What the hell is wrong with Quantas lately?
Posted on 10/29/2008 12:21:55 PM PDT by traumer
What the hell is wrong with Quantas lately?
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This makes no sense. Radar means *nothing* to guiding an aircraft over the ocean...the radar in a jetliner is used strictly for weather. If they were navigationally blind, they would’ve had to lost whatever 747-400s use for long-distance navigation...I think that’s at least one GPS system and something called an inertial reference system, which basically tracks the direction, speed, and distance that the plane has moved from a fixed point (i.e., the gate at LAX that it departed from). It’d be a fairly major failure, and more than just “the radar”.
}:-)4
They used to navigate by stars... I thought they used GPS now.
No kidding.
This is the stupidest, most poorly informed, totally fracked-up aviation “news” I can remember reading. Airliners do not navigate by radar. Some military aircraft use radar for target acquisition and perhaps terrain avoidance. The only radar aboard is the radar altimeter for precise measurements above terrain at low altitude. None of this article makes any sense. One airliner cannot “guide” another one, except visually. Airliners navigate using GPS, the VOR network, INS, Air Mass Computation, TCAS, LORAN, etc. This article is just butt stupid. Typical of the “press.”
Another article on MSNBC (linked over on airliners.net) said that it was indeed the weather radar that went out. So if it’s just the weather radar, and the INS and GPSes and radio navigation receivers for VORs are still working, why does the Qantas captain say that he’s “flying blind?” Avoiding flying into a tropical thunderstorm or other heavy weather, I guess?
}:-)4
BUMP!
My wife is a Kiwi so we make the trip about every other year. Preference is Air New Zealand, best crews, cleanest flights. See you guys in December.
My wife is a Kiwi so we make the trip about every other year. Preference is Air New Zealand, best crews, cleanest flights. See you guys in December.
Darn, so much for my posting “In Before the Rainman reference.”
Why do so many Kiwis hate Yanks so much?
I don’t have a radio or any instruments in my plane. I’m an IFR pilot...I Follow Roads.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqEwF757G5k
I’m in the video production business, and while we don’t do news, just corporate stuff, we do work a little now and then “inside” TV news.
I’m often apalled at the scientific ignorance these pretty-haired dim bulbs display. Almost anyone in our technical crew could easily set them straight on a lot of basic science and technology if they could get over their arrogance long enough to ask.
My personal favorite is when the newsblonde tells you about “the small aircraft, which FAILED to file a flight plan...” making the guy sound like a dangerous and neglectful crazyman when flight plans for “VFR” at low altitude are not necessary at all.
It may sound like innocent ignorance, but I see it as a deeper delight in making science and experts, such as licensed pilots, look stupid and threateningly risky.
The press is shot through with this kind of naval-gazing at all levels, and it’s journalistic malpractice. The damage they do... The damage they do...
Flew from LAX to Melbourne, Australia on Qantas in late 2003. Midnight departure from LAX still climbing to altitude out beyond the Channel Islands when we hit clear air turbulence, no warning, just a very pronounced jolt. The next AM as we approached the coast of Australia over the Tasman Sea we went thru squall line/thunderstorm and really got bounced around. Fortunately breakfast had been served and the food carts stowed or there might have been injuries. After over 14 hours in the air we finally arrived in Melbourne.
I don't know about hating Yanks, but they seem particularly fiesty!
I had a friend who was Kiwi who worked in the same industry. I hadn't seen him for quite a while, but heard he had resigned his job.
When I finally ran into him, I asked about his leaving his former firm, Xerox. He said: "The rumors are wrong. I didn't get fired for throwing my boss down a flight of stairs at the company party; I got fired for walking down, picking him up and throwing him down the second flight".
And he was a little Kiwi - not over 5'6" and about 160 lbs.
I can’t imagine a 14 hour flight. I am squirming at 3 hours.
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