

3 Tesla Execs Dead In Palo Alto Plane Crash - jazzychad
http://jalopnik.com/5473942/3-tesla-execs-dead-in-palo-alto-plane-crash

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brown9-2
Does anyone else find the editorializing in this article disturbing?

This is the second paragraph of the article:

 _Employees at the electric carmaker — a company that has done everything but
paint its logo green in a bid to sell itself as environmentally-friendly —
have always had a penchant for gas-guzzling private airplanes. But that's sort
of been the Tesla way. An electric car without compromising speed or style.
The roadster's perfect for the Hollywood and Silicon Valley elite —
environmental credibility without having to give up your private plane._

3 people just died. Is it really necessary to slam the type of people that buy
electric cars in an article reporting on their deaths?

~~~
staunch
Ban worthy IMHO. I think the whole Gawker network should be banned here
though, all bottom feeders.

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idlewords
That's what voting is supposed to be for. I find this site disturbingly ban-
happy.

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zackattack
We can't downvote articles.

~~~
pvg
You can not-vote. And if warranted, flag.

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djb_hackernews
Sad News. This reminds me of the time I was working at a startup and the
office admin booked a flight for the three founders to attend a conference or
some such. Same flight for all three, seemed reasonable to me, but after some
stern discussion that never happened again.

~~~
diego
It's interesting how some people do this, yet don't give a second thought to
driving together all the time.

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jamesbkel
True, I imagine a plane crash is very much an all or nothing venture (major
and few survivors vs. minor with just injuries). Perhaps not so much with
driving.

Right now just speculating, but I'd be curious to if anyone's created a
breakdown of traffic fatalities by # of passengers in each vehicle and #
passenger fatalities. I've seen that sort of thing before, but almost always
in the context of teen/new drivers.

Couldn't find anything quickly, will look after work.

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fnid2
This is tragic. Very sorry to hear it.

As an intern, I worked for a company and found in the employee manual that
there were explicit restrictions on the number of execs who could be on the
same plane or even in the same car!

I thought it was a silly clause and asked about it and the execs said, "Yes,
the probability is small, but multiplied by the damage that would occur gives
a very big risk of damage." That made a lot of sense. It doesn't cost much to
avoid the risk, just take different flights.

~~~
dschobel
I knew plenty of kids growing up whose parents traveled separately when the
kids were not with them. It's morbid stuff being responsible for other
people...

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fnid2
It is. When I started a company and got customers who depend on me, I started
driving slower. I stopped taking the kinds of risks I used to take. I even
worry, briefly, when I go skiing.

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markbao
It was confirmed that Elon Musk was not on board.

Source: <http://twitter.com/kensweet/status/9247008924> (guy is a reporter for
FOX Business)

~~~
bprater
My first thought was about Elon. Anyone passing away is tremendously sad. But
in that sadness, I think it is good to acknowledge we didn't lose a great
visionary today. We need them.

~~~
mingdingo
Speaking of lost visionaries, check out Daniel Lewin
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_M._Lewin>).

He co-founded Akamai and was killed on American Airlines Flight 11, possibly
while trying to stop a hijacker. A very smart and influential guy who died
tragically.

~~~
volomike
Wow. Didn't know that one. I guess you never know who you might be sitting
with on a flight these days. I would not have guessed Daniel in a million
years as formerly working for IDF.

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MikeCapone
Elon Musk has written this note on the Tesla Website:

"Three Tesla employees were on board a plane that crashed in East Palo Alto
early this morning. We are withholding their identities as we work with the
relevant authorities to notify the families. Our thoughts and prayers are with
them. Tesla is a small, tightly-knit company, and this is a tragic day for
us." \- Elon Musk, CEO

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dasht
FYI, and hopefully not just morbid:

Local TV news (sorry, no link) reports that planes taking off from that run-
way must turn 10 degrees left or 10 degrees right after take-off. They can't
go straight because of a nearby field (Moffet field) - a former naval air base
currently owned by NASA and famous for being where the Google guys park their
jet.

This plane was planned (or instructed, I'm not sure) to go right - they went
left.

That they went left AND that they failed to gain enough altitude to avoid the
power lines is tentatively _speculated_ to be indicative of a left engine
failure.

They took out three high-tension power lines which, the plane geek quoted on
the news pointed out, is "likely to seriously interfere with the forward
progress of the plane". They came down in a very dense residential
neighborhood with debris hitting a nearby day-care center.

A consolation is that as of this report, the pilot and passengers appear to be
the only victims. The plane mostly came down in the middle of a street. Nearby
residents report that they tried but could not get anywhere close to the plane
because of the intensity of the heat from the fuel flame. It was the
resident's impression that post-crash fuel explosions scattered debris which
is what led to the structure fires.

The thought that occurs to me is that I wonder if the pilot retained enough
control that he aimed for the street on purpose either hoping for a survivable
crash landing or (shudder) in a heroic last act to save others knowing he had
no chance, personally.

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jazzychad
I wish I didn't get karma for submitting this :(

~~~
btipling
News organizations make a ton of money when lots of people die in some
horrific way. You're not profiting from the bad news, you're gaining from
informing others.

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pavel_lishin
I recall reading a list of the top 10 ways to live a longer life somewhere,
and pretty high up on the list was "Do not get a pilot's license."

Apparently, CEOs, doctors and the like assume that competence in one area of
life implies that they're competent to do anything, like flying a plane.

~~~
dschobel
While that sounds like great advice to trot out every time a small craft
crashes, in the absence of data it is functionally worthless.

~~~
jrockway
Exactly. "Don't get a driver's license" or "don't go outside" are just as
valid.

My thought is, if I die or become horribly brain-damaged, I won't really care,
because the capacity to care is gone. Existence only goes as far as you can
interpret it.

~~~
pavel_lishin
So your point is that avoiding danger is pointless, because once danger kills
you, you don't care?

Race you across the interstate! Go!

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volomike
Still no report yet on which 3 it was. They're probably talking to family
members, first. Sad, none the less.

~~~
kqr2
Tragic, however, there is no confirmation that they were executives either.

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fjabre
Tragic...

It's seems like once every other month you hear about a small passenger jet
crashing like this. This one happening yesterday:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/nyregion/17plane.html>

Anyone know if it's certain types of small aircraft that are prone to this or
is it just small civilian operated aircraft in general?

Don't think I'll by getting on one of these anytime soon in any case.

~~~
gwern
In general. Small civilian aircraft are death traps (although maybe not as bad
as cars);
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/General_aviat...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/General_aviation#Regulation_and_safety)

> According to the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, in 2005 general
> aviation in the United States (excluding charter) suffered 1.31 fatal
> accidents for every 100,000 hours of flying in that country, compared to
> 0.016 for scheduled airline flights.

(One can imagine many reasons for this; more professional maintenance, more
professional pilots, more redundancy in the systems of big airplanes;
whatever. But the safety differential is not imaginary.)

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elblanco
I was just on a conference call today with some coworkers out in the area when
the power went out. Had no idea why.

This is truly sad news.

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humbledrone
What a crazy coincidence -- the CEO of the first software company I worked for
was a pilot, and he also flew his personal aircraft into some power lines.

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staunch
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessna_310>

~~~
JshWright
So, it's at least a 30 year old plane.

I'm not connected at all with the private aviation industry... What is the
useful (safe?) lifespan of an aircraft like this?

~~~
pc
It's common. GA aircraft have quite rigorous maintenance schedules, with
inspection and overhaul every 50 or 100 hours, which (mostly) keeps even old
planes airworthy. Almost all airfields will have plenty of 30 or 40 year old
planes.

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lisper
Much more likely than the age of the airplane was the visibility. PAO has been
foggy in the mornings of the last few days, and the photo in the story makes
it look like it was foggy when the crash happened.

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wakeupthedawn
It was crazy foggy in Palo Alto this morning and has been for the past of
couple of mornings. I'm really surprised they tried to fly in those
conditions.

The report suggests that the power outage in Palo Alto may have been caused by
the plane crash. I find this hard to believe because the traffics lights were
only down in the area near Stanford and downtown PA; as you drove closer to
East Palo Alto, the lights were working. Of course maybe there was a larger
outage earlier, and they just restored it in this pattern.

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mmastrac
There's a picture somewhere on the web (sorry, no link) of a severed high-
voltage power line linked to this crash.

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luminary
Inside job, anyone?

~~~
tbgvi
How much karma do I need before I can down vote someone? This seemed like a
good place to ask.

~~~
luminary
Irrespective of the down-votes, I do see another user expressing something
similar. "I'm suspicious it is somehow related to the oil overlords. Big
money, big risks."

~~~
fnid2
c'mon, get real. Do you really think there are people out there looking for
Cessnas flying around shooting them down if there are EV execs on board?

What did they do? Shoot a missile through the fog? Take it down with a
privately owned F14? Plant a bomb on it before it took off?

It's a ridiculous hypothesis.

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natrius
I don't know anything about planes, but my hunch is that sabotaging an
airplane, especially a private one, is easier than you're making it sound.

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anigbrowl
Your hunch is largely mistaken. Of course it _can_ be done. But methods like a
bomb or remote trigger are apt to leave forensic evidence, and sabotage _qua_
damage to the plane is likely to be found either during pre-flight checks
and/or a pilot reporting a problem tower before the crash occurs. Unless an
air crash takes place at sea or a very remote location, the chance of sabotage
going undetected within the USA is low. All plane crashes in this country are
subjected to detailed forensic examination by the NTSB.

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sokoloff
For GA, the NTSB pretty much only responds to fatal crashes, and even there if
the cause is "routine" (controlled flight into terrain, spatial disorientation
loss of control) there won't be much in the way of a detailed investigation.

Have a non-fatal accident and you as pilot-in-command are required to report
it within 72 hours, but no one from the NTSB is likely to ever see the
aircraft in question in person.

Commercial Part 121 crashes get large amounts of attention and amazing levels
of effort (the reconstruction of TWA800 is astonishing to me). If I bend my
182 and don't kill anyone, they'll only know about it because I have to tell
them and they'll file my submission away.

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maurycy
Fuc^W

My deepest condolences to their families.

I'm suspicious it is somehow related to the oil overlords. Big money, big
risks.

