How to stay safe: rule 1 is avoiding Windows.

Yes, 100%. The stick on that plane is a little joystick on the side of the seat, basically out of view of the other pilot. The one guy just pulled back on it and kept it back the whole flipping time. I can’t believe someone like that, someone who totally panicked and forgot how to fly, was certified to fly that type…

The pilots actually caused the stall in that crash, no? When the alarms first sounded, they were flying normally. (spelling edit)

Serious question...what do you think happened with the flight (Can’t remember the #, maybe an Air France?) coming out of Brazil going to France that iced up the one pitot tube and killed the airspeed indicator. They were in a stall all the way, but kept pulling up on the stick the whole way down instead of going nose…

If only the crew of AF 447 had been as methodical as that of QF 32 I assume the acft would've never been lost. Ditto for Colgan 3407.

Mark froze at the cockpit computer. “Captain,” he said. “It won’t let me continue. What are we going to do?”

> What if, de Crespigny thought to himself, I imagine this plane as a Cessna? What would I do then?

Whole article wreaks of sensational journalism.

There’s something wrong with this description. Aircraft engines are numbered from left to right. On a 4-engine plane, 1 is the outboard left engine, 2 is the inboard left engine, 3 is the inboard right and 4 is the outboard right. If both left engines were damaged, it would be 1 and 2, not 2 and 3 as described in the…

There is a thing called radios. The tug driver will normally have another person with him to keep an eye out and communicate with the ground crew member in the cockpit. We have escorts also in truck following where I work. When they move the plane from one parking spot to another. They don’t have the pilot with them…

The “bugout” maneuver is also called unloading, as the most important point of the maneuver is to attain 0gs therefore removing any drag caused by lift enabling superior acceleration.

You don’t out-roll a missile tho.

There never was any such thing as an Air Force Tomcat, bro

No-one was “sucked” out of the airplane. One person was BLOWN out. Cause, physics or something.

You can’t get sucked out of an airplane. You can be blown out of one.

Actually, a Prandtl–Meyer expansion fan occurs due to the low pressure region trailing the transonic shock cone.

This. Consider the wake that fans out behind a speedboat. The sonic boom moves away from the plane in a similar fashion

It’s continuous once the aircraft crosses the sound barrier. Imagine a cone trailing the aircraft. As that cone hits the ground, boom!

It's a rolling boom, in that you don't hear the jet until the compressed sound wave hits you with a boom, then it just sounds like a jet going really fast. The guy 5 miles down the jets path from you gets the same show.

It follows the jet the entire time that it’s supersonic.