Pseudonymous writer who publishes detailed, readable investigations of commercial aviation accidents, covering causes, investigations, and safety lessons.
Commenters recommend it as the go-to source for aviation disasters, calling the write-ups well written, easy to follow, and a good alternative to reading raw NTSB reports.
> I know that we like to circle jerk about "written in blood" around here but your take is asinine.
Aviation regulations are indeed written in blood. I can recommend https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/ if you're into reading, or https://www.youtube.com/@MentourPilot if you're into watching for some education of how bad things used to be. Airplane crashes were an almost weekly occurrence, sometimes barely making it into national news. Enormous advances have happened in technology, redundancy, training, maintenance to make aviation absurdly safe. In the US, you have a higher chance of injury/death while driving to the airport than flying (if anything that's an indictment on American roads, terrible cars and bad drivers, but that's a whole other topic).
> We don't regulate freight barges and personal watercraft the same way we regulate cruise ships and ferries. There's a pretty clear demarcation line between commercial passenger service and noncommercial non-passenger in every industry,
> Why is aviation not similar? Oh, that's right, because decades ago the FAA and Congress brought the entire industry (with a tiny carve-out for experimental) under the same regulatory scheme and damn near killed the GA industry.
If you think GA is under the same regulatory regime as civilian airliners, you're misinformed. It's drastically easier, with much less redundancy or safety requirements. None of the current GA planes would be accepted in commercial airline service for a variety of…
Like so many addictive habits, while you’re in it day to day, it feels so… important… and when you’re out… it doesn’t even make sense that complete truth could be fully knowable in the moment.
Most consequential decisions are made, or built up to, over a long time. Sure, somebody has to call moment-to-moment balls and strikes, but if that’s not literally you, your weight in the world might be better applied in slower, quieter, subtler places.
Am I morbidly curious about a plane crash? How could I not be? But the NTSB didn’t earn the credibility they have by parachuting in day-of and shooting from the hip. If anything, their processes provide discipline against first impressions blinding them to true causes.
For those who haven’t encountered Admiral Cloudberg, this is a good opportunity: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/
...by Kyra Dempsey, a.k.a. Admiral Cloudberg, who has a long series of in-depth airplane crash investigation articles on Medium: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/
This is her Medium article on the LAX runway collision: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/cleared-to-collide-the-crash-of-usair-flight-1493-and-skywest-flight-5569-or-the-los-angeles-5d24ab5fec46 - with further details that would probably have distracted from the point she's trying to make in the Asterisk article (e.g. that the controller who made the fatal mistake was originally hired after Ronald Reagan fired and banned from rehiring 11,345 air traffic controllers in 1981 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_(1968)#August_1981_strike)
From what I've learned reading AdmiralCloudberg's plane crashes analysis [1]: altitude heavily matters in fuel consumption. Jet planes use a lot less fuel at a higher altitude, up to the point that a plane on the verge of running out of fuel at a medium altitude might manage to squeeze in 50 or 100 more miles of flight by climbing 5000 feet, even accounting for the increased fuel consumption during climb. I guess that correlates with speed as well. Turbofan engines, on the other hand, are more fuel efficient than jet engines at lower altitudes, hence they remain common for interstate transit. The difference seems to be directly caused by the effect of air "thickness" on the engines.
[1] https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/
It is. It's a good study of what happens when you combine complex systems in planes and helicopters with the complex systems of navigation and communication, and air traffic control.
If you're looking for more Cloudberg, some of my favorites are:
the United 232 crash in Sioux City
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fields-of-fortune-the-crash-of-united-airlines-flight-232-9cf65ae14c68
the Gimli glider
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/a-mathematical-miracle-the-story-of-air-canada-flight-143-or-the-gimli-glider-9e99545d9b3d
and UPS flight 6
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/alone-in-the-inferno-the-crash-of-ups-airlines-flight-6-507d13f3e481
That last one is truly a nightmare scenario if you're a pilot.
I’ve read a few of these in depth crash analyses: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/
I’ve realized that fires are a way bigger issue than you might imagine after a crash — things can go south really quickly. Multiple stories of planes going from “fire outside” to “people suffocating and burning to death in their seats” in minutes. Here’s one of a 737 in Manchester, taxied of the runway intact, 55 people died: https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com/fire-on-the-runway-the-manchester-airport-disaster-and-the-tragedy-of-british-airtours-flight-28m-0a2054e27fff
I might have taken my laptop bag in such a case out of habit before reading these stories, not so much now.