The flight in question went from Karachi to Medina carrying a total of 416 passengers, on a Boeing 777 with a total seating capacity of 409, including staff seats. !!
What flight are you referring to? The article says extra passengers were allowed to stand in the aisles. It also says the captain was unaware until after takeoff.
"As many as seven passengers aboard the Pakistan International Airlines flight PK-743 (Karachi-Madina) on Jan 20 were forced to stand throughout the over three-hour flight after the airline boarded excess passengers in a serious breach of air safety regulations."
People downvote over some dumb stuff sometimes on HN, but I'd be careful about posting a complaint about being downvoted that contains no other contents. It's against site rules and could get you in trouble.
> Don't put spaces before commas or question marks.
Actually, I do this all the time, when what precedes the punctuation mark is a URL. It just doesn't seem right to have the URL seamlessly run into a punctuation mark that isn't actually part of it.
URL a permissible exception to a rule that otherwise stands.
You can identify texts written by French people by the extra spaces (if they're careful or have a good word processor, it'll even be a non-breaking space).
I'm curious, on a scale of 1-10 how big of a transgression do people consider this to be?
When I was in India it was common to have people sitting in the aisles on long distance buses, trains, and theatre halls where fire evacuation plans were clearly not being followed. Agreed, planes are not theatre halls, but how severe of a breach in public safety is this? I think planes are a special case because they are such fragile systems, but it does seem like in the West we worship health and safety a little too much.
I'm from the UK and I'd put it at 4 or 5. Basically completely unacceptable but when it comes to health and safety there is almost no limit to how dangerous you can make a situation. 10 would be depressurising the cabin and giving passengers warm clothes and oxygen masks and hoping enough of them survive that you still make a profit.
In commercial aviation specifically, we worship health and safety even more than usual, in large part due to the high psychological impact of aircraft incidents. Given the complexity of aviation systems and the number of catastrophic failure modes that exist, the fatality rate of (particularly Western) aviation is absolutely incredible.
I would give this incident 1/10. It's mind boggling to me why people think this is a big deal.
Speaking of theatres and other venues, overcrowding them is way worse. For once, they actually do catch on fire much more often then planes fall from the sky. I consider overcrowding a theatre criminal negligence, while I couldn't care less about (minimally!!) overcrowding a plane.
Such an over-crowded flight would have caused
problems in an emergency evacuation, aviation
experts said, and passengers would not have
had access to oxygen if it was suddenly required.
Additionally, you don't wear a seatbelt on a plane to save you from a crash, you wear it to stop yourself being injured during turbulence, or from injuring someone else by being thrown onto them. Obviously these people did not have seatbelts.
I don't know if this is actually true, but I read recently that in the case of a crash the seatbelt isn't there to stop you dying, its to keep your body attached to your assigned seat so that you can be identified afterwards.
Sounds like the old "brace position is to kill you rather than injure you" myth to me. Struggling for a better source, but:
> And the seat belts that flight attendants urge you to wear during most of the flight also helped to keep head and neck injuries to a minimum, says Dr. David King, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. “Clearly for the vertical deceleration [typical] of an airplane crash, the lap belt seems to be the most important restraint,” he says.
A myth. Sure, there are accidents where everyone perishes with or without seatbelt (and those make the headlines), but there are surprisingly many accidents where some or many people survive.
> "between 1983 and 2000, more than 95 percent of people involved in U.S. plane crashes survived."
Fair enough, but bottom line is that lots can happen on a flight that might injure you, without necessarily being a prototypical plane crash. So better wear your seat belts.
Similarly, I take off my shoes during long flights, but make sure to have them on for take-off and landing, in case of evacuation.
Don't need to fall from the sky to cause damage. Bad turbulence can break bones, doubly so if you're stranded in the aisle with nothing to hold you down. Airplanes have seatbelts for a reason.
Not to excuse this in any way, but that sort of sky bump is a rare event, which is why you can find a news story about it. And, also per that story, people can end up getting hurt in those circumstances even though they're seated.
Again, we don't have standing room planes for very good reasons. And breakdowns in safety protocols should be worrying. But as a one-off event, the incremental danger is actually pretty slight.
Otherwise, totally agree: compared to total number of flights (there's maybe 1000 B737 and A320 in the air at any moment), rare (though potential consequences could be grave.)
And, as you say, it's the negligence of basic safety protocol that's worrying.
in a post on Quora about what it's like to fly on Air Force One:
First, as we started to descend I instinctively went back to my seat and buckled up. But I noticed a lot of the other "frequent flyers" were still up and walking around. So I asked one of them, "When are we supposed to sit down?" They just kind of laughed at my "noob question" and said something to the effect of-- "You don't really have to sit down at all just watch how the pilot lands this thing." So people were still up and walking around as the plane landed. For someone who had only flown commercial it was a fascinating to me for some reason. Sure enough- the pilot put her down like a feather and came to a gentle stop.
CFR 14 (Federal Aviation Regulations) requires everyone on board a civil aircraft to wear seat belts during taxi, takeoff, and landing.
(Under part 91.107 [1], where part 91 are general rules for general aviation, and that rule does not hold for operations under part 121 (air carriers/airliners), 125 (planes with more than 20 pax), 135 (commuter and on-demand flights), but they all re-introduce it separately [2][3][4], so yeah.)
Either they're all criminals, or the rules on military flights are different.
At any rate, I'd think it's rather prudent to sit down and put a seatbelt on - the rule's not just for fun, but because accidents can occur. The notion that the Airforce One pilots are somehow special with special landing skills strikes me as fanciful.
I'd be inclined to agree with you regarding the "general safety" concern, except for two things:
1. AF1 is a 747. If you've never been on a 747 (or A380), then you might not appreciate how smooth landings are in general. It's a lot of airplane with a lot of momentum (not to mention a lot of electronic assistance for the pilots).
2. You say "The notion that the Airforce One pilots are somehow special with special landing skills strikes me as fanciful." I don't consider that notion fanciful at all! In fact, I'd expect they have special landing skills. The AF1 pilots are not just some random commercial or charter pilots, they are Air Force officers, hand-picked from the best of the best. In addition, not only do they have to take-off and land the president's airplane, they also must be able to take evasive action IN A FREAKIN' 747 in the event of a hostile encounter. So "special landing skills"...I'd buy it.
EDIT: Also, reading the original Quora answer, the particular landing mentioned was on the Shuttle Landing Facility, one of the longest runways in the world! I'd wager the pilot could've practically let AF1 roll out the landing and had room to spare.
Fair enough, they're probably among the best pilots in the world, and a long runway helps (I've landed a Cessna 172 at Upington, South Africa, at 4900 meters one of the few runways in the world longer than the Shuttle Landing Facility, and yes, it's fairly straightforward to set it down smoothly in the nearly three minutes you can fly down that runway).
But are you advocating that pax in an A380 approaching big airports with nice weather just walk around as they please? And why not? Because the risk during takeoff and landing is elevated, compared to cruise flight, isn't it?
It's a tricky question, granted, but I'd still say, "principiis obsta", nip things in the bud, don't let safety standards slide, buckle up.
For commercial service I agree with you heartily. For AF1...I don't know. I'd be inclined to take a seat myself, but I can understand not, for a number of reasons. For example, even if landing is a tad rough, from the sounds of it there isn't nearly as much "stuff" in the interior (seats, overhead bins, etc.) you could potentially bang into.
If it was documented policy that the captain could authorise extra passengers and so on, 3/10. But if they just ignored their own rules it's a 9/10, because adherence to procedure is critical to avoiding death. If they can't do that bit right, what other (expensive) corners are they cutting? Engine maintenance? Crew training? Rest time log fabrication? Nepotism?
Think you have that the wrong way around! Taking on more passengers than there are seats is not safe. If it's an isolated incident, then that's 3/10. If it's an actual policy of the airline then holy shit! 11/10
Well, we can disagree. If you understand the risk and are willing to accept it that is one thing; if things are happening without controls that is far worse. There are no 'isolated incidents' in aviation.
The other comments don't really take into consideration the possibility of turbulence.
Imagine people trying not to fling around the cabin when hitting a rough patch. This isn't something that happens on a bus, but it is routine in aircraft.
The evacuation risk is only one side of the issue. People not strapped in are another. With enough turbulence, they'll fly around the cabin. In the best case it will be uncomfortable for them. In the worst, a 100kg body will suddenly hit you in the face.
I mean, this can happen on a bus: http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/2175405/bus-bounce-o.gif If you experienced proper turbulence in flight, you can imagine how it can go wrong on a plane. So around 8 and I will call the staff if you sit next to me and think you're too cool for the seatbelts.
Ive seen it in the US several times. Some people just refuse to use seatbelts. They look pretty funny hovering upwards then crashing down onto armrests. Luckily cabins now are so cramped that they rarely move far enough to hurt anyone else.
Google tells me that the average person weighs 80.7kg, let's conservatively round up to 100kg to take into account clothes, and luggage (It's probably higher). From this we can estimate that the PIA flight had an extra 700kg (It's probably closer to 1 tonne) of weight on board, and extra 700kg that wasn't properly secured or distributed.
Depending on the plane, the effects could range from using up more fuel (planes carry extra fuel for emergencies and so they can circle their destination while they wait to land, it would eat into this reserve making flight incidents more deadly), to failing to take off the runway; The pilot wasn't informed until he was in the air.
While the plane in question is certainly larger and more powerful than the majority of the links I provided, the fact of the matter is an overloaded bus or train may refuse to move if overloaded, a plane can fall from the sky killing people both on-board and on the ground. Planes fail deadly.
You now have 7 extra, fragile humans standing in the aisle who have nowhere to belt down in case of emergency. If the plane crashes, needs to make an emergency landing, or even encounters incredibly rough turbulence they could be thrown around the cabin hurting both themselves and others.
As for a 1 to 10 scale of transgression, it's hard to place because of the nature of such a simplistic scale. Assuming your scale is confined to aeronautics (lest we invoke Godwin's Law) what counts as a 1, and what counts as a 10? If your 1 to 10 scale is truly inclusive of every possible aeronautical incident then 1 has to be a passenger with a typo on their ticket, and 10 has to be 911. I don't know about you, but I have no idea where to place this overloading incident on such a scale.
The smallest 777 can take off weighing over 200t. An extra 0.7t is basically nothing, considering even the smallest variant holds nearly 100t of fuel and consumes over 6t/h of it. In other words, 0.7t is the weight of the fuel consumed in less than 7 minutes of flight.
I once flew a (non-indian) airline with a large group of people from india on it (to be honest could have been from some of the neighboring countries too, but looked like the average group of Bangalore engineers) - who stood up and retrieved their coats and carry on from the overhead bins while the plane touched down. A fly around or bumpy landing could really have ruined their day. I was just thinking "that makes sense if you ride on the roof of the bus from the airport home...".
happens on every single indian flight. Indians have the fear of being 'left behind' from decades of conditioning where only first few birds get the worm. I have this instinct too form standing in ration lines with my ration card for wheat/sugar and palm oil .
As an an Indian, I completely agree and it annoys me every time I fly home. I just don't understand what's the rush? I mean, the plane hasn't even touched the runway yet and people are scrambling for overhead luggage, some of them are turning on their mobiles on and are on call, heck I even saw even once the toddler taken out of the belt. All for what? To go and wait in aisle or bus or in front of the airline staff or the luggage belt. It grinds my gears every time.
The flight in question went from Karachi to Medina carrying a total of 416 passengers, on a Boeing 777 with a total seating capacity of 409, including staff seats.
IMHO the weight difference will be negligible, and in an emergency evacuation those in the aisle would be the first to leave. The biggest risks are probably turbulence and availability of oxygen.
If you take flying lessons weight and balance is a big part of the training.
The moment arm ("virtual" fulcrum) is an imaginary point where the balance of the plane is and it moves depending on the shape of the aircraft and where the weight is located.
Imagine a long lever with the fulcrum in the middle now imagine that lever is flying in three dimensions. Any weight near or far from the fulcrum makes it difficult to control the lever (aircraft) if the weight is moving or in the wrong spot.
My flying lessons were 25 years ago and I didn't continue but that's the gist of it.
Maybe I'm paranoid thinking back to my flying my instructor was strict about weight and balance not that I carried anything as a student. But always being aware of it is a big part of flying or at least when learning to fly.
My instructor even made me secure my pen when I was flying nothing loose in the cabin.
For a small plane, the limits are smaller, naturally. But half a ton here and there is something an airliner can deal with.
For the pen, there might be other reasons - a dropped pen might slide under the rudder pedal and block it, or interfere with other things in the cabin.
Around 4. A bit like taking a selfie on a train track, or walking along the edge of a sky scraper - most likely nothing is going to happen, but if, the consequences could be severe.
Turbulences injure people all the time, see [1].
Also, commercial aviation is as incredibly safe as it is because everyone follows the rules. If you start neglecting them because everything is happy and dandy nearly always, you are contributing to the next accident.
It is this creeping "normalisation of deviance" that has to be fought.
Note that generally I agree with the notion that we might exaggerate with safety - I'm all for letting children play, for example. But here we are dealing with potentially deadly consequences, and not only for yourself, but for others.
Let me conclude with a great quote:
> "Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."
— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. 1930's
What's the problem? I'm sure those passengers would rather stand in the aisle and get there on time than sit at the airport waiting for the next plane...
If the pilot doesn't know he has extra passengers, and those extra passengers add weight to the aircraft, and the aircraft is not fueled to handle the extra weight, that's a problem.
All passengers are required to have a chair for safety reasons. The chairs absorb a lot of impact in the case of a crash, and obviously they also have seatbelts which are important for safety.
Fuck somebody else's safety guidelines. I am responsible for determining what level of safety I desire for myself. Nobody is forcing me to stay there, I decide (or not) if the flight conditions are acceptable or not.
Then chose a different (more expensive) airline that doesn't take extra people. Market dynamics at work.
Personally I would always chose the more expensive option, not because of safety (level of safety is plenty), but because of comfort.
Thing is, I afford this comfort, there was a time (not even that long ago) where I could not afford to fly at all, and I would have definitely accepted to stay in the aisle (or a plane without seats). Many, many people are in this scenario. Why shouldn't they be allowed to fly if they are satisfied with the conditions?
Market dynamics should not be allowed to jeopardize people by not respecting standard safety procedures.
Stupid people would do a lot of stupid things to themselves or others willingly.
Some would gladly sell their children into slavery. That doesn't mean this market dynamic should be allowed.
Point is, there is some lower limit that should not be crossed and crossing it should be universally considered bad.
Also I don't think you will always the more expensive option for an undetermined amount of more comfort.
I am sure someone out there will willingly design your own custom one of a kind record size airplane. I doubt you will be willing to pay for it.
I would bet that people not respecting standard safety procedures in airplanes cause less damage to people around them than the same people driving cars. By your argument we should ban people from driving cars, because they jeopardize people around them.
When one travels to this part of the world, one learns that it's more like, "I have nothing so fuck your rules I'm happy to trade some of my safety for food for my family."
We might sniff that such a point of view is short-sighted, but we do so from a position of privilege.
That is true, and one could argue that one should relax certification requirements for airplanes and airmen and operating rules, and let more people fly more cheaply, and more people die.
(Not being flippant here: we make risk trade-offs all the time, could limit cars to 30 km/h or so and reduce traffic deaths, but in that case, we don't.)
However, in aviation we do have very high standards now, with concomitant safety, and while it might be fruitful to have that discussion, it's arguably not up to cabin crew to make that decision ad hoc for everyone on the flight.
The safety and consideration of others is not privilege nor is this a case of moral relativism. You've got a company bending the rules so they can make money and a member of the Hackernews commentariat who would effectively trade your life and safety because of ideological convinience. So nice try but that argument isn't going to hold water.
You're free to determine your level of safety. But your placement on the plane and how well you're strapped to the seat determines everyone else's level of security - which they have just as much right to.
Or in simpler terms, during heavy turbulence, if you're not strapped in you will hit the ceiling and then fall down, potentially onto another person.
Except that, due to your lack of consideration or knowledge, you put other people at risk. What happens when the aircraft hits turbulence and you can't hold on? It is very likely that you injure yourself, and worse yet, someone else.
I mean, it's not like the risk itself is something wrong, right? I can risk failure in a game even if a chance for success is tiny because I have a quicksave just before. I can risk being hit by lightning by going out on a sunny day without caring at all. It's the level of risk - how probable something is and how severe the consequences when it happens - that's important.
> It is very likely that you injure yourself,
First how "very" likely it is? The probability of injury and the extent of the harm will depend, in large part, on the individual person ability.
You made a claim in absolute terms, but even if we agree to tone it down a little and say that it is more likely to get injured when unseated, the question remains: how much more likely?
You risk injury and death every time you fly. You find the risk acceptable because you need to get somewhere fast. The person sitting in the aisle feels similarly, only their "need to get somewhere" is greater than yours (or their risk assessment differs from yours).
> and worse yet, someone else.
Again, how probable this is? How much of a threat am I to the people next to me?
And what's more important, do people around me accept the risk? If they do, what is wrong with my behavior? On what grounds are you assuming that the other passengers were not ok with the extra ones? There's no mention of this in the article.
In short: you're simplifying the problem a little too much. Even if something indeed increases some risk, it's not enough to regard that as bad. You need to take things like the degree of risk and the willingness to take the risk in people in a particular situation into account, too.
Have you never encountered turbulence while flying? Actually have you ever traveled by plane?
The risk of injury, from more "acrobatic" maneuvers, should be rather obvious. To quantify this risk the severity is anywhere from bruises to permanently debilitating injuries + the risk you cause to others and the probability is rather high. Turbulence is not uncommon.
And other risks related to extra fuel consumption, extra weight, placement of weight should be easy to understand but more difficult to quantify.
Yes, people differ in their ability to evaluate risk, and their willingness to to assume it.
But in this case I think, for us as observers, I think it's quite easy to figure out that the personal and collateral risk is significant and bad. Especially since by doing this you are going outside the specs of the plane so you don't know how bad.
It is all of the people who do not care for themselves and accept awful conditions that make those conditions acceptable. If the airline can cram 7 people into the aisle next time they will try to cram 8.
If the employer sees the employees are ok with less safety, lower wages, less time off, etc. that is the direction things will go because those very it was allowed to happen. It is a downwards spiral.
In the U.S., about a dozen people have serious injuries each year due to turbulence in airplanes. It's quite a while since the last fatality, but a majority of injuries incurred while flying are due to turbulence.
The injuries are so rare precisely because people are instructed to keep their seat belt fastened whenever seated. I don't fly very much, but have been twice in a turbulence where I surely would have hit the ceiling and latest on the downward trajectory, would have hurt myself and others - if I hadn't been buckled up.
That list is global, not just US, and seems to include also minor injuries. But yes, there are definitely lots of occasions where people are injured by turbulence and just being buckled up helps a lot (see how many of those injuries are to cabin crew who isn't seated).
I would rather sit in my seat with the belt buckled and not have another passenger bounce all over the cabin and hit me in case of turbulence. Not to mention capacity, balance and evacuation efficiency issues.
I had that years ago (~1983) on a flight in China on CAAC. They put a couple of regular plastic chairs in the isle. CAAC didn't have the best safety record at the time.
something that's being ignored, there are three possibilities, and its' never PIA that it will prefer it let alone advertise aisle... It's about 2.30 hr flight from Karachi to Medina.
1. They are labors. and they can't miss the working day, they beg to fly in aisle
2. 99.9% is above, other than some religious pilgrims, who have tight schedule ...
3. PIA is dirt cheap for Karachi to Medina compared to ahem Emirates
And it wasn't as uncommon than one could think, until recent times, few decades ago, it was pretty regular thing for Karachi to Lahore (local flight ... 1 hr approx) ... as people have to meet certain time to perform a job .... and back then there were no local carrier compared to dozen of them now, and about 20+ KHI to LHE daily flights.
It's terrible, but chalking it up entirely to PIA is bit unfair...
Years ago I had a conversation with a Pan Am flight attendant who worked a Teheran evacuation flight after the Pahlavi "dynasty" was deposed and the US nationals had to clear out of Iran quickly. She told me they filled their Boeing 747's aisles with people sitting on the floor.
She told me it's a calculated risk to put passengers in the aisles.
But, the captain of the flight knew exactly what was going on and made the decision to proceed. It sounds like this PIA flight crew concealed their overloading from the captain. THAT is a very serious infraction indeed.
Aside from the other concerns raised that I see here, weight/balance would be off if the passenger count was off.
The pilots use weight/balance to calculate things like range, takeoff speed, altitude ceiling, stall characteristics, and so forth. If the plane is heavier than they think, that's not good.
Three quarters of a ton isn't all that significant a weight bump or CG change for an aircraft that size - the latter could as easily happen just from people moving normally around the cabin, maybe queuing at a lav, and the former might fractionally increase Vr but otherwise wouldn't make any difference.
Filling the aisles with people would be a more significant concern, but as another commenter noted, it's a calculated risk - better a long takeoff and rollout than leaving probably one or two hundred people to the tender mercies of the revolutionary and explicitly anti-Western new regime.
In either case, severe turbulence is a much more critical problem. If it happens, some people are certainly going to be badly, maybe lethally, injured.
It isn't the most important thing thing no. Keep in mind though, that the pax count doesn't drive just body weight, there's luggage as well. And I don't know that the count was off by just 7 or 8 pax.
In evacuations, generally luggage beyond whatever people are carrying in their hands is not accommodated. So that lack of luggage gives a margin of error on weight.
The PIA stunt was especially dangerous due to it being a normal flight
In 1991, Israel evacuated 14325 Ethiopian Jews in 36 hours using 35 aircraft, with up to 1122 passengers on a plane [1]. It's such an impressive feat, those must have been some of the best pilots, to be able to fly such an overcrowded plane (even though they stripped the seats from the planes it was probably still overloaded)
Not to knock the accomplishment but to be fair, the passengers were really light (confirmed according to article).
This comment sent me on a journey to find obesity data on Ethiopia and I found this ranked list that tied back to the CIA factbook as source and places them next to last (currently): http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=et&v=2228
Yeah, people are about the density of water but even an isle full of people isn't enough to be too meaningful to an airliner. The only times it may be a problem would be a short runway with a full fuel load at altitude. Airliner are typically flown well within it's performance limits. No airline would allow a flight plan that's close to the maximum performance of the aircraft since it would be a recipe for disaster in addition to hard on equipment.
Keeping the cargo secure and the wrench that extra passengers throws into emergency procedures is the real issue here.
I've heard that Boeing 747 airplanes have enough lift to fly properly (if not land properly) with their fuselages full of water. They are in service as fuel tankers.
Still, it's a bad idea to prang an airplane with a few hundred people in the aisles, so pilot skill is important.
It perplexes me that there are HN'ers who do not understand the risks involved.
I can understand that the passengers involved do not have an alternative that ensures their short term livelihood and may not be aware of the risks.
But seeing some of the HN'ers, who one would assume have a high school understanding of physics, have the same careless attitude is surprising.
It makes a very unlikely event (crash) slightly more likely, and it makes the consequences of slightly less rare events (heavy turbulence, diversion, emergency landing...) worse.
There is very high chance that it makes no difference to anyone at all. That's why it's seen as a "no big deal". I when something is VERY unlikely making it even ten times more likely doesn't matter to people's perception of risk.
It is hard to say how unlikely it is. A plane crash may be unlikely globally but may be more likely among the planes of an airline that considers this acceptable. Likewise, a drunk driver is more likely to cause an accident than the average driver.
And as I was saying, I understand this attitude from the passengers. For them the risk of a crash may be severe but highly unlikely and in comparison to the risk of loosing their job acceptable.
But I would have expected the average HN commenter to recognize the just like the risk is different for different types of drivers (and their cars due to maintenance) , the same applies to planes.
So those less rare events may be more likely than the average.
So making some events (and their consequences), that may already be more likely than the average for them, a number of times more likely is bad.
Than again the average is just as uninformative a statistical indicator for HN commenters as it is for drivers and planes.
This makes me think, when someone talks about something they perceive as the average of something do they perceive the median, the mode or actually indeed the mean(average)?
There is a case to made that we actually perceive the mode (value that appears most often) instead of the mean.
I agree, and what would worry me about seeing passengers in the aisle wouldn't be the risk of people bouncing around or fuel running low, but the worry of "what other things are seen as not very imortant by the airline I'm flying?".
Being sloppy with crew rest, sobriety, maintenance schedules, would make me much more nervous - and the people in the aisle might indicate a bad attitude.
Of course it doesn't. Risk (of an event) is an aggregate of the severity (of said event) and the probability (of that event happening). The damage is just the severity.
It is actually irrelevant in this case how risk is actually calculated from these two because almost no one actually calculates it before a plane ride. (Though it is probably calculated for heads of state/royalty/CEOs/etc..)
I took a flight from Yekaterinburg to Moscow in the 90s, and there was a delay while they added some of the chairs back to the plane because they had been moving some furniture in the cabin. I mean, like dressers and dining room tables and such.
I've been on several overseas flights, including on US based airlines, where people were stuffed in the aisle. It seems to me to be a dangerous practice, but flight safety standards tend to be more lackadaisical outside the US.
One of them was United. I did in fact report the incident to the FAA. Because the flight started and ended outside the US they had no jurisdiction and rejected my report.
Even if the safety issues surrounding people in the aisle were negligible, there's the Van Halen-M and M factor. If the airline is ignoring this rule, what other rules are they ignoring?
I had relatives in the airline industry, and the backronym going around for PIA (Pakistan International Airlines), which was quite crash-prone back in the days (30 hull losses, according to Wikipedia) was "Please inform Allah"...
117 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 219 ms ] threadMaximum certificated escape capacity for a 777-300ER is 550.
"As many as seven passengers aboard the Pakistan International Airlines flight PK-743 (Karachi-Madina) on Jan 20 were forced to stand throughout the over three-hour flight after the airline boarded excess passengers in a serious breach of air safety regulations."
https://www.dawn.com/news/1316682/pia-probing-safety-breach-...
Doesn't sound believable...
Don't put spaces before commas or question marks.
Single question mark is enough. "??" looks sloppy.
Actually, I do this all the time, when what precedes the punctuation mark is a URL. It just doesn't seem right to have the URL seamlessly run into a punctuation mark that isn't actually part of it.
Another possibility is to put <> around the URL; but that didn't work correctly on HN last time I tried.
You can identify texts written by French people by the extra spaces (if they're careful or have a good word processor, it'll even be a non-breaking space).
PS: Spaces before smileys also permissible :-)
Not sure how's that relevant to this article, though...
When I was in India it was common to have people sitting in the aisles on long distance buses, trains, and theatre halls where fire evacuation plans were clearly not being followed. Agreed, planes are not theatre halls, but how severe of a breach in public safety is this? I think planes are a special case because they are such fragile systems, but it does seem like in the West we worship health and safety a little too much.
Speaking of theatres and other venues, overcrowding them is way worse. For once, they actually do catch on fire much more often then planes fall from the sky. I consider overcrowding a theatre criminal negligence, while I couldn't care less about (minimally!!) overcrowding a plane.
> And the seat belts that flight attendants urge you to wear during most of the flight also helped to keep head and neck injuries to a minimum, says Dr. David King, a trauma surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. “Clearly for the vertical deceleration [typical] of an airplane crash, the lap belt seems to be the most important restraint,” he says.
http://healthland.time.com/2013/07/09/lessons-from-flight-21...
> "between 1983 and 2000, more than 95 percent of people involved in U.S. plane crashes survived."
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2619382&page=1
Similarly, I take off my shoes during long flights, but make sure to have them on for take-off and landing, in case of evacuation.
An Air Canada flight in 2015 had 21 people injured, including a broken pelvis.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/tsb-investigation-air-...
Again, we don't have standing room planes for very good reasons. And breakdowns in safety protocols should be worrying. But as a one-off event, the incremental danger is actually pretty slight.
http://avherald.com/h?search_term=turbulence+injures&opt=0&d...
Otherwise, totally agree: compared to total number of flights (there's maybe 1000 B737 and A320 in the air at any moment), rare (though potential consequences could be grave.)
And, as you say, it's the negligence of basic safety protocol that's worrying.
First, as we started to descend I instinctively went back to my seat and buckled up. But I noticed a lot of the other "frequent flyers" were still up and walking around. So I asked one of them, "When are we supposed to sit down?" They just kind of laughed at my "noob question" and said something to the effect of-- "You don't really have to sit down at all just watch how the pilot lands this thing." So people were still up and walking around as the plane landed. For someone who had only flown commercial it was a fascinating to me for some reason. Sure enough- the pilot put her down like a feather and came to a gentle stop.
https://www.quora.com/Whats-it-like-to-fly-on-Air-Force-One/...
(Under part 91.107 [1], where part 91 are general rules for general aviation, and that rule does not hold for operations under part 121 (air carriers/airliners), 125 (planes with more than 20 pax), 135 (commuter and on-demand flights), but they all re-introduce it separately [2][3][4], so yeah.)
Either they're all criminals, or the rules on military flights are different.
At any rate, I'd think it's rather prudent to sit down and put a seatbelt on - the rule's not just for fun, but because accidents can occur. The notion that the Airforce One pilots are somehow special with special landing skills strikes me as fanciful.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/91.107
[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/121.311
[3] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/125.211
[4] https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/135.128
1. AF1 is a 747. If you've never been on a 747 (or A380), then you might not appreciate how smooth landings are in general. It's a lot of airplane with a lot of momentum (not to mention a lot of electronic assistance for the pilots).
2. You say "The notion that the Airforce One pilots are somehow special with special landing skills strikes me as fanciful." I don't consider that notion fanciful at all! In fact, I'd expect they have special landing skills. The AF1 pilots are not just some random commercial or charter pilots, they are Air Force officers, hand-picked from the best of the best. In addition, not only do they have to take-off and land the president's airplane, they also must be able to take evasive action IN A FREAKIN' 747 in the event of a hostile encounter. So "special landing skills"...I'd buy it.
EDIT: Also, reading the original Quora answer, the particular landing mentioned was on the Shuttle Landing Facility, one of the longest runways in the world! I'd wager the pilot could've practically let AF1 roll out the landing and had room to spare.
But are you advocating that pax in an A380 approaching big airports with nice weather just walk around as they please? And why not? Because the risk during takeoff and landing is elevated, compared to cruise flight, isn't it?
It's a tricky question, granted, but I'd still say, "principiis obsta", nip things in the bud, don't let safety standards slide, buckle up.
http://www.vanallen.com/index.php/an-isolated-incident-risk-...
Imagine people trying not to fling around the cabin when hitting a rough patch. This isn't something that happens on a bus, but it is routine in aircraft.
I mean, this can happen on a bus: http://stream1.gifsoup.com/view3/2175405/bus-bounce-o.gif If you experienced proper turbulence in flight, you can imagine how it can go wrong on a plane. So around 8 and I will call the staff if you sit next to me and think you're too cool for the seatbelts.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/18/us/crash-that-killed-21-ap... http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2015/11... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-32732607 https://sputniknews.com/latam/201612261049016624-plane-brazi... https://generalaviationnews.com/2011/07/18/overweight-airpla... http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2004/Mar-29/29...
Google tells me that the average person weighs 80.7kg, let's conservatively round up to 100kg to take into account clothes, and luggage (It's probably higher). From this we can estimate that the PIA flight had an extra 700kg (It's probably closer to 1 tonne) of weight on board, and extra 700kg that wasn't properly secured or distributed.
Depending on the plane, the effects could range from using up more fuel (planes carry extra fuel for emergencies and so they can circle their destination while they wait to land, it would eat into this reserve making flight incidents more deadly), to failing to take off the runway; The pilot wasn't informed until he was in the air.
While the plane in question is certainly larger and more powerful than the majority of the links I provided, the fact of the matter is an overloaded bus or train may refuse to move if overloaded, a plane can fall from the sky killing people both on-board and on the ground. Planes fail deadly.
You now have 7 extra, fragile humans standing in the aisle who have nowhere to belt down in case of emergency. If the plane crashes, needs to make an emergency landing, or even encounters incredibly rough turbulence they could be thrown around the cabin hurting both themselves and others.
As for a 1 to 10 scale of transgression, it's hard to place because of the nature of such a simplistic scale. Assuming your scale is confined to aeronautics (lest we invoke Godwin's Law) what counts as a 1, and what counts as a 10? If your 1 to 10 scale is truly inclusive of every possible aeronautical incident then 1 has to be a passenger with a typo on their ticket, and 10 has to be 911. I don't know about you, but I have no idea where to place this overloading incident on such a scale.
While the plane in question is certainly larger and more powerful than the majority of the links I provided
At least an order of magnitude more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliners_by_maximum_t...
The smallest 777 can take off weighing over 200t. An extra 0.7t is basically nothing, considering even the smallest variant holds nearly 100t of fuel and consumes over 6t/h of it. In other words, 0.7t is the weight of the fuel consumed in less than 7 minutes of flight.
https://www.quora.com/How-much-fuel-does-a-Boeing-747-or-777...
As anecdotal as it gets but still eye opening.
I hate that. Of course, most likely nothing is going to happen, but it could, and then their stupid suitcase could also fall on my head.
When the plane arrives at the gate, there's still plenty of time to get your stuff... :-/
IMHO the weight difference will be negligible, and in an emergency evacuation those in the aisle would be the first to leave. The biggest risks are probably turbulence and availability of oxygen.
The moment arm ("virtual" fulcrum) is an imaginary point where the balance of the plane is and it moves depending on the shape of the aircraft and where the weight is located.
Imagine a long lever with the fulcrum in the middle now imagine that lever is flying in three dimensions. Any weight near or far from the fulcrum makes it difficult to control the lever (aircraft) if the weight is moving or in the wrong spot.
My flying lessons were 25 years ago and I didn't continue but that's the gist of it.
My instructor even made me secure my pen when I was flying nothing loose in the cabin.
For the pen, there might be other reasons - a dropped pen might slide under the rudder pedal and block it, or interfere with other things in the cabin.
Turbulences injure people all the time, see [1].
Also, commercial aviation is as incredibly safe as it is because everyone follows the rules. If you start neglecting them because everything is happy and dandy nearly always, you are contributing to the next accident.
It is this creeping "normalisation of deviance" that has to be fought.
Note that generally I agree with the notion that we might exaggerate with safety - I'm all for letting children play, for example. But here we are dealing with potentially deadly consequences, and not only for yourself, but for others.
Let me conclude with a great quote:
> "Aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous. But to an even greater degree than the sea, it is terribly unforgiving of any carelessness, incapacity or neglect."
— Captain A. G. Lamplugh, British Aviation Insurance Group, London. 1930's
[1] http://avherald.com/h?search_term=turbulence+injures&opt=0&d...
Personally I would always chose the more expensive option, not because of safety (level of safety is plenty), but because of comfort.
Thing is, I afford this comfort, there was a time (not even that long ago) where I could not afford to fly at all, and I would have definitely accepted to stay in the aisle (or a plane without seats). Many, many people are in this scenario. Why shouldn't they be allowed to fly if they are satisfied with the conditions?
Stupid people would do a lot of stupid things to themselves or others willingly. Some would gladly sell their children into slavery. That doesn't mean this market dynamic should be allowed.
Point is, there is some lower limit that should not be crossed and crossing it should be universally considered bad.
Also I don't think you will always the more expensive option for an undetermined amount of more comfort. I am sure someone out there will willingly design your own custom one of a kind record size airplane. I doubt you will be willing to pay for it.
We might sniff that such a point of view is short-sighted, but we do so from a position of privilege.
(Not being flippant here: we make risk trade-offs all the time, could limit cars to 30 km/h or so and reduce traffic deaths, but in that case, we don't.)
However, in aviation we do have very high standards now, with concomitant safety, and while it might be fruitful to have that discussion, it's arguably not up to cabin crew to make that decision ad hoc for everyone on the flight.
Or in simpler terms, during heavy turbulence, if you're not strapped in you will hit the ceiling and then fall down, potentially onto another person.
Ok. How big is this risk?
I mean, it's not like the risk itself is something wrong, right? I can risk failure in a game even if a chance for success is tiny because I have a quicksave just before. I can risk being hit by lightning by going out on a sunny day without caring at all. It's the level of risk - how probable something is and how severe the consequences when it happens - that's important.
> It is very likely that you injure yourself,
First how "very" likely it is? The probability of injury and the extent of the harm will depend, in large part, on the individual person ability.
You made a claim in absolute terms, but even if we agree to tone it down a little and say that it is more likely to get injured when unseated, the question remains: how much more likely?
You risk injury and death every time you fly. You find the risk acceptable because you need to get somewhere fast. The person sitting in the aisle feels similarly, only their "need to get somewhere" is greater than yours (or their risk assessment differs from yours).
> and worse yet, someone else.
Again, how probable this is? How much of a threat am I to the people next to me?
And what's more important, do people around me accept the risk? If they do, what is wrong with my behavior? On what grounds are you assuming that the other passengers were not ok with the extra ones? There's no mention of this in the article.
In short: you're simplifying the problem a little too much. Even if something indeed increases some risk, it's not enough to regard that as bad. You need to take things like the degree of risk and the willingness to take the risk in people in a particular situation into account, too.
The risk of injury, from more "acrobatic" maneuvers, should be rather obvious. To quantify this risk the severity is anywhere from bruises to permanently debilitating injuries + the risk you cause to others and the probability is rather high. Turbulence is not uncommon.
And other risks related to extra fuel consumption, extra weight, placement of weight should be easy to understand but more difficult to quantify.
Yes, people differ in their ability to evaluate risk, and their willingness to to assume it. But in this case I think, for us as observers, I think it's quite easy to figure out that the personal and collateral risk is significant and bad. Especially since by doing this you are going outside the specs of the plane so you don't know how bad.
It is all of the people who do not care for themselves and accept awful conditions that make those conditions acceptable. If the airline can cram 7 people into the aisle next time they will try to cram 8. If the employer sees the employees are ok with less safety, lower wages, less time off, etc. that is the direction things will go because those very it was allowed to happen. It is a downwards spiral.
The injuries are so rare precisely because people are instructed to keep their seat belt fastened whenever seated. I don't fly very much, but have been twice in a turbulence where I surely would have hit the ceiling and latest on the downward trajectory, would have hurt myself and others - if I hadn't been buckled up.
http://avherald.com/h?search_term=turbulence+injures&opt=0&d...
1. They are labors. and they can't miss the working day, they beg to fly in aisle
2. 99.9% is above, other than some religious pilgrims, who have tight schedule ...
3. PIA is dirt cheap for Karachi to Medina compared to ahem Emirates
And it wasn't as uncommon than one could think, until recent times, few decades ago, it was pretty regular thing for Karachi to Lahore (local flight ... 1 hr approx) ... as people have to meet certain time to perform a job .... and back then there were no local carrier compared to dozen of them now, and about 20+ KHI to LHE daily flights.
It's terrible, but chalking it up entirely to PIA is bit unfair...
She told me it's a calculated risk to put passengers in the aisles.
But, the captain of the flight knew exactly what was going on and made the decision to proceed. It sounds like this PIA flight crew concealed their overloading from the captain. THAT is a very serious infraction indeed.
The pilots use weight/balance to calculate things like range, takeoff speed, altitude ceiling, stall characteristics, and so forth. If the plane is heavier than they think, that's not good.
Filling the aisles with people would be a more significant concern, but as another commenter noted, it's a calculated risk - better a long takeoff and rollout than leaving probably one or two hundred people to the tender mercies of the revolutionary and explicitly anti-Western new regime.
In either case, severe turbulence is a much more critical problem. If it happens, some people are certainly going to be badly, maybe lethally, injured.
The PIA stunt was especially dangerous due to it being a normal flight
"Billy Mays here!!..."
(granted that was a freak accident but if you're in a vehicle with a seatbelt you should wear it)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon
This comment sent me on a journey to find obesity data on Ethiopia and I found this ranked list that tied back to the CIA factbook as source and places them next to last (currently): http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=et&v=2228
Keeping the cargo secure and the wrench that extra passengers throws into emergency procedures is the real issue here.
Still, it's a bad idea to prang an airplane with a few hundred people in the aisles, so pilot skill is important.
There is very high chance that it makes no difference to anyone at all. That's why it's seen as a "no big deal". I when something is VERY unlikely making it even ten times more likely doesn't matter to people's perception of risk.
And as I was saying, I understand this attitude from the passengers. For them the risk of a crash may be severe but highly unlikely and in comparison to the risk of loosing their job acceptable. But I would have expected the average HN commenter to recognize the just like the risk is different for different types of drivers (and their cars due to maintenance) , the same applies to planes. So those less rare events may be more likely than the average.
So making some events (and their consequences), that may already be more likely than the average for them, a number of times more likely is bad.
Than again the average is just as uninformative a statistical indicator for HN commenters as it is for drivers and planes.
This makes me think, when someone talks about something they perceive as the average of something do they perceive the median, the mode or actually indeed the mean(average)? There is a case to made that we actually perceive the mode (value that appears most often) instead of the mean.
Being sloppy with crew rest, sobriety, maintenance schedules, would make me much more nervous - and the people in the aisle might indicate a bad attitude.
I don't think you understand that "risk" doesn't mean "damage"?
It is actually irrelevant in this case how risk is actually calculated from these two because almost no one actually calculates it before a plane ride. (Though it is probably calculated for heads of state/royalty/CEOs/etc..)
heh...Aeroflot