NW_Pilot's Trans-Atlantic Flight -- All the scary details...

"Jay Honeck" wrote:
Stuck in IMC over the North Atlantic, in the dark, no
primary displays, a possible carbon-monoxide leak, a known fuel leak --
I simply can't imagine it getting any worse.

Snakes.


;-)

Jay Honeck writes:

http://www.alexisparkinn.com/nwpilot's_tranatlantic_flight.htm

Man, if the new details of his story doesn't chill ya, nothing will!

There's no excuse for the G1000 to reboot. I guess nobody has to test
safety-of-life systems any more.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Ron A. writes:

Garmin needs to wake up! To have out-of-bounds sensor inputs reboot the
system continuously, especially something as unreliable as fuel sensors, is
horrible system design.

It implies that the system was designed by desktop programmers,
instead of people with experience building mission-critical computer
systems. I guess people will have to die to get bugs fixed.

There is never any excuse for a safety-of-life computer to reboot,
short of a power interruption.

What do you want to bet that there is a bunch of other safety critical,
software driven devices that are prone to this?

Unfortunately, there are probably a great many of them, including
anything built by Garmin.

Think about this for a second. What if there was some unexpected
transmission from a GPS satellite due to an incorrect software load to the
satellite that caused the G1000 to reboot continuously. Now extend that.
Take your Garmin portable GPS out to save your butt and it ALSO includes the
deficient algorithm and continuously reboots. Scary. I would bet the
portables share quite a bit of logic and decision trees with the panel
mounts.

Probably. And you can bet that nobody is verifying the generated
binaries bit by bit, the way people used to verify safety-of-life
software in the old days. If it compiles without errors, it's ready
to ship!

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

("Jay Honeck" wrote)
Steven, I'm curious to know what your thought processes were in that dire
situation.


"If I die out here, I'll never hear the end of it from the gang at
rec.aviation."


Montblack :-)

"John Gaquin" wrote in message
. ..

"Larry Dighera" wrote in message

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have

Do you have a machine to pick those nits, or do you do it all by hand?



Consider the source...




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Stefan wrote:
Larry Dighera schrieb:

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting.


He did everything by the book, but the book was wrong. A pilot is not
supposed to assume that an FAA approved book is wrong! In fact, I'm
scared of pilots who establish their own ad hoc procedures because they
think they know better than the book.

So you think Al Haynes and crew screwed with their DC-10 improvisation?
Personally, I think it is imperative that pilots create their own ad
hoc procedures when the book is wrong or nonexistent. I'm much more
afraid of pilots who keep doing what the book says and are afraid to
think and improvise.

Matt

Emily wrote:

Stefan wrote:

Larry Dighera schrieb:

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting.


He did everything by the book, but the book was wrong. A pilot is not
supposed to assume that an FAA approved book is wrong! In fact, I'm
scared of pilots who establish their own ad hoc procedures because
they think they know better than the book.


You're completely right. I'm an A&P, but I'm not going to sit up there
in IMC miles from land and try to diagnose a fuel problem if the other
option is heading for land and landing ASAP.

As an engineer, I'd do both! :-)

Matt

..Blueskies. wrote:

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message ps.com...
: http://www.alexisparkinn.com/nwpilot's_tranatlantic_flight.htm
:
: Man, if the new details of his story doesn't chill ya, nothing will!
: --
: Jay Honeck
: Iowa City, IA
: Pathfinder N56993
: www.AlexisParkInn.com
: "Your Aviation Destination"
:

See Jay, another reason to get the instrument rating!

Yes, Jay, this is very true! You can't scare yourself nearly as well
VFR as IFR!! :-)


Matt

On Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:40:52 -0500, Emily
wrote in
:

I'm not going to sit up there in IMC miles from
land and try to diagnose a fuel problem

Right. You'd have studied the fuel system while you were on the
ground.

Matt Whiting wrote:
Stefan wrote:
Larry Dighera schrieb:

A more experienced pilot who had studied the aux tank system may have
been able to mentally diagnose the cause of the fuel venting.


He did everything by the book, but the book was wrong. A pilot is not
supposed to assume that an FAA approved book is wrong! In fact, I'm
scared of pilots who establish their own ad hoc procedures because
they think they know better than the book.

So you think Al Haynes and crew screwed with their DC-10 improvisation?

Al Haynes' situation was a little different. He had multiple crew
members and a lot of backup on the ground. A single pilot doesn't
usually have the time to do troubleshooting like the United crew did.