dutchroll

Knowing many people in horsey circles, they use a fair bit of itinerant european backpacker labour on their horse spelling properties. The europeans never cease to be amazed at how bloody long it can take to get places over here. They honestly have no idea when they first arrive.

Boeing - roughly correspond to degrees (though the B737 "flaps 5" setting is actually an angle of 12 degrees trailing edge flap). Airbus - no resemblance whatsoever. Just numbers and words on a lever. Flaps 0, 1, 2, 3, Full.

Sorry, flap 15 on the B767 for runway length/weight limitations. There was no flap 10 setting. Getting confused with my even earlier years on the B747 which does have a flap 10 setting but normally used flap 20 for takeoff. It still looks like they rotated too early even if they had V speeds for the wrong flap setting. The difference is < 10 knots and usually more like 3-4.

On the B737, takeoff with flaps 1 improves the second segment climb performance. What this means is that on certain runways where second segment climb performance is limiting due to obstacles and required climb out gradients but the runway length is sufficient, the takeoff weight can be increased by using flaps 1. On our B737s using runway 35 at Canberra for example, where the second segment is limiting due to the gradient required, using flaps 1 for takeoff gives them an extra 2.8 tonnes of payload. It's not a "common" takeoff flap setting for the B737 as such. They usually use flap 5. But it's an "allowable" one which can be used in certain circumstances. They can use more than flap 5 for takeoff too. That would be if the weight and runway length were performance limiting but the second segment was not. On the B767 the standard takeoff setting was flap 5 but at heavy weights and warm days in Honololu or Tokyo we sometimes had to use flap 10.

I wouldn't be surprised to find Ozrunways with that functionality soon enough. Both Avplan and Ozrunways are very competitive and neither of them lets the other get too far ahead with features and connectivity before they catch up!

I have to say it seemed to be well recovered. Even if it was a stupendous screwup in the first place.

Definitely rotated way early compared to a "normal" takeoff. If you compare the time to the first attempt to rotate to any of the numerous other B737 takeoff videos out there, there's a very big difference. The flaps look like they are at "1" (leading edge flaps/slats partly extended, trailing edge flaps retracted) which is a valid takeoff position. Why did they rotate so early? No idea. Mistook the "V1" call for the "rotate" call maybe?

Yeah I'm finding the frozen poo thing a bit difficult to swallow. Oooh........sorry about that. Even on the old C130s which were 1970s vintage with urinals that vented overboard, the potty was still self-contained and had to be vacuumed or tipped into a sewage truck. I've never heard of an airliner that can vent toilet waste though.

"Looking at the plane afterwards and seeing that there was a large gash in the back of the plane … had that punctured the interior cabin we'd be dead," Tammy Richards, of Oklahoma City area, said. It did puncture the cabin Tammy. That's why the plane depressurised and the oxygen masks dropped. You're not dead though.

I'll be very surprised if that happens. Governments and even most big corporations are excellent at writing very punitive "non-disclosure" clauses into early termination of contracts. They do not want their dirty laundry aired in the public arena. You might get some abstract hints, but you won't get a warts & all account.

The Ministerial Statement reads (in part): Minister for Infrastructure and Transport Darren Chester also thanked Skidmore for his service and wished him “all the best for the future”..................“I remain focused on working with the board and staff of CASA, in partnership with industry, to maintain and enhance our safety record and, just as importantly to support a viable aviation industry.” Translation for those not familiar with bureaucrat-speak: "I can't work with him. I will replace him with a grovelling yes-man." Skates as he is known in RAAF circles is actually a very intelligent and decent person, and a very keen aviator. Yes of course political statements crap on about "achievements" etc but my hunch based on him leaving well before his term is up is that his vision for changing CASA was probably stymied by his own board or at the political level quite a lot - enough to say "screw this......I'm packing up and going home".

It's been 16 years since she was a GP before going to the dark side and becoming a specialist and my wife still knows most of the drug interactions off the top of her head, and certainly all the common ones plus the ones which apply to her speciality (ie all the pain relief drug classes). Drug interactions seem to be reasonably uncommon and often the result of a swiss cheese scenario rather than ignorance. I don't think she's ever gone to the web to search for an answer to anything because I imagine tapping away on your computer in front of a patient might distract from a proper history taking and examination from which almost all the info necessary for a diagnosis (or at least figuring out if further testing is needed) is gleaned. I have witnessed the occasional dragging out of very thick medical textbooks at home though!

Yes but who is going to fund that all the way through to the 10 or 12+ years training to produce the end product and with what money? The Government goes "oh but we've funded many more university medical graduates!" Who will fund the extra nurses? The extra hospital beds? The extra theatre time? The extra orderlies? The extra facilities? They pump out hundreds of medical degrees from uni and then......silence. Crickets chirping.

Unfortunately the perspective that all the doctors and nurses are sitting around on their arses after hours doing nothing is often born from ignorance (not deliberate - just ignorance of how the emergency/casualty system works). Urgent casualties which are not triaged in the waiting room are usually admitted from ambulances via the emergency entrance which is not visible to patients in the waiting area. Doctors can be absolutely flat out behind the scenes with patients in theatres or treatment rooms while the waiting room has the casual appearance of nothing happening at all. When my wife did her 36 hour shift non-stop (actually she had a one or two hour break where she fell asleep in the tea room I think from memory) in Canberra hospital a few years back, she didn't visit the hospital waiting room once. So while the long suffering waiting room patients probably would've thought she was just bone lazy and couldn't care less about their sprained ankles or cuts and bruises, the reality was that she was sent home utterly exhausted after nearly falling asleep in the operating theatre (with still a long list of patients waiting for treatment).

The other type is the one who "talks the talk" and impresses, but can't actually operate to save themselves. Weird how medicine sometimes parallels aviation!

It is true that there is very little that a doctor can prescribe or surgical procedure that they can perform which doesn't have the potential to harm you more than it fixes you. Even if that potential is extraordinarily low. However it is all about balancing risk (isn't life in general?). You are required to be informed of those risks and it becomes your decision as to whether the good outweighs the bad. The pivotal court case in Australia was as recent as 1992, Rogers v Whitaker, which lead to a big upheaval regarding "informed consent" and pretty much changed the face of how that was done in this country. You can look it up online, but essentially an ophthalmologist was successfully sued by a patient for failing to inform her of a 1 in 14,000 chance of a particular serious complication, which of course she got (it was not the fault of the doctor). The upshot of it all was that risks have to be disclosed no matter how small, if they could have a material effect on the outcome, or the patient is deemed to not have given informed consent. It doesn't have to be entirely verbal though. It could be by giving the patient a pamphlet to read (and actually this is often recommended as a backup to a discussion with the patient). You're also supposed to be given the opportunity to ask questions. Nev you're right about bedside manner, though regrettably it is not related to surgical skills so sometimes you just have to wear it. All professions have issues with how some individuals communicate.

I don't think there's any data to support 1 in every 4 being unnecessary Nev, but yes we do know that happens unfortunately. Proving it is a problem. There are certain conditions which will often get better naturally. My prolapsed disc had something like a 90% chance of resolving naturally within about 8 weeks with rest and physio. We waited (on the surgeon's recommendation), and it didn't. I was in the 10% club, and as an added bonus I ended up being in the other club for which a cortisone injection does nothing at all after a further 3 weeks. Lucky me - sat (well lay down mostly) around in substantial discomfort and unable to work for 3 months watching nature abysmally fail to take its course (in fact it got progressively worse), plus the time to recover after the operation! So even though you have a condition which might commonly resolve naturally with time, who is to say that you'll be in that group? And how long are you prepared to tolerate the pain and disability to find out? You'd also be surprised at how many patients walk in and demand an operation, rather than talk about alternatives. This is how the lines get blurred in determining what was necessary and what wasn't. However as I said, I'm not denying it doesn't deliberately occur. We know it does.

The majority of surgeons don't actually use patients to pay off their Maserati. You are "normal". A minority of patients are "unfortunate". Mrs Dutch has occasionally (she would argue "continuously") run afoul of hospital management for actually caring about her patients' welfare, rather than just shovelling numbers through the operating theatre as quick as she can to reduce the waiting list so the management can crawl up the Health Minister's backside and tell them how spiffingly well everything is going. The management of public hospitals and the politicians who control them live in a bubble which is absolutely impenetrable by reality. Sorry.....I digress!

Talking to mine he said fusion still has its place, but only when you've totally run out of options and need to relieve severe pain. He said disc surgery is much more conservative these days compared to many years ago when they'd fuse you without even giving it a second thought. I actually had a very new procedure which, after the portion of diseased and protruding disc is nibbled away to release the pressure on the nerve roots which is causing all the symptoms, involves putting in a small titanium anchored poly flap which reduces the probability of a relapse of the remaining disc in that same space. I was hoping he'd actually implanted Adamantium in my spine, but alas it wasn't to be and I cannot become Wolverine.

Absolutely. It was sort of funny in hindsight - my wife actually picked up the foot drop. We were walking through Coles and she was just behind me and said "Hey stop! Do you hear that?" I had no idea what she was talking about. She said "all I can hear while you walk is this slap-slap-slap of your left foot flopping on the ground and you have an irregular gait. Take a walk over there while I watch." So I did that. Then she goes "now try to walk on your heels, both at the same time". Normally with effort you can do this, but my left foot absolutely would not stay on the heel no matter how hard I struggled with it. The right one was no problem. She says "ok so now the disc is impacting the left side nerves so badly that you're rapidly losing any strength in your foot. If it gets worse, you can end up losing bowel and bladder control." Ok....we need to book in for the surgery now!

There are a crap-load of suggested causes and risk factors (a few with some evidence behind them) for low back pain and disc degeneration. So many people get it that it's nigh impossible to narrow down any one or two particular reasons why. I had 4 months off early this year with a lumbar disc prolapse that grounded me and didn't respond to anything until I went under the knife for an L4/L5 discectomy due to gradually deteriorating pathology (severe sciatica followed by development of foot-drop which means "surgery is the only thing which will help you now and you better have it sooner rather than later"). Fortunately having a wife who's an orthopaedic surgeon helps you get booked in easily for spinal imaging, and having an orthopaedic spine surgeon who shares your hangar and owns his own warbird helps with getting the operation done too. Being in a job which involves sitting down all day doesn't help either. Compared to lying down, standing up doubles the intra-disc pressure in your spine, and sitting quadruples it. That was shown in studies done overseas on volunteers where they actually measured it. I learned this as he was discussing how he was going to slice my back open.

Yeah the thing with the portable oxygen cylinders around the cabin is that they're not designed for emergency use. They only have 2 flow settings and are designed for therapeutic use for ill passengers just to supplement the ambient oxygen level. There are a couple in the cockpit too, but these are fitted with a "demand" outlet as well as the normal outlets. If you use the demand outlet with a pilot oxygen mask to supply a level of oxygen appropriate to emergency use, you can expect to only get 15 minutes duration from it. I would hope, at least, that after the number of hours it remained airborne for, the cabin crew and passengers were already deceased.

Yes. The threat of an attack on the cockpit from the cabin is considered, I think quite rightly despite this event, a much greater risk than a threat the other way around.

Yeah I'm reasonably convinced that the Captain must've done it. How? By getting out of the seat and deadbolting the cockpit door after convincing the F/O to go out for a break or get him something. I would imagine to negate the possibility of anyone thwarting the whole plan he depressurised the plane until the passenger oxygen ran out (it's only 15 minutes worth and it'd be well before the flight deck oxygen required for one pilot would run out). Then he would've had free reign to do what he liked while everyone else was permanently asleep. Or maybe he didn't bother. Why put it in the deepest part of the Indian Ocean so it's almost impossible to find? I have absolutely no idea at all.

He was ex-Air Force. He earned the nickname there of "the screaming skull". Being ex Air Force myself I can tell you that the majority of guys are decent blokes, though you are by necessity brought up to be very "mission-orientated". Most guys adjust fine to life outside. Even if they don't like the way GA is run on a shoestring, they cope with it. However there are some who were d***heads when they were in the Air Force, and history shows they usually remain d***heads when they're out of it too. It's just the way life is......