Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "Mentour Pilot" channel.

  1. 34:20 One has to wonder the logic of allowing fuel station to be built next to runway!
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  2. As a non-pilot, I'm wondering why in case of engine problems the failing engine is not identified by individually controlling each engine in sequence. For example, in case of this incident, bringing 1st engine to idle and pushing 2nd engine to go-around power would probably run very nicely, but then trying to run 1st engine on go-around power and 2nd engine on idle should have caused smoke and vibrations. That should have made it obvious which engine is the problematic one. Another idea that immediately comes to mind is why is an engine without engine fire shut down at all? Wouldn't running it at near idle reduce drag and usually avoid the problems with vibration and similar issues with partially failing engine? Bringing such partially failed engine back to use in case the only remaining engine encounters problems later in the flight would be much faster than trying to restart totally shutdown engine.
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  3. How about making similar episode for Air France Flight 447?
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  4. 24:12 Why were the approach and runway lights enabled while the runway wasn't available because of snow blower? Wouldn't it be much safer to turn off any signals that make the runway appear as if it were available for landing?
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  5. It appears that if the pilots are expected to always follow the rule that if reversers have been activated, go-around is no longer an option, it should be enforced by the aircraft software. For example, disable enabling engine forward thrust for 15 seconds.
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  6. This was the result of the cheese theory after rats have eaten all the cheese.
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  7. Awesome shirt!
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  8. I guess ATC requires you to say the magic words "mayday mayday". Simply saying "declaring emergency" sounds just like a polite request for the ATC, instead.
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  9. Great video! It's hard to understand how these professionals fail to trust the attitude indicator. If your inner ear disagrees with the attitude indicator in a modern aircraft, it's always your inner ear that has the incorrect reading. The changes that your inner ear is more accurate than tripple redudant laser gyro is practically zero and you should keep that in mind at all times.
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  10. I guess it just underlines how hours in long routes have very little to do with the landing. I'm more and more thinking that instead of counting hours, the pilot experience should be counted on trips.
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  11. This case sounds a lot like the "standards inspector" status of the captain was more probably result of corrution than actual performance.
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  12.  @thesisypheanjournal1271  Yes, but you should mentally work your way to at least the nearest exit on both sides of the plane because in case of huge fire, your nearest exit cannot be used. As a general rule, you should count the number of seats to two nearest exits so that in case of black smoke filling the cabin you can still count how many seats you have traveled to find the exit. It's also worth thinking how things would change if the cabin were upside down. Could you still get out after opening your seat belt?
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  13. Great video! I think publishing this kind of videos with all the speculation clearly underlined is valuable. All the clues that point to missing AC power seem definitely plausible for this accident.
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  14. Awesome production quality in this video. The only thing I would prefer different is the camera run from 0:07 to 0:16 in the intro where the camera movement seems to lack any kind of inertia (of course, being a simulated video, this is easily possible) and the resulting video looks weird. Other than that, this video has better production quality than most TV shows. Maybe add some acoustic panels to the room you use for the spoken parts to reduce echo, too. That's more like personal preference, the echo makes it sound more like a normal room but makes the speech slightly harder to understand.
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  15. Exactly! I fel that everybody was trusting that "somebody else" is taking care of things so they don't need to care. Especially if having to care would require filling some official form.
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  16.  @HuwRichards-e2z  1974 Health and Safety at Work act sounds great. Here in Finland, it's your duty to only take action if somebody is already harmed (for example, traffic accident or fell in stairs) but we have no requirement to take any preventive action which I consider pretty silly.
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  17. Great video and thank you for underlining the culture effects!
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  18.  @naders1771  How about the angle the strap is tensioned? At least here in Finland, max legal angle is 60 degrees even for road transport and that will have much smaller g-forces than aircraft.
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  19.  @jackielinde7568  I'd expect any marking changes on airports to leave a papertrail roughly visible to moon so ATC should be able to get information about new markings on taxiways.
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  20. But the camera horizontal trimming is slightly off.
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  21. Good point. I was watching this video in somewhat dim room with antigrare display and that part seemed totally okay, but it's easy to imagine well lit room with glossy screen not being able to see anything else but A, B and C and some moving dots in the background.
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  22. Superb video as usual! I was a bit worried already when I didn't see the video as early as I expected.
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  23. The problem with DC80 series was that the yoke didn't move the elevator but control tabs at the rear edge of the elevator. And standard procedure was to verify that yoke moves the control tabs which it indeed did in this accident plane, too. The problem was that the actual elevator was moved by the combination of airspeed and control tabs and that couldn't be tested when the plane was standing still. And that design was selected to avoid needing any hydraulics or electronic motors which could fail, too.
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  24. I think creating more this kind of videos would be valuable. There're already many people creating videos about plane crashes but this angle to plane failures isn't often seen.
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  25.  @boltar2003  It was actually airlines that cheaped on the second sensor because that was optional. Boeing can be blamed for not being straight about what happens if the single sensor fails mid-air. Had they honestly told that having single sensor failure causes so much difference in the flight characteristics that the pilots need different certification no airline would have skipped the second sensor.
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  26. Is there some specific movement that this pilot in training is failing to do or is the level really bad in this sim? For example, are you supposed to raise the lever before moving it or to push it to right before moving it? It looks like the pilot in training raises the lever, moves it but drops the lever downwards before getting it to final position which makes the end of move really ackward.
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  27. I'm also from IT background and in my experience most systems have absolutely awful error messages that make the problem much worse. In most cases no UX designer ever designed any of those messages and you end up sending more or less badly written error messages to end user that is already under high stress already. The changes of the end user understanding the error message correctly are slim to none. Then there's also huge collection of badly written software that reports WRONG errors all the time. I hope that the software that planes have would have at least high enough quality to not report incorrect error messages.
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  28. Great story! I would have wanted to hear a bit more about how the information about the accidents were collected back then? Without cockpit voice recorders, and I assume without flight recorders either, how did they figure out the cause for any crash without survivors?
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  29. Superb video! I thought that the 3D visualisation of the events were great in older videos but this video just raised the bar a lot! Kudos to whoever did the 3D graphics and livery.
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  30.  @MentourPilot  A better design would be one where such physical stops are visible for the walk around inspection and the flight should be cancelled if a physical stop is damaged.
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  31. Your video production quality is getting ridiculous high! And I don't mean that it's a problem. As for the content, it seemed that TransAsia had get-there-itis with their captain training program. I would assume that there were cultural issues, too. If I've undertood correctly, denying a request is considered very rude in many Asian cultures and that would make it harder for the Captain A to be denied the type certification. The pilot certification seemed a lot like p-hacking in bad research where you keep retrying until you get borderline acceptable result and then declare the test successful immediately. I fully agree that this was systematic failure within the company instead of the pilot just doing things against better judgement. This was underlined by the fact that the first airline with this person correctly grounded him or her because of multiple problems in training. I'm still wondering how on earth did this captain have successful career in the airforce? I would have expected airforce to be more strict about all pilot abilities than any commercial airline. I think pilot certification should be based on scientific measurements. For example, a valid method would be to decide minimum acceptable success rate for any task during the training, say 95%. And this success rate should be defined while designing the course, not per applicant. And if you fail some task (e.g. engine failure during takeoff in the simulator) you have to then repeat the task so many times that you can exceed the required rate – in practice it would mean that if you fail the task once, you have to then successfully repeat the same task for total of 19 times to get the success rate to 95% or better. And that would just barely demonstrate that you have 95% success rate for correctly handling the situation. It seemed that the Captain A had 25% or less success rate for handling engine failure during take-off even in the simulator. In real world situation the stress level would be even higher so the probability is going to get only worse.
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  32.  @rutherd9616  Yes, software can have all kind of problems. However, redundant computer systems (like those in flight computers) do not suddenly fail because there isn't a single part where failure could cause failure for the whole computer system. Then there's MAX and MCAS where the system was intentionally programmed to not switch to working AoA sensor due FAA rules.
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  33. I'm also software engineer and my thoughts were exactly the same. However, if I understood correctly, this design was selected to allow having big control surfaces (elevator) without "power steering" (hydraulics or electric motors). In theory that should have resulted in system with less things to go wrong because if you don't need power to control the elevator the power source cannot fail (e.g. loss of hydraulic fluid). The problem was that the walk around could only check that the control tabs (small flaps at the rear of the elevator) move with the yoke becuse the actual elevator was moved by combination of control tab and airspeed. Without enough airspeed, there was nothing that could have enough force to move the elevator so it couldn't be easily tested. The real problem was that there was no standard procedure to verify that the elevator surface is free to move. The elevator hinge was just assumed to be working okay. And the fact that the surface was 9 m above the ground made sure that pilot couldn't just try to move the surface by hand during the walk around. Also, the fact that this plane normally had 3 second latency from control input to actual plane reaction still baffles my mind. How on earth anybody can react to unexpected things with such a latency? Also, pilot induced oscillation would be more than expected with such a latency.
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  34.  @fluchschule  I think the idea of averaging input for dual input is based on assumption that both pilots are trying to input optimal input but they make random mistakes while moving the stick. If that were true, then averaging the inputs should statistically reduce that random error and end up with better input data. However, when pilot has lost situational awareness, the stick input is no longer correct input + random error but totally wrong. The problem for the computer system is that there's no way to tell from the stick movement if the pilot has lost situational awareness. I'm currently thinking that dual input is nearly always so serious problem that warning about it should have priority even over GPWS. If pilot is not in total panic, they should be able to press the little red button in the stick after hearing "dual input" to make it single input again. And GPWS warning could be played after that.
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  35.  @Eternal_Tech  I guess nobody would be reaching for their luggage after that! 😉
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  36. Didn't airplanes during this incident have optical star navigation available?
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  37. 7:55 If you've already landed on the runway with autobrakes, is it possible to do go-around even if you haven't selected reverse thrust? I thought that autobrakes are going to reduce your speed very rapidly even without applying reverse thrust if the traction is good.
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  38.  @masonmunkey6136  That's my understanding, too. However, applying autobrakes with a lot of braking power should cut the speed with deceleration of maybe 0.5-1.0 g and if you release the brakes and try to do go-around, how much time do you have to make the decision until the speed has dropped too much to do that?
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  39. MCAS could not make any extra noise or FAA would have denied the same type certificate for Max. The point of the same "type certificate" is that the operation of the plane must be the same. If 1964 version of 737 didn't make noise or show visual warnings, neither can Max.
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  40.  @mrubin3770  Even the solid state gyroscope in your phone is miles better than anything inside your head. A couple of old Android phones in phone holders would be a good start.
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  41.  @Skarry  Compass cannot tell your flying attitude, only compass direction.
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  42.  @Skarry  They do orient towards the greatest acceleration but if you're accidentally e.g. flying a loop, the greatest acceleration is from the center of the loop outwards and that's where your acceleration based device will point. You need a real gyro based attitude sensor to know the real orientation. Cell phone gyro may or may not be good enough but a simple acceleration sensor will not be enough.
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  43. ​ @VWaudiRULEs  The important point is that MCAS information was witheld because it was required to get the FAA certification. The same reason was why the system didn't have redundant AoA sensor. Blaming "software error" is a lie - probably invented by Boeing marketing department.
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  44. I think MAX should have deserved AD for its AOA sensor failure causing MCAS to run nose rapidly towards the ground. And I guess that wasn't done due financial repercussions.
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  45. Superb video and very nice graphics, too! The message is really important, too, and I feel that preventive mental health treatment is poorly organized all around the world. And I definitely agree that if you know that your career will end if you get diagnosed, that definitely sets really high bar to even seek treatment that could potentially give you a diagnose. And avoiding getting diagnosed while having actual mental issues is a very very bad situation. Final decisions do not work even for criminal punishment (like 3 felonies and you get automatic death sentence) because that only takes off any options from a person that might get himself or herself into situation where that final decision would be automatically applied. It really doesn't matter if it's death sentence, or career ending move in a country without proper social support like the US.
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  46.  @DAndyLord  I think it would be the best to have 1:1ratio chip and always record the full frame. That way you could rotate the image in post production and maybe reframe it a bit if you're lucky. Modern cellphones could easily capture 4096x4096 resolution video.
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  47. Was there any additional info about that engine in later investigation? Was shutting it down really the best option they had?
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  48. Superb video again! Great work!
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  49. Amazing video! I didn't know that the IRS was accurate enough to measure latitude and true north from the earth movement alone while sitting on the field. Do the aircraft systems nowadays allow using GLONASS, BDS or GALILEO in addition to GPS signals?
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  50. I think you get criminally low likes to total viewer count for these videos! These would deserve more likes, too, and not just views.
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