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Jimmy Stewart Plane Crash Movie too Close to Reality 60 Years Later
April 28th, 2011. By Hunter West
The grounding of a Southwest Airlines 737 earlier this month due to a five-foot tear in the upper fuselage while the plane was in the air reminded me of a favorite old movie starring James Stewart.
‘No Highway in the Sky,’ a British disaster film made in 1951, follows the heroics and eccentricities of a professor and an expert in aviation who is commissioned to investigate the crash of a commercial airliner. Factoring in the age of the plane and the number of hours flown—not to mention the natural propensity of metal to weaken when under constant stress and subject to vibration—Stewart’s character theorizes that the plane crashed because the tail fell off due to metal fatigue.
He proceeds to rig a life-sized experiment in his lab, subjecting the tail section of an actual aircraft to vibrations and various in-flight sources of stress in an effort to replicate the actual crash, and to test his theory.
His colleagues think he is daft. But the movie—based on a novel—did contain some elements of truth.
That was borne out in the comments of a former North Carolina State University prof and expert in materials science, who says cracks in the bodies of commercial airliners are normal, and can be expected.
“It can happen with everyday things,” Charles Manning said in comments published April 4th on WRAL.com. “Take a paper clip and bend it back and forth. It’s going to break,” Manning said.
Of course, there are the engine vibrations—harkening back to that old Jimmy Stewart movie. But more precisely, Manning told WRAL that the act of pressurizing the cabin, allowing passengers and crew to breathe, stretches the metal skin in, and out with each pressurization. Over time, the metal wears down and cracks.
Fatigue cracks are small, he said—barely perceptible with a microscope when they first occur. It’s when they become more severe and can be seen by the naked eye, that they can potentially become a problem and are then subject to regular inspections.
Manning knows his stuff. For the past 30 years, he has headed Accident Reconstruction Analysis Inc., an engineering consulting firm that performs failure analysis and accident reconstruction. Before that, he was a materials science professor at North Carolina State, and he also headed NASA’s Langley Advanced Materials Research Program. He reminds travelers that planes are inspected regularly, and not to worry…
Not to worry?
Tell that to the frightened passengers on board the Southwest airliner when the five-foot gash blew open, suddenly de-pressurizing the plane. Yes, the aircraft landed safely and there was no loss of life or injury beyond sheer terror. However, the sudden de-pressurization of a cabin can serve as a vacuum, sucking anything out with the rapidly escaping air pressure—like papers, handbags…and if the breach happens to occur adjacent to a child who isn’t strapped in…
Well, you know the rest.
In the movie, Jimmy Stewart’s character forgot to provide for temperature in his calculations. The tail DID fall off in his lab, but a bit beyond when he said it would. Sadly, during the interim, he had caused damage to a similar plane on an attempt to prevent it from taking off (he was worried about the tail), and the daft professor was banished and dismissed as a crackpot.
Until, that is, the tail in his lab experienced fatal metal fatigue, cracked, separated and crashed to the floor.
Until, that is, the actual plane he tried to keep on the ground was repaired and sent up for a test flight without passengers. When it landed, the tail fell off…
It was just a movie, right?
Fact: Three years after the film’s release, there were two fatal crashes involving the world’s first passenger jet, the de Havilland Comet. Investigators determined that metal fatigue was the most likely cause of both accidents, although other sources point to a design flaw. No the tails didn’t fall off, but the fuselage gave way.
That was in 1954.
Then there was the infamous 1988 incident where cracks led to a massive breach in the roof and fuselage of an Aloha Airlines flight. Flight attendant C.B. Lansing was sucked out due to the rapid depressurization, and she fell to her death.
Manning assures that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) keeps the airlines on a tight maintenance schedule, including the testing by manufacturers of aircraft in an effort to gauge when, and where metal is likely to experience fatigue.
Did they miss something with the Southwest flight?
“I think planes are maintained as well as you can, and if the FAA sees that people are not doing it, they get after them,” Manning said.
That’s reassuring…
Hey, how about this idea. Figure out the point when metal starts to experience fatigue—and replace the bloody plane.
Oh, but that would be just too expensive, wouldn’t it? Planes cost millions of dollars. Fleets cost billions. We wouldn’t have an airline industry—it would not be economically viable.
Thus to have an airline industry, it appears that planes are required to stay in service as long as they are well maintained.
Complete with cracks.
Yes, I acknowledge those who maintain flying is still safer than driving—especially with so many people abusing their smart phones and GPS devices—or looking at their computerized dashboards–while driving.
That’s why I’m taking the train…
Food Safety Alert: The Problem With Meat Glue
April 21st, 2011. By Hunter West
Oh, you haven’t heard of meat glue? The food industry loves the stuff—and for good reason. Anything that would allow the morphing of a bucket of meat bits, like stewing beef for example, into what looks like a Grade A steak and commands a Grade A price at the counter, is akin to manna from heaven.
To the untrained eye (meaning, you and me), it’s impossible to tell the difference. It looks like a steak. It grills like a steak. It tastes like a steak. But it’s not a steak, but rather chunks of meat that in a previous era would have been sold as stewing beef for a lot less than the kind of price a steak commands. But mix in some meat glue, roll it up and after six hours in the refrigerator, out comes a gelled roll that can be sliced into a series of lovely-looking, boneless steaks.
The potential for fraud is obvious. Beyond the deception, however, why did the European Union ban meat glue last year?
First, the back-story of what meat glue is. In fact, meat glue is actually an enzyme derived from thrombin and fibrogen, which is obtained from the blood plasma of swine and cattle. This is the stuff that causes blood to clot—and it also does a spiffy job, it turns out, of knitting small bits of meat together to appear like more expensive-looking steaks.
Is meat glue harmful? Well, the European Food Safety Authority gave meat glue a positive safety opinion in 2005, only to ban it five years later. And a butcher participating in a story Read the rest of this entry »
Mary Watson v. Plastic: A Tale of One Pissed-Off Retailer
April 18th, 2011. By Hunter West
We’ve been ticked off at credit card companies for a long time, haven’t we? The high interest rates, the late-payment fees, and the propensity to jack up the rates at the drop of a hat. Congress finally called the credit card companies to the carpet and forced them to reign in some of their practices—although critics have always maintained there will be other ways found to make up for any lost revenue.
And that’s just for us—the schmucks who use credit cards. What about the merchants?
Well, according to a proposed class action lawsuit filed Monday in Canada, merchants aren’t happy with the status quo, either…
Mary Watson is a retailer who operates a furniture store in British Columbia. She has since 1990. And like most merchants who sell big-ticket items, she can understand that most people would rather use plastic to buy that pricey leather sofa, than pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.
No, she’s okay with that. What Mary is upset about are all the fees charged to her business when a consumer uses plastic. The fees are hard to track. What’s more, she’s not allowed to promote, or suggest that her customers use an alternative form of payment, such as cash or debit.
She’s not exactly required to suggest her customers use their credit cards. But at the same time, Read the rest of this entry »
Incandescent vs. Fluorescent: Just Where is all that Mercury Going?
April 13th, 2011. By Hunter West
Okay, we all know that those fluorescent bulbs are more efficient than incandescent bulbs. They last longer, and reduce greenhouse gasses.
And everyone is on the bandwagon. Canada starts phasing out incandescent bulbs starting next year. In the US, it’s 2014. Australia led the way in 2007, and the European Union came soon after.
Here’s the thing. Incandescent light bulbs, as inefficient as they are, don’t contain mercury.
But fluorescents do.
Okay fine, the mercury is in the bulb and as long as they don’t break…
Indeed.
Yes, mercury is a naturally occurring element, just as the inert gas used in the incandescent bulb is also naturally occurring. The difference with mercury is that it’s a neurotoxin that can damage the brain, spinal cord, kidneys and liver through chronic exposure.
Health Canada says, “Mercury can impair the ability to feel, see, move and taste and can cause numbness and tunnel vision. Long-term exposure can lead to progressively worse symptoms and ultimately personality changes, stupor and in extreme cases, coma or death,” according to Health Canada.
The regulator goes on to say that recent research suggests even at low levels, mercury can have adverse health impacts on the cardiovascular and immune system.
Here’s the question. What happens to all these bulbs when they are spent? And what happens if they break en route to a disposal facility?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that three per cent of the total mercury in Read the rest of this entry »
FAA, Where are You? Clearly Air Traffic Control is Oxymoron
March 24th, 2011. By Hunter West
Now, wouldn’t that make a great reality TV series? Modeled after ‘Car 54 Where Are You,’ only in this scenario the two cops are replaced by two bungling air traffic controllers who don’t bother to answer when a pilot coming in for a landing, radios the approach tower at a major airport and gets no response.
Wait a minute—that would be incorrect. Because apparently there need be only one air traffic controller on duty…late at night…when things are quiet and it’s easy to nod off.
We don’t know if that was the case in the wee hours of yesterday morning when not one, but TWO incoming flights had to make do with input from regional towers and land at Ronald Reagan National Airport using unmanned airport protocol.
But this is bloody serious. Utter negligence. A lawsuit in the making, and a juicy one at that, had anything more serious happened.
According to a report yesterday in The New York Times and a compelling treatment on NBC‘s ‘Today’ this morning, an American Airlines Boeing 737 from Dallas approached the airport around midnight Wednesday but aborted its landing and circled the airport after pilots got no response from the tower. About 15 minutes later, a United Airlines Airbus 320 from Chicago also tried unsuccessfully to establish contact with the tower.
The controller in the tower at Reagan apparently re-appeared and all was well after that. The ‘Today’ show reported this morning that the controller who was on duty has an unblemished record (ps, the controller’s since been suspended, thereby blemishing that unblemished record).
Fine and dandy. But hey, FAA, why is it okay to have just one person in the tower? Would it not, Read the rest of this entry »
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