At the risk of interrupting a lively debate: Looks like a lot of fuel coming out of that wing; anyone know how the ground decontamination is done? Do they just dig out huge volumes of earth and dump it in a landfill?

A very large earth moving operation will be needed although the cost of that compared to the cost of the rest of the incident will be trivial

Semantics
 

I agree we should not get wrapped around the axle about trivial details, since the Herc crew did an amazing job. I will just say though, that if there is one American I will listen to without question it’d be the great Chesley Sullenberger III:

15:27:32.9 RDO-1 mayday mayday mayday. uh this is uh Cactus fifteen thirty nine hit birds, we've lost thrust (in/on) both engines we're turning back towards LaGuardia.

BV

Why use four syllables when two will do?

My dad flew USN F-4s. I recall him describing refueling as closing at some level of minimum thrust and having one engine in burner before being done. Not a lot of performance overlap yet it has worked for 50 years.

Incredible picture. I have one somewhere my dad took of the basket from inside the Phantom as he tanked.

I'm curious to learn more about what happened with the F-35 and KC-130. Incredible flying to get everyone on the ground safely.

Because verbosity is a National characteristic?

But from a grounded eagle, that appears to be masterly flying so I will cut some slack on the r/t procedure.

sycamore -I said nothing about the relative speeds etc during AAR with a C130. I simply pointed out that ATP 56 strongly advises against joining direct astern a probe and drogue tanker. That said, on the that airbridges I did required toboggan because of the lack of spare power in the rx as well as a lack of compatible speed range. If memory serves the hose limiting speed was a major problem.

A bit like this really: :E
How many pilots does it take to change a nav light?

1 to change the nav light and to post that the nav light has been
changed

14 to share similar experiences of changing nav lights and how the nav light could have been changed differently

7 to caution about the dangers of changing nav lights

7 to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing nav lights

5 to flame the spell checkers

3 to correct spelling/grammar flames

6 to argue over whether it's "navlight" or "nav light"

... another 6 to condemn those 6 as anal-retentive

2 industry professionals to inform the group that the proper term is
"position light"

15 know-it-alls who claim they were in the industry, and that "nav
light" is perfectly correct

19 to post that this forum is not about nav lights and to please take
this discussion to a navlight forum

11 to defend the posting to this forum saying that we all use nav
lights and therefore the posts are relevant to this forum

36 to debate which method of changing nav lights is superior, where to buy the best nav lights, what brand of nav lights work best for this technique and what brands are faulty

7 to post URL's where one can see examples of different nav lights

4 to post that the URL's were posted incorrectly and then post the
corrected URL's

3 to post about links they found from the URL's that are relevant to
this group which makes nav lights relevant to this group

13 to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety including all
headers and signatures, and add "Me too"

5 to post to the group that they will no longer post because they cannot handle the nav light controversy

4 to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"

13 to say "do a Google search on nav lights before posting questions about nav lights"

1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now and start it all over again.

1 forum lurker to respond to the original post 10 years from now and start it all over again :p

You nailed it Mightygem

That depends on whether you read what I actually wrote compared to what you think I implied......

Great post MG:ok:

Given the size of the fireball seen in the video when the F35B smacked the dirt suggests to me it had quite a bit of fuel on board....maybe he'd taken/was taking on some gas when things went pear shaped. That's an expensive smoking hole in the ground, not to mention what it's going to cost to cleanup that strawberry field which is now a HAZMAT site.

Back during my seafaring days, I was taught that the proper way to announce a dodgy situation was "Pan Pan" and to announce a real hairball emergency was "Mayday". When I learned to careen across the skies back in the 1960s, I was taught the same way: use "Pan Pan" and "Mayday" I don't know about the military, but my experience was in the civilian aviation environment. I never officially flew for the military.

Of course there could be a bit of Francophobism associated with reluctance to utter the phrase "Mayday", which is allegedly a shortened bastardization of the French phrase "M' aidez moi". On the other hand, Francophiles may object to the shortening/bastardization of any French phrase, considering that use of such a term constitutes an attack on all things French; consequently, such folks would be reluctant to participate in any way in the decline of the French Language by uttering the phrase "Mayday". :rolleyes: Je ne sais pas.

I have always preferred the use of the "Pan and Mayday" codes because they seem to be fairly precise in their meaning, plus they add a bit of "je ne sais quoi" to the whole aviation/maritime experience.

Cheers,
Grog

Circumstances sometimes roll the dice in your favour, sometimes not, procedures/rules are written in blood it is oft said. The Herc crew certainly did a an absolutely great job, no denying. Having already declared a PAN there is little doubt the controller knew what Swissair 111 meant when they used the word "Emergency".

1:14:18.0 Swissair one eleven heavy is declaring Pan Pan Pan. We have uh smoke in the cockpit, uh request (deviate), immediate return uh to a convenient place, I guess uh Boston ***
1:25:05.4 And we are declaring emergency now Swissair one eleven
1:25:49.3 End of recording

All 229 died.

The link I previously gave was an outcome of the Avianca 52 crash at JFK, a 707 in which eight of the nine crew members (including all three flight crew members) and 65 of the 149 passengers on board were killed. The NTSB determined that the crash occurred due to the flight crew failing to properly declare a fuel emergency, failure to use an airline operational control dispatch system, inadequate traffic flow management by the FAA, and the lack of standardized understandable terminology for pilots and controllers for minimum and emergency fuel states. The crew had asked for "Priority" which didn't really communicate the predicament they were in.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/...ts/AAR9104.pdf

Yes, but it doesn't tell anyone the state you're in, just knocked the nav light off, wing came off your F-15 and managed to land OK, or you're ejecting. Should you need to eject just say "I'm ejecting", don't bother with all that MAYDAY nonsense. ;)

I guess we could adopt the attitude of the apocryphal story of a FJ type putting out a MAYDAY in Vietnam and being told in reply "Shut up and die like a man".Carrots a local says in one report, so should lower the cost.

I might say that to my GIB (if so equipped), otherwise, I'm pulling the "handles" and getting out. Let ATC figure it out. Of course, it is always best to transmit as much information to ATC (or whomever) prior to ejection ... if there's enough time.

By the way, I have no experience with ejection seat-equipped aircraft. I'm just a card-carrying coward, and as soon as the idea "eject" entered my brain, I'm outta there. I do, however, have a couple of friends who successfully ejected from stricken aircraft ... one from an F-105 at near M-1.

Cheers,
Grog

You forgot the
1 to post that there is no appostrophe in URLs

Not to mention the long time lurker, who jumps in to correct the spelling of "apostrophe"

El G.

Bet California doesn't allow that. There are specialists with kit to do this. You truck all the contaminated ground away to them, where a centrifuge-like machine heats it, mixes it with water, splits it into components, etc and deals with it all. Expensive machine, not used that much, so costs a lot when you do. Charged by the ton. Meanwhile, truck back in fresh soil. Old roadside fuel station sites invariably have petrol and diesel which has leaked from the tanks into the ground below and needs this before you build something else there.

Likewise never flown anything in which ejection is an option... However... I would imagine that in almost all cases, a 0.5-second call saying "Ejecting" would have a helicopter sent out to my location pretty quickly. If I am on the ground, in the middle of nowhere, with a broken leg.... I would not like to be thinking about whether or not the controller is still sitting at his chair trying to work out what was going on. Knowing the exact point of ejection would seriously reduce the search area, I guess.

I am purely guessing that the system as a whole might have an ELT, or the Military pilots might carry some sort of personal location device... however... If that hunch is right or wrong... a quick shout out couldn't do much harm....

... THinking further... in the circumstances of this thread... a quick shout of "Ejecting" allows the controller to focus more on the wounded Herc, as he isn't trying to work out what is happening with the other aircraft... the other aircraft is now isaac newton and the insurance company's problem