A little off-topic, since in this case I'd say "Sad I'm not a passenger".

But I'm sure that @WBahn (among others) will enjoy this article.
I've always been a fan of the SR71, and I'm still holding on to hope that they will fly again one day.

 

The SR-71 was truly a wonder. I would love to see it fly again, but only if it is with a bonafide mission that justifies taxpayer expense or if it is being paid for by private/corporate funds, most likely for heritage or museum purposes. Union Pacific is current restoring a Big Boy to running condition for similar purposes and it would be great if Lockheed would do something similar for a Blackbird.

But I have to admit -- while I would love to see it happen, I wouldn't volunteer to help out with the effort. I'm glad I got to work on one Blackbird, and that was enough to teach me that I don't really want to ever work on another one.

 

The SR-71 was truly a wonder. I would love to see it fly again, but only if it is with a bonafide mission that justifies taxpayer expense or if it is being paid for by private/corporate funds, most likely for heritage or museum purposes. Union Pacific is current restoring a Big Boy to running condition for similar purposes and it would be great if Lockheed would do something similar for a Blackbird.

But I have to admit -- while I would love to see it happen, I wouldn't volunteer to help out with the effort. I'm glad I got to work on one Blackbird, and that was enough to teach me that I don't really want to ever work on another one.

From what I've heard, it's a rather complex machine. Using monocrystaline steel alloy in its compressor and turbine blades. And requiring high maintenance. Most of it's weight at takeoff was due to the amount of fuel it carried. And leaking it everywhere until it reached cruise speed and the fuel tank's skin expanded enough for them to seal. But of course you could expand on this subject yourself, and correct me if I've said something wrong.

 

@cmartinez You might also like to read this report on the U-2 project: https://www.cia.gov/library/center-.../the-cia-and-the-u-2-program-1954-1974/u2.pdf

There are several interesting anecdotes. One in particular about a flame out over the Mississippi is kind of funny (p. 78). There is another about a pilot who almost mixed up his gumdrop candies with the cyanide capsule some carried.

John

 

I only got to work on one and that was because it blew a fuel pump over the Atlantic and had to divert to our base. So a team from Beale came out to replace the fuel pump but there were components in the way that had to be removed to facilitate the maintenance and that's where I came in. Working around all of the leaking fuel and hydraulic fluid (and the Skydrol fluid they used was rather nasty stuff -- annoying more so than dangerous, at least in relative terms) was bad enough, but the design of the aircraft did not make maintenance tasks easy. I have to admit that I was pampered by the relative easy of maintainability of the F-15.

 

I wonder what happened in this plane... why were only three passengers affected?

 

Hard to say. They should have some data from the flight data recorders to work with. The fact that the masks didn't deploy means that the cabin pressure (probably) didn't get above 10 to 12 thousand feet (I don't know what the trip altitude is).

Here's one scenario (which is just a WAG):

The cabin pressure is climbing in altitude and since different people are susceptible to altitude affects at wildly different rates and way, at some point the most susceptible passenger has a reaction (faints).

The nurse gets out of her seat and assists, meaning that she is no exerting herself and thus needs more oxygen.

The passenger behind the first succumbs to sympathetic trauma -- basically when a group of people see someone react oddly in a way that might indicate "something in the air", some fraction of people will fall victim to the same thing even if nothing is there due to the placebo effect. There was a study that was done a two or three decades ago in which researchers went to rock concerts and had someone that "feinted" (feints a faint) at particular time and there were usually a good handful of people nearby that collapsed in quick succession.

So now the nurse, who has already been exerting herself, goes to help the second person and, in doing, exerts herself even more and then past the point where she becomes susceptible to the high, but not excessively high, cabin altitude (and there could be placebo effect going on there as well, who knows).

 

Hard to say. They should have some data from the flight data recorders to work with. The fact that the masks didn't deploy means that the cabin pressure (probably) didn't get above 10 to 12 thousand feet (I don't know what the trip altitude is).

Here's one scenario (which is just a WAG):

The cabin pressure is climbing in altitude and since different people are susceptible to altitude affects at wildly different rates and way, at some point the most susceptible passenger has a reaction (faints).

The nurse gets out of her seat and assists, meaning that she is no exerting herself and thus needs more oxygen.

The passenger behind the first succumbs to sympathetic trauma -- basically when a group of people see someone react oddly in a way that might indicate "something in the air", some fraction of people will fall victim to the same thing even if nothing is there due to the placebo effect. There was a study that was done a couple decades ago in which researchers went to rock concerts and had someone that "feinted" at particular time and there were usually a good handful of people nearby that collapsed in quick succession.

So now the nurse, who has already been exerting herself, goes to help the second person and, in doing, exerts herself even more and then past the point where she becomes susceptible to the high, but not excessively high, cabin altitude (and there could be placebo effect going on there as well, who knows).

I just watched this "House" chapter in which he's traveling on a plane with his associate, and exactly the same thing happens to some passengers after one of them becomes ill... very interesting stuff...

 

Another clue has been found to this latest fainting passengers mystery.

 

This is a very, very good video about a passenger narrating his near-death experience on the famous Hudson River plane crash. It's only 5 minutes long.

 

And, actually, you would be wrong about that.

But I wasn't talking about thread drift, I was referring to taking a post completely out of context in order to make a point that is irrelevant to the discussion. The side effect is that it is apparently an attempt to hijack the thread.

Sorry, I hadn't notice that this site makes it impossible to retain the context. That mistake is a shame:
(1) it encourages trivial conversations (context is often necessary to understand the nuances of what's being said) and
(2) context enables many extremely productive conversations.
See http://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php for many many examples.

 

This story is almost unbelievable:

The impact sounded like a train wreck. Jagged shrapnel from the helicopter's blade whistled by the Kirk. The helicopter then turned upside down in the water, its wheels pointing upward. There was an ominous silence as the crew watched something red spread across the spot in the sea where Nguyen jumped.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/29/us/vietnam-sea-rescue/index.html

 

This definitely qualifies for this thread... I cannot possibly begin to imagine the anxiety caused to most passengers...
Good thing it was a short flight

 

Stay ahead of the airplane,

I'm very familiar with this idea in riding (horses), bicycling, skiing, and sailing, but never thought of it in terms of flying. DUH.

Nice.

ak

 

A little off-topic, since in this case I'd say "Sad I'm not a passenger".

But I'm sure that @WBahn (among others) will enjoy this article.
I've always been a fan of the SR71, and I'm still holding on to hope that they will fly again one day.

Set your Outlook reminder - July 28 is the 39th anniversary of the last entry in the manned aircraft speed record table. 39 years!!!

ak

 

I cannot even begin to imagine the horror felt by the passengers of this plane when they realized they had lost power to both engines during a storm. Of course, I am very much aware that those engines were designed with the possibility of restarting them during flight if it ever becomes necessary, and that pilots receive intensive training on how to handle a situation like that one... but still....

 

Scarry. I hope they figure out why the engines flamed out so other can avoid that situation.

 

The reporter claimed that the plane dropped 13,000 ft "within seconds". That's ludicrous.

It's possible that most of the passengers weren't even aware of the problem until it was all over -- particularly since they were already in a storm.

As to cause, the only thing I can think of is lightening-induced EMI causing the electronic engine controllers to freak out. But that's just a WAG.

 

Probably 1300 feet. I was a passenger on Nantucket Airlines in the late 1980s that hit a down draft and I thought the Altimeter dropped a couple of hundred feet. I made the comment that you pay good money at an amusement park for that kind of a ride. The remainder of the flight from Hyannis and Nantucket was just a little bumpy.

After a see-saw ride down the runway at Shemya in 1974, I learned to accept what I can not control in the aircraft.

 

The written article cites a radar site as indicating that they dropped 13,000 ft (but no indication about the amount of time it took). I can easily believe that they dropped that much altitude while going for the restart, but it happened over a few minutes (two to four, probably), not a few seconds.