Media aviation howlers

People in films having normal level conversations on airliners instead of ‘What? Eh? Hang on I’ll lean a bit closer.’

I watched a program about the Douglas Skyraider this evening in which the programme blurb referred to it as a jet…………

People being sucked out of airliner windows in action films…er.no they won’t.

Eye witness accounts, mostly of light aircraft incidents where an aircraft has made a forced landing ‘And we were amazed to see this little aircraft come over and crash in that field’….no it didn’t, it just landed there.

The eye witness ‘The pilot was a hero, he avoided all of the houses and schools and managed to put down in a field’. No he didn’t, landing on a school or house usually results in the cessation of breathing for the pilot so he will quite happily plonk it into a field instead of on your cat.

I remember years ago being dismayed to see on telly an RAF Jaguar pilot talking about his aircraft being equipped with machine guns. :confused:

If we can get away from pedants…

Here’s an example from a TV station’s website today when a 94 year old crashed his Cessna 150.

“Haggerty had problems with brake and aileron pedals and came in high and fast, according to the Lincoln County sheriff’s office.”

Darn, do you hate it when your aileron pedals don’t work?

Nobody in the real world talks about compressor stall very much

rgds baz

Was in the hangar at VNY one day & something large was suffering a severe bout of it as it came in. Sounded like an artillery barrage.:eek:

From an article today….after a 94 year-old crashed his Cessna 150.

“Haggerty had problems with brake and aileron pedals and came in high and fast, according to the Lincoln County sheriff’s office.”

I’ve never seen “aileron pedals”.

Your original point.

A regular occurence (sic) in news reports is that they think a stall is an engine malfunction.

All I said was that it is an engine malfunction and that you were wrong. That’s all.

I wasn’t aware this thread was an aviation dictonary. (sic)

Well quite.

You’ve never heard of a compressor stall? I’d ask your groundschool for your money back. Then again, maybe they didn’t cover jet engines.

How many times have you heard the general MEDIA (the subject of this post) mention compressor stalls?

Whereas they do assume when someone says “The plane stalled before impact”…that it was an engine issue.

That’s what I was talking about…I wasn’t aware this thread was an aviation dictonary.

Is your other name ‘Arfur’ by any chance ?? 🙂

Don’t nessecelery mean anything by ‘Real World’…it is just a turn of phrase 😉 !
I could have said that Surge was a more common usage !

Oh OK. All I was doing was pointing out that something someone said was lacking in accuracy. If accuracy is not what this forum is interested in, then fair enough.
A compressor stall what it is called and it is often what causes a surge. I’ve experienced a few and am well aware of what causes them.

Why the jibe about the “real world”? What are you implying with that remark?

If you want to belabour this point or be a little pedantic Derek…the answer is that most people refer to it as engine ‘SURGE’…as answered on Prune…

jet engine surge/stall
could anyone give me the difference between engine surge vs stall ?

Answer was

If you really wish to differentiate (most do not) than the stall is the aerodynamic local disturbance to either a single or group of airfoils while a surge is the complete breakdown of pressurized flow through succesive stages resulting a flow reversal of the air in the compressor.

The loudest noise that you hear is the drumhead effect of the shock of the reversed air as it expands to the much larger inlet. Thus pure turbo jets or small JT8Ds produce pops while large high-bypass engines produce low frequency booms that will scare the hell out of you the first time you hear one.

Lots more can be said, but this is just a real simple start.

Nobody in the real world talks about compressor stall very much

rgds baz

You’ve never heard of a compressor stall? I’d ask your groundschool for your money back. Then again, maybe they didn’t cover jet engines.

I’ve added a couple of links to fill in what your groundschool missed.

http://aviationglossary.com/compressor-stall/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressor_stall

It is an engine malfunction though.

Not in ground school…:rolleyes:

In aviation, I’ve heard of engine stoppages and failures. Never “stall”.

Thanks for posting that, moggy. I never even saw the flypast on Channel 4.

If you can sit through 4 minutes 50 seconds of this You Tube you will be rewarded with some great air-to-air

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd4FgGSY5BY

And even on this the commentators haven’t a clue “Oh look, now there’s a flypast Haven’t we been having a lot of rain?”

Moggy

Is even the stalling of a jet engine compressor an engine ‘malfunction’ since the engine is not physically damaged; it has just got into a situation where it cannot function as intended?

If the compressor stall can indeed damage the engine especially if the engine surges.

Thanks for posting that, moggy. I never even saw the flypast on Channel 4.

I think we should maybe add in the interest of topicality Channel 4’s complete bollox-up of Aerobility’s stunning contribution to last night’s paralympic opening ceremony

There’s a collection of photos from the flypast using the “view gallery” link on the Aerobility site today:- http://www.bdfa.net/

And a video from BBC News here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b01m9rg8/?t=2m10s

Moggy

…all can be saved by the hero and heroine jointly pulling back on the control yoke with all their strength.

Even if it is an aircraft with powered flying controls! :rolleyes: I’d forgotten that part. 😀

One other thing that bugs me is the vast spaces apparently available to hide in on a flying airliner! I watched some of the (dreadful) ‘Flightplan’ on TV last night; the heroine goes of into the ‘avionics bay’…

…it was the size of a ship’s engine room! :rolleyes:

Oh OK. although I’m not sure how a engine compressor stall could be construed as pilot error though.

I hadn’t considered jet engines actually. 😮 Usually when TV reports talk about an aircraft ‘stalling’ they are thinking about what they do when they try to pull away from the lights in their car…

…that is pilot error! 😀

Is even the stalling of a jet engine compressor an engine ‘malfunction’ since the engine is not physically damaged; it has just got into a situation where it cannot function as intended?

But please all remember, when the aircraft starts making the Stuka howl and plummeting (a favourite media word) because the baddie has sabotaged the fuel system, all can be saved by the hero and heroine jointly pulling back on the control yoke with all their strength.

One wouldn’t mind so much if the heroine suffered a costume malfunction at this point, but they never do. 🙁

Moggy

Oh OK. although I’m not sure how a engine compressor stall could be construed as pilot error though.