Boeing 7*7: the saga continues…

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

Just now, Meecrob said:

No they didn't. Stop making stuff up.

Truth.

She got another crew member to look at it.

[Meecrob]

So you are trying to tell me that a flight attendant thought this factory-delivered-plugged emergency exit looked fishy, but all the mechanics were too dumb to figure it out. Also this flight attendant muttered it to passengers, rather than maintenance personnel?

No, sorry, nothing about this adds up.

Like, if you are telling the truth, I'd venture a guess that this person did not last as a flight attendant.

 

 

Edited January 7 by Meecrob

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

11 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

So you are trying to tell me that a flight attendant thought this factory-delivered-plugged emergency exit looked fishy, but all the mechanics were too dumb to figure it out. Also this flight attendant muttered it to passengers, rather than maintenance personnel?

No, sorry, nothing about this adds up.

Like, if you are telling the truth, I'd venture a guess that this person did not last as a flight attendant.

 

 

Ah - I see the problem.

You failed to understand what I was saying.

I said 

Quote

Flew one of those home a couple of days ago... the stew kept looking at the door and commenting 'that looks weird'.

The key word here is door.

As in THE DOOR to the plane.

I said nothing about a plug - which I had not heard about until this thread.

[Meecrob]

The door was plugged. As in blanked out with a piece of sheet metal to put it bluntly. The capacity the seating was configured to did not require the exit to be in operation. Evidently, the exit thought otherwise!

Look, I forgot the laughing emoji. Please understand I'm joking around with you, not trying to be some internet detective or something lol. You don't need to talk down to me. I apologize I did not explain plug vs door to you, but you clearly did not watch the video that lays out the details of the incident that is posted upthread. Its not my fault you are unaware of the details of the incident.

Edited January 7 by Meecrob

[tater]

3 minutes ago, Meecrob said:

As in blanked out with a piece of sheet metal to put it bluntly.

Not quite. A door was installed, it just lacks operational door functionality (no ability for crew/pax to unlatch and open, and no vent to equalize pressure). If the customer (or a future customer should the plane be sold) wish an alternate seating arraignment that ups the pax capacity such that it requires more exits, then they remove the door, and put a functional door in.

Least according to the entire vid about those doors straight out the Boeing manual on them.

[Meecrob]

So you are in total agreeance with me? Except you insist on calling it a "door." Doors have hinges, this object did not lol.

It might have been missing some hardware as well, we will find out in the investigation.

 

 

 

Edited January 7 by Meecrob

[JoeSchmuckatelli]

1 hour ago, Meecrob said:

Please understand I'm joking around with you

Walked into that one. 

Thank you for the explication.  I'm usually quicker on the uptake. 

[Meecrob]

3 minutes ago, JoeSchmuckatelli said:

Walked into that one. 

Thank you for the explication.  I'm usually quicker on the uptake. 

No worries, I figured I gave the wrong impression by the way you replied, lol.

Edited January 7 by Meecrob

[tater]

6 hours ago, Meecrob said:

So you are in total agreeance with me? Except you insist on calling it a "door." Doors have hinges, this object did not lol.

Well, it's removable, and has all the door hardware except user controls to unlatch it. <shrug>

Also, this means it has the same failure modes as the doors—minus being intentionally/accidentally opened by a human. Hence it's more likely a 1-off, as is has tons of commonality with all the other exit doors.

[PakledHostage]

Quote

The missing plug door was recovered on Sunday by a Portland school teacher identified only as “Bob” in the Cedar Hills neighbourhood, who found it in his back yard, the NTSB chair, Jennifer Homendy, said, adding that she was “very relieved” it had been found.

It seems that the missing door has been found. I don't have time to look for the press release, but the above quote came from an article in The Guardian (British source).

Edited January 8 by PakledHostage
fixed formatting

[Shpaget]

Bob, a schoolteacher in Portland, found the door plug in his back yard.

edit: sniped

Edited January 8 by Shpaget

[magnemoe]

12 hours ago, tater said:

Well, it's removable, and has all the door hardware except user controls to unlatch it. <shrug>

Also, this means it has the same failure modes as the doors—minus being intentionally/accidentally opened by a human. Hence it's more likely a 1-off, as is has tons of commonality with all the other exit doors.

As its not designed to be opened you could easy make it much stronger for less weight, solid metal rather than retractable bolts for one, flanges on the inside to rub it, you will need an inside cover unlike doors anyway so it make room for the flanges. 

[tater]

4 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

As its not designed to be opened you could easy make it much stronger for less weight, solid metal rather than retractable bolts for one, flanges on the inside to rub it, you will need an inside cover unlike doors anyway so it make room for the flanges. 

These aircraft can be in service for decades, and they can be sold to other airlines, or the current owner can decide to reconfigure them. As a result they wanted the ability to add/delete emergency exits.

[magnemoe]

Just now, tater said:

These aircraft can be in service for decades, and they can be sold to other airlines, or the current owner can decide to reconfigure them. As a result they wanted the ability to add/delete emergency exits.

Sure and its still an plug, remove inner cover remove the bolts holding it in place, remove and install door and new inner cover. An plug don't open outward, an emergency exit has to. 
And yes I assume older planes get put into the short hop routes who is more like flying busses, comfort is not an priority as flight is less than an hour. 

[Shpaget]

Apparently, the cockpit voice recorder was completely overwritten. For whatever (regulatory) reason, it keeps only 2 hours of recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsxttZvI3qo

 

[tater]

4 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Apparently, the cockpit voice recorder was completely overwritten. For whatever (regulatory) reason, it keeps only 2 hours of recording.

She answered that question poorly, while mentioning that it used to be 30 minutes, not 2 hours, etc. It was originally a tape I assume. Size was an issue. With solid state devices it could be long, and have a RAID just in case. A total no-brainer. Seems like a law should have specs for the survivability of data recorders, then add that it should make a mirror backup, and up the time to whatever is possible now in the size/power constraints. It's not like SSDs are expensive compared to a data recorder. A crappy google search not showing many options has a few for several thousand $ each. So it's how many terabytes you want. 1 TB holds 17,000 hours of voice.

A new std of 25 hours means maybe they are still using tape? LOL

[PakledHostage]

2 hours ago, tater said:

Seems like a law should have specs for the survivability of data recorders, then add that it should make a mirror backup, and up the time to whatever is possible now in the size/power constraints. It's not like SSDs are expensive compared to a data recorder. 

It's not that simple. There already are "laws" that mandate what voice and data recorders need to do: The Federal Aviation Regulations (e.g. FAR 25.1457). Changes to those regulations require a whole rulemaking process where industry, pilot associations, etc. get a chance to make their case for why the rule should or should not be implemented. The pilot's unions will inevitably have a lot of negative to say about any new standards that increase the amount of time the CVR stores in its loop, so it wouldn't be a straightforward rule change. The change that increased the CVR recording time to 2 hours was made in 2008 (ref. Federal Register 73 FR 12563 that was published following the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking cited in Federal Register 70 FR 9752)

You also won't be able to buy an off-the-shelf SSD that meets the FARs for crash and post-crash fire survivability (among other requirements). Any new hardware would be expensive, because it would have to be certified by the manufacturer as meeting the relevant updated FARs. That expense would have the industry protesting the cost of the change. It would take a lot of political pressure, time and expense to get changes to CVR recording length through. Two hours is what they managed to push through in the last change. It will be a while before it will ever be increased again.

[tater]

3 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

It's not that simple. There already are "laws" that mandate what voice and data recorders need to do: The Federal Aviation Regulations (e.g. FAR 25.1457). Changes to those regulations require a whole rulemaking process where industry, pilot associations, etc. get a chance to make their case for why the rule should or should not be implemented. The pilot's unions will inevitably have a lot of negative to say about any new standards that increase the amount of time the CVR stores in its loop, so it wouldn't be a straightforward rule change. The change that increased the CVR recording time to 2 hours was made in 2008 (ref. Federal Register 73 FR 12563 that was published following the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking cited in Federal Register 70 FR 9752)

You also won't be able to buy an off-the-shelf SSD that meets the FARs for crash and post-crash fire survivability (among other requirements). Any new hardware would be expensive, because it would have to be certified by the manufacturer as meeting the relevant updated FARs. That expense would have the industry protesting the cost of the change. It would take a lot of political pressure, time and expense to get changes to CVR recording length through. Two hours is what they managed to push through in the last change. It will be a while before it will ever be increased again.

I realize it's a mess, but off the shelf should in fact be fine with solid state, what's to break? (far easier to make shock proof than a tape or HDD assuming they ever switched to those).

I think you are right, the largest issue will be pilot concerns about privacy, which are legit.

In the modern world, it seems like it should be straightforward to buffer some period of time (say 2 hours), then start a SAVE that includes the 2 previous hours at the point any system warning goes off. The save would go forward X hours or until some reset was done (or alt/speed are 0 for some time period). A smarter CVR in short. Minus a warning indicator of some sort, scrubbed, never saved (& playback requires either removing device, or some sort of playback that notifies pilots (or a pilot body like a union) that it has happened).

Course there have also been calls to send CVR and/or FDR to the cloud so finding them (say over ocean crashes) is not required. Data at least has no privacy issues.

[PakledHostage]

Quite rightly, things aren't done on an ad-hoc basis on aircraft. For example, the BBC reports that the cockpit door flew open when the aircraft depressurized. That happened because, despite being locked and largely impenetrable from the cabin, there are rules that require the door to equalize pressure between the cockpit and cabin when something like this happens (and it has to work both ways, because the catastrophic depressurization could occur forward or aft of the door). Cockpit security was increased post 9-11, but it wasn't just a simple matter of adding better locks. There is no "let's just do this" in aircraft engineering.

Edited January 8 by PakledHostage

[tater]

1 hour ago, PakledHostage said:

There is no "let's just do this" in aircraft engineering.

The new standard is already set to 25 hours, why not just swap them out when the batteries need replacing? (make a 25 hour version that fits the old form factor if the form factor differs). CVRs and FDRs have a battery shelf life requirement of 6 years for the underwater beacon. Presumably this means that ever 6 years the boxes are opened, and the batteries removed and replaced.

Seems to me the existing FDRs can stay as a backup, but the data cable that supplies it should just add a splitter, and send the same data to the sat broadband.

If they did the same with the CVR, they could buffer for a long time in the cloud, but that data could be encrypted and sent straight to NTSB cloud storage. Opening a file on that server would then require a mishap investigation, and perhaps even a judge (so that the pilots would have a legal say in a case like this one where they are alive).

 

 

[PakledHostage]

The standard for CVRs is 2 hours, not 25 hours. The CVR and FDR are two different boxes. 

 

[tater]

6 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

The standard for CVRs is 2 hours, not 25 hours. The CVR and FDR are two different boxes. 

 

Sorry, misread.

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/Pages/cvr_fdr.aspx

Quote

Specifications

Flight Data Recorder
Time recorded		25 hour continuous
Number of parameters		18 - 1000+
Impact tolerance		3400Gs / 6.5 ms
Fire resistance		1100 degC / 30 min
Water pressure resistance		submerged 20,000 ft
Underwater locator beacon		37.5 KHz; battery has shelf life of 6 years or more, with 30-day operation capability upon activation

 

Cockpit Voice Recorder
Time recorded		30 min continuous, 2 hours for solid state digital units
Number of channels		4
Impact tolerance		3400Gs / 6.5 ms
Fire resistance		1100 degC / 30 min
Water pressure resistance		submerged 20,000 ft
Underwater locator beacon		37.5 KHz; battery has shelf life of 6 years or more, with 30-day operation capability upon activation

 

The woman doing the pres conferences on this event said a day ago that the standard for new construction aircraft was supposed to be 25 hours on voice as well. Not sure what year that starts.

Edited January 8 by tater

[PakledHostage]

8 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

The standard for CVRs is 2 hours, not 25 hours. The CVR and FDR are two different boxes. 

 

Please help me out here @mikegarrison!? They don't seem to be understanding what I am saying...

 

[tater]

Wonder why they can't simply can't retrofit digital units with more memory, though.

2 minutes ago, PakledHostage said:

They don't seem to be understanding what I am saying...

I understand what they are currently. I know that the NTSB lady in the vid pressers stated that she wants the CVR time lengthened, and for existing aircraft, not just whatever year they start being longer on new aircraft (cause she said that).

Sorry, I looked for the clip, but between the couple pressers, it's well over an hour. She discussed this though, I watched it. That there is a new std otw for new aircraft, and she'd like to see it for existing aircraft because it is valuable data for safety. <shrug>

She said Europe already has this standard I think.

Edited January 8 by tater

[PakledHostage]

5 minutes ago, tater said:

I know that the NTSB lady in the vid above states that she wants the CVR time lengthened, and for existing aircraft, nit just whatever year they start being longer (cause she said that).

What the NTSB wants is only one side of the negotiation. Please see the NPRM in the US Federal Register for the rule change that led to the current 2 hour requirement. That should give you a sense of the work that was done (and what was considered) to reach the current consensus. The comments responding to that NPRM may also be available online (I haven't looked); they would give you insight into opposing positions. Similar discussions would be required today before the FAA could mandate fleet wide retrofit of CVRs with the type of capabilities you envision.

(I have been involved first-hand in FAA rulemaking processeses. Trust me, it is very bureaucratic... The meetings are T.E.D.I.O.U.S. tedious. ...Imagine a room full of Vogons and Pakleds and you'll be on the right track.)