Yep!

I’ve shown the video of that crash as part of our annual re-current training course (which I do as my secondary role as check and training dispatcher).

In that case, it was the loadmaster not understanding the physics of the tie-down system. He thought that the chains and tire-downs he used were sufficient, but failed to take into account the angle of pull, so the load rating perpendicular to the load was sufficient, but angle of pull reduced the actual load rating.

As for your last paragraph, also “yep!” I HATED having to do weight and balance. One of my objections was that by having us dispatchers doing it, we were adding another person/step into the process, magnifying the opportunity for transcription and other errors. I sweated more over weight and balance than the actual flight, fuel, weather and route planing that was my primary job!

In retrospect, I don’t want to knock the ground crew as much as I think I did in this anecdote, since I also had a ground agent call me and request I delay a flight (despite huge pressure on him from HIS bosses not to), since there was some confusion about paperwork and he insisted on pulling a container off and having it re-weighed, since some numbers didn’t match the paperwork.

https://youtu.be/lksDISvCmNI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102

I’m here to tell you, aircraft load planning is no damn joke. Did that class, got certified on it, and throughout the entire thing, all I could think was “What a massive nightmare this could be, if you did it wrong…”. It’s not as easy as it looks, from the outside.

I fear that we are going to become like the post Roman Britons, aware of aqueducts, domes, roads, concrete, centrally heated bathhouses and the like, but unable to maintain or build them….

Kirk,

Speaking of technical ineptitude, some years ago, the company I work for had a contract to fly for a large courier company, taking overnight packages between major cities.

We used B727 aircraft, all of which had been converted from passenger aircraft into freighters. Because they were aftermarket conversions, the weight and balance calculations were difficult. The passenger planes used a paper graph in conjunction with a plastic plotter and some tables, and the crew did it themselves. The cargo conversion required some quite complex math to blend various datum points together, so an excel spreadsheet was developed to do the math. Being the days before cheap laptops and tablets, the crew could no longer do it themselves on the flight deck.

Now usually in such a situation, the loading crew supervisor or ground handling agent would be taught how to do it. In fact it works best that way, since they build the load and do the work, it is in their interest to plan the balance carefully. For some reason, my boss insisted that us dispatchers did the weight and balance calculation. This made no sense to me, and I assumed that it was just my boss being a control freak (which he was!).

Then something happened which made me understand his point of view.

So:

1. Loadsheet arrives by fax

2. Paul inputs said loadsheet into the program, and the result is out of balance, too tail heavy.

3. Paul calls the load team supervisor; “Sorry, this plan is too tail heavy, you need to re-arrange the containers to move more weight forward.”

4. Paul gets (T.I.N.S!), the following response: “We have already finished loading and closed the doors, can’t they just fix it at the next stop?” (!)

That is when I understood why my boss would not delegate the calculation to the ground crew!

I admire the hack that driver friend used, but only if he had done it only to his own seat. He should not be trying to kill his passengers. But really I’m young enough that belts have been a feature for most of my life, so he would be better to just wear the thing. Better than a catastrophic autodefenestration.

Yesterday, I was in a foul mood for reasons I won’t go into, but which had something to do with the technically inept.

I frankly have to wonder what the hell is going to happen, going forward. Once you start to look at getting people off the planet and into artificial environments “out there”, I fear that the vast majority of the race is simply not going to be viable, because the level of idiot-proofing necessary to keep those idiots alive is going to be exponentially harder to accomplish. You think it’s bad, now? Wait until you have to worry about someone bypassing the safety systems the way they do here on earth, in order to make life “more convenient”. I know people who’ve done things that flat-out boggle the mind, when it comes to ill-conceived workarounds. Casual acquaintance of mine got tired of the buzzer in their car going off for the seatbelt, so they cut the buckle out of the belt and stuck that into the locking bit, and drove without seatbelts. Wouldn’t have been so bad, but they did that to all the seatbelts in the car, not just the ones that were hooked into the buzzer. I go to get in the car with them one day, and he’s pointing out his very brilliant work-around with great pride. I’m like “Yeah, no… I’ve seen you drive; I’ll walk.”.

People like that are who you have to worry about with these things. And, most of the race ain’t going to make the cut, from what I’ve observed. Being able to search an email account is only the very tippy-tip of the iceberg, when it comes to technical competence, and most people don’t even know you can do that, despite nearly thirty years of exposure to computers. How the hell these people get through the day, I’ll never understand. You’d think most of them would die of starvation, trapped behind the closed doors of their bathrooms, or something. I swear to God, some of the people I run into can’t be much smarter than the Sims characters I watch the kids playing with.

Or, maybe that’s the real deal: The technically competent are the only real characters in this video game we’re stuck in, and the rest are just non-player characters with really bad game AI…

No worries. You touched a small nerve there but it was also all in good fun.

My mechanical and digital aptitude is pretty limited but, from his later comment, I’m in roughly the age group and level of ability of Paul who is also from Canada.

I take a special little thrill every time I figure out how to do some tiny thing with Windows, or my Blackberry, and I can certainly use them effectively and without difficulty to do my work. I can even use them well enough to eventually say, once I have figured out how to do what I want, WTF were those designers thinking, having realized their architecture is stupid.

I’m also the sort who clings to an older tool because I assume some good feature will disappear in the new version, or because I can’t be arsed to learn another OS every couple of years when my organization signs some new contract.

I was just in an email exchange about this this week with a longtime IT colleague. He berated my lack of a sense of wonder about each new iteration of software or other tools. I remember the Wonder that was Vista.

Still, I marvel if it is true that so many people can’t use, or at least learn, simple features of Outlook. Space ‘em.

Sidebar to all that because you reminded me with a reference to packaging. There are a few things I have wondered about over the past 25 years or so.

1. Milk cartons have mostly gone to the spout and cap model, which is an improvement if arguably wasteful. But those that retain the traditional opening seem harder to open cleanly than they used to be.

2. Toilet paper rolls used to work without sticking to themselves at the beginning and peeling off ply by ply.

3. Plastic packaging used to require less cunning and force to open.

Am I just buying cheap quality stuff or what? Whenever anyone asks me to substantiate any notion of decline within the general atmosphere of technological progress, those are my top 3.

On that last- I have had to use scissors to open the plastic packaging of a new pair of scissors. True story. Within the last month.

Now, I managed it without injuring myself, which probably puts me in the top 20%, but what gives?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-hV1HrMP8j1OWpEWXBXbUJsNms/view

https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Aerodynamics-Arguing-Real-Physics/dp/1119967511

Build something new, small drone or big plane. Better peers, too.

I was flabbergasted to read a couple of years ago about a study on the ability to use a computer.

I am the awkward age of people for whom computers were brand new technology, and the VIC-20 was state of the art and only really dedicated nerds learned to use them. I really didn’t get to use computers until they invaded the workplace in the early ’90′s.

I can’t program, and my knowledge of computers is sufficient to use them for my work, and personal stuff like this, but I know enough to use them as effective tools to get my work done, and if pressed, I can learn to use a new program or system.

Turns out, something like 75% of people cannot search an email program like Microsoft Outlook for previous emails, sent or received, on a particular topic.

Blew my mind!