I'm curious the actual mechanics of this operation. The main primary-source I found is a Telegram post of an Aeroflot pilot memo [0], but this only discusses the side-effects of reverser only braking, not the mechanics of "disabling the brakes."
There is a possibility the brakes are still available and not worn through, and this is a preemptive measure to leave enough brake material to handle an emergency rejected takeoff while avoiding "unnecessary" braking on landing by using the reversers instead. It's still ridiculously dangerous and bad, of course, but a different situation from "they're running the aircraft with no brakes."
So I used to work in aircraft maintenance (never in Russia though) and the policy is to change the brakes when there is $minimum_thickness of brake pad remaining.
There's a little wire embedded in the pad and eventually as the pad wears thin the wire completes a circuit with the rotor, and lights up the aerospace version of the Check Engine Light.
The brakes on these planes certainly have some remaining life but they're technically unserviceable as per the airworthiness policy that Boeing/whomever produced as part of the approved maintenance program for these aircraft.
Whether the Russians follow that policy is another question. When I was in the Air Force we saw lots of Russian military Antonovs and they, uh, weren't in good shape.
How does the wire from the removable pad couple electronically with the permanent housing? Is it like a contact plate or is there an actual m-f style plug?
I'm not sure I understand the question. When the techs install a new brake assembly, the wiring harness is connected at the same time as the hydraulic system.
The pad itself is never changed on the flight line. It's quicker and easier to change the entire assembly and have the worn brakes rebuilt in a second line shop.
I'm most familiar with the C-130 but I believe it's common on many types: the pad is replaceable but in order to do that you have to remove the entire brake assy, which means it's more efficient to just slap a new assy on and send the worn one to 2nd line to be rebuilt/overhauled.
Thank you for that link. In case anyone else is wondering, this is a Telegram chat with actual pilots in it. There is currently a lot of cursing in that thread about stupid sensational news on the topic, along with an actual explanation.
Aeroflot is disabling 1 out of 4 brakes, not all 4. Nobody is actually trying to stop a plane with just reverse thrusters.
At the risk of confusing mixed metaphores, I'd say it's more like "It's not as bad as it seems. We only have one flat tire, not four.".
I don't know if that claim is actually true, mind, but it sounds like a problem that has multiple levels of solutions still to go before it becomes catastrophic.
I think the moral here is there is an unhealthy dash of sensationalism and propaganda that must be sifted away, if we actually want to take any worthwhile information out of this.
As the saying goes, the first casualty in war is truth.
I am curious what is the point of the omnipresent "Russia is doomed" propaganda in the first place? People are emotionally uninvested in Russia, and Russia itself is in practice irrelevant. What is to gain here by manipulating the public opinion in this way?
It makes people indifferent to the plight of the Ukrainians and promotes both sides-ism. Too many smart, intelligent, totally normally people that I usually respect and go to advice for, when asked about the Ukraine war have the opinion that 'Russia shouldn't have invaded but it was America's fault anyway because wavy hands. American should tell Ukraine to stop fighting and give up the land the belonged to Russia(USSR) anyway'.
edit: I mis-read your post and got the reverse intention. Here's the reverse answer.
By presenting Russia as on the brink of implosion, it gives the impression that the Ukrainians just have to hold on for a little bit more and everything bad will go away.
Propaganda has an interesting dynamics where it feeds off human instinctive behaviour.
It would be hard to convince people about things they don't believe in already. Propaganda works by amplifying what people already want to believe and by giving tools for people who already want to believe in something but don't know how to back their beliefs with arguments. This leaves people who don't believe in the thing surrounded by people who wouldn't otherwise have strong rhetorical skills suddenly tooled with a barrage of pre-canned arguments and "facts" to disarm any fruitful conversation.
A consequence of this dynamics is that often even pure factual presentations of an event gets spontaneously turned into "propaganda-like" discourse without necessarily any active involvement by state agends
There's a mile wide difference between "disabling some brakes according to manuals" and "disabling all brakes and relying on just the thrust reversers".
I know it's cool to harp that Russia is doomed, but propaganda is bad regardless whether it's coming from the Russians or the west.
No one here is claiming Russia is doomed, I don't care about the west or Russia or whatever. Flying a plane without a full complement of brakes is foolhardy all by itself.
I went and read through the last 3 days of chat history, including the part where the original article was mentioned. There are not really a lot of “cursing about stupid sensational news“ there. In fact, people were posting screenshots of news about Chemezov (the Head of Rostech) reporting to putin about the ongoing cannibalisation of the current fleet.
The story looks like a penny dreadful of “Russia is doomed” series.
1. There’s no info on that Russian slide about actual planes flying without any breaks at all. There’s a manufacturer defined minimum equipment list that allows planes to have some breaks (actual number depends on the type of a plane) disabled for, let’s say, 10 days at the most.
This is absolutely normal as planes cannot be serviced constantly (they fly back and forth, duh). As long as you don’t exceed the allowed number of breaks disabled, you’re fine.
2. The slide just warns about possible adversary effects (off-axis skid and longer landing distance) if some of the breaks are disabled. This is expected, somewhat corrected by algorithms, etc.
3. No one is telling planes to fly without any brakes.
4. There are different types of “breaks”: the ones used in a landing and the ones for an end-of-runway “stop” are not the same.
5. If the adhesion index is lower than required for the specific landing (weight, fuel leftover, etc.) even the brand-new “brakes” are to no avail. Again, another parameter out of many.
tldr; it is absolutely safe to fly those nine Aeroflot planes that — at the moment of the slide — had some breaks disabled (not to mention another thousand of other Russian passenger planes).
==
More importantly, there is absolutely no shortage of airplane parts in Russia — they’re just delivered in a more “wink-wink” obscure way.
I guess it’s just the same as there’s no problem there and in China to get modern GPUs that US “ordered” nvidia and amd not to sell :-)
Or mastercard/visa/swift “blocking”: even kids in Russia now have foreign virtual cards that are topped-up via p2p crypto in a matter of minutes so that one could buy anything digital (and physical via mail forwarders) online and rendering that great — mostly pr/perception based —“exodus from Russia” obsolete.
>More importantly, there is absolutely no shortage of airplane parts in Russia — they’re just delivered in a more “wink-wink” obscure way.
That sounds like a hazard in itself, airlines being forced to buy parts outside of official supply lines makes it much easier for unscrupulous sellers to substitute counterfeit parts.
You raise an interesting point. How does Iran, Cuba, and Syria get parts for any Boeing or Airbus civilian aeroplanes? Or are they all flying Russian aircraft now?
Iran (Iran Air and Mahan Air) is flying mostly Airbus and Boeing, but really, really, really old planes.
Given these are rather old planes, with a wide international distribution, I'm kind of expecting it's not too hard to find second hand parts cannibalized from retired planes and coming from neutral countries.
They were even able to smuggle parts to keep some of their F14s flying. In comparison, civilian airliner parts surely are easy to get.
Cuba is flying Russian except for a few ATR 72. I guess finding parts after 60 years to keep these Super Constellations flying is beyond reasonable.
These two countries are in a bit of a pickle actually. Parts can only help you up to a point, they will need new planes. With the EU and US mostly aligned and inter-dependent anyway, if you are under embargo, the only place you can get a full aircraft is Russia, but their industry is lagging behind (particularly engines and avionics). Their most modern planes cannot be built without using western parts currently.
China might be another provider in the future, but they are still dependent on foreign parts, engines in particular.
And in both cases, while they have regional jets (ARJ21 and Sukhoi Superjet) and 737/A320 equivalents (Comac 919, Irkut MC-21), the long range offer is more sketchy (Soviet era IL-96 and still in design phase Comac 929).
But what is fascinating is how Islamic Iran managed to keep these planes flying, including through an 8 years long war, despite the embargo and the lack of parts.
Through back-channel deals with Israel or even the US (Iran-Contra deal) or good old smuggling exploiting mismanaged military surplus handling in US, plus domestic reverse engineering & production, the Iranians were incredibly resourceful in getting parts for these birds.
In comparison, finding parts for civilian planes is a piece of cake.
(Of course, Russia also seized planes that were on its territory )
And due to other sanctions and boycotts, lessors are unable to keep their contract up and be paid from Russia (so, Russia is either forced to return the plane, or seize more... Since they already got comprehensively sanctioned, there's not much point in the former)
Also, of course in the long term some countries are going to try to rely more on domestic/friendly production, but Sukhou planes apparently have lots of foreign parts, so switching to use only Sukhou isn't feasible nor a silver bullet
As a Russian I'd say this guy lives in some other country. Probably imaginary. Based on how little reality there is in the comment I would not believe comments about airplane brakes either...
Not a single person I know much less their kids has "foreign crypto virtual cards" etc. Ofc even if they had they would be locked out of transacting with any serious business that doesn't take crypto.
The exodus is real, ask Armenians, Kazakhs, Georgians Finns or by now probably Argentinians. 30% of all people I know left. The government declared amnesty for any criminal who agrees to serve in the army for some time, and people know that all those murderers and rapists are coming back to the streets and dark alleys when Russia is kicked out of Ukraine. (Some people want to leave but stay because in their head they think everyone abroad except China hates them for actions of Putler, which is part of Russian propaganda designed to slow down brain drain.)
The Russians I’ve run into in Argentina, Indonesia, Thailand , Philippines, Japan, China, HK and other Asian countries all have crypto cards and use crypto very candidly. They also are filling up and creating demand for crypto services in these areas. I’ve seen Facebook posts and instagram pages marketing Russian crypto services and investment - real estate, business and the vector of payment transfer is crypto and second local bank accounts in these countries.
The exodus is very real, and documented via social media so vividly. You can even go to the local social media pages (e.g. Thais, Indonesians, Argentinian social media pages / language ) and get local perspective and demeanor vs the Russian and Russian adjunct countries. It’s so interesting that English has become a neutral language for business and marketing but all the real “work” is done in either or language.
Yes, on flip side Russian crypto peddlers are a dime a dozen and a scourge on public chat groups etc.
People I know tend to find proper jobs though, it's not impossible. But better do it in EU/US/AU etc, in Argentina even locals often resort to crypto due to economy
I am sure what you describe is your real situation, but there may be more complexity. Its not like 30% of russian population left, rather less than 1% overall. 1 million in 150 million nation is a drop in the bucket. I am pretty sure russian state is able to draft another few millions into meat grinder of Ukraine without a blink of an eye. 1 thing eastern Europe is good at is avoiding official rules and finding ways to get forbidden stuff, some historical experience there.
Also, you have places where russian propaganda (be it fsb, gru or subcontracted to wagner's troll farms) in past 2 decades was very effective in making non-trivial part of population firmly on Putin's side (and also anti-vax, anti-EU and so on in usual divide-and-conquer psyops manner).
I mean, back home in my backwater Slovakia some recent polls showed 50% support of russian invasion in their neighbour. In the nation which was enslaved for 4 decades and occupied for 2 decades by soviet union and damaged beyond repair due to this, with usual shooting/electrocuting people on the borders trying to just run away, secret police arresting non-conforming people, snitching etc. It's... mostly less smart part of population for sure, but still.
There is a lot of support of course, like in China. Remember TV is still the main media in Russia and it is strictly state controlled. Moreover the gov is not bad at online information warfare and even many Europeans, AU/US people support Putin (as indicated by downvotes I'm getting here and as I even sometimes hear IRL)
The 30% number is among people I have known in life (friends/acquaintances, those who actually left, not counting those planning to leave, that'd be like 70%). I have not checked other stats but I wouldn't be surprised
The cards are not “crypto” — they are very much ordinary virtual (or even physical) visa/mastercard ones.
You use p2p crypto to top-up them with real dollars from RUB.
It takes around 5 minutes to get a virtual Visa card. And if you want to get a physical one (for traveling), there are a lot of countries (even NATO ones) where you can get one with no problem at all.
> any serious business that doesn't take crypto.
Again, you’re not paying crypto. You use ordinary cards to pay in any store that you like.
Turkey and others crack down on this regularly. Besides if you have the money to go to Turkey or pay extra to unscrupulous forwarders it means you are already well off, if the regime pays you well then good for you I guess. People in remote villages that supply new meat for the war don't have that luxury. They only have a TV that tells them everything is fine
Yes even in Iran people manage to buy foreign goods and find ways to work around sanctions. But if you say "Russia is becoming like Iran/North Korea" and "Russia is thriving" are the same then I rest my case.
Yeah, their banks also started charging monthly fees to drain tourist accounts and close them after that
Yes if you are at the top of the regime with a bunch of money many doors in unscrupulous countries worldwide open to you, not so much if you are a ordinary person, and guess what most people are more or less ordinary
Sorry but i have to comment. Hackernews should not be political but still. In Russia there is currently an all time high support from the current regime. The small moscow bubble you are referring to isnt remotely representing the common Russians. Most of that bubble was anti regime before the war anyway.
Braindrain? You know how many Indians and other nations are currently immigrating to Russia? Tech is booming right now in Russia. Factories are opening everywhere. The whole country is ramping up production. There seem to be unlimited funds (Chinese, Isreal) Investers are pumping a lot of money into the country.
The country is in 100% war mode. It is convinced that it cannot lose the war in Ukraine. And they are probably right. And not everyone hates Russians btw.
I have never been to Moscow but I'd guess many of the shielded comfortable 0.1% who live there are people who care the least. They know what's happening is bad but they are "above politics" (that is, supporting the regime by default) and will be until s*t hits the fan. See prices for flights from Moscow to Tbilisi on the day of Prigozhin debacle...
And the other side is people elsewhere in Russia who are not above politics but whose politics are based on watching TV.
The remaining people may well be a minority. Perhaps more than half of people support Putin. That's why it's futile to change from below, if thinking people want revolution they would have to fight their own zombie neighbor first.
Ramping up production, factories every day, not gonna lose to Ukraine smells like another dose of fantasy agitprop itt but I'm v curious to hear more about Israel funding!
And you misread my comment, at least regarding Russian hate by Westerners. I do not see Western people hating Russians in any meaningful way. But I see Russians definitely thinking so. Because that's the image Putin wants them to have. Us vs them.
I think there is more hatred in former Warzaw Pact countries. But overall, I have seen very little in the way of demonising russians, especially those already outside of Russia.
> There are different types of “breaks”:
> the ones used in a landing and the
> ones for an end-of-runway “stop” are
> not the same.
The dynamic and parking brakes use different actuator systems, but rely on the same rotors and stators on the undercarriage. Those are the consumbale parts that are sanctioned.
In general it is permitted to dispatch an airliner with one or more brakes unavailable, depending upon load and airport conditions, but it's meant to be an interim measure pending brake replacement.
About the foreign virtual cards, can you please give me a link where I can get one? Being searching for a long time, only found scam. All legitimate ones require proof of address.
Kazakh and Belarusian banks open cards for Russians with no questions asked. There are services that do it online for you. You only need a passport (the international kind).
Georgia is also a good choice, but you need to be physically present in the country. (It's a nice place though, but maybe not in August.) I don't recommend Armenia, the banks here have cracked down on tourists opening cards, and if you see someone offering you an Armenian card it's 100% a scam.
I heard of Georgian banks closing people's accounts with a week's notice for being "high risk" or something. It's a gamble.
In Armenia, at least when I visited in December, I was told that "if you want an Armenian card, it can be done in 2 days for 25000 rubles that you put in your account". Not sure which bank it was.
I also know people who opened cards in Indonesia and Turkey.
Yes, back then there was an Armenian bank that could get you a card for a crapload of money but no supporting documents. Since then, they've fallen in line with the others, and now they want a rent agreement and a local job.
>There is a possibility the brakes are still available and not worn through, and this is a preemptive measure to leave enough brake material to handle an emergency rejected takeoff while avoiding "unnecessary" braking on landing by using the reversers instead.
The brake question is irrelevent. This will put unimaginable stress on the already taxed engines, which are orders of magnitude more expensive and complex to maintain. It's not something that is possibly sustainable at all. Typical magical thinking. "Well we can see the brake pads are running low, and we can't get any more. We can't see the fact that the engines are about to explode, so we'll just go with that."
It's quite imaginable. Already "most of the work of stopping a commercial aircraft is done through the use of thrust reversers", so it's not all that more than they do now.
> We can't see the fact that the engines are about to explode,
There's nothing magical about thrust reversers which make it impossible to inspect for increased engine wear and tear.
> On aircraft using jet engines, thrust reversal is accomplished by causing the jet blast to flow forward. The engine does not run or rotate in reverse; instead, thrust reversing devices are used to block the blast and redirect it forward.
Take a look at the video of "A target-type thrust reverser being deployed" for an example.
Planes don't stop with the reverse thrust, only slow down to 100-120km/h. If you use it a lower speed there's a real risk of lifting a piece of debris off the runway and sucking it into the engine intake.
This is why we have to bother with pushback for jet aircrafts unlike the convenient powerback we have for props.
Due to the routes they are left to fly, debris will most likely be Russian. But I bet in case of an incident, propaganda will definitely declare it as foreign debris.
In this instance the "foreign" in foreign debris is anything that's not part of the aircraft but gets sucked into the engine anyway. A goose for example could be considered foreign debris regardless of its citizenship status.
Evil capitalistic debris deployed from high orbit to destabilize Mother russia.
Just like in 50s there was massive campaign against Colorado potato beetle, which was presented as being dropped from evil capitalistic American planes to harm crops... although the bug was already in Europe for decades and spreading eastwards on its own.
The thing is, these propaganda campaigns are often quite successful, many people back there still believe this is what happened.
I think at some point it was deemed acceptable for the tail mounted engines as they are higher off the ground (and also further away from the terminal).
This is probably going to be just the tip of the iceberg. There was already articles around cannibalisation of planes so that you can service and repair an ever dwindling number of aircraft.
If it keeps going on for another year or two it's not going to be good
This literally happens everyday, everywhere and to every airline. Sometimes even between airlines.
I’ve personally been responsible for a part getting pulled off another engine from another airline and swapped for one that got its electrical connector damaged so the engine would ship on time.
There is a whole industry of buyers and sellers of 2nd hand aircraft parts.
That doesn't mean this is the same situation. In examples you are likely thinking of, this is happening because of the immediate need for parts or as cost savings, etc. Russia is doing it because they are blocked from primary and secondary markets. For many of their aircraft in the country there are no replacement parts coming except what falls off of the truck in China and gets passed along. So their supply chain is slowly approaching zero until their aircraft have to simply be grounded (or they quit invading neighboring countries and the embargoes are lifted.)
Sure, but those types of things are stopgap measures that work in a normal, unsanctioned market. Like, they need a part now, but there's none available in the maintenance hangar (or whatever), and it would take a few days to order one, so they ask another airline at the same airport to float/sell them the part. Once the ordered part arrives, they're back to their usual number of parts.
In this case, Aeroflot just cannot get more parts, period. The market for new parts is completely closed to them right now due to sanctions, and secondhand parts will only get them so far. We're talking about brakes here, which wear out to uselessness, so I doubt there's even much (if any) secondhand market for those. Once all the "Boeing brake pads" wear out and run out in Russia, that's it. They can't get new ones without someone violating sanctions. Well, unless they manage to bum spares from countries like China that aren't sanctioning them, or unless someone local can manufacture them to the correct specs.
Regardless, these other options get more and more expensive as time goes on.
> or unless someone local can manufacture them to the correct specs
This will likely happen except for the correct specs part. Sure, it will be manufactured to fit, but it likely won’t be able to be made to the same standard as the official Boeing part.
The impact of this could be absolutely nothing, or maybe Aeroflot planes just end up on runway excursions more often. It could also lead to catastrophic failure and separation of the landing gear bogie causing all sorts of additional trouble.
Aeroflot was widely regarded as worst international airline (on par with say Nepal airlines but for very different reasons) way before any invasion started. Typical russian mentality and alcoholism is simply not a good match to highly structured and regulated environment of very complex machinery.
Everybody I know tried hard when travelling from Europe to Asia to avoid using them, even when they were often the cheapest.
I know absolutely. However they can order spare parts. AFAIK, Russia is now cut off. Unless they can smuggle some from Kazakhstan, China or somewhere else it will be SOL for those airframes at one point.
They will set up one or more shell companies in a non-suspect country but with less regulation oversight. Think Africa, like Morocco.
Then buy second hand planes, engines parts etc from dealers that may only check 1 level deep or be willing to risk getting sanctioned themselves.
Then strip them and send them to their overhaul locations.
Certain Colombian groups used to do it in the 80s when they needed their private jets overhauled but found their organization was sanctioned. surprised picachu
There’s a huge industry of leasing jet engines to avoid downtime since most shop time is spent waiting for engine repair. The lessors hot swap engines and avoid downtime for an entire jet just so an engine can get serviced. This is a perfectly normal practice in the aviation industry.
Leasing "thrust", not engines; there's a distinction that might not be obvious at first.
Engines are leased at different thrust ratings depending on what the airline needs. Mostly fly out of long runway airports in fairly cool, low altitude (ie dense air) locales lots of thin, svelte passengers who have little luggage, on fairly short trips with not much fuel needed onboard? You can get away with a lot less thrust than an airline that caters to overweight tourists flying out of Las Vegas with luggage loaded to the gills with trinkets.
The lease usually includes everything needed to make the plane go VROOM when the pilot pushes the loud lever, including live monitoring of telemetry for performance and repair issues; a plane might get scheduled for repair, with parts routed and mechanic time scheduled, mid-air...
It's a perfectly normal practice...that ground to a halt in Russia with economic sanctions, and was why a bunch of people in the airline industry sat up and took notice when the sanctions started rolling in. In theory leases could be up a few days after sanctions started and the plane would be dead on the tarmac (or maybe they get a minimum amount of thrust, enough to fly the plane mostly unladen. Not sure. I don't know the industry well enough.)
There were stories that Russian airlines were looking to, or expected to, hire hackers to hack into the engine FADEC units to re-enable them when the leases were up / change their thrust levels, etc. What could possibly go wrong with hiring people to hack your plane's FADEC units...
This is on top of all the airframe leasing, of course. Lot of people expected planes that were leased by Russian airlines to suddenly fly only domestic routes, or routes to countries with friendly governments bribed by Russian oil, grain, and loans who wouldn't allow a repo team to do their thing.
You're telling me that there are devices built into civilian airplanes that are able to disable or hobble the engines based on the whims of _business agreements_? It seems beyond reason that a pilot would be denied an engine's full design thrust, especially in a contingency that requires as much performance as possible (terrain avoidance, wind shear, aerodynamic surface failures, engine flameouts, on-ground emergencies after takeoff decision speed, go-arounds, etc...) Can you expand a bit on how this system works? Do you know what prevents a mistyped lease expiry date from causing dangerous incidents?
Thrust ratings are a thing. They’re “programmed” using a dummy plug. Literally an electrical connector that has a cap on it and inside that cap is a bunch of wires that loop back and bridge pins. The pin combo represents a thrust rating.
The plug is set and screwed into the fadec at manufacture and then updated after each service based on the test cell run.
Overhaul is often defined in terms of thrust ratings. Customers engine comes in, dyno’d (test cell) current thrust level is established. A plan is put to the customer based on their requirements, work is then done, dyno’d again and then signed off with the new plug installed.
Why would you do this? When engines are made, from automotive engines through to sophisticated jet engines, they all have a rated power number but minor variations in tolerances etc add up to make the actual power number.
In a jet engine, you have two or more on a plane, if one engine is slightly more powerful the plane will naturally try to fly in circles.
I think the parent comment gets a lot of things confused, for example you don’t rent a thrust rating.
You rent an engine, at a thrust rating and will need to return it at that same thrust rating after you’re done (ie a mandatory overhaul of the engine and scoped to a particular rating).
Often the engines are owned by leasing companies or banks. Have a look next time you fly, there may just be a “Bank of Honk Kong” sticker on the side of your engine.
That makes sense and is much closer to how I understood things. Parent comment made it sound to me like there is a whole subsystem dedicated to plane DRM.
Take off and landing aside, can you properly control the aircraft on the ground without brakes? I'm thinking of stopping at hold short lines, at the gate, etc. How precise, responsive is reverse thrust in those cases?
Or will they get picked up by those little cars and pulled right after landing?
It's not very responsive at all. Nor is it meant for this purpose. It's just a brake assist for use on the runway.
Also, reverse trust is hard to maneuver with considering you will immediately start reversing once you've stopped moving. Unlike a brake that has a stop as an "end state". If they really start taxiing using that it'll lead to collisions at least, I'm sure, because of unintended reversing.
It's a harebrained plan as presented here IMO.
But perhaps it's more nuanced? Just not using the brakes unless you really need them? This is what we used to do at the gliding club too, since brake pads are expensive and our runway was 5x the length needed for an unassisted rollout.
I don't think the margins are ever that high on airliners though... It still sounds very dangerous and has the risk of pilots getting confused.
My thoughts as well: go through the crazy "look ma, no brakes!" emergency routine for landing and use the remaining pads for taxiing. Not an aircraft engineer, but my guess would be that the pad wear for one regular landing would be good for a decade or two of what's consumed during taxiing.
(and when the inevitable accident happens, the victims' suffering will at the same time be acclaimed as heroic sacrifice and a called out as a direct attack by "evil nato, how dare they not give us what we need for business as usual". Chances are less people will die for this propaganda stunt than in the apartment bombings)
The thrust reversers are more than just an assist on the runway. You can land without the reversers, but I'm pretty sure you'll have to go get the brakes replaced before it's ready to fly again. It'll also consume a dangerous amount of the runway.
The reversers are no joke, especially when the aircraft is heavily laden.
An aircraft operating nominally is designed and intended to be able to land safely relying on just the brakes. Thrust reversers are also used because they decelerate the aircraft quicker and with less wear on the brakes, aka thrust reversers are used out of convenience and benefits.
Thrust reversers may be used solely in an emergency that renders the brakes inoperable, but such situations are so exceptional they aren't useful for any general observations.
An aircraft that can't land safely with just brakes would not be certified to fly.
> An aircraft that can't land safely with just brakes would not be certified to fly.
Yes. That doesn't contradict what I wrote.
The thrust reversers also greatly reduce the stress on the tires, another critical and expensive item. There's also the enormous heat generated, which stresses the rest of the landing gear and the bearings.
One of the certification tests is the airliner is landed with flaps up, at max landing weight, and no thrust reversers.
The tires inevitably blow and catch fire, and the airplane literally grinds to a halt, with a raging fire on each truck. The firemen have to wait a specified amount of time before they can put the fire out.
While this is "landing safely", at minimum the landing gear is wrecked, and I suppose some of the fuselage panels.
The thrust reversers are an expensive piece of machinery, with a lot of engineering expended on them. They are not a "would be nice if" piece of equipment. The brakes are a backup system for the thrust reversers, not the other way around.
>The brakes are a backup system for the thrust reversers, not the other way around.
Absolutely *NO!*
Thrust reversers are always supplementary to the brakes, the brakes are always the primary means of bringing the aircraft to a stop on the ground. If the tires blow, the brakes burn out, and the landing gears are a goner in an emergency landing then so be it, that is all part of the design specifications.
Why is it like this? Well what happens when the aircraft loses all engines? This has happened many times, and far more frequently than failures concerning the brakes. If an aircraft is not designed and certified to land safely with just brakes, it means an aircraft with all engines out can't land safely. That is absolutely unacceptable.
Incidentally, plenty of flights land nominally without using thrust reversers depending on the situation. Using them is preferred because the brakes are worn out less and the aircraft spends less time on the runway, but if the pilot in command appropriately decides to land without thrust reversers that is still perfectly safe without any of the fireworks.
Thrust reversers are marvels of engineering, that is never in doubt, but they are never the primary means of stopping an aircraft.
As I mentioned, the aircraft is certified to land safely with just the brakes.
The cert test that results in flames is a worst case scenario - in particular, with flaps retracted, the airplane lands at a much higher speed than normal.
And, of course, when you're taxiing around, you'll just use the brakes.
I suspect they can still use them in those situations, since there is very little wear just holding still.
The planes probably still have brakes, just the pilots are told not to use them when landing - this would make them last much longer, but still be available.
Not at all. Thrust reversers, depending on engine model, can take a few seconds or more to engage, and the engines themselves can take even longer to spool up thrust from idle or to spool down when no longer needed.
I'm guessing that the vast majority of brake wear occurs during landings, so re-enabling them for taxiing and at the gate would still save a whole lot of pad.
This. Breaking from 30km/h wears brakes much less than from full landing speed. A policy of just using thrust reversers more generously would save quite a bit of brake life.
Why would you deactivate the brakes, rather than just tell the pilots "don't use the brakes unless it's absolutely necessary, and use thrust reversers instead"?
Possibly if the pads are at extremely low wear, you would only need to replace the pads/shoes when parts are available. But if you tell pilots 'just don't use them', then they will keep using them, and those pads/shoes could wear through and begin damaging other parts of the callipers which would result in more parts requiring replacement?
Not an aircraft mechanic, but just making an assumption based on the similarities in cars
Just as higher-end cars have brake pad wear sensors and sometimes caliper temperature monitors....commercial passenger jets, especially ones made in the last two decades or so, are instrumented up the ass.
There's a Minimum Equipment List that specifies the minimum stuff a plane needs to be safe to fly, and under what conditions specific equipment can be bypassed or non-functional. I seriously doubt that overworn brake pads can be mitigated or ignored according to the MEL, and a pilot should be sweating bullets signing off to fly a plane that doesn't meet the MEL.
...at least in the modern, developed world. Which Russia is increasingly neither...
> Just as higher-end cars have brake pad wear sensors and sometimes caliper temperature monitors....commercial passenger jets, especially ones made in the last two decades or so, are instrumented up the ass.
Never underestimate the power of snipping off a sensor and soldering in a resistor in it's place :P
If professional Russian pilots could be depended on to soberly follow the rules and do what they're told, then maybe Russia wouldn't be having so many problems getting their ass kicked in Ukraine, while "accidentally" bombing so many apartment buildings full of civilians, don't you think?
This advisory is probably not "Disconnect the brakes" but rather "don't turn on auto-brake for landing and use brakes only for emergencies or sparingly"
My friend is a private jet pilot, but also partially trained for commercial jets. He says that the article content is a nonsense. Here's his words, translated:
The plane is always using brakes. Reverse thrust reduces landing distance by about 15%, and its main task is to reduce the load on the brakes and prevent overheating of the pads (which lose their effectiveness at high temperatures) and wheels (which would otherwise blow the fuse and release air from them, to prevent explosive destruction). All landing distances that are indicated in the manual and that are calculated by the [onboard] computer are calculated for serviceable brakes and WITHOUT taking into account the use of reverse thrust.
With “brakes disabled” - how can you be sure that you will stop within a runway of a given length? There is no such data, no one has tested it. There are procedures for brake failure, but this is an emergency, there are no landing distances for these procedures, and in any case, pads are still used for emergency braking (it’s just that compressed air/nitrogen is supplied to their actuators instead of hydraulic fluid).
"Many parts in (western made) Russian passenger aircraft that would normally be easily replaced are rapidly wearing out with no replacement parts in sight due to the import of spare aircraft parts from Boeing and Airbus being banned since March 2022. "
I would be curious about things like lubrication and the hydraulic systems where deferring maintenance is easy but repairs once there are problems are potentially very costly. Hopefully the manufacturers can get some of the data back, it seems like this kind of deferred maintenance is an experiment nobody would run willingly but given that it's happening the data could help improve safe and efficient fleet operations.
Oh for sure, but I'm guessing it's rare for an operator with modern aircraft to aggressively defer maintenance to the extent it sounds like is happening over there. Toyota has plenty of data about what happens to a Camry if it goes a few years with no oil changes (because people) but does Boeing have similar data to draw from?
We just had a roughly three year period where planes meant to be running more or less constantly were consigned to desert parking lots due to lack of travel demand.
I am more surprised there is not a sufficiently rich black-market operation going around sanctions.
Random site[0] says,
>In general, airplane brakes can last between 1000-2000 landings before they are changed. An active airplane makes an estimate of two landings per day; this means the airplane needs to be changed after 18-36 months.
Even at multiple brake pads(?) per plane, that does not sound an insurmountable amount of shady dealings required to keep planes operational if you have 1.5 years of <ahem> runway for your maintenance window.
If Russia paid enough, people would steal the brakes. They might even steal them themselves, and report as stolen. Then they get more, and who's going to investigate some brake pads if the owner isn't pushing for action on the case?
There absolutely is a black market for selling airplane parts to sanctioned countries. As an example, Cuban state airline Cubana has been flying ATR turboprops with American made engines (and many other parts) since 2002 or so. Even with wide sanctions, Iran has maintained an operational fleet of old Boeings, and during past decade even newer aircraft.
There is a significant amount of goods moving via Georgia. To be exact they move them from Georgia proper to part occupied by Russian separatists. That is totally different from smuggling stuff to Russia. Exports from Germany to Georgia were something like 50% up year to year.
How strict is that manufacturers' control over spare parts?
A few days ago there was an article about European merchants evading the trading bans on a large scale. They'll get the brakes. If Russia can afford their price.
they don't have proper specs, manufacturing equipment, materials, engineers, machinists, etc. they been trying to source parts from india, china, iran, etc.
For sure, they will be using half-butted homegrown (or made in those countries) clones, just like you would see in the Soviet era. It will lead to a gradual but increasing incidence of air disasters. Russian friends, please avoid flying if you can.
most likely clones. those days everybody semi-capable seems to be directed towards weapons manufacturing/etc. there is enormous shortage of workforce even for lower level skills manufacturing.
You’re talking like Russians are the people living in some Stone Age :-)
“half-butted homegrown clones for parts”, my ass. How about an actual brand new twinjet airplane with carbon fibre reinforced polymer wing (consumes less fuel then Boeing/airbus alternatives) like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irkut_MC-21
You can get Chinese copies of almost any part for any car, a lot of them aren't very good but they are inexpensive and that's tempting for a lot of people who do their own repairs, or bottom-feeder shops. And sometimes they actually aren't too bad.
A big reason this may not be true for aircraft parts is that in most countries buying unapproved aftermarket parts is illegal at least for commercial airlines. Not so for autombile parts.
How in the world would any common Russian trust an airplane in this current sanctioned state in Russia and fly in one?!
Are people that brainwashed to trust their leader to get on a plane that doesn’t have brakes?!
Story from a friend. Once, flying on a Russian domestic airline flight, they noticed something like a little shrine at the back. Some black and white photos, flowers, mementos. They asked the cabin crew about it.
Response was, well, the plane had crashed once, killing some people on board, including some staff. So they are commemorated here. But the plane is fine.
Anecdote aside, it's fair to say Russia has a somewhat laissez-faire attitude to safety.
To be fair, in America I don't think we have rules against reintroducing planes involved in deadly incidents, but are still airworthy. The shrine is a bit wild, though.
We have a word for US movies and books portraying Russia: "klukva" (cranberry). Because in every US made movie and US written book amount of lies and confabulations about Russian history and Russian culture is so high, that it deserves a special word.
E.g. I was reading a book recently by John le Carré and had to stop after reading about 50 pages. I simply couldn't continue. E.g. there's a scene where Russian traitor comes to "Chechen" restaurant in the center of St. Petersburg, and orders only a glass of vodka.
Firstly, there are no Chechen restaurants. Especially in the center of St. Petersburg. I don't know why, but anybody living here in Russia wouldn't be able to find any Chechen restaurant in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Russian, Ukranian, Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever, but not Chechen. Secondly, not all Russians drink vodka, not even majority. Vodka is considered a drink for poor and alcoholics. I don't think it's true, I think that vodka is superior to many other spirits, but that's the typical Russian stereotype. Thirdly, Russian people never order just vodka. We always drink vodka together with substantial food. Not only it is considered a very poor taste to drink vodka without food, it's also absolutely not enjoyable to consume it this way.
And on the cover of the book it was written that the story is very close to the truth, which makes Le Carré special. OMG.
So, this whole story about a shrine in a plane is bullshit.
> Firstly, there are no Chechen restaurants. Especially in the center of St. Petersburg. I don't know why, but anybody living here in Russia wouldn't be able to find any Chechen restaurant in Moscow or St. Petersburg. Russian, Ukranian [sic], Thai, Chinese, Vietnamese, whatever, but not Chechen.
In case anyone was curious, there is a halal cafe called "Брат" ("Brat", meaning brother) in central Saint Petersburg which serves Chechen food and is advertised occasionally as a "Chechen restaurant". You can read the reviews on Google yourself:
https://goo.gl/maps/wLi8qCoP8MaQy9Vv9
"Вкусно, как в Грозном!" ("Tasty, like in Grozny!")
I've had beers and wine in western restaurants representing cuisine of muslim-majority countries, that's nothing special. Its up to owner to decide whether they want to cater to wider local audience or be strict. For example beers attract a lot of people, we like to pop a small one with lunch as digestive.
I am not saying what is or isn't possible in russia or how chechens are viewed by russian populations, but the whole concept is more than fine elsewhere.
I don't doubt for a minute that Western media is filled with all kinds of ridiculous apocrypha about Russia. At the same time, I've never encountered this kind of ridiculous sensitivity about a country's perception before.
Do you think every American drives a pickup truck and owns 12 guns? You probably don't, because you're not a fool; similarly, most Americans don't think that Russians live their lives swizzling vodka in Chechen restaurants. Le Carré is a novelist, not a biographer.
> I don't doubt for a minute that Western media is filled with all kinds of ridiculous apocrypha about Russia. At the same time, I've never encountered this kind of ridiculous sensitivity about a country's perception before.
You won't find many Russian authors vilifying USA habits and culture. Not among popular ones, for sure. Nor the Russian movies. That makes a difference.
When there's a Russian in the US movie, I mentally prepare myself for a cringe. Usually, it would be a unreasonably aggressive person, killer or terrorist, or just a bad person. Drinking vodka like water, beating women, etc, etc.
You'd have hard time finding anything resembling this in Russian books or movies about USA.
> this kind of ridiculous sensitivity about a country's perception before
What's up with these emotive labels? Lots of people (myself included) enjoy klyukva - it's an awesome source of hilariously absurd content.
But you'd be surprised how often it actually leaks into supposedly serious reasoning, constantly making you question exactly how far (not even "if") the person you are talking to is detached from objective reality and what are their assumptions. There are quite a few examples of this even in this comment section.
Obviously this is not really unique - likely an extremely common view of foreign cultures people aren't really exposed to. The example with Americans isn't representative though since we are all exposed to this particular culture.
I'd say the anecdote about Sarah Palin saying "I can see Russia from my house" is related. Plenty of Americans think she actually said it even though it came from SNL.
> But you'd be surprised how often it actually leaks into supposedly serious reasoning
I live in Texas and let me tell you I believe I know exactly how you feel. A lot of people's entire perception of this state is based on agitprop headlines they consume. To the point where the other day, on HN, everyone is an expert on Texas energy production and policy desperate to dunk on the state based on a headline about a temporary spike in wholesale energy prices.
> Of course there chechen restaurants in St. Petersburg
Even your link proves that it's essentially not the case. Google finds the word "chechen" only twice and then just makes a fair guess that you were actually looking for Caucasus cuisine. Same for Moscow.
> Second surprise for you - there are plenty of russians who are poor and alcoholic. There are plenty of russians that drink vodka.
As is everyone else. What's the "surprise"? Parent wasn't arguing that there are NO people who are alcoholic, poor, or simply drink vokda, were they? They were moking a stereotype.
By the way, John Le Carré was British, not American. No doubt there are dumb passages in American novels about Russia, but I don't see why we should take the blame for John Le Carré.
> We always drink vodka together with substantial food
It's funny that you say this because one of the strongest memories I have of a former Russian co-worker was him telling me that "when you drink vodka, the food must be right there. You drink, then you eat right away. That is the only way to do it." And I tend to remember it as I'm taking a shot of vodka and it always makes me smile.
This is all interesting - would you be willing to go on more about Russian vernacular/stereotypes? My background is solely USA and I find it really impossible to learn these things - online. I do think the easiest way would be to go out and make Russian friends and such but - ideally that isn't something I want to really do. I guess I could try to find online communities of Russians, but even then - it is conflating a country to a language (which I think is sort of uniformly spoken in several countries?)
1. In much of the country, people drink vodka like people drink Coke, not oligarchs in Moscow though.
2. Much of restaurants in Russia are indeed Chechen owned. Great many of Japanese, Chinese, Korean restaurants, and street food in general in Russia have Chechen owners.
None of the crashed 737 MAX-8s were ever re-flown. This is a conversation about re-flying air frames that have been involved in fatalities. Air frames here means the planes, not the model. The 737 Max-8 is a cautionary tale about a lot of things, but re-flying crashed airframes is not one of the lessons.
> However, the aircraft took on severe damage. Its nose and right wing collapsed, and the two right wing engines were damaged. While Qantas did not disclose an exact figure, it cost the carrier less than AU$100 million in repairs, which was significantly cheaper than buying a new 747 at the time.
> Repairing and returning the aircraft to service also helped Qantas maintain its record of having no hull-loss accidents upon the rise of the Jet Age at the time, which also meant the carrier could uphold its safety reputation.
I flew from Moscow to Vladivastok recently, and it's a choice between 8 hour flight and a week in a train. The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies, and it's not like the trains can't fail (especially considering occasional train tracks sabotages). There are always risks, it's not that big of a deal.
> The planes might be missing some maintenance, but they are certainly not falling out of the skies
Yet.
You don't want to be in the first one that does.
Planes have gone down for much stupider reasons. Even serious airlines like KLM (Cityhopper) and Air France have flown perfectly good aircraft into the ground. It doesn't have to be faulty, human confusion is enough.
Going outside of normal procedures like this reduces redundancy and increases the chances of confusion and error.
Oh, you may be surprised by the number of perfectly avoidable, not even cost-saving stupid things that cause train accidents around the world.
The GP has a point. If the trip is necessary, planes are probably the safest way to do it. And as they become unsafe, the alternatives are prone to doing the same on an even quicker rate.
> And as they become unsafe, the alternatives are prone to doing the same on an even quicker rate.
russian railways isnt dependent like Aeroflot on EU/USA aircraft for their operations. maybe there will be more train travel until the indigenous industry supplies the necessary aircraft / spares?
Russian Roulette is not that big a deal either, as long as it doesn't stop on the wrong chamber...
Yes there are risks everywhere, but what you are putting on display is Normalization of Deviance [0], which reliably gets people killed. With luck, it won't be you that is killed before the entire fleet is grounded, but at this point it is just luck, maybe with better odds than Russian Roulette.
I first heard about Vladivastok when The Hunt for Red October came out. I have been fascinated with it ever since, hoping to make a journey someday. I love that this was just a mundane trip for you.
I hate to possibly be the bearer of bad news, but I can’t think of any plot points in that movie that involved Vladivostok. The action all took place in the Barents Sea and North Atlantic, after Red October left Murmansk through the Polyarnny Inlet. Vladivostok is on the other side of the country, many, many time zones away.
I wonder if there is a reference later in the movie? Either that or it was another movie and the reference was about sending you to the middle of no where, because, as you said, it’s out there.
Isn't the in-between choice to drive or fly out of Russia towards Europe, then fly east on a non-Russian airline, and eventually take e.g. the Tokyo to Vladivostok direct flight?
The Russian airlines can't fly to most of Europe. They're sanctioned by the EU. You'd need to drive. But better option is probably just flying through Turkey. Turkish Airlines still operate in Russia. Turkish Airlines isn't sanctioned, so they can maintain their planes just fine.
This isn't _that_ relevant because China is there as an option but there are no flights direct from Japan to Russia, for the same reason there aren't EU to Russia flights right now either.
I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be? After all, people can sabotage airfields and airplanes as well.
> I think the more apples-to-apples comparison here would be a train without breaks, wouldn't it be
No. Not really. Russia has the means to produce brakes for their trains. They do not have the means to do the same for these airplanes.
So the reality on the ground is that the trains have brakes while the airplanes don't (or they have breaks but with rapidly aging out of compliance parts.)
> No. Not really. Russia has the means to produce brakes for their trains. They do not have the means to do the same for these airplanes.
I meant in terms of riders' perceptions of safety, not industrial capacity. That being said, it astounds me that Russia can't fabricate replacement breaks here: we're talking about a country with some of the best metallurgists in the world and a domestic aerospace industry; what gives?
No one ever said that they can't. But going from zero to being able to buy replacement Boeing (or whoever the OEM was) brakes off the shelf is a process of many months (in the optimistic case) or years, not weeks.
After all, even the simplest analysis for an aviation supplier has to be "can we make enough money selling these replacement brakes to cover the cost of setting up a manufacturing, quality control, and distribution system?"
Also, Russian manufacturing may have other urgent priorities right now. Wars (fought outside of the homeland) may be good for employment and industrialization broadly, but they often are the opposite for application of industry to civilian ends.
This would have made sense 12 months or even 9 months ago, but we're now 18 months into a war that Russia's government had otherwise been preparing domestically for. Again: what gives?
> 18 months into a war that Russia's government had otherwise been preparing domestically for
Eh, I think we all saw how "prepared" Russia was.
In any case, I think the following factors are definitive here:
- No one really considers the current situation as "permanent". The war will be over at some point and life will go on. So investing in manufacturing of those specific parts might prove a waste.
- This is specifically an issue with parts for foreign aircrafts. Is it even worth producing parts for foreign crafts?
- There are ways to evade sanctions and smuggle parts and right now, to some degree
- Russia passed a legislation allowing 3rd-party parts and signed a contract with Iran on airplane maintainance and parts supply - Iran already has an expertise and industrial capacity operating in somewhat similar conditions. Iran also has more experience smuggling.
Obviously, that work had started many months ago, not just now.
They hadn't been preparing for it to last 18 months, and part of their preparation had been oriented at influence operations to preemptivelt disrupt Western unity and political response when the war qas launched. While I won't say that categorically failed (it still has tangible effects), it has been far from a complete success.
Firstly, if you understood that this is a reference, why are you trying to interpret separate words literally?
And secondly, there was no constructive criticism or even any mention of "fascism" or "invasion".
Following your own logic, I could - just for the sake of example, mind you - claim that you come from hellish slave-hole where people eat babies and then justify it with actually literally the same slogan as you did. Would that be as fucking stupid? Yes, it would.
Now, should I expect you to accuse me of whataboutism for trying to build a consistent logical framework?
It's pretty clear that the war was planned under the assumption that they'd just march straight into Kiev, maybe shoot a few hardcases, scare the rest with how awesome they were, and basically be welcomed as liberators by most.
When that failed to work, they didn't seem to have any idea what to actually do next, besides claiming the attack on Kiev was always supposed to have been a feint and the real goal was always to grab a few chunks of eastern Ukraine.
> I meant in terms of riders' perceptions of safety
But that is what I am saying. The apples-to-apples comparision is “airplane with questionable/no brakes” vs “train with brakes”. There the “apple” is “as the thing is right now when you want to travel”. The proposed comparision with “train with no break” is not apples-to-apples because there are no breakless trains servicing the route. It is not a hypothetical comparision with some hypothetical train service and hypothetical planes. It is the comparision between the realworld situation on trains and airplanes right now.
The discussion about industrial capacity just illustrates how this difference have happened.
where from you got idea about "best metallurgists" ? and domestic aerospace industry is a boutique shop (especially when we are talking about civilian planes) that mostly relies on foreign components. their production goals are like 10 planes a year
Trains are more vulnerable because they will always have long unguarded sections of track.
A train without breaks isn't really comparable because the planes can break using thrusters. I don't believe that you can engine break on a train to a comparable degree.
I believe this to be true (the article definitely states "Brakes are also necessary for aborting takeoffs", and V1 is the speed at which takeoff ~~occurs~~ edit: must be committed to), but this is only one instant of the journey. At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.
> At other times it is certainly feasible to brake (landings included) with just the use of the thrust reversers.
This could be true; it's also not particularly reassuring as a passenger :-)
(Not doubting you specifically, but it'd be nice to have one of the many pilots on HN opine here. My understanding as a passenger is that commercial airliners use breaks because the margins are very narrow, especially in the presence of a tailwind or busy runway designed with breaks in mind.)
There are two distances to calculate, called accelerate-stop and accelerate-go.
Accelerate-stop is the distance needed to accelerate to V1, lose an engine instants before that, take the first action to abort at V1, and the resulting accelerate-stop is the distance between the start and end of roll. On an uncontaminated runway, this is computed without thrust reversers. On a contaminated runway, you can compute it with thrust reverser on the assumed non-failed engine(s).
Accelerate-go is the distance needed to accelerate all engines to just below V1, lose and recognize the loss, continue to Vr, rotate, climb, accelerate to V2, and reach 35 feet above the ground at V2.
When the accelerate-stop and accelerate-go are the same for the chosen V1, we call that the balanced field length.
Brakes are critically needed to achieve anything close to the book accelerate-stop distance.
There's definitely a difference between feasibility and what passengers should be guaranteed, yeah. Don't get me wrong, commercial airliners should have brakes.
It's been a while, but isn't that V2? ISTR that V1 is the commit speed: above that point you have to take off since there isn't enough runway to abort.
V1 is the “takeoff decision speed” (roughly as you describe). Vr is the speed at which rotation occurs. Vmu is the “minimum unstick” speed (the lowest speed at which liftoff is possible). V2 is the takeoff safety speed, which is faster than liftoff speed, and the minimum target speed for initial climb.
That's how train brakes work, actually. They short-circuit the electric motors through an array of resistors (with cooling fans to keep them from melting).. This is effectively engine braking on an electric motor. Electric cars do this too but they have batteries to absorb the energy instead of turning it all into heat.
What is the alternative, curl up and cry? Doing anything (especially anything interesting) involves taking risks. Not to mention that I probably have more chances of being arrested or conscripted then actually suffering in an airplane accident, they are still quite safe. I don't think that worrying about everything, especially things as basic as an airplane travel, will do you any good.
Why would they want to hide it? Perfect opportunity to agitate a little more against "the west". From the perspective of someone who blows up apartment buildings to get a unifying war it's not really a risk, it's potential upside.
It's hard to hide a crash, but it's easy to downplay one. Threaten a few witnesses, pay off a few bereaved families and you can turn a catastrophe into a minor incident.
Russian warships in the Black Sea have been "catching fire" at a suspiciously high rate since February 2022. Same for petroleum facilities and ammo dumps near the Ukrainian border. We all know what really happened, but the Kremlin can spin a line and nobody who saw what actually happened is brave or foolish enough to contradict that line.
There are myriad of reasons why this is not realistic, but if I were to pick the most obvious, that would be
1. No, there is no "complete control of the media", IDK why people assume it to be the case. Broadcast federal tv has to be politically correct, but not too much beyond that.
2. Planes are tracked and people usually have relatives or something.
3. Planes fly through established routes and air corridors - they have a specific destination and don't fly over random wilderness all over the map.
> No, there is no "complete control of the media", IDK why people assume it to be the case. Broadcast federal tv has to be politically correct, but not too much beyond that.
How do you recocile that with the journalists assassinated, arrested, and/or driven from the country?
That's some control. One example - last year one brave lady from TV staff protesting IIRC via banners against the war in state TV. I hope she is still alive and well (for that part probably outside of russia).
Of course the ultimate goal would be total control, so they counter similar situation (or putaine giving some speech live in tv) with ie 1 minute delay to counter any 'mishaps'. So they are going there, but slowly, ineffectively, at least for now.
Russian state can't unroll all freedoms immediately, their main goal was to paint war as "nothing is happening, just minor security cleanup". Putaine's clique is, just like any dictator, scared shitless of people revolting en masse, there is nothing more important for them than keeping the power and stealing all those juicy billions in resources and services flowing. But for majority of russians to revolt, they would have to go quite a bit beyond FUBAR, population is trained with patriotic spin to suffer incompetence of its leaders for generations.
>No, there is no "complete control of the media", IDK why people assume it to be the case. Broadcast federal tv has to be politically correct, but not too much beyond that.
This is why recent prigozhin roadtrip to moscow completely didn't happen at all according to russian media ? or is it just a case of been "politically correct" ? and tv station absolutely not given talking points by kremlin ?
> This is why recent prigozhin roadtrip to moscow completely didn't happen at all according to russian media ?
Who exactly told you this? I assume you don't personally interact with Russian media? You can check that what you claim is not true with just a few keystorkes. Do you need a list of popular media outlets in case you can't find on your own?
I am honestly curious why are you so sure of this, because I see these kinds of extremely confident claims about "did not happen according to Russian media" on the other side of the language barrier way more often than you would expect from random assumptions.
There must be someone who feeds you this idea.
> and tv station absolutely not given talking points by kremlin ?
I am not sure I completely understand you here. They report from the perspective and the angle of Russia, just as their western counterparts (e.g. NY Times, Washingtonpost, BBC) report from their geopolitical angle and perspective. Please elaborate.
>Who exactly told you this? I assume you don't personally interact with Russian media? You can check that what you claim is not true with just a few keystorkes. Do you need a list of popular media outlets in case you can't find on your own?
after those two days it went to "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia"
>There must be someone who feeds you this idea.
i am native russian speaker (not russian. never lived in russia). nobody feeds me anything. i been tracking russian media for past two and a half decades. after prigozhin voyage reporting was about attorney general ending criminal investigation "because it was inproperly started" and few pr shows with putin about his unity with people and stuff.
in any other "normative" country there will be non-stop discussion in all media for weeks about what happened.
>I am not sure I completely understand you here. They report from the perspective and the angle of Russia, just as their western counterparts (e.g. NY Times, Washingtonpost, BBC) report from their geopolitical angle and perspective. Please elaborate.
In Russia media is controlled by kremlin. It's "widely" reported what are the general talking points are delivered by kremlin to media and what topics should be suppressed.
You want to say that white house and american media companies have same relationship ?
Now you are just moving goalposts (even up to claimig that bloggers arent media in the neighbouring thread) and base your argument on the fact that something does not fit your personal expectations.
It was a hot topic and it is still discussed from time to time (though more hot topics have appeared since). I'll try to get you some links when I have enough time and if I won't forget. Damn, I should really implement that media tracking and cross-referencing project concept I've been fiddling with - that's just a perfect usecase for it.
> In Russia media is controlled by kremlin. It's "widely" reported what are the general talking points are delivered by kremlin to media and what topics should be suppressed. You want to say that white house and american media companies have same relationship ?
What I want to say is that journalists employed in "big" influential media have a VERY good sence of what optics and points are appropriate and politically correct to report or not, without any explicit control.
A perfect example of this would be the matter of neo-nazi militias influence in Ukraine that was rather extensively discussed and reported on in western media (that's how I personally figured there is a certain ground truth to it, first taking it seriously after BBC and Radio Free Europe reports), until it suddenly became a no-no-hush-hush topic and "Russian propaganda".
It's called "post-truth" and sometimes even semi-officially acknowledged as "editorial policy". And it's EXACTLY the same in Russia.
EDIT: That was easier than I assumed. Thanks to google for "<topic> site:<website.tld>" query format, and thanks to the fact that news-sites have tags:
This is just lies. I tracked this situation and watched official TV. There was interruption at night with breaking news which informed about Prigozhin mutiny. Few hours later there was Putin interruption where he condemned this action and publicly called them a traitors. I don't think that there were many Russians who were not aware of this situation in this day.
Some details could have been hidden, like shot down helicopters or killed soldiers. But claiming that it didn't happen is just lies.
and after those 2 glorious day ? how much discussion on television ? "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" didn't came to existence by accident
I'm not a vivid official TV watcher, so I can't comment about it, sorry. My point is that every russian citizen is perfectly aware of what's happened that day, so hiding very important events is not possible, at least today. Hiding plane crash with hundred of passengers is not possible.
Now explaining those events is another matter. And that's where propaganda will kick in, for sure.
> "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" didn't came to existence by accident
How exactly did it come to existance though? It honestly feels like some kind of gaslighting. Putin did a whole speach on TV and this was a hot topic for weeks. Popular Z-bloggers were all over this matter even longer.
Prigozhins hairwigs meme didnt come to existence by accident either, you know.
I really feel like you might want to reconsider interactig with Russian media through what I assume are 3rd-party reports.
yeah, he made a speech when shit went down, and another one later about "we all are brothers" or whatever. after this media discussion stopped hence the meme "on june 23-24 absolutely nothing happened in russia" that was widely circulating in russian circles in the beginning of july.
zbloggers aren't media. i am talking about official media
just FYI i saw live feed of special news edition in 2am moscow time on ort and live feeds of putin speeches.
The way regular people take videos of destroyed bridges, damaged warships.. I wouldn't say so.
The videos regular folks filmed on incident locations were perfect for damage assessment to us western folks. Russian government may control media in general but social media and messengers are full of uncontrollable stuff (for now)
> meanwhile the Russian state has complete control of the media
Traditional mass media, sure, but there are a lot of people that have to know about a plane crash, and containing that information, even in Russia, is nontrivial.
It is trivial. Official news will report that it was shot down or sabotaged by Ukrainian spies. I'm sure that the scripts and some stock footage are already prepared for when it happens.
That could happen 60 years ago, I guess. Nowadays everyone uses Telegram, everyone possesses smartphone with camera, there are bloggers with millions of subscribers who are outside of political control.
That said, few weeks ago major internet providers in Russia started to roll out VPN blocks with DPI. There are other obvious signs that Russia prepares for the external Internet cut off. So I wouldn't bet for this situation to continue for much longer.
I feel like the planespotting community will eventually ask "hey what happened to that registration number ABC123" or "didn't Aeroflot used to have 80 777s, but only 79 have been seen in the last year"?
I feel like it's hard to hide a plane that's designed for international travel in a highly regulated industry.
Like the Malaysian 777, we know it's missing. No idea what happened to it or where it is. Even in the twenty-first century it's not impossible.
In the context of the Russian war, the Russian government stole a bunch of planes being leased to Russian airlines by foreign companies and assigned them Russian tail numbers. With that paucity of transparency I'd say it's even easier to hide a plane wreck over there.
>I suspect you'd see fewer people driving if it was 1 in 10
I don't. The cohort of people that make risk assessments with regards to routine every-day things and change their plans accordingly is minuscule, and most places around the world do not have an equivalent form of transportation.
Even with minor/un-needed activities people tend to ignore risk. Every cigarette smoker over a long enough period will develop health problems and eventually die faster than they would have otherwise, but it's still a thing; and it doesn't offer the advantage of actually facilitating getting to work on time and feeding your family.
> I suspect you'd see fewer people driving if it was 1 in 10
Everybody dies, and I need to get to work/see grandma/go to the grocery. People drove about as much in the 60s, when the per-vehicle mile travel deaths in the US were 5 times what they are today.
I won't be surprised if the narrative within Russia reframes this to "Western airplanes are inferior to Russian planes. So for your security we have grounded all Boeings and Airbuses" in near future.
I can only hope this happens before western planes start dropping out of the sky due to missing parts.
The fleet was grounded for nearly 2 years while Boeing fixed the design flaw and applied the fix to the existing airframes. So they're probably OK now. The whole point of the MAX program was to get a few more years out of a 1960s design with a couple tweaks. Hopefully all the tweaks that cause the plane to dive into the ground are fixed now, simply because there can only be so many tweaks.
I enjoyed this snippet from Wikipedia:
> In March 2022, there were rumors that Boeing would request an exemption from the U.S. Aircraft Safety and Certification Reform Act of 2020, a safety reform law passed in response to the MAX crashes. The act requires airliners to be fitted with an engine-indicating and crew-alerting system (EICAS) if type certificated after December 31, 2022. [...] In December 2022, the U.S. Congress agreed on a bill allowing Boeing to certify the MAX 7 and MAX 10 without EICAS, but it must install a third angle-of-attack sensor in all 737 MAX types as previously demanded by European and Canadian regulators. The company also must install a switch to disable the stick shaker, which distracted pilots during the MAX crashes. Boeing would have to retrofit these design changes to all 737 MAXs already delivered in Canada, Europe, and the U.S. within three years of MAX 10 certification.
> The USA does as well, except among poor people and gun victims.
I suggest you look at the actual causes of death in the US: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db456.htm#secti... Considering typical health outcomes in the US, obesity and the life choices people make, I don't think you can honestly say the US obsesses about preventing deaths. Of course, improved health care access and personal health wouldn't materially change the numbers, just the ages where those end of life diseases finally win.
A magnitude less than the causes there, car crashes are around 12.9/100,000, and guns are at 10/100,000 (54% suicides, 1% "accidents") - and the US car death rate is significantly higher than Europe or elsewhere, very preventable with more stringent driving tests and lower blood alcohol level allowances.
>US car death rate is significantly higher than Europe or elsewhere, very preventable with more stringent driving tests and lower blood alcohol level allowances.
if you think that's the key difference between driving in Europe versus the United States then i'm not sure what to tell you.
Distances are longer, traffic is denser, speed limits (in general) are higher, and the ability to drive from one place to another is more valuable given the lack of public transportation options, so there is a larger onus to drive even if you consider yourself unskilled or lesser-abled.
there is more to it than drunk driving and poor training regiments. furthermore drunk driving is an extraordinarily bad metric to compare countries given the varying BAC regulations throughout the world. Drunk driving in one place may very well be legal in another.
Technically there is no way it could be definded as "racism" (Russian is not a race).
But IDK what would be a proper term for a cituation when a person doesn't like something about the politics of higher government echelons and starts filling blanks by projecting it down to every comissioner, manager, certification auditor, mechanic or even every household?
There is a possibility the brakes are still available and not worn through, and this is a preemptive measure to leave enough brake material to handle an emergency rejected takeoff while avoiding "unnecessary" braking on landing by using the reversers instead. It's still ridiculously dangerous and bad, of course, but a different situation from "they're running the aircraft with no brakes."
[0]: https://t.me/aviatorshina/3679?comment=166821