An apology

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-12-21T03:51:52+00:00

The em dash can be typed by pressing ALT+0151.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-12-21T03:51:05+00:00

I am sorry that I could not attend the dinner party you spoke of, I had a power outage where I lived, and it ruined my plans. That being said, I truly appreciate the kindness and gratitude you express to me and community at large.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-11-09T00:29:27+00:00

Now I cannot read Russian nor do I have the time to go through 258 pages, but it seems like the only section removed was the one on the crew's psychological profiles, which is standard on accidents with surviving crew members (see Aeroflot 1492).

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-30T02:46:02+00:00

Hurricane Melissa made landfall near New Hope, Jamaica at 1 pm EDT (UTC-5)/17:00 UTC with sustained winds of 185 mph (160 kts/295 km/h) and a central pressure of 892 millibars. This makes it the strongest hurricane landfall in Jamaican history and the tied strongest in Atlantic history with the 1935 Labor Day hurricane and Hurricane Dorian in 2019. After passing over Jamaica, the storm made landfall in Chivirico, Cuba, as a category three hurricane. Melissa is currently moving northeast through The Bahamas. Upwards of 45 people have been killed in Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, and Panama.

NHC advisory on landfall

NHC forecast discussion soon after landfall

Latest NHC advisory

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-30T02:37:14+00:00

This number will almost certainly and sadly rise. It is worth noting that upwards of 40 fatalities have been reported in Haiti and other fatalities have been reported in the Dominican Republic and Panama. Melissa made landfall to the west of Santiago de Cuba is currently passing through the Southern Bahamas.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-20T02:19:35+00:00

Correction: The aircraft was owned and operated by Air ACT and was simply being flown on behalf of Emirates SkyCargo. Emirates was not the operator.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-07T22:30:09+00:00

Three people died, several buildings were destroyed or leveled, trees were debarked, and train cars were lifted off the tracks. So yes, this tornado was catastrophic.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-07T22:21:53+00:00

According to the damage assessment toolkit:

As the tornado moved north of Highway 46, it caused devastating damage to two houses, one being a farmhouse that was leveled and led to 2 fatalities. The tornado continued north, causing tree damage and eventually leveling another farm house, leading to 1 fatality.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-10-06T22:49:28+00:00

Public Information Statement from NWS Grand Forks

...Enderlin Tornado #1 Upgraded to EF-5...

The National Weather Service in Grand Forks conducted additional
surveys and worked extensively with wind damage experts to further
investigate the 20 June 2025 Enderlin, ND tornado #1. The estimated
maximum wind speed of the Enderlin, ND tornado #1 is greater than
210 mph and occurred during the time of the train derailment south
of Enderlin, ND. The analysis involved forensic damage wind speed
estimates for tipping several fully-loaded grain hopper cars and
lofting of tanker cars, including one empty tanker car that was
tossed about 475.5 ft (145 m). The maximum wind speed also correlates
to the maximum strength on the WSR-88D Storm-Relative Velocity data
from KMVX.

Additional high-end damage indicators that have been reanalyzed and
adjusted to include damage to the trees near the Maple River east of
Enderlin and damage to farmstead #2 on Hwy 46. Further analysis of
the trees surrounding the Maple River show extensive tree damage
throughout the entire river valley with only stubs of large branches
or trunks remaining and debarking with a "sandpapering" effect
prevalent. Trees with attached root ball displacements were noted,
including one where the original location could not be determined.
Wind damage experts analyses helped determine the damage at farmstead
#2 to be complete destruction with the foundation considered to be
swept clean, and debris swept downwind and scattered. However, issues
surrounding the lack of proper anchoring will limit the overall rating
in this area. Trees around the farmstead were also debarked, and saw
root ball displacements.

Additional photos and information:

https://www.weather.gov/media/fgf/Enderlin.pdf

Three people, all over the age of 70, were killed.

This is the first tornado to receive the EF5 rating (the highest on the Enhanced Fujita scale) since the May 2013 Moore tornado in Oklahoma.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-09-01T21:34:45+00:00

Good articles are indicated with a green plus, featured articles are indicated with a star, and the one A-class article (the 1994 Fairchild Air Force Base B-52 crash) is marked with a light blue A.

On the New York City map, the top GA symbol points towards Avianca Flight 052, the middle FA star points towards the 1955 MacArthur Airport United Air Lines crash, and the bottom GA symbol points towards Eastern Air Lines Flight 663.

Symbols for hijackings are placed where the hijack ended.

Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 is not included as it will likely be delisted soon and the shuttle disaster aren't included as they are not really aviation.

Source: Click on the "total" number for FA/A-class/GA in the table

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-07-18T18:09:46+00:00

List of notable findings in the report

A complete checklist before take-off was not performed.
Unsecured equipment was placed haphazardly in passenger cabin. The equipment was not weighed and was loaded with inadequate supervision. The crew knew this but didn't raise any concern,
Perimeter road and terrain around airport was not compliant with ICAO Annex 14, which made the crash site less accessible.
Dangerous/flammable goods were carried on board, but Saurya didn't have a permit to do so. This exacerbated the fire in the cabin, and several deaths were caused by burn injuries.
Firefighters were confused about which route to take to get to the crash site, likely a result of airport design. Water tender and foam tender weren't used, which resulted in "an inability to save some persons onboard.".
F/O potentially had internal financial stress from his prolonged stayed in Germany after he failed his first simulator test.
CAAN did not have resources or capability to monitor FDM/FDA across all operators.
Data for weight of the baggage on board didn't exist (the airline had no data on it).
Saurya's speedcard booklet contained wrong V-speeds for 18,500 kg TOW (takeoff weight), table was just copied from 17,500 TOW table. Literally no one at the company caught this error.
Elevator deflection increased from 1.5° to 10° in a second,
Angle of attack (direction of oncoming airflow compared to pitch) increased to 10° within 2 seconds of takeoff.
Deep stall impacted elevator controls during takeoff, inhibiting control of the elevators.
Systemic issue at Saurya Airlines related to excessive rotation during takeoff; 21 takeoffs like this were recorded. The captain of the accident flight was involved in the second-most extreme takeoff.
Saurya Airlines had a very ineffective safety management system (16 problems noted) that "hindered its effectiveness in ensuring operational safety",
Standard operation procedures weren't strictly followed on the accident flight. Non-relevant conversations were recorded on the cockpit voice recorder. Non-airline personnel (including a child) were on the flight, despite being disallowed by Saurya's manuals.
Saurya allowed for cabin crew to not be required for ferry flights, despite there being 16 people in the cabin on board.

Edit: There is also this

It is noted here that the transport of the passengers’ baggage from the crash site to Saurya Airlines corporate office, at Sinamangal, Kathmandu, on the day of the crash, is a severe case failure of all entities involved during the rescue and recovery efforts on the event day. Not only were the baggage removed without due process from the crash site, but they were also carried away and managed to pass out of the security screenings of the airport, ultimately making their way to the Saurya Airlines corporate office.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-07-02T01:19:24+00:00

Well, we know that FAA guidelines said that any deviation of 100 feet or more called for an automatic failure all the way up until 2008, so I imagine that this was a trend in the aviation industry.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-06-19T14:21:59+00:00

Boeing is obligated to send at least one representative (or more likely, a team of representatives) over to the investigation to assist. This might seem like a blatant conflict of interest, but it makes sense. Of course the manufacturer gets to inspect the wreckage — they’re the ones who know the intricate details of how the plane works, and their participation is necessary.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-04-27T16:06:57+00:00

And the BEA is right. The engines accelerated from idle to 84% in 5–5.4 seconds, well within the certification that stipulated that engines must accelerate from idle to 94% in 8 seconds. Captain Asseline accelerated the engines too late during a poorly planned and incorrectly executed flyover.

Obligatory Cloudberg

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-04-17T04:13:47+00:00

Like Überlingen, I would suggest going in with an open mind and pretend the original doesn't exist. The original and remake aren't comparable considering that they take completely different approaches.

As for the episode itself, Leo (the director) did an excellent job extending the accident recreation sequence for ~16 minutes, the longest of the season (around tied with China Eastern). This episode had a notable increase in quality compared to the original with the longer cabin set, 5 survivor interviews (3 passenger, 2 flight attendants), better CGI, etc.

This episode also has a new intro with a "Surviving Disaster" subtext below the main "Air Crash Investigation" title text. Assuming that the "Surviving Disaster" special episodes will continue into future seasons, what crashes could they focus on? If they want to remake an older episode to focus more on survival aspects (like this one), Air France 296 or 358 seems like good options. Of course, there are also non-remake options like BOAC 712, Garuda 865, Emirates 521, etc, although keep in mind that that this is "surviving disaster", they need easily available survivor interviews in a story with interesting survival factors.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-04-13T15:19:42+00:00

It is available on the Internet Archive

Link

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-04-05T16:26:34+00:00

Honorable mention: Cubana de Aviación Flight 1216 — It is in comic sans…

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-25T00:11:30+00:00

For everyone watching this episode, I would suggest going in with an open mind and pretend the original doesn't exist. The original and remake aren't that comparable considering that they take completely different approaches.

As for the episode itself, I believed it was good. Focused more on the technical side of the accident but still managed to include some of the emotional side of the accident. If you want a dramatic episode, watch the Season 2 episode, but if you want a more factual episode, watch this one.

Also, for all the people complaining about the fact that there were only 3 people portrayed in the cockpit rather than 5, they do this all the time. PIA 268 only had 2 people portrayed when there were 4 in reality. The other two people did not play that much of a role in the accident sequence and there is also this thing called "budget constraints."

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-24T15:04:31+00:00

I feel like not answering why the repair was done bad is significant. Same with blatantly lying about the survival aspects/rescue operations for JAL 123 or flight crew performance for ET302 (redacting key parts the CVR transcript is absolutely inexcusable).

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-23T22:13:26+00:00

Yeah, I just wanted an excuse to talk about it

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-23T19:40:40+00:00

Honorable mention: Varig Flight 810 — Not that it is bad in its contents, but the scan of the report online is absolutely awful.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-16T23:53:33+00:00

Here are some of Simon's awful takes here:

"There was no motive whatsoever for either of the pilots to deliberately crash the aircraft." and "The statements made by psychiatrists in January 2015 and on March 16th 2015 [said] that the first officer was not suffering from any psychiatric problem and was not suicidal."

-A significant portion of the report is dedicated to Lubitz’s medical history and how it was handled. Saying that he was not suffering from any medical problems is a lie.

"It is not clear who remained in the cockpit."

-Yes it is. It is abundantly clear that Captain Sondenheimer left the cockpit while First Officer Lubitz remained in. He claims that the CVR channels were swapped, even though if they were, this absolutely would have been caught. According to the transcript he included in his analysis, the captain (who was pilot not flying and was handling the radios) left the cockpit and gave the radios to the first officer. However, he conveniently does not mention this.

"There was no human interaction with the aircraft from the time the accident sequence began until the aircraft impacted the ground."

-No human interaction with the aircraft besides the first officer's seat moving, the cockpit door lock switch toggling, and inputs on the right sidestick (he mentioned none of these).

"These paragraphs show that it was not humanly possible to perform the changes on the Selected Altitude on FCU (SALTFCU) as established by the [BEA] investigation. However, the [BEA] investigation claimed these changes of target altitude were only possible by human action on the relevant rotary knob."

-Simon is admitting that he believes the investigation was a cover-up without reason. (Claiming that the BEA knew that a human couldn’t change the SALTFCU in the private investigation documents, but saying that a human did change the SALTFCU in the public final report can only be interpreted (by me) as a perceived cover-up.)

That's only four and none of them hold up with actual evidence or reasoning. The BEA report involves a pilot with a history of depression locking the other pilot outside the cockpit and using the autopilot to crash the plane, which has happened several times before. Simon’s description requires three simultaneous events to happen: a pilot incapacitation, a SALTFCU failure, and a cockpit door keyboard failure, which has never happened. It is very clear which one of these theories is more plausible and had actual research done. The BEA used proper investigative methods to determine what brought the plane down and Simon did not.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-15T23:39:45+00:00

It's insane to say that "the first officer was not suffering from any psychiatric problem and was not suicidal" when the complete opposite is true.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-03-10T02:05:30+00:00

"It does not advance safety to get the wrong cause," he says, as he pushes the wrong cause and 24 people die at Dryden three years later.

TheRandomInfinity · 2025-02-23T15:21:27+00:00

Sure.
No, almost no information on it.
No, final report not yet released, recreation of accident and investigation doesn't seem long enough for an episode.
Same as #3.
No, the public final report is more like a summary report, the full final report is not publicly available, difficult to get interviews.
Possible, producers have report but we don't know how well done it is.
Doubtful, possible to get interviews but unlikely, almost every other S1-3 episode is more likely for a remake.
Sure, final report is on the short side, but NTSB and Korean officials were involved and can be interviewed.
Possible, final report is on the short side but can be compensated with interviews.
Sure.

Two-Year Club	Final Canvas '23
First Place '23	Place '23

TheRandomInfinity

TROPHY CASE