Another MD-80 emergency landing in Indiana?

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Just heard brief report on news radio that there was an emergency landing of an MD-80 in Southbend, Indiana. The report said the pilot reported that the plane wouldn't fly straight (whatever that means). Sorry, that's all I heard!

-- (JustMe@Home.presday), February 21, 2000

Answers

Continental Jet Lands in Emergency

Link

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/a/AP-Emergency-Landing.html

A MD-80 passenger jet headed from Las Vegas to Cleveland made an emergency landing Monday at the South Bend Regional Airport after its crew reported problems maintaining level flight. ... Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tom Kenney said crew members reported problems with aileron trim. The aileron is a control surface on the wing that controls the rolling movements of an airplane.

-- Ron Rodgers (RonRodgers@yahoo.com), February 21, 2000.


Let's inspect them all AGAIN, for something ELSE this time!
-- Sysman (y2kboard@yahoo.com), February 21, 2000.

This is an incredible series of incidents. Think we'll see all these MD80 incidents reported on CNN/NBC? Where's the media? I just hope it doesn't take another crash to get the NTSB to seek the bottom of the problem.

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 21, 2000.

If another MD80 crashes under similar circumstances to the Alaska Air incident, a case of gross negligence against the airlines, NTSB and the FAA won't be far behind!!

Ray

-- Ray (ray@totacc.com), February 21, 2000.


Well, I reacted a little too quickly--CNN did report the story. But there is no reference to the many other incidents that have been taking place, which is an exceptionally important part of this story....

MD-80 makes emergency landing

February 21, 2000 ] Web posted at: 6:51 PM EST (2351 GMT)

SOUTH BEND, Indiana (CNN) -- A Continental Airlines MD-80 with 145 people aboard made an emergency landing here Monday following a sudden drop in altitude the crew attributed to a trim problem with a wing flap. Nobody was injured. Flight 1416 was headed to Cleveland from Las Vegas carrying 140 passengers and a crew of five, Continental said. It landed at South Bend at 3:28 p.m. Another plane was sent to South Bend to take the passengers to Cleveland, said Continental spokesman Ned Walker in Houston. Tom Kenney, regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Chicago, said the crew reported aileron trim problems and asked for permission to land in South Bend. The aileron is a movable wing flap that can be used to control the plane's rolling and banking movements. "We'll do a complete inspection of the aircraft now and we'll report our findings to the FAA," said Walker, the Continental spokesman. Walker said the plane was "fully compliant with FAA airworthiness directives" issued February 11 as a result of the Alaska Airlines crash off the southern California coast January 31 that killed all 88 people aboard.

Link

http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/02/21/md80.landing/index.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 21, 2000.



This is simply incredible!!! How many does this make?

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), February 21, 2000.

Mara ... TOO MANY ! Eagle

-- Hal Walker (e999eagle@FREEWWWEB.COM), February 21, 2000.

Another one??

Jeeeezuz!

Those embedded chips are really starting to twitch!



-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), February 21, 2000.

"fully compliant"

Hmmm now where have I herd that before?

-- mush (discovery@shields.up), February 21, 2000.


Including the accidents this morning added up to five (5) since February 15; and there had been 5-6 prior to that, beginning january 30 or thereabouts. Sorry, I haven;t been keeping an exact tally, just saving links to the threads posting MD-80 incidents. Beleiving this to be a bona-fide embedded systems failure-- contrary to all MIkey2k's expert advice -- I committed to an additonal 12 -19 incidents before the end of the month, since the "buffer overflow" problems, if that's what these have been, should "theoretically" (not that I know what I'm talking about) be accelerating in frequency, until the plane HAS TO BE GROUNDED or lese the pilots walk out on it. We've got to be close to that point now. I'd say give it a week or ten days into March before the planes are grounded or struck.

>"<

-- Squirrel Hunter (nuts@upina.cellrelaytower), February 21, 2000.



Squirrel Hunter, are you making the following a prediction? The MD-80 fleet will be grounded no later than March 10, whether by FAA order or by pilot walkout.

Just curious, what has caused you to believe these incidents to be the result of embedded computer system failures?

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), February 21, 2000.


Yup. I already committed to that prediction. What makes me think it's Y2K is context: It's Y2K. Context: refineries are going down left and right; context: pipelines have "meter-rating" problems"; context: many 911 systems are experiencing serious problems; context: Toronto Stock Exchange down for 2nd day; context: another derailment, switching problem; etc. etc. etc. And a layman's (mis?)understanding of what embedded systems might trigger in the systems they govern or monitor: just this sort of mishap .... disaster. That plus the the suddenness of the appearance of MD-80 problems right at January 30/31, etc. etc.

You Mikey, have a clear expertise in aviation and avionics (?). I'm looking at the larger picture and reposnding almost intuitively or impressionistically patterns of events I think I see unfolding regardless really of whether I have the competence to say that any given particular event si the result of a Y2K failure.

Flight 261 fopr example -- was it or wasn't it? We'll probably never know. I certainly won't because I haven't the capacity to wiegh your arguments agasint Hawk's, much less to inspect the actual wreckage or interpret the FAA report, etc. But in the context of everything else that's going haywire in the fly-by-wires and back on the ground, I can make a wild-ass guess that this accident has to be related to the very problem everyone here is concentrating on ...

Smae with subsequent incidents: are the really Y2K, or are they "pilot-perceptual" problems resulting from increased scrutiny of the pilots and the FAA when it comes to MD-80s? No way to know. We have always said that you could not disentangle the perception from the reality when it came to Y2K, and I think it's important to note that this is confluence may already be affecting events in the 'flight history" of the MD-80.

-- Squirrel Hunter (nuts@upina.cellrelaytower), February 22, 2000.


It ain't normal ~ !

And that's enough to make us cautious ...

Let's see if there's any kind of spike around / after February 29.

Remember in 1996, for the rest of the year, most grocery receipts were one day off.
Wondering if the Leap will exacerbate any of these popping failures.

*HOPE NOT*

-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), February 22, 2000.


SH, when you consider a problem identified on a statistical basis, you have to identify first whether your statistics are valid and then you need to find a linkage.

If we've established that there are statistically and significantly more incidents of whatever, then you have to consider all possible causes, not just the calendar.

But no, I don't think that we have significantly more incidents, just significantly more reporting. If AS261 had not crashed, I don't think that we would have heard about all these MD-80 incidents. And yeah, I expect that pilots have been sobered by the AS261 crash and I think their take home lesson has been to avoid unecessary troubleshooting and get it on the ground.

Do I think that Y2k could still cause problems? Sure I do -- in non- compliant software evaluating data that spans the rollover. Why don't I think that I a Y2k bug caused AS261 to crash? Other than my 27 years experience in avionics and aviation, but even if I didn't I would ask Why is data spanning the rollover involved in the control of a process lasting a single flight? No, I don't think so. Also, the Paula Gordon overflowing buffer nonsense is just that: nonsense from a non-expert, notwithstanding her input from an anonymous "expert".

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), February 22, 2000.


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