Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw

Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by JimmyL on Monday June 08, 2009 @06:06PM (#648105)

>> As libertarian I prefer an airline which will charge me premium for flying more expensive but safer routes.

How would you even know? Saying "I'd pay more for a safer routing" is rather reminiscent of Steve Yegge's Shit's Easy Syndrome - you say you want a safer routing, but what does that mean?

You'd pay an extra ten percent on your ticket to fly ten percent lower? What about other factors - would you demand more reinforcements on the wings of the planes you fly on? How about longer flight times due to having to stop for fuel? What about how this would impact global route scheduling?

I could keep going with that, but the bottom line is that you don't understand what makes a plane safe. I don't understand what makes a plane safe. Few people - unless they're Airbus or Boeing design engineers - on this site know what makes a plane safer, and how much that would cost.

Airlines have a huge interest in making their flights safe - think off all the shitty PR that Air France (one of the world's most respected airlines) and Airbus (one of two real manufacturers of jumbo jets) are getting, and how much it will directly and indirectly cost them. The last people died on an American airline was in February. Before that, it was in August 2006. The last time an American jumbo jet crashed and killed people was in 2001. Flying is an incredibly safe way to get from point A to point B - but like everything, there are some times when nature throws us a curveball, and we get hit by it.

>> So I'd settle for a government mandate of how high commercial airlines can fly.

I wouldn't trust Congress to determine how high an airline can fly. If I want to know how high an Airbus can safely fly, I'd ask Airbus - they know the planes better than anyone, and have a huge vested in interest in keeping them safe.

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by lutorm on Monday June 08, 2009 @07:16PM (#648206)

Flying lower = flying slower. You can already do that, just pick a plane that flies lower, like a commuter jet...

But in general, when flying it's safer to be higher and faster. By far the most dangerous thing you might encounter when flying is the ground...

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by stcredzero on Monday June 08, 2009 @08:59PM (#648329)

Instead of flying a lot lower and slower, how about marginally lower and slower? You could give the plane 50 knots leeway in speed and still fly over most of the weather out there.

For conditions like the ones that the Air France flight was going through, this would seem prudent. You can't fly above thunderheads like that. Might as well get yourself into a safer part of the flight envelope in case something bad happens.

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by lutorm on Monday June 08, 2009 @09:27PM (#648349)

There is a maximum safe speed in turbulence (it's called "design maneuvering speed") and I really doubt they would exceed that in these conditions. (You want the wing to stall in case of severe turbulence, because the alternative is to overstress it. That's why you don't want to fly fast.)

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by stcredzero on Monday June 08, 2009 @10:13PM (#648399)

Yes, but that depends on the amount of turbulence, yes? Perhaps the margin of safety needs to be bigger for that region of the ocean?

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by lutorm on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @08:33AM (#648930)

Weakly so. The idea is that you want the wing to stall and lose lift before it generates that design load limit you don't want to overstress. You generate lift by increasing angle of attack, but the idea is that the wing should stall, and thus stop generating lift, before. The amount of lift a wing can generate depends on its airspeed, so if you keep the airspeed down, the only situation in which it could generate a dangerous amount of lift would be if you entered a region of very high horizontal windshear such that the airspeed all of a sudden increases to above maneuvering speed. (So in principle you should be at least the gust speed below maneuvering speed to be safe, so here is where the margin of safety enters. But it's a second order effect.)

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Re:Air France 447: The ‘Coffin Corner’ and a ‘Mesoscale’ Maw by biohacker42 on Tuesday June 09, 2009 @10:18AM (#649107)

you don't understand what makes a plane safe

Agreed. Now if the captain Sully (the guy who landed in the Hudson) says flying out of the coffin corer is safer would you believe him?

Airlines have a huge interest in making their flights safe

Yes, they also have a huge interest in being profitable, they are trying to optimize both.

There's nothing wrong with that, but as a consumer I'd like a bit more choice.

But as other in this thread have pointed out the particular nature of the airline business makes it impossible for that kind of market differentiation to happen. That's known as a market failure.

Hence my desire for a government mandate.

Alternatively, do you think we need any of the current government regulations on airlines?

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