend's uncle was thrown clear of a burning car because they weren't wearing a seatbelt so they're bad" and ignore the thousands of lives seatbelts save every day. Are there really anti-seatbelt people in this day and age? Like, not just skipping the seatbelt out of laziness, but actively believing that seatbelts are bad? This is blowing my mind.
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Aug 3, 2015 18:10
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Patattack posted:Are there really anti-seatbelt people in this day and age? Like, not just skipping the seatbelt out of laziness, but actively believing that seatbelts are bad? This is blowing my mind. There are motorcycle riders who think helmets are bad. Lots of people are stupid.
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Aug 3, 2015 18:15
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I had a friend that refused to wear a seat belt. Made him uncomfortable so he never bothered. Then he got into a minor fender bender and smashed his face into his steering wheel. Life lessons come hard for some people. He wears one now.
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Aug 3, 2015 18:19
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People love to think that stuff made to protect them is gonna hurt them and they have to smash their face or get measles before they learn the truth.
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Aug 3, 2015 18:37
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Last time, on the tale of I-TIGI: missing radar logs, shaken eyewitnesses, and lots of military aviation activity. Now, let's take a look at the political situation and a baffling finding. I'll cut right to the chase: 1980 was during the Cold War. Italy was (and still is) part of NATO, but its particular location meant that it was the "border", so to speak: Yugoslavia was just east, and south, across the Mediterranean, you had Egypt (Soviet-aligned until 1970) and Libya. Libya will be the focus of this history corner. While not formally allied with the Soviet Union, in 1969 Gaddafi took power in the country and nationalized its economy, including most foreign (mainly western) interests, and established a number of anti-western politics, while at the same time supporting several heads of state whom NATO didn't like a bit. I'm no historian, so you should read up on it yourself if you want details, but trust me on this: at the time (1980), NATO hated Libya in general and Gaddafi in particular, and the feeling was mutual. (This would culminate in 1988 in the Lockerbie bombing, but that's another story). Italy, however, was in a peculiar situation, in that it was deeply in debt with Libya. Gaddafi knew this very well, and used the fact to throw his weight around a bit in the Mediterranean, with the (implied) threat of "If you Italians bother us, we'll come a-knocking to collect the debts". This bullying included frequent incursions on part of the Libyan Air Force into Italian airspace, which civilian and military ATC were forced to mask by filing fake flight plans after the fact. Oftentimes Libyan planes would also "hide" themselves inside Italian airspace by turning off their transponders and flying real close to civilian traffic, so that active radar would have difficulty distinguishing them. Thus was the political situation at the time: a complete mess. But what does Libya have to do with I-TIGI? Well, I did promise you a baffling finding, didn't I? On July 18, 1980 (22 days after the disappearance of I-TIGI), the wreck of a MiG-23 fighter jet was found sitting on the side of a mountain in Calabria, southern Italy, about 300 km from where flight IH870 had gone down; the markings clearly identified the aircraft as being from the Libyan Air Force. Officially the wreck was found right after the crash, but according to eyewitness testimony and autopsy reports the pilot's body was badly decomposed, as if it had been there for a while before being discovered. Of course this could be a coincidence, exactly like the fact that, once an official inquest started and people began being called up as witnesses regarding the crash of I-TIGI, well... People start dying The original inquest into the crash of I-TIGI ended up blaming sudden structural failure for the accident. The Italian public wasn't satisfied with this answer, and in 1984 a penal proceeding for homicide was started (in Italy you can have a penal proceeding against "unknown accused people"). I won't mince words: there are a lot of suspicious deaths related to this case. Let's have a partial list. Maresciallo Mario Alberto Dettori: was present on the night of the crash at a radar station (one of those where the logbooks were "misplaced"). Allegedly told his wife "Somebody hosed up big time, lots of people are going to jail," and his sister-in-law "We were on the verge of war that night." Suicide by hanging, 1987. Maresciallo Franco Parisi: was present at a radar station on July 18th, 1980 (the official date of the MiG-23 crash), was called to testify about that and "supposed contradictions" in his initial deposition. Suicide by hanging, 1995 (two days after being called to testify). Captain Maurizio Gari: was on duty with Dettori the night of the crash. Heart attack, 1981. General Roberto Boemio: allegedly had "important informations" regarding the accident. Murdered in 1993. Colonels Ivo Nutarelli and Mario Naldini: they were the two instructors who were aboard the two-seater TF-104 who went close to I-TIGI the night of the crash and declared a general alert. Those of you who are aviation fans are probably already going  at the names, because they later both became members of the Frecce Tricolori (the Italian Air Force aerobatic team), and both died in 1988 in the sadly famous Ramstein accident.There are more, but these are the most significant and weird coincidences. But to be fair, they could be coincidences, in none of the above cases there was any proof of foul play (except for General Boemio, but even in his case there's no proof of a targeted killing). What does it all add up to? Next time, the conclusion.
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Aug 3, 2015 19:39
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Patattack posted:Are there really anti-seatbelt people in this day and age? Like, not just skipping the seatbelt out of laziness, but actively believing that seatbelts are bad? This is blowing my mind. Yep. They're stupid as gently caress. I was in a 40-40 head on collision and walked away with a wicked seatbelt burn and a contusion in my chest, and a bloody nose from hitting the airbag. If I hadn't been wearing my seatbelt I'm sure I would've gotten a face full of windshield at the very least.
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Aug 3, 2015 19:43
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Well, the thing about anti-seatbelt and and anti-helmet people is that those problems tend to take care of themselves.
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Aug 3, 2015 20:28
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Samfucius posted:I was recently reminded of the Georgetown Cuddler, a Hispanic man who would just walk into unlocked dorms and lie next to (or, if the girl was sleeping on a couch or other narrow space, on top of) students. The nickname got a lot of flack because it kinda downplayed the seriousness of the whole thing, but nothing else ever caught on. They never caught the guy either. Another interesting thing is that he always (as far as I know) left as soon as he was asked to. It's a measure of the amount of human depravity that I've read about over the years that in a sick and wrong sort of way I think this is kind of sweet, at least compared to the alternatives.
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Aug 3, 2015 20:58
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It's a measure of the amount of human depravity that I've read about over the years that in a sick and wrong sort of way I think this is kind of sweet, at least compared to the alternatives. Thanks to the internet these weirdos now trawl city streets and anime conventions. 
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Aug 3, 2015 21:17
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Crossposting from the news headline thread. 19th Century tabloid "Illustrated Police News" had some pretty amazing headlines.        Found a site that gathers 19th century news stories. https://extraordinaryincident.wordpress.com/ quote:A silly mechanic, whose upper lip was adorned with a pair of monstrous mustachios, applied to Mr. Rawlinson, at Marylebone police-office, for an assault-warrant against his shopmates, who had laid violent hands upon his cherished hairy monstrosities. He stated, that having taken to wear mustachios, “cos it vos fashionable, and made him look like a man of courage and a gentleman,” his fellow-workmen declared that he must pay half-a-gallon of ale to wet them, or must have them cut off. He refused to comply with either one alternative or the other, and they therefore stole his dinner, hustled him about, and laid sacrilegious fingers on his darling mustachios. He begged of Mr. Rawlinson to tell him what to do. “Do!” said Mr. R. “why, go to a barber, and get shaved.” “Can’t part with a hair,” said the carpenter. “Well, you may have a warrant, if you like,” said Mr. Rawlinson, “but I think you’d better not.” The carpenter then walked off without a warrant, saying “that it was the most prowoking thing as ever vos heard on, and very haggrawating, that he couldn’t vear his mustachios in peace.” quote:At a pic-nic near Keyport, New Jersey, yesterday a young couple, for the amusement of the party, went through a mock ceremony of marriage. The person who officiated was a stranger, and was selected for his clerical appearance. It was revealed after the ceremony that the stranger was an ordained minister, and that the marriage was entirely legal. The young couple were dismayed, and the proceedings were broken by lamentations of the bride, who was really engaged to be married to a gentleman who was not present at the pic-nic. Nckdictator has a new favorite as of 21:26 on Aug 3, 2015 |
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Aug 3, 2015 21:22
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Chichevache posted:Thanks to the internet these weirdos now trawl city streets and anime conventions. There were a gang of like 5 people doing this on a really busy 6-point corner in Chicago a couple summers ago. A goony looking dude zeroed in on me and came at me arms outstretched. When I said "please don't touch me" he looked so dejected. You would think that after thousands of rejections these people would stop but no. They were still there on my return trip. Boundaries you fuckin nerds.
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Aug 3, 2015 21:49
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:It's a measure of the amount of human depravity that I've read about over the years that in a sick and wrong sort of way I think this is kind of sweet, at least compared to the alternatives.
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Aug 3, 2015 22:13
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Wiggles Von Huggins posted:There were a gang of like 5 people doing this on a really busy 6-point corner in Chicago a couple summers ago. A goony looking dude zeroed in on me and came at me arms outstretched. When I said "please don't touch me" he looked so dejected. You would think that after thousands of rejections these people would stop but no. They were still there on my return trip. Boundaries you fuckin nerds. I always wanted one of them post/username combos thank you for this 
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Aug 3, 2015 22:17
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pookel posted:As a woman, let me say no, the idea of a guy breaking into my room and cuddling me while I sleep isn't sweet, it's really loving terrifying. There are also people who switch from weird and threatening non-lethal behavior to terrible murder at the drop of a hat, like the Boston Strangler, who spent years wandering Harvard Square groping women on the pretense of getting their measurements to submit to a modeling agency (that didn't exist). People just yelled at him and chased him away, and the cops didn't take the complaints seriously and gave him a cute name: The Measuring Man. Then one day he quit groping people and started busting into their houses to cave their skulls in with a pipe. He killed 13 people before they stopped him. Imagine if somebody noticed his creepy poo poo during all those years he stopped short of raping or killing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_DeSalvo
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Aug 3, 2015 22:23
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Patattack posted:Are there really anti-seatbelt people in this day and age? Like, not just skipping the seatbelt out of laziness, but actively believing that seatbelts are bad? This is blowing my mind. My dad wouldn't start the car until my brother and I put on our seat-belts, but he never wore his precisely because he almost lost his arms to a car fire he got trapped in. I'm still not sure exactly how to feel about that. Like, at least he knew my brother and I needed to wear ours. I wonder if therapy would have eventually gotten him comfortable with wearing a seat-belt again. Of course everyone is always so reluctant to go to therapy. 
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Aug 3, 2015 22:38
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Jack Gladney posted:Then one day he quit groping people and started busting into their houses to cave their skulls in with a pipe. He killed 13 people before they stopped him. Imagine if somebody noticed his creepy poo poo during all those years he stopped short of raping or killing.
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Aug 3, 2015 22:59
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pookel posted:I remember some true-crime book I read had a similar story about a mostly-harmless foot fetishist who would hold women down and lick their toes. Then he graduated to murdering them and cutting off their feet. I think that was an episode of The Wire.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:08
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An armed society is a polite society? 
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Aug 3, 2015 23:09
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pookel posted:As a woman, let me say no, the idea of a guy breaking into my room and cuddling me while I sleep isn't sweet, it's really loving terrifying. Well of course it's terrifying, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. But like I said, the alternative things he could have been doing are so much worse. It's like breaking into the White House with a suitcase nuke at 4 AM and then making the President a sandwich.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:10
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Dick Trauma posted:An armed society is a polite society? Any better? 
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Aug 3, 2015 23:15
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ALL-PRO SEXMAN posted:Well of course it's terrifying, and I wasn't suggesting otherwise. Funny you should mention that. Michael Fagan quote:Fagan entered the palace through an unlocked window on the roof and spent the next half hour eating cheddar cheese and crackers and wandering around. He tripped several alarms, but they were faulty. He viewed the royal portraits and rested on the throne for a while. Not exactly unnerving, but being able to walk into the bedroom of a head of state unchallenged during the Cold War is a bit tense when you think about it.
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Aug 3, 2015 23:42
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If you switched the verbs for these, one story would still be exactly bizarre and the other absolutely banal.
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Aug 4, 2015 08:19
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pookel posted:Air crashes are fascinating to me because there seems to be such a razor-thin edge between "everything's fine" and "in about 30 seconds, everyone on board is going to be scattered in unidentifiable pieces in a 1/4-mile radius," and often even the best trained and most competent pilots can't do anything to change that outcome once things go bad. As said, decent pilots can make a difference. See The Gimli Glider or my personal favourite British Airways Flight 9 which has this quote from the captain: quote:Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress. 
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Aug 4, 2015 09:41
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freelop posted:As said, decent pilots can make a difference. I prefer this quote from the same article: quote:It was, in Moody's words, "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse." Anyway, I'm a fan of the piloting in this incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_5390 quote:Suddenly, there was a loud bang, and the fuselage quickly filled with condensation. The left windscreen, on the captain's side of the cockpit, had separated from the forward fuselage. Lancaster was jerked out of his seat by the rushing air and forced head first out of the cockpit, his knees snagging onto the flight controls. This left him with his whole upper torso out of the aircraft, and only his legs inside. The door to the flight deck was blown out onto the radio and navigation console, blocking the throttle control which caused the plane to continue gaining speed as they descended, while papers and other debris in the passenger cabin began blowing towards the cockpit. On the flight deck at the time, flight attendant Nigel Ogden quickly latched his hands onto the captain's belt. Susan Price and another flight attendant began to reassure passengers, secure loose objects, and take up emergency positions. Meanwhile, Lancaster was being battered and frozen in the 345 mph wind,[3] and was losing consciousness due to the thin air. The plane landed just fine for everybody except the guy who was blown out the window. He had hospital treatment, returned to work five months later, and flew happily until he reached retirement age
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Aug 4, 2015 11:50
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Centripetal Horse posted:I think that was an episode of The Wire.
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Aug 4, 2015 15:00
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freelop posted:As said, decent pilots can make a difference. There was one flight back in the...80s?...Where an enormous amount of control wiring exploded and the plane had to be crash-landed basically using just the rudder. I wish I could remember the flight because the only reason anyone survived at all was due to the insane skill of the pilots involved. I think one of them was a guy who was taking the plane somewhere else and happened to be an instructor or something? I'm probably completely misremembering.
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