Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/03/12/passenger-on-new-zealand-boeing-flight-says-pilot-said-he-lost-control-after-instrument-failure.html
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"A Boeing spokesperson said yesterday that under Boeing’s new ‘five nines availability’ policy, the controls should be unresponsive for no more than 11 seconds during the hundred and ninety minute flight from Sydney to Auckland. While acknowledging that the policy would allow controls to be inoperative for longer periods on more extended flights, the spokesperson was quick to dismiss suggestions that intermittent blackouts could pose a threat to passengers. ‘Eleven seconds? I mean, how far can you fall in eleven seconds? A few hundred meters, maybe a thousand, tops. On most flights, passengers won’t even notice a thing. If the aircraft suddenly drops like a stone, you just explain it away as ‘bad turbulence’ and everyone goes home happy. Most of the time, anyway.’
Passengers and crew aboard the Latam flight were all busy changing their underwear, and could not be reached for comment at press time."
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Hey we are all just living inside a simulation right?
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Was the plane plugged in?
Did they try rebooting it?
You did?
Ok, let’s try rebooting it again.
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The worst is to know this ISN’T done as an irony…
Flight Simulator is really used as a simulator on flight courses… They put you to fly and the instructor simulate some malfunction on your airplane (from locked landing wheels to a engine that gets into fire…)
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Fly-by-wire systems like that on the 787 have always scared me (as do the steer-by-wire systems that some new cars have) but dang, I would have hoped that a momentary glitch wouldn’t immediately command the plane to nose down. Guess we should always assume the worst.
Probably best not to fly on one of these things during the next solar flare event!
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There must be mechanical failsafes that return the control surfaces to neutral position in the event of steering input failure, right?
Right?
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I remember reading that some fly-by-wire aircraft are not stable unless the control surfaces are being actively commanded by the aircraft’s electronics. So effectively there may not be a neutral position that ensures level flight until the computers get over their little crisis.
Granted, I believe I’m thinking of high-performance fighter aircraft rather than passenger jets. But it’s Boeing, so you never know.
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My left leg does that some times. Especially going up stairs or something. For a literal split second it’s just gone. I can’t feel it. But then it comes back and I’m fine.
Luckily for me, I don’t have as far to fall if the outage lasts longer.
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Nor are you carrying hundreds of passengers on your back.
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Technically not true with all the microbes and mites on my body… 
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To be honest, I’ll wait until the official report comes out on what happened. I’m not simping for Boeing here, but there’s a lot of guesses and suppositions that go zipping around every time an event like this happens.
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Okay guys, who programmed a “vomit comet mode” during development for shits’n’giggles - and then forgot to remove it before, you know, using the code to fly actual planes?
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Do big airliners still have vacuum powered gauges and a whiskey compass as a backup?
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No Nixie Clock, no fly.
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“So was there an emergency evacuation after the plane landed?”
“No, that happened when the plane plummeted for 11 seconds.”
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I remember reading that the 737 Max used this advanced control system to allow it to fly stably, since the engines are too big to allow the wing to be in the inherently stable location as the previous 737s. And that’s what has caused it to crash a few times. So it’s not just fighter jets that need active stability systems these days.
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You’re essentially correct, but as I understand it MCAS – which I think is what you’re referring to – isn’t always active. It kicks in during specific parts of the flight, when the plane is in particular attitudes (the two MCAS-related crashes took place during the climb-out phase quite soon after leaving the runway). I think the 737 MAX is supposed to be stable without computer support when it’s in level flight.
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I’m actually getting scared to fly in Boeing planes now. I mainly fly to Japan, and both JAL and ANA operate twice as many Boeings as Airbuses. I mean I now intellectually it’s probably still only a 1/1,000,000 chance of the Boeing going down, but Airbuses aren’t suffering all these different faults at anything like the same rate.
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