Posted on 10/23/2009 4:53:30 AM PDT by Erik Latranyi
Many a person has missed their stop on a bus or train at one time or another because they were engrossed in a weighty conversation or a book.
But when the pilots of Northwest Airlines flight 188 became distracted it had more serious consequences as they overflew their Minneapolis destination by 150 miles.
"They were in a heated discussion over airline policy and they lost situational awareness," the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) explained.
When the pilots got their "situational awareness" back they turned the Airbus A320 around and landed it safely on Wednesday evening, apparently without any of the 144 passengers realising they had taken a roundabout route.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Thanks for editing my post to change the meaning of it.
No? Look here.
http://www.yenra.com/handheld-gps/
You're welcome, I enjoyed confusing you with the facts.
I really don't see how you came to that conclusion and I have no idea why you decided to rag on me. We were both responding to the same poster in the same manner when you started ragging on me. What's up?
I never heard of a handheld GPS with a built-in barometric altimeter.
But they are available, and Im sure it would come in handy for measuring cabin altitude.
http://www.yenra.com/handheld-gps/
That's what I posted. Exactly. And then I gave you a link to to educate you.
Truce? Just tell me where we clashed in the past?
It’s all tongue-in-cheek, but factual. A gentle ribbing. Hey, we’re all brothers here — I save my ammo for Democrats!
How many names are you posting under? I posted #30, in response to someone else, and you never posted anything before that. I was pointing out (with the link I provided) that GPS's with baro altimeters do exist, as a simple search produced (thus the link), and I could see why they would be handy for some pilots.
I can have fun with the best here! I save my ammo for the marxists.
Correct. I just noticed that you had posted to him:
"I never heard of a handheld GPS with a built-in barometric altimeter."
and took the time to give you a link to examples.
Yes, once in a while one slips in over here, but for the most part they're over at DU, HuffPo, Daily Kos, and, sadly, ABC, CBS, MSLSD, CNN, PBS, Time, Newsweek, LA Times, NY Times, the WA Compost, both houses of Congress, and the White House. As a partial listing.
Here is a link to a Garmin response on why they have barometric altimeters in GPSs.
http://gps.about.com/b/2008/04/12/gps-vs-barometric-altimeters.htm
At least we can count on the Chicago mob to keep them away.
Which happened to be the same link I gave to him in my post #30, to illustrate that they do exist despite the fact I had never heard of them before.
All fine but I don't think (not 100 percent on this, but fairly sure) those handhelds are legal for primary navigation anyway. Put another way, a private pilot would be ill-advised to pull one out during an FAA examination in the aircraft, under normal circumstances.
But I would think without the local altimeter setting (made available to pilots while in the air, by radio with ATC or other means) there is no correction factor for the baro altimeter function, and the GPS is therefore probably more accurate (though I don't know their specs on the spatial error probability for that model).
That might explain why the first commenter complained about the altitude being 21 meters different in reading the second time he was in the same spot. 1/100 of an inch in baro setting is about 10 feet in altitude, so 21 meters is about 66 feet or about .06 inches difference, which is not an unrealistic change in baro settings if the weather is changing over the time period.
Illegal for Instrument flight.
I can’t help but laugh at the sheer stupidity of these pilots! If I had been on that plane I’d wonder were the hell we were going.
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