Plane crash in NY

[AbsurdNY]

My prayers go out to everyone that might of had family on last nights crash.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090213/...lane_into_home

[mj213]

That's just horrible.

[AbsurdNY]

That's just horrible.

Yea it is. You would think after all the problems that planes have had with ice building up on the wings they would come up with a way to have it melt off fast. Hopefully they start designing and testing some anti icing systems soon.

[Father Time]

They actually have thought of a way to deal with this issue (ice bulid up on this type of aircraft), it has a de-icing system on the tips of its wings that pumps air through the edges of the wing which makes the surface of the wing vibrate a little so ice doesn't build up.

Not saying it's perfect, things do fail and this could have been something that did.

[f22a1accord]

gah thats crazy. all my prayers are out for there family's. and yet again thats why i dont ride in planes. never have and never will

[topcop182]

While I do feel bad for those on board and all involved, I would encourage everyone to look at the big picture with plain safety. In the time it took me to write this I am sure at least a few people have died as a result of traffic crashes throughout the US. Flying is much safer then driving, but we hear of only the bad things because when it does happen, it is rare.

[deevergote]

Very true. Planes are still safer than cars.

The only thing that's unnerving about a plane is that your life is in the hands of the pilot, the engineers, and the maintenance mechanics, as well as the weather. If something unexpected happens, you have NO control. At least a car offers some control (sometimes...)

I wouldn't stay off of a plane for fear of a crash... but when it happens, it's sad. Those people had no chance as soon as it started going down.

[Rusty]

While I do feel bad for those on board and all involved, I would encourage everyone to look at the big picture with plain safety. In the time it took me to write this I am sure at least a few people have died as a result of traffic crashes throughout the US. Flying is much safer then driving, but we hear of only the bad things because when it does happen, it is rare.

I think another reason its such a big deal when a plane crashes is b/c its usually a Mass of people, where a fatal car crash is usually only a couple of people.

But yeah it really does suck and plane crashes seem to be more and more common these days

[owequitit]

Yea it is. You would think after all the problems that planes have had with ice building up on the wings they would come up with a way to have it melt off fast. Hopefully they start designing and testing some anti icing systems soon.

Airplanes in this category already have anti-icing/deicing systems (yes, they are distinctly different). Anti-icing systems prevent ice formation. De-icing systems remove ice AFTER it has accumulated. A system that can do either, can be classified as either.

However, there are occasions, when storms created by mother nature build ice faster than airplanes can remove them. That is like saying we need to build technology that can stop a Hurricane. It isn't likely to happen. Aircraft are VERY weight sensitive and the economics and realities of flight dicatate that they can't be impenetrable fortresses of safety.

There are also a lot of occasions where we don't have the equipment, or technology to adequately predict the actual icing in a storm. It isn't uncommon to run into it accidentally in a place where it should not have been, or to find it is worse than was forecast, expected or reported by previous airplanes.

Once you are in it, you are in it. If the aircraft can't remove the ice faster than it is accumulating, then you have two choices. 1) Climb back above it. 2) Descend below it. If the event you are picking up ice that fast, being able to outclimb it can be iffy at best. Below is the ground. Take your pick.

Pilots, flight crews, and aircraft are designed to deal with as much as is humanly possible. They do so with a VERY high success rate. Still, sometimes shit goes wrong.

Larger jets usually have heated surfaces that use engine bleed air (hot air piped from the engine) to warm the leading edges of the wings, which makes them less prone to icing. Smaller airplanes have deice boots, which are big rubber boots that get filled with air, inflate and puff up causing the ice to fracture and shatter off of the airplane. The boots are retracted, ice is allowed to form, and the process is repeated all over again. These systems are somewhat less effective than the heated systems, but the heated systems require a lot of engine bleed air and power that the smaller engines just don't have. In fact, on many smaller airplanes, if they attempted to use hot air, it would be cold by the time it got to the end of the wing. Electrical systems have also been used, but they are hugely expensive, heavy, unsafe and require gigantic generators that add more weight and complexity to the airplane. There is no easy solution.

Also, there are great demands on airlines to operate in all sorts of weather. Airplanes are extrememly costly to own and operate (largely as a result of the legislation created to make them safer) and thus it is not beneficial to keep them on ground any more than you absolutely have to. Add to that the realities of passengers these days, and you have an environment that tries to get the job done safely, but occasionally something goes wrong. You have probably seen the type of passenger or may even be the type of passenger. You know, the ones you see on A&E's "Airline?" The people who if their flight gets cancelled due to bad weather that the airline can't control, want a million dollars and a free stay in a 5 star platinum rated hotel because they were "inconvenienced?" Yeah, well, now you know what the potential alternative is. The other aspect is that one flight cancelled or delayed in New York affects people in Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Phoenix and Seattle too, because the plane that is now stuck on the ground in New York was supposed to fly to all of those cities that day, and now it can't. No plane, no flights. No flights=stranded passengers. Stranded passengers = lost revenue and unhappy customers.

I don't know when the Colgan Air Dash 8-400 started picking up ice, nor do I know their internal policies. I do know this though, most airlines have policies that limit the amount of ice you can be accumulating and still continue the approach, the reason being that if you get too low, or too slow, you won't have enough power to get back out of it. It is possible they started picking up ice so fast that it was determined that the safest course of action was to continue. They may also have just underestimated its affect on the airplane. They are likely to have seen this thing routinely, and as such, may have become complacent about it. It is also possible that the deice system failed, in which case the only alternative would have been to try to make the airport, because the airplane is landing one way another anyway. Ice Cubes don't fly.

[owequitit]

Very true. Planes are still safer than cars.

The only thing that's unnerving about a plane is that your life is in the hands of the pilot, the engineers, and the maintenance mechanics, as well as the weather. If something unexpected happens, you have NO control. At least a car offers some control (sometimes...)

I wouldn't stay off of a plane for fear of a crash... but when it happens, it's sad. Those people had no chance as soon as it started going down.

Yes, but the average training of the average flight crew would rival the training and professionalism of a doctor. People have no problem putting their life in a doctor's hands. Coincidentally, more people die every year of medical mistakes than in plane crashes...

The fact is that when it is your time, it is your time. The only two certainties in this life are being born and dying.

[h22sparkle]

Before they left the ground they should have used type 1 fluid then type 4. If they didnt use that and monitor the build up then someone wasnt paying attention when the shit started building up.

[owequitit]

I think another reason its such a big deal when a plane crashes is b/c its usually a Mass of people, where a fatal car crash is usually only a couple of people.

But yeah it really does suck and plane crashes seem to be more and more common these days

You are correct about the sensationalism of airplane crashes. It gets attention because a lot of people die at once. How often do you hear about fatal small airplane crashes where 1 person dies, even though they happen several orders of magnitude more frequently? You don't. Occasionally, maybe, but nowhere near on the order they occur. Most of those are caused by stupidity on the part of the pilot.

Some simple facts about aviation.

1) Flying on an airline is 99.9999996 percent safe. It it were 99.99 percent safe, there would be 3 major fatal accidents every day.

2) More people in the United States die every 6 months in fatal car crashes than have EVER died worldwide in ALL fatal airplane accident in the last 100 years.

3) If air travel were as safe as driving a car, there would be 1 crash with 120 deaths every single day of the year.

4) Every day, approximately 4.25 MILLION people board an airliner to fly. That is equivalent to the total population of Norway flying every single day.

5) At any given moment, there are approximately 366,144 people in the air.

6) In 2000, US based commercial airlines flew 11,022,759 flights covering 7,148,928,000 miles, which is the equivalent of 13,000 round trips to the moon.

7) Of the 2.5 million Americans that died in 1998, 700,000 died from heart disease, 500,000 died from cancer, 50,000 died from medical mistakes in hospitals, and more than 20,000 died in car crashes. Not a single person died in a major air crash. In 1994, which had a higher than average number of disasters, 239 people died.

8) In 1995, there were an average of 22 fatalities per million automobile trips and only .14 fatalities per million airplane trips. That made flying in an airplane 157 times safer than driving.

9) Between 1993 and 1999 you were 37 times more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. Flying an airplane long distance was 8 times safer than driving long distance.

10) You have a 1 in 8 million chance of dying on a major domestic US airline flight, and a 1 in 2 million chance of dying on a small commuter airplane (such as the one that crashed in Buffalo). You have a 1 in 5 million chance on an international flight. The worst fatality rate of all is in 3rd world developing countries where you have a 1 in 500,000 chance of dying in a plane crash. That is like saying 1 day out of 1,300 years, which would make your odds on a US domestic flight on the order of 1 day in 20,800 years. Yes, you are likely to have better odds of winning your State's lottery.

11) If a thousand people flew every day for 30 years, only one of them would likely die.

12) In 86% of airline accidents, nobody dies at all, even though studies show that people believe that in 75% of airline accidents there are 1 or more fatalities.

12)Since the mid 1990's air travel has gotten safer. In fact, while the perception is that there were more total fatalities in the 1990's than the 1980's that is only half the story. From the 1980's to the 1990's the average number of fatalities per year increased 12.5%, but the part they don't tell you is that the number of people flying increased OVER 30%, so your odds of being a fatality went DOWN significantly.

Aviation relies on a VERY proactive "never again" philosophy. Often times, changes, or retrofits are made after 1 incident that might prevent it from ever happening again, even if they aren't 100% sure that was the cause. If it even LOOKS like it might be a significant problem it is typically rectified immediately.

13) To put this into perspective, over the last 15 years, the number of annual deaths due to car crashes has increased. We are currently hovering around 40,000-50,000 deaths annually. This number has not changed significantly, despite all of the mandated "advances" in safety features for cars over the last 5-10 years. Surely, if you were to look at it significantly, it probably is a slightly lower %, because we are mostly likely driving more, but it isn't nearly as significant a change as what aviation has achieved, and yet the average person FEELS safer in a car because of 2 reasons. 1) They are in control. No matter how bad they are, how incapable, or how poorly trained, you will never convince the average person they are less capable than a highly trained driver or pilot. The EGO will not allow them to accept that. 2) People assume that airplanes don't LOOK any different than they used to, so there must not be any tangible advances in safety, when in fact that couldn't be further from the truth. They buy a car and see the 14 airbags, auto pretensioning seatbelts, auto cruise control, auto emergency braking systems, lane departure preventions systems, side impact protection, etc. and assume that makes them safer. The problem with this philosophy is that the best way to survive an accident is to PREVENT it so that it never happens, not load the car with crap that hopefully helps you survive it.

The issue with aviation safety is that people are blinded by a false sense of security. They FEEL safer driving a car, but they really aren't. The media is a terribly biased and outright cause of this misconception. Aviation safety is a prime example of media sensationalism, journalistic irresponsibility and out and out propaganda at its boldest. They are lying to you.

[Father Time]

8) In 1995, there were an average of 22 fatalities per million automobile trips and only .14 fatalities per million airplane trips. That made driving in a car 157 times safer than driving.

Than driving? I have NEVER read a post where you typo'd. I am shocked. (Not that I am saying I can do better in ANY WAY! )

That is some really interesting facts though. I am scared of flying but that is ONLY because I have no control of what happens though. I do agree, when it's your time it's your time.

[AbsurdNY]

Wow Owequitit you really know your stuff. That was a good read on the facts. I never knew all that. I'm guessing you are in the aviation industry?

[owequitit]

Before they left the ground they should have used type 1 fluid then type 4. If they didnt use that and monitor the build up then someone wasnt paying attention when the shit started building up.

Deicing fluid doesn't last forever, nor does it really prevent further ice formation. It removes the ice that was there and that is it. You do have some protection against formation, but it isn't significant enough to allow airplanes that have been deiced, but have no anti-ice or deice equipment to go fly. Had the airplane not been deiced properly, it never would have left the ground, or would have crashed shortly after doing so. Ice Cubes don't fly. That is why they give you a window in which you must be off the ground before you have to be deiced again.

Deice fluid doesn't prevent buildup in flight once the ice has been removed, especially not after a full flight with a descent back into the soup.