I assume this is about the plane crash? I have to admit that reading about the press conference absolutely terrified me in a way that no other plane crash (even 9/11) ever has. It's just so.....unexplained at the moment.
(Or maybe not, I just happened to come to Unfogged after reading it so it's at the front of my mind. Sorry for the thread hijack if not!)
Yes, the plane crash, but not just that. And it doesn't seem to be unexplained anymore: co-pilot apparently deliberately crashed the plane.
I like to fly; plane crashes usually don't bother me (beyond obviously feel sad for the victims and their families) because I can see how they happen. Plane malfunction, political or religious terrorism - statistically unlikely but they happen and are, in a way, understandable to me. At the moment, the idea of a pilot just deciding to kill everyone and himself for unstated reasons is pretty damn mystifying to me. (I know there may still be plenty more to come out, or that we may never know, or that he could have been mentally ill and overcome with despair or psychosis or what have you.)
No, 28 isn't that young, but it's younger than it used to be.
6: Right there with you. There's something about this one that is especially incomprehensible and distressing.
I guess 28 is too young to have a daughter who recently died of a heroin overdose while a chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin stood by and watched.
...say what you will about international terrorism, but at least it's an ethos? Someone so hates themselves and the world that they plot to enact violence upon it. That doesn't sound too different from terrorism. Or from school shootings. I hope there are no copycats. Young men are horrible.
Oh come on. If young men were really that horrible, we'd be seeing lots of problems emanating from the country's fraternity system.
Interesting how quickly this theory has been publicly acknowledged, in contrast with the EgyptAir crash. Even William Langewiesche's long, long essay about the EgyptAir crash put most of the suicide allegations and implications in the mouths of his interviewees.
Wait, was that James Fallows? It was a while ago.
It may not be that remarkable that the French were so quick to acknowledge the blame of a German.
12. I think it's been quickly acknowledged because there's no other possible explanation.
Looking at the issue in depth (i.e. Wikipedia), the EgyptAir crash happened in international waters so Egypt had jurisdiction. The American investigators were there at Egypt's request. I don't think the U.S. investigators had any doubts at to the cause, but the politics were different.
That guy was 59 at the time, making ogged wrong.
One of the UK papers had some speculation about the cockpit window breaking, I think. But I've been on a plane where that happened, over the Alps, no less. The pilots just went into a rapid descent -- lots of ear-popping -- and landed us at Milan [rather than Pisa, which was the original destination].
It seems they ruled out the depressurized/unconscious scenario because they can hear the co-pilot breathing right up until the crash.
In the event of a cabin depressurization, please affix your own mask before helping the guy flying the plane.
I guess you can be unconscious and breathing. Hey, I'm not an investigator.
I guess now we'll be seeing regulation to ensure that no one is ever alone in the cockpit?
I guess now we'll be seeing regulation to ensure that no one is ever alone in the cockpit?
The CAA has basically said as much, yes.
28 might not be that young, but it's prime suicide age. Very sad and scary.
If one pilot has to go to the toilet, the other one has to go with him.
And they can't all have the fish for dinner.
Can you really tell if someone has been incapacitated entirely by their breathing on a recording? I find that hard to believe.
Well, if they aren't breathing, they are incapacitated.
I think what overrules the idea that he was incapacitated as well is that he had to deny the request to enter by the crew members entering the code to unlock the door. This points to him being conscious the entire time; if he was unconscious the crew's efforts to unlock the door should have worked, as that is what they're designed to do. Of course, there could always have been a malfunction, I suppose?
I think what overrules the idea that he was incapacitated as well is that he had to deny the request to enter by the crew members entering the code to unlock the door.
They also say the actions leading to the descent required conscious input. I suppose he could have done that and then incapacitated himself.
I feel like this could be an undiagnosed-brain-tumor-pushing-against-weird-brain-part situation.
We might...stop locking the cockpit doors. These incidents are actually more common than terrorists bursting into the flight deck. Just...forget about the fucking terrorists for a moment. Be normal.
I have a great deal of trouble imagining the airlines publicly making the argument that statistically their own pilots are more likely to deliberately cause your death than a terrorist is.
I'm just going where the data goes. Actually the relevant issue is just the rarity of terrorists, rather than the suicideyness of pilots.
Heh. Generalized paranoia aside, 36 is a good point.
27. ??? Risk increases with age monotonically in Western countries as far as I know ( US for instance), China is very different (women more likely than men until recently), don't know about Japan and Korea.
Actually the relevant issue is just the rarity of terrorists, rather than the suicideyness of pilots
"The statistics only look bad because there is a pilot on board every single flight. If there were a confirmed terrorist on board every flight, we feel confident that the terrorists would prove to be much more dangerous than our pilots."
Obviously, we need a control group.
40: Well, if you ever get tired of law and the circus. and your chef career doesn't pan out, then maybe you should consider PR
The age link is probably totally wrong. The high suicide rates, at least in this country, are in the 45 and older groups. Mass shooters who take their own lives are all over the map age wise. Family annihilators who kill themselves are usually 35-45. I would be interesting to see if there's specific numbers on pilots doing this kind of thing.
43, 44: OP should be revised - new version
Should men be left in charge of anything, ever? Probably not.
44: Not nearly close enough to expiration, certainly.
don't know about Japan
Geishas and the adopted sons of rice merchants.
Wait
I'm not sure what to think about this crash, because suicide-by-killing-loads-of-people strikes me as a wholly different thing than suicide-because-of-depression/etc. People who kill themselves out of overpowering despair/guilt/shame/whatever don't generally go "what the hell, might as well take 150 random strangers with me", or at least that seems way off base (maybe this isn't true for pilots?) But spree-killing-then-suicide people usually look pretty obviously unbalanced beforehand (in retrospect, anyway), and picking people to die mostly at random also seems less likely because usually there's some kind of grievance involved.
I'm thinking maybe some additional info from his personal life will give some insight. Usually males manifesting something like schizo do so before 28. From what I've seen on mass shootings you get more of the younger guys on the school shootings and the older ones dominate more of the grudge type like workplace, govt. office, etc. There's exceptions like the Luby's incident, Dunblane, and Wedgwood Baptist Church, among others. But all of those guys were showing signs of instability and such beforehand.
So far the only indication is a three month break in his training in 2008 that that's not being talked about due to "German regulations on the privacy of medical records".
Turns out the dude is from the small city 2 miles upriver from my FIL's home (and childhood villages). Potentially a couple degrees of separation away. Shouldn't matter, but it feels gross.
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This is completely unrelated but kind of fascinating.
What makes it interesting isn't that OMG bike lanes in Minneapolis! It's that these lanes in particular are pretty fishy. If you look at the map you can see a green line just a half block south of the southernmost lane they're putting in. That is the midtown greenway which is an entirely set aside rail trail/bike path running east-west across basically the whole city. And the streets around 26th and 28th are relatively low traffic and bike friendly to boot.
On the other hand, 28th and 26th are multi-lane one way streets that were set up to act as fake freeways running right through the city when it was being optimized for suburban commuters (my guess, anyway - they're very straight, wide, and have very few stop lights) and as a result they're dangerous as all hell. They amount to a really good example of why 'safe design speed' is not the same thing as 'safe speed', because you absolutely see people going 50mph on them through dense residential neighborhoods. So doing something to slow down traffic on them is a really good idea, and will have a lot of benefits. If this is a case of the city using bike infrastructure as an excuse to accomplish different goals that's kind of amazing, and reflects way more support for bikes than I thought existed, even in Minneapolis.
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Wait, wasn't thinking clearly. It's the town of AB's birth, where she lived until 3. No remaining connections, though.
51 is great, and an example of Complete Streets thinking - mutually reinforcing design decisions that make the street safer for all. They've begun a program here, and I'm very curious what will come of it.
I don't know, but I love the bike lane by Phipps even if the people who ride actual bikes have somewhat mixed feelings.
The original post was the theme of my deeply ambivalent final speech at Deep Spr/ngs.
no, but we pride ourselves on our self-governance. By 19-year-olds. It can be rocky.
Further to 16: My understanding from the reading I did at the time was that the US investigators were totally convinced it was intentional, but due to the devout religious belief of his family (?), who publicly insisted again and again that he could never have done such a thing, they chose not to pick an international flight over it.
The thing that seems deeply frustrating to me is that -- fine -- they didn't want to start a diplomatic incident. But why not use their knowledge to at least improve pilot mental health studies/understanding here in the US regardless? AFAIK that hasn't happened.
they chose not to pick an international flight over it.
Now *that's* an unfortunate typo.
Oh dear. I think it was a thinko, not a typo -- even worse!
To 48: The guilt/shame/despair motive seems so much more likely than spree. Isn't it fairly common for the hopelessly distressed family man to end it all by taking the wife and kids with him? Isn't this on the continuum of that?
58 is correct - plus the Egyptian government flat out refused to accept that an Egyptian pilot could be at fault and likely insisting it must have been a mechanical failure. (These things happen when your military dictator is a pilot.)