Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

This college admissions scandal is nuts. The Yale women's soccer coach got $400,000 to pretend some rich kid was a prodigy so she could get into Yale with the lower standards reserved for athletes. For an Ivy League women's soccer coach that's probably something like 5-10 years worth of pay. Whoever that person was paid $1.2M overall to get into Yale. If you're willing to spend that much, why not just donate to the school directly? Surely even at Yale a donation that big gets your kid in the door.

Lori Loughlin (Aunt Becky, no!) paid $500,000 to get her daughters declared crew team recruits, though neither had ever road a boat in their lives.

Others bribed SAT and ACT administrators to literally cheat on test scores for them.

Pretty amazing and I'm sure much more is out there. You don't think about the coaches on the lower-end sports...those people start around $40,000-$50,000 at most schools. Maybe lower than that. And some billionaire offers you half a million to pretend their kid is a prized recruit so they get judged on the 'athlete' scale rather than general student population. Got to be extremely tempting for the fencing coach at Johns Hopkins or whatever.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/inve...bribery-scheme

[Jeff Buchanan]

Yeah. It's difficult to know how to react as a consumer. You know there are 10000 flights daily and you take comfort in the numbers, but when you see regulators start to pick on a particular plane in a growing list of countries, it feels foolish to ignore that.

I wouldn't disagree. The thing that I'm pretty sure is driving the decisions to ground or not allow the 737 Max 8s/9s to fly into airspace you control is liability. As well, if you do let this jet fly and another one crashes, you are going to get bombarded publicly with questions of why is it still flying.

I'm confident that the US airline industry and Boeing, know about the system problems that the 737 Max 8s/9s have and considers them to be not significant enough to warrant grounding. You could say these companies are putting profits over safety but I can guarantee you that is not the case. An aircraft accident and the ensuing liability weighs much more heavily in decision making like this and if any of them thought the risk of this happening again within their operational fleets of affected 737s, those aircraft would be hangered immediately.

I'm going to guess on this because I don't know first hand but I do know how stuff like this is handled from an aircrew training perspective. Every commercial pilot employed by a major US airline undergoes rigorous and regular flight simulator training. To get a type rating in the 737 requires this on top of FAA flight checks in that aircraft administered by check pilots employed by the FAA that have upwards of 10,000h in type. They are the cream of the crop.

I'll feel safe guaranteeing you that every commercial pilot carrying a US licence and flying the 737 Max 8s/9s has been on a simulator ride where he has had to deal with this auto-pilot emergency. He's probably screwed it up at least once but by the time he's done it three or four times, he or she has got it down in spades. The correct reaction has become instinctive. Not all airlines are as rigorous and as regulated as US airlines. Not every country has an FAA like the US does. Not diming Ethiopia or Ethiopian Airlines - way too early for that shit.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Back in the days where aircraft were far simpler as Trump says, there were more crashes. He says this is for "All this cost for very little gain." That is a capital B Bozo comment. Flights are safer and cheaper, is that a little gain?

Yep it sounds like there may be a design flaw with this newest edition of the 737 or the change in that version with the engines makes it so the pilots may actually have to get actually recertified. Or maybe it was pilot error. Nobody knows right now. He sounds like a nimrod. Fallows has the right approach, we don't know enough yet. Trump certainly shouldn't be weighing in on it.

Planes will crash, planes will get more complicated to keep them safer. Count on it.

Don't get me wrong ...... Trump's comments in his stupid tweet on the crash in are "captial B Bozo." I probably misspoke when I tried to give him some licence here but my point was more about how pilots have become more process oriented and possibly less instinctive in modern, glass cockpit, commercial aircraft. He did sort of allude to that but, no, he also probably doesn't have a clue about what he is talking about..... par for the course where he is concerned.

[froot loops]

I agree with you on that, I think with the scale of how many commercial pilots fly you are going to have a hard time getting to your ideal instinctive pilot. It is something compelling to be studied. A lot of the stuff I've read is that the big leaps in safety in flight is the culture change of focusing on the process.

[AlabamAlum]

Correct. The critical failure rate has improved an average of 230% every decade for the last 50 years.

[Ghengis Jon]

Maybe trump will back up his words by traveling in an armored train like his snugglebunny Dear Leader.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Speaking as someone with absolutely no knowledge on the subject, emphasizing instincts and 'trust your gut' over instruments and technology seems like Hollywood sort of stuff.

BTW, the EU just grounded the 737 for its entire airspace

[froot loops]

Its a theme that permeates a lot of fields, not just aviation. Process sucks. documenting it, making sure you follow it sucks but it works. In these cases it takes a long time to figure out what went wrong if they figure it out at all.

[froot loops]

Speaking as someone with absolutely no knowledge on the subject, emphasizing instincts and 'trust your gut' over instruments and technology seems like Hollywood sort of stuff.

BTW, the EU just grounded the 737 for its entire airspace

Just remember Iceman is the hero in Top Gun instead of Maverick.

[hack]

All good comments here. Jeff, I agree that this is highly unlikely to be chalked up to Boeing skimping on costs. And I agree that liability concerns would rule the day. But, there, that again might not fit the pattern. This isn't my field, but where I have come across it, it's been developing-country airlines that have a harder time winning regulatory approval to land in the US than in the Eurozone. So just anecdotally I'm minded to believe a ban would come in the US before it would in the EU. However in that case the question is an airline and not a manufacturer. I just don't know.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Theresa May has her Brexit deal rejected a second time, by a margin of 391 to 242. The UK is scheduled to leave the EU in 17 days

EDIT: A representative for the EU says there will be no further talks between now and then. Britain has three choices. 1) Leave with no deal 2) Revoke Article 50 (overturn Brexit in other words) or 3) Ask for an extension which would require unanimous vote by the EU states.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-47547887

[froot loops]

[crashcourse]

serious doneiro 1/2 million to get your daughter into USC then pay a mill plus in tuition for your daughters who likely are going to crash and burn in that envirnement anyway.

looking at the oldest daughter of Laughlin she needs to forsake college and concentrate on that tan and that bod

https://www.instagram.com/oliviajade/

[froot loops]

That was the point of going to USC. She makes money as an "influencer"

[Dr. Strangelove]

serious doneiro 1/2 million to get your daughter into USC then pay a mill plus in tuition for your daughters who likely are going to crash and burn in that envirnement anyway.

looking at the oldest daughter of Laughlin she needs to forsake college and concentrate on that tan and that bod

https://www.instagram.com/oliviajade/

I'm not saying it's right either, but if you just donate that kind of money to the school to get a fitness room built or renovate a quad or something, I'm pretty sure most schools are going to get your kid in. Again, it shouldn't work that way either but it always has and at least the entire community benefits. Why cheat your way in?