Well There's Your Problem | Episode 140: Helios Airways Flight 522

spooky scary ghost plane
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Captions by Pineapples Foster Media Services
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Chapters (Provided by Mickulty)
00:00:00 Ear Update
00:04:50 Intro
00:08:45 The GD News: Island of Maui Burned by Big Oil, Link in Description
00:17:11 The GD News: LA Disaster Movie'd by Big Oil, Avoid the Poop Water
00:20:41 The GD News: Helicopter Cable Car Rescue in Pakistan
00:26:59 WTYP LIVE SHOW FRANKLIN MUSIC HALL SEPTEMBER 12TH
00:30:14 Background: What is Aircraft Pressurisation?
00:39:37 Background: What is Hypoxia?
00:43:40 Background: What is Aircraft Depressurisation?
00:53:16 Background: Time of Useful Consciousness
00:55:35 Helios Airways - From Wet to Dry
01:07:41 Door Issues / Well This Calls For a Toast so Fly The Sham Plane
01:12:36 The Big "Deflate Plane" Button
01:19:33 Flight 522 Departs, Odd Issues
01:27:22 9/11 Strikes Again
01:33:58 Ghost Flight, Fighters Sunny Side Up
01:39:06 The Miracle that Didn't Save The Plane
01:47:27 Aftermath
02:02:00 Safety Third: Well There's Your Gas Leak, A Story Without Slides
in the commercial: Local Forecast - Elevator Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/b...

[@Siktah]

If any of your sentences start, end or have in the middle the word 'like' you need to go back to school or get some communications training.

[@gonzoengineering4894]

Ooo in b4 pin of shame

[@gonzoengineering4894]

Called it

[@thomaspalazzolo5902]

Must hate poetic allusion.

[@Yordleton]

When is it ok to use, then?

[@grmpEqweer]

Like, that's just your opinion, man...

[@aceplym]

>looking for a flight >ask the stewardess if their lease is creepy or wet >she doesnt understand >pull out illustrated diagram explaining what is creepy and what is wet >she laughs and says "it's a good airline sir" >buy a ticket >its wet

[@teslashark]

What will a creepy lease be

[@aceplym]

@@teslashark very vague terms about it ending and phrases like "nature of payment to be determined at time"

[@teslashark]

@@aceplym Oh army money laundering front

[@shitpostgrotto2982]

At first I read that as "looking for a fight"

[@GaldirEonai]

2+ hour podcast, nature is healing.

[@GoredonTheDestroyer]

Is it _really_ a podcast if half of it isn't devoted to some nonsensical tangent?

[@mysteryshrimp]

Back to the classic "oh shit" moment disasters, too.

[@Alex-js5lg]

I genuinely end up saying something like "oooooh!" out loud when they release an episode that's 2+ hours long.

[@SeanKDLA]

*Dan Carlin enters the chat*

[@jaysea5939]

I'm excited and ready

[@GordonFreemayne]

"Hijacking was an exciting adventure to Cuba and now it's a less exciting adventure to being smashed into a building"

[@kstxevolution9642]

I loved how November summed it up in one of the 9/11 shows: you become the most arrested anyone has ever been

[@willclark6961]

Dude that got me and I knew someone must have commented on it

[@tyson31415]

Liam: "Roz has hearing damage." Roz: "What?"

[@azertyQ]

Roz doesn't have hearing damage, he just has auditory processing issues

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

It's Rocz. I think it's Dutch for Roz.

[@fenflare]

@@azertyQ Wanted to +1 this. Sounds like auditory processing disorder to me. I stop being able to understand people if there's any level of background noise pretty much.

[@Darklor_WCF]

I was just involved in a very much safety third type fuel air explosion at work. And my first day back at the office went pretty much like that. Lol

[@LifesNeverHumDrum]

He did the telltale “what?” followed by answering the question/statement, and as someone with SPD that’s my usual process

[@frederf3227]

Alice involuntarily swearing us in as police officers is a really poor substitute for my forced feminization kink.

[@adams3627]

Force-pigification

[@flaminginferno6641]

​@@adams3627nah nah Forced Swineifcation Saying Pig is too direct

[@michaelkitchin9665]

I just really want to make a difference, honest.

[@catherinedonaldson4490]

If Alice is swearing us in as members of the Philly Secret Service, I guess it's okay?!

[@redoctober67]

According to the THERAC-25 episode, it’s how we can cure cancer. Or was that the Deforestation episode? Both?

[@FuuPhoenix]

The darkly funny thing about bleed air is that you’ll know if a bird has been sucked into an engine, because the cabin will smell of cooked chicken

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Tragilicious.

[@xmlthegreat]

oh fuck really?

[@IzzyHackworth]

I'm never going to fact check this because I want to believe it

[@TheShortStory]

Partly true. Also burnt feathers, offal and bone. Not appetizing.

[@DefendYoungstown]

​@@PanAndScanBuddycadaveriffic!

[@jamesadfowkes]

This is why when you do checklists you don't just read the checklist. You read the item, look at the thing, touch the thing, read out what the thing is set to. So easy to just *read* it, not *do* it.

[@hobog]

This is related to many east Asian train drivers regularly gesticulating to signals and incanting procedures

[@joshuagreen3185]

@@hobog it's got a Wiki article - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pointing_and_calling

[@tahrey]

This sounds like a good ADHD tactic for making sure you Do The Thing and that you've Done The Thing. edit: actually realising now that I already do very similar when leaving the flat to make sure I have phone, wallet, keys (for door, and, if necessary, for car or bike), anything else I'm supposed to be taking with me on that particular trip... Not pointing of course, but putting my hand on each thing in my pockets or a bag or box I'm carrying and saying its name...

[@claudiadarling9441]

Exactly. ALWAYS do the checklist.

[@Myrea_Rend]

Oh dear, someone left the "Kill Everyone" switch set to "ON"

[@blackvulture6818]

The "IsAlive" modifier got bitflipped

[@tahrey]

Honestly why does the plane even let you spin the engines up whilst the "open the cabin directly to atmosphere" hatch is open and the "maintain pressurisation" switch is turned to "nope" without you needing to go through a longwinded override sequence that resets after every shutdown?

[@MrJimheeren]

@@tahreybecause engineers need to do tests on airplanes. And this hardly ever happens because pilots have check lists and they don’t miss this shit 99,999999999999999% of the time

[@tahrey]

@@MrJimheeren But clearly they DO miss it sometimes. It should be part of the engineer's check list, enforced by you not being able to do the test otherwise. You design out the gotchas, no matter how good you think your people are or the procedures they run through, because the fallout when they DO mess up is so catastrophic. It would be easy enough to implement a failsafe for this, but I expect the manufacturer figured it would be too costly.

[@MrJimheeren]

@@tahrey there are a couple of very good reasons for pilots to have a switch to turn it off and on again, troubleshooting is one of them, testing (like mentioned before). An audible warning would be nice though. But I’m pretty sure that since this accident happened Boeing send out new regulations to airlines to make sure this doesn’t happen anymore. These are the kind of accidents that in the long run make flying safer

[@bookcat123]

“Shoot, we’re out of different alarm sounds. We’ll have to reuse one. Which alarm do you think we should double up on?” “Oh the one that goes off to warn you that you might be easily confused, obviously. No need to make that one unique.”

[@GojiMet86]

Mass aphyxiation in a plane due to crew negligence is NOT one of the reasons I expected people to die. It's not a crash, it's not a hijacking, it's not being shot down. It is someone just forgetting a small setting, jeez.

[@grmpEqweer]

Planes are full of little details that will k1ll everyone on board if not set correctly.

[@thomasgiles2876]

There was another event where this happened with a private jet on a PGA tour in 1999. It crashed in South Dakota after losing pressure around Florida.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

​@@thomasgiles2876 yep, this was the Learjet plane where Payne Stewart was on board.

[@Rietto]

The pilots were told to check it, even, but perhaps the impairment was already happening and they didn't respond to the request to look.

[@Mindbleach]

@@thomasgiles2876 For the benefit of non-Americans, South Dakota's in the middle top. That jet flew across half the dang country without one living soul onboard. In a very dry sense, it is a testament to Lear's autopilot.

[@warmachine5835]

As soon as Roz states that the SOP says "put the plane back the way you found it," I knew immediately what went wrong. From my experience working in the altogether less risky world of computer hardware and software, unless you spell everything out in a checklist that must be completed each time, someone is going to fuck up. Early, and often.

[@eleSDSU]

Yup. What nobody tells you about computer engineering is that most of your work is checklists, programming is a secondary requirement and most often than not you are programming something that makes some form of list. Everything is lists.

[@tahrey]

From working in public-facing IT support at a college... even if you DO that, it still happens.

[@Weirdeiolu]

I'm gonna clean my flat so good with this existential horror beaming into my ears.

[@iciajay6891]

How I always do it.

[@Mt.Dwezzy]

Doing the same this weekend

[@4thanonymousperson]

Oh hey you too?

[@PandorasFolly]

Oh man all of us.

[@FireFan44]

I too am here to represent the Existential Horror Cleaning Crew

[@Lunahoyer7040]

I love how whenever rocz talks about his old job, liam always makes sure to emphasize how dangerous it was and how happy he is rocz no longer works there

[@felgraf9811]

I gotta agree, it's honestly very sweet and adorable.

[@loadeddice4696]

I had today off word due to a railway strike, so solidarity forever and let's all learn about horrible things happening!

[@outistynnanyt5153]

✊✊✊ Solidarity forever

[@ClimateDude]

Solidarity forever comrades! ✊

[@grmpEqweer]

✊️Workers' RIGHTS!✊️

[@ferky123]

Off Microsoft or talking?

[@ebnertra0004]

Railway strike? *stops trainsimming in solidarity*

[@masonturner0]

Pounding my fists on the table and chanting ‘plane’

[@benjiboy69420]

I do this all the time

[@tarasaurus98]

I love these extremely frozen cold open discussions. Never change.

[@Personal_Chizo]

Starting the podcast mid-word... These folks are true trailblazers. 🙌

[@Alex-js5lg]

It's called "in media res" and it's a sophisticated film technique. They're being artsy. Fartsy.

[@iciajay6891]

What I'm here for.

[@toastpoint]

the editors note of "you have no idea the fear that enters my heart when they *START OFF* this boisterous" is the sign of a good time.

[@Puddlef1sh]

Hail Devon. They keep this chaos machine moving.

[@piguyalamode164]

The Hawaii fires stuff is so insane. It feels like almost the worst possible situation from a disaster management perspective. You are fighting a fire with very few natural firebreaks(hawaiian islands are basically one giant mountain), the island is in the middle of nowhere so its really hard for anyone to help, your options for getting water all sort of suck(yeah there is the ocean, but that will destroy all your firefighting equipment), and its really hard to evacuate people anywhere

[@Frommerman]

Perhaps we should not be tiling the entire planet and every biome with structures and infrastructure initially built in colder climates with zero geological activity, and instead pay attention to the kinds of structures built by the people who lived in the places we colonized for thousands of years under the assumption that there was a reason they built things the way they did.

[@Electrolux219]

@@Frommermanwhat the hell does that have to do with firefighting?

[@aliquotidian]

@electrolux219 - ultimately it has everything to do with climate change. Covering landscapes in an indiscriminate scurf of buildings disrupts hydrology and ecology. Intensive building will create heat sinks that alter local weather. More to the point, having said buildings constructed to be inhabitable only when artificially modulated, so continuously requiring input from from external electricity sources (ie, carbon spewing coal fired plants) instead of taking advantage of natural airflow, seasonal sun aspect, millennia of lowtech building methods which can passively heat or cool a space - helps drive climate change. There's a planned township near me in a valley winds do not normally enter, mostly facing north and west (in Australia, receiving the most sun, so prone to overheating), lots of close narrow roads, that is the embodiment of this situation. Right down to enough remnant bushland to create an inescapable hell when it ignites some day in the future.

[@Frommerman]

@@Electrolux219 @Electrolux219 Hawaii is volcanic. The rightful owners of Hawaii, indigenous Hawaiians, knew this, and so didn't build permanent structures entirely out of stone. They absolutely could have, loads of the Polynesian peoples they descend from did, but doing that is stupid on an island chain where all your hard work could get entombed in lava in the space of an hour. Instead they sometimes built low stone foundations, something both sturdy and easy to replace after a disaster, and constructed everything else from wood and thatch. Sure it would be burned away by lava, but they could also rebuild such structures in the course of a hard day's work. Contrast with the various pueblo-building nations of the Mojave Desert. They are famous for their incredibly sturdy construction which lasts, even absent maintenance, for archaeological timescales. They also built everything as close to the ground as they could, shared walls wherever able, used mud and stone to create extremely thick earthen walls, and whitewashed everything. These features keep off the sun, reflect much of its heat away from their dwellings, and siphon the rest into the ground they are built so close to, in effect making artificial miniature caves which benefit from ground cooling. They didn't need to worry about volcanoes, but they did need to worry about the sun. So they designed around that constraint. Enter, idiot Westerners. We build literally the exact same things everywhere. Giant glass and steel dildoes in the middle of deserts where they are impossible to keep naturally cool. Plywood and gypsumboard in extremely wet regions where these materials rapidly mold and decay. Mazes of asphalt which absorb titanic amounts of heat and effectively cook our cities from the inside. We're morons for doing all this and more, but we stole so much power and ignored (or outright genocided) so many people who knew what the fuck they were doing that nobody can stop us.

[@jacobrzeszewski6527]

We're waiting for the inevitable 24 hour podcast.

[@ManyTriangles]

The engineering disaster is that their clock broke.

[@SuperSweetBoy]

@@ManyTrianglesY2K: The Revenge

[@maitele]

How long was the combined Penn Central series? 12 hours?

[@blackvulture6818]

New punk: Airpunk, alternate universe were people built planes so large they perform maintainance in flight and constantly ressupply them with tankers

[@grmpEqweer]

...would work better with hydrogen-based dirigibles, using solar cells to electrolyze hydrogen out of the air. Separated balloons to keep from an explosion taking the platform down... 🤔

[@blackvulture6818]

@@grmpEqweer That just sounds like steampunk and how everything there has to be lighter than air

[@cf453]

The people demand nuclear-powered planes.

[@ashermil]

You’d need some kind of mid-air supply system for spare engine parts, biscuits, etc.

[@irisidem6580]

isn't this straight up the plot of an armored core game?

[@pumpernickelherbert]

i like how justin keeps two jpegs of the eagles logo on his desktop, as well as the among us launcher

[@spambot7110]

ok thank you i'm glad someone else is doing a deep dive on the desktop. i've noticed dual launchers for Blender and IrfanView64, the classic New Folder, a crisp jpeg of pete buttigieg, ,a bunch of PDFs with names that start with "statement" (presumably waiting to be put away in "roz banking stuff", and mysteriously, "number.txt". also spotted: Google Earth Pro, which is making me imagine an episode with Jon Bois style graphics for the slides

[@MrJohndoakes]

13:30 The thing is not guano, it's that there's all these abandoned sugarcane farms on Maui which make perfect wildfire zones, and the local power company did not kill the lines fast enough.

[@MySerpentine]

Yeah, the sugar cane is a menace.

[@blackvulture6818]

Can't wait for Lahania to rebuild in the most fire resistant architecture of the united states *checks notes* five over ones

[@cattibingo]

"Luxury" apartments babyyyyyyyy

[@teslashark]

Wood!

[@PobortzaPl]

Well, it would be quite hard for United States to turn out of sudden to the most East European kind of house building technology, that being prefabricated concrete slabs. And IIRC five-over-ones, once built, are more fire resistant than drywall on wood skeleton.

[@JuneNafziger]

@@PobortzaPlsprinklers are remarkably effective

[@PobortzaPl]

@JuneNafziger if a building has them, if they're properly maintained and if there's a working fire detection system that is connected to them Sometimes I have a feeling that modern humans have some kind of a deathwish, when easily avoidable deaths are concerned.

[@ridleycombs]

Fun fact, these days in some cases there _are_ oxygen tanks supplying the passenger masks on planes! They've always been around for pilots and flight attendants (you can often see the latter stowed in the overhead bins, or between a seat and a bulkhead), but using them for passengers used to be fairly uncommon (though certainly not unheard-of) because the weight of the large high-pressure tanks required to deliver a continuous flow of oxygen to every passenger can be pretty substantial for large jets, and the piping involved in running a centralized system would be impractical. These days, though, some newer planes like the 787 use small high-pressure tanks above each row of seats (where older designs would've had a chemical oxygen generator), and use a demand regulator kind of like the ones used in SCUBA to only emit oxygen when the passenger inhales, which reduces waste massively and saves enough weight for the mass of the tanks to be workable.

[@joearnold6881]

Aw the couple look so sweet that’s so sad 😢 and so horrifying. They spent an hour surrounded by probable corpses beating the door down, actually managed to get in only for it to be just barely too late… Fuck. And still they were heroes, aiming the plane away from built up areas 🫡 if an afterlife existed, they’d deserve to be in it together

[@piratesswoop725]

I sadly think his girlfriend went hypoxic with the others. There was some confusion because she shared a surname with the copilot, but I recall reading she was not actually in the cockpit with him, so he truly was alone.

[@ignorance72]

They didn't beat the door down, that's one of the many facts this podcast got wrong. They opened it by typing in the code on the keypad.

[@Alchemeleon]

Liam's sigh when Justin said "fighters were over easy'd" was priceless

[@laurencebois5119]

That safety third reminded me of the time someone almost recreated Piper Alpha at a theatre I worked at during heavy renovations. Basically the gas guy turned the wrong valve causing the plastic bag and gaffer tape cap of the line to the restaurant to fail.

[@nathansmith3608]

31:31 re: "air has less oxygen in it" Alice & the people she's annoyed with are both right - at high altitude air does have less oxygen _per unit volume_ but it's the same oxygen content _per unit mass_

[@scaredyfish]

So it has the same oxygen content per unit oxygen.

[@basedeltazero714]

Since oxygen has a significantly higher molar mass than nitrogen, it'd tend to settle into the 'bottom' of the atmosphere, right? I don't imagine the difference would be particularly significant, but there might be a slightly lower concentration.

[@davidwright7193]

⁠@@basedeltazero714Nope. The difference isn’t enough to make a major difference in % concentration. The best measure of “amount” of a gas is partial pressure which does decrease with altitude.

[@brandonthesteele]

​@basedeltazero714 Ozone is composed of three oxygen atoms and the ozone layer is way up in the stratosphere, so

[@brettmcknight4677]

I'm glad to see a return to really strong bits in this episode. The recurring Sherpa and all the various ways to prepare a fighter jet were gold.

[@ferchrissakes]

Having entertained the idea of being able to land a jet, I figured step one would be to establish radio comms with someone more qualified to help. Having looked into that I challenge any other Dunning-Kruger affected dude to _just_ figure out the radio in a cockpit; nevermind flying. That said, in the good old days before 9/11 I was one of those kids that got to visit the cockpit and the pilots let me actually change the autopilot’s heading while over the Atlantic. So if you need to aim a 777 a bit south of Nova Scotia, I can help with that.

[@leonhardherrmann6958]

Shudder... kzbin.info/www/bejne/jGPQfqZjnZmkfac

[@Ryu_Himora]

Mentour Pilot managed to talk Tom Scott into landing the plane via auto pilot relatively recently, and it was not even close to being a dangerous landing. Tom only failed on the other attempt when Mentour tried to actually get him to manually land the plane. The Mythbusters also did autopilot landings successfully in an earlier season. Its not far-fetched at all that ATC could talk someone into modern airport even with no experience.

[@markhamstra1083]

A flight instructor for the specific type has some chance. Plain ATC, not so much. A controller may not even be a pilot.

[@TheMrVengeance]

I mean, modern auto-pilots are able to land by themselves. It'll likely be a rough landing but it'll be better than a crash. It'd be a matter of telling the person which knobs to twiddle and buttons to press. Ie. tell the computer what pattern you're doing into which runway, deploy flaps and set the brake.

[@trioptimum9027]

@@markhamstra1083 Yeah, but also it's a 737 and he was a pilot. It's not an obscure plane, so the chances of getting someone familiar with the controls on the line quickly are decent. I'm going to say that if they can get a good 737 pilot on the line, even if she isn't a flight instructor per se, she could probably talk a qualified but not type-qualified pilot down at a modern airport. It does very much depend on the timeline, too. In three to five minutes? No chance. In ten? Maybe, if they're very lucky and there's an instructor immediately available. In an hour? Decent odds.

[@stanislavkostarnov2157]

@@TheMrVengeance this only works if the airport is equipped with a CAT-III capable ILS, & the airplane is equipped with a modern CAT-III capable auto-pilot... however, I believe there is a chance, the PILOT, even if he is not relevantly trained, can find the airport, land, and not crash... even if some metal will be bent, the chance is most will live... however, this is all if there is plenty of time... in this situation, the chance is there was probably a lot of things hampering a safe outcome, including, some damage probably done to the brain by high altitude... but, I do believe the one man who was conscious (I believe even the cabin crew had 30 something minutes oxygen, not enough for the full flight... Andreus did however have low oxygen training (as a dive instructor) & some genetics allowing him better conscious time, he also knew the door code)

[@TheMrVengeance]

@@stanislavkostarnov2157 Well yes, if the airport (or plane) isn't equipped for auto-landing, then auto-landing won't work. 😆 But if they are, I do think any ATC or instructor that knows the autoland procedure could talk someone down without issue. There's no skill involved at that point, just input the right data.

[@deansartorel7260]

The full face mask with goggles is to protect from smoke in the cabin, funny enough I’ve flown metroliners that have a really old style of oxygen mask and some scuba goggles instead of a full face mask

[@spuriouspodge7416]

Ah, just the Podcast to download before I fly on yet another 737. The sadness is that regulations, standard operating procedures and checklists are literally wrote in blood in much of the airline industry. What a way to go.

[@ewetoo]

Be glad its a 737. Different models of airbus have opposite orientations for the switches on their overhead panels so if you're not paying close attention you could make some fatal assumptions if you're used to a type and are in a hurry.

[@GorgeDawes]

I think what you are referring to would be the differences between the Airbus A300 and A310 versus the subsequent, more modern Airbus aircraft. There aren’t many A300’s or A310’s left in passenger service any more and I can’t think of any operators that fly mixed fleets of old and new Airbus models, so I think it’s a fairly unlikely scenario. That said, I recently switched from flying an Airbus aircraft to a B737 and the fact that the switches were the “wrong way round” was bloody confusing, if only for the first week or two of training.

[@spuriouspodge7416]

@@GorgeDawes yea, I was going to say for any type rated airline pilot, they would certainly be familiar with the pressurisation system of their aircraft, be it a 'bus or a Boeing, doesn't really matter if a switch is lit when off or on.

[@cattibingo]

16:10 Prigozhin's plane fell down the stairs

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

Onto some surface to air missiles.

[@SploshBadger]

Christchurch mentioned!!! I’m so glad that we got the promised exciting modern city after the earthquake and not twice as many car parks as residential buildings :)

[@Trendyflute]

Yay!! Proof that it really comes down to policy. I worked for a US-based civil engineering firm that had a New Zealand presence and the company did a lot of work in Christchurch after the earthquake. I left the company and the industry because I felt like garbage helping build unneeded office spaces, 5-over-1s, and soulless single family tracts in the US, but it's good to know it's possible to build well somewhere.

[@ayemessdee]

It's horrifying but to totally justified that 'Stop the Boats' is the phrase that comes to mind when you guys think of Australia 😬

[@Zoey47969]

The f16 scramble joke keeps running just long enough for peak comedic timing. Kudos Roz I am tearing up over here 😂 ❤

[@johannageisel5390]

Can you explain it to me please? What does "scramble" mean in the context of F16s?

[@VintageTrollean]

@@johannageisel5390 the verb "scramble" can apply to a style of cooking eggs but can also mean to rapidly deploy aircraft for intercept. Roz was making a labored joke where he kept replacing the word scramble, in the context of f-16s, with various other styles of cooking eggs. He workshops the joke until landing on "fighter shakshouka", although he still drags it out further...

[@peterdevido8836]

14:10 Sounds like you need a bonus episode on The Enclosure of The Commons, if only to hear justin try to read pamphlets from the Levellers

[@AndrewFremantle]

Alice, I'm not familiar with your particular old headphones, but on the Koss headphones I prefer, the earpads and cups are consumables - they're expected to age, become brittle, and being falling apart. Replacements can be purchased from the manufacturer quite cheaply.

[@mulad]

Yep, I used some Bose noise-canceling ones at the office back before the pandemic, and had to replace the pads a couple times since the lining started disintegrating. Presumably ones like the Beyerdynamic DT 770 with fabric pads won't have the problem to the same extent, but I'm sure even they need replacing after a while.

[@2sudonim]

Alice, that actual limit on aircraft endurance isn't fuel or even crew. (The military in particular wouldn't think twice about having two crews on a plane rotating 12-hour shifts for a week at a time.) The actual limit is engine oil. Jet engines are so hot they burn oil. When oil levels get too low, the engines catch fire and explode. When they upgraded the AWACS fleet's engines some years back, they went from 48-hour flights to 72-hour flights because the new engines burned less oil.

[@trianglean806]

they should switch out the engine midflight, simple

[@bobsmith2637]

they should try what the railroads do on big diesels. never change the oil, just keep adding more as the engine burns it 😁

[@2sudonim]

@@trianglean806 Because of the SAC forces, somewhere on my computer is a PDF of a government report on a feasibility study of literally doing this. The results of the study were, "It would have been more fiscally responsible to just set a huge pile of money on fire than do this study."

[@2sudonim]

@@bobsmith2637 Well, the military at least already does this. They actually looked in to the ability to do mid-air refueling of engine oil. The problem was, it tended to either make oil pressure drop precipitously, making the engines catch fire, or it just directly started a fire. That's why more modern jet engines use stuff like air bearings and magnetic bearings so they can simply use less oil to begin with.

[@trianglean806]

@@2sudonim consider: we could then say that we had done it, which would make the US look way cooler.

[@nataliehogue1276]

the thing about Noise-Induced Hearing Loss is that it's basically unavoidable, because existing in the world is dangerously loud way more than you'd expect. Compounding this, common disposable foam earplugs do very little to attenuate mid and low range frequencies, and as such do basically nothing for most types of noise you need protection from, so unless you spend good money on hearing, protection, and start using it from a young age you're basically guaranteed to develop NIHL, at which point the question just becomes how much. This is a thing i could discuss at length in a podcast format if you all are ever interested

[@bobsmith2637]

I work for the railroad, hearing loss is basically an occupational disease for us. Some newer locomotives have soundproofed cabs, but a lot of others (including some brand new ones) are absolutely deafening, I've actually had earplugs vibrate out of my ears on one particularly loud type. It's difficult to use hearing protection while outside switching, you have to be able to hear your handheld radio and listen for vehicles driving around the yard and other trains moving on adjacent tracks, but you are also subjected to the racket of cars smashing together and squealing through switches.

[@isthatrubble]

how do basic over the ear ear muffs do for low frequency stuff? that's what we have, I've never found a pair of foam earplugs that don't fall out unless I stay very still, which is not particularly practical for DIY. but we only have a basic old pair, nothing new or high tech. my dad works in an industry where industrial hearing loss for his generation is rampant (he's in his late 60s) and he says that in the last 5-10 years he's noticing some of the younger workers are very lackadaisical about safety equipment, especially ear and eye protection, probably because they haven't seen how bad it can be because the generations before them have benefited from improved safety over the decades. dad has industrial hearing loss and wears hearing aids in some situations now, otherwise he has been very lucky to have no serious injuries from his job, which is almost unheard of for someone his age.

[@tahrey]

Huh, I thought it was the high frequency noise that was most damaging, hence that being what you lose first and what most earplugs target?

[@allisonhastings4964]

Cozy, wrapped in a blanket, listening to gang while doing new semester homework... Happiness indeed

[@PanAndScanBuddy]

I like the cut of your jib, Allison

[@NoPegs]

Finally a full measure of a podcast episode... Was beginning to worry...

[@ferchrissakes]

1:07:55 “This particular door had some history behind it” Well, shit, keep it closed then. Don’t want a repeat

[@GigasGMX]

Mailing Liam a pair of shitty Apple earbuds would be the funniest prank.

[@eleSDSU]

Just because you have never seen Turbus earbuds, they cost $0.50, barely any metal in them.

[@jameslake7775]

Oh man… a friend of mine used to work for a fast-food brand, and dumped some branded earbuds on me that they didn’t manage to give away during some kind of promo. They are so, SO bad. Liam would probably dump them directly into the trash, but I’m kinda tempted to check what postage to Philadelphia is…

[@tahrey]

What about one of the true Dankpods treasures... big over-ear cans that actually just have a pair of crappy earbuds hidden inside to supply the sound?

[@ManyTriangles]

The Top Gear reference just gave me “Maintaining a commercial aircraft. How hard could it be?” vibes.

[@tahrey]

The thing with those kinds of episodes is that they tended to actually show in considerable detail just how hard it actually is. The comedy comes from the hopelessness of the presenters and their hubris / overconfidence in the face of a task or profession that's actually kind of difficult and complicated, and if they come out successful on the other side it's not without quite a bit of unpleasantness happening inbetween. And that continued into some Grand Tour specials like the Cambodia boating one. Like, you can't dick about when trying to run a railway. Or drive a truck. Make an amphibious car. Build a rocket. All that kind of thing. And of course all their stretch limos were very obviously terrible despite them putting in about as much work as a typical limo company. Presumably there hasn't been an aircraft based one (or a submarine...) because even they, whilst still in character, aren't that stupid and there's no way to really highlight the actual difficulties and dangers of the task without someone literally dying in the process.

[@bobsmith2637]

There was that one time where they tried turning a Robin Reliant into a space shuttle, but no one had to ride in it.

[@tahrey]

@@bobsmith2637 i did say "build a rocket". But even NASA aren't daft enough to send their new model of spacecraft up with live crew first time out. Not even SpaceX or Virgin Galactic in fact. Possibly Roscosmos or at least the Soviet agency that preceded them, IDK.

[@Malkavon]

As both a scotch aficionado and a huge Sennheiser fanboy, I 100% support Liam spending the PatreonBucks on those two things exclusively.

[@spintt]

Knowing that's what it's being spent on, I regret not subscribing

[@lyndonwesthaven6623]

I love to think of my $2 becoming an infinitesimal slice of nice headphones and a drop of Scotch

[@waharadome]

Absolutely check out the Iberia 610 accident, it includes -Striking pilots -Union busting -Wasting fuel taking longer routes because of aforementioned strike -fucking huge tv tower not being in any map -Franco minister dying in that flight

[@Eibarwoman]

Seems like Franco's ministers flying near Basques doesn't end well for the fascist politicians.

[@waharadome]

@@Eibarwoman flying's the right word alright

[@marshallberry8943]

I have aeropex bone conduction headphones and they are great for listening to podcasts and music at my desk at work. Battery is still excellent more than a year later. You could alternatively find the agency causing Havana syndrome in people and have them make you a weaker version that modulates the music onto microwaves and resonates in your skull.

[@Cleanmybass]

As a father of two young kids, I love my bone conducting headphones. It's enough to block out Mrs. Rachel but if one of them is about to set the other on fire, I'm present enough to keep that from happening. Usually.

[@falloutghoul1]

7:07 I am now imagining a scenario where we refuel nuclear planes with the fuel rod fish tube.

[@bf1701]

"Do you Prigohzin-style," is my new favorite murder euphimism.

[@friedriceengels9381]

its not a murder euphemism its a shooting a plane down euphemism

[@ianhomerpura8937]

Quite similar to the Habyarimana assassination back in 1994. Two presidents, one plane, one anti aircraft missile.

[@lars7935]

@@ianhomerpura8937Two presidents one missile. The latest shit every primary schooler must have seen!

[@tiocco]

I laughed unreasonably hard when Liam said "Oh another checklist THANK FUCK".

[@whoever6458]

Back when I was going to college, I went out to drink my coffee on the porch one morning and there were many hundreds of turkey vultures migrated right past my apartment! Since I went to a college right at the base of one of the mountains caused by the San Andreas Fault, the vultures were circling in order to gain enough altitude to fly over the mountain. It was such a trip and they got to flying so high! The really cool thing is that this happened right when I had been taking an ecology class for my degree in which the lab was literally half birdwatching and half native plant identification so I had a pair of nice binoculars that the school loaned to us for the class so I got to look at all the vultures through it. It was pretty awesome! My first class of that day actually was the ecology class and the teacher came in so late that we were all just about to leave but the reason he was late is that he had been out watching the vultures migrate over the mountain too. He came in and told us about it and I was the only person in the class who had also happened to see it. I don't know how the other people missed it but maybe they didn't live near the campus like I did or maybe it's because they had to pay attention to driving on their way to school. I don't know but I was surprised that so many people hadn't even seen all these hundreds of birds flying around. I guess they were pretty high but there were so many of them that you'd think it would at least draw a glance from people.

[@PrivatePen]

I think it would be so funny and very educational if you have Mentour Pilot on for a flight disaster video! A very earnest European pilot who goes into extreme technical detail about the accident sequences of flight disasters for his own channel would be, I think, a very interesting addition to whatever anarchocommunist milieu you all have going on

[@a.p.2356]

Ah yes, hypersonic atmospheric reentry; known for not being turbulent.

[@viliamklein]

So I lost my house in a very similar fire event in the Marshall fire in Colorado 1.5 years ago. These people are in for a rough time.

[@grmpEqweer]

Sympathies extended.

[@Stephanie-we5ep]

Holiday Fire, and I concur, the people of Hawaii have my sympathies the rebuilding is rough.

[@tomwatts703]

I stumbled across your podcast just a few days ago from the battery-electric locos episode and I love it, I feel like I've found my people somewhat

[@LoPhatKao]

welcome! :)

[@dirckdelint6391]

Alice: “It’s 23 years into the future right now.” Me, a Gen X who grew up with a cultural certainty that the civilization-ending nuclear war would come about no later than 1987: (mildly elderly weeping)

[@babyjesusvideo]

This reminds me of the sinking of The Eastland. Safety precautions introduced after an event that killed a bunch people end up killing a bunch of people.

[@JD-xt8cj]

Our family has an old little souvenir glass cup from the Eastland

[@Mickulty]

Timestamps: 0:00:00 Ear Update 0:04:50 Intro 0:08:45 The GD News: Island of Maui Burned by Big Oil, Link in Description 0:17:11 The GD News: LA Disaster Movie'd by Big Oil, Avoid the Poop Water 0:20:41 The GD News: Helicopter Cable Car Rescue in Pakistan 0:26:59 WTYP LIVE SHOW FRANKLIN MUSIC HALL SEPTEMBER 12TH 0:30:14 Background: What is Aircraft Pressurisation? 0:39:37 Background: What is Hypoxia? 0:43:40 Background: What is Aircraft Depressurisation? 0:53:16 Background: Time of Useful Consciousness 0:55:35 Helios Airways - From Wet to Dry 1:07:41 Door Issues / Well This Calls For a Toast so Fly The Sham Plane 1:12:36 The Big "Deflate Plane" Button 1:19:33 Flight 522 Departs, Odd Issues 1:27:22 9/11 Strikes Again 1:33:58 Ghost Flight, Fighters Sunny Side Up 1:39:06 The Miracle that Didn't Save The Plane 1:47:27 Aftermath 2:02:00 Safety Third: Well There's Your Gas Leak, A Story Without Slides Somehow out of all the WTYP episodes this is the one that made me cry. BTW, is Alice on the Nate Approved(tm) audio setup without the compressor for WTYP as well? Feels like the volume is all over the place.

[@DisasterBreakdown]

oh, well this is a nice surprise :)

[@grmpEqweer]

Hey, lady!😊

[@TalkingSoup]

oh this one was sad. the fact that the guy woke up long enough to get into the cockpit and did everything he could to try and figure out how to get the plane down, the fact that he at some point had to make the calculation that it was better to put it in the wilderness than in the city, the fact that it sounds like his girlfriend was either still passed out or dead at that point....fucking sad, man

[@kstxevolution9642]

Hell yeah 2 hours of "plane fall down". Glory to Burkina Faso!

[@yakovgolyadkin]

11:15: In reference to not having a "proper great fire in something like 70 years," the town of Paradise, CA was nearly wiped entirely off the map in 2018 and a huge chunk of Santa Rosa, CA was leveled by a fire in 2017.

[@Eibarwoman]

There's also the particularly costly 1976 Seney/Walsh Ditch fire which has significant environmental and governmental financial impacts despite never destroying a building. As to why it was so costly involve 4 factors: Duration of fire which lasted almost 4 months before heavy snowfall extinguished the peat moss fires, peat moss burning underground, the long-term closure of a major east-west highway through the Upper Peninsula, and containing it within the National Wildlife Refuge and away from small communities which involved some feats of transporting heavy equipment around peat marshes comparable to military operations to make fire lines to cut it off from burning places that weren't desired to be burnt. Edit: Biologists still study the marsh areas which burnt to those which didn't decades later and note salamanders are more common in burnt areas.

[@ianhomerpura8937]

In the case of Hawaii the last fire that became that extensive was in 1918.

[@cf453]

I had 2 friends that died in the 2017 fire, and many that lost their homes. Santa Rosa took another good wildfire hit in 2019. We're getting near-misses most of the rest of the years. The prior wildfire that hit Santa Rosa was 1964. Thanks climate change!

[@tahrey]

Would Lac Megantic count, or did that not erase enough of the town?

[@gearandalthefirst7027]

Like telling the editor to like do something after it's like already happened from the like viewer's perspective is like maybe my favorite bit people do on youtube. Like alternatively, telling the editor to like cut something out and them like not cutting it out. So like this was a very good episode for me, like great job everyone. (prescriptive grammar can go alpine horn itself)

[@PFMediaServices]

As the person who captions these and thinks a little too hard about whether/when/how to include the filler words, reading this felt both comfortably familiar and vaguely rage-inducing. 🍍

[@rowandoggo]

As a Bus-pilled traincel, this comes as no surprise to us learned few who dislike flying

[@lars7935]

The only bus from Cyprus is an Airbus though

[@JD-xt8cj]

I remember damn near shitting myself, years ago, when some old lady was standing outside the lavatory, looking at the exit door as if it might be a second lavatory. I had nothing to worry about!

[@PFMediaServices]

It's been awhile since y'all have forced me to learn more about a terrifying incident that I was already familiar with. Greatly appreciated!

[@EyeMWing]

The full face seal on the air masks wasn't added because of CBRN concerns - it was added after a couple of tragic accidents where the pilots could breathe just fine and fly the plane just fine but couldn't see because of the smoke. A couple more incidents later and the industry has discovered that keeping the smoke out of your eyes isnt good enough when you can't see through the smoke, and they're now introducing little positive air pressure tunnels that clip to the face mask and to the instrument panel to keep the smoke out from between the pilots face and the stuff the pilot needs to see to land

[@dvpierce248]

My old Audio Technica headphones are on their third (?) set of ear cup pads. They're cheap fake-leather and my sweat makes them disintegrate. On the other hand, the headphones work fine and the pads are cheap to replace. Good luck, Alice.

[@napalmholocaust9093]

The pinhole pressure escaping catastrophe is overblown. You could put a naked finger over an eighth of an inch hole in the space station (greater pressure gradient than a plane) and it would not even bruise your finger, let alone yank you out and tear the wall open. That senerio is completely unrelated to rapid catastrophic failure from fatigue hull pops.

[@deanc9453]

We really love the solutions that cause 'who has the nuclear football'/succession crisis situations

[@jacefairis1289]

currently listening to this episode while on a plane, because having my plane crash while listening to media about a plane crash is the kind of shit that would only happen in a bad disaster movie,, its sort of an Anti-Jinx

[@henriquepacheco7473]

On the other hand, it would be tragically ironic if your plane crashed immediately after posting this comment, meaning you just killed the bad movie effect protecting you. Hopefully there were no plane crashes three weeks ago.

[@jacefairis1289]

@@henriquepacheco7473 hmmm, you're right... who can say, maybe i *did* die in a plane crash

[@drakkenmensch]

As someone with diabetes who sometimes goes in critically low sugar, I know from experience that anything that affects your cognitive functions will effectively prevent you from noticing that it's happening to you.

[@sholem_bond]

High blood sugar does it for me. (Low blood sugar basically makes me feel like I'm suddenly starving to death and also have the munchies, so it's usually pretty hard to miss IMHO.) Whereas high blood sugar is just kind of generalized crankiness that can escalate into roid rage sometimes (much less often these days than when I was a kid/teen). So it's great for impairing cognitive function/convincing me to make bad decisions or refuse to make good decisions.

[@drakkenmensch]

@@sholem_bond Low blood sugar puts me in a weird headspace where I feel that there is SOMETHING I have to do URGENTLY about my job and I can't remember what it is. I also can't remember how to do simple tasks like turning off my alarm clock or logging into my computer.

[@MrJohndoakes]

1:10:17 I like how the new PO Box lettering fades in before the ad screen to hide the old Box number. That's been going on for a while.

[@moreedcola6837]

This disaster is the textbook example of how fragile airliners are: one incorrectly set switch and you’re fucked.

[@tstehler1]

As a 737 pilot, for a group of non-aviation professionals, this is surprisingly accurate.

[@devnom9143]

I am kinda surprised airplane doors don't have a timer system where someone buzzing to get in starts a timer if the pilots don't accept or reject the request within say 15 minutes the door automatically unlocks. Also, trains have a Deadman system to stop them, cockpit doors should have something similar

[@GorgeDawes]

They actually do have exactly that. You enter the code and the buzzer sounds for about 40 seconds after which the door will automatically unlock, unless the cockpit crew have already denied or granted entry.

[@tahrey]

@@GorgeDawes The fact that you still need the code to do that seems a bit of an issue though...? Also unless that's a more recent development, seems the crew didn't have it in this case, and there's then plenty of scope for a future episode where they couldn't even activate the time lock because of not having the code or it having been changed without them being updated or whatever. Still too much human factor included.

[@erbrferg]

Bone-conducting headphones are literal lifesavers for me (dog that yells at speeding cars + lots of blind curves = need to hear approaching cars) and also figurative lifesavers (my physical ears are sensitive and most headphones really hurt). 10/10 never going back

[@sea_kerman]

I live in LA, all that happened was a relatively normal rainstorm (there wasn’t even any lightning, it just rained a bit) and my swivel chair rocked back and forth a little.

[@raccoonking7566]

Thank you Podcast Gods for sending an episode my way. It will be perfect content to listen to as I build an overly complicated tree farm in Minecraft. Also, bridge and airplane episodes are always the best ones.

[@kvvvy6359]

I imagine that's how they intended us to listen

[@ebnertra0004]

That sounds better than my project, which is setting speed limits on a simulated railway

[@markmcgivern5938]

dioxin trench was my favorite takeshi's castle challenge

[@deansartorel7260]

I have a friend who just finished his ground school for a job at a major airline and I shit you not, they told the group that the captain decides to go psycho to just hit them over the head with the crash axe which on the A320 is on the co pilot’s side

[@ashermil]

Great. Now everybody knows.

[@Whiskey2shots]

As someone who lives in Cyprus slamming the desk at all the info you get wrong is fun 😂

[@alexandera2509]

Thought I was really falling apart, glad to have a WTYP. Good luck at the liveshow coming up! Excited for your continued success!

[@yodaskoda117]

The podcast is turning into a Dankpods fan channel, and I am all for it.

[@halfagallonofboiledeggs2738]

52:33 actually, those cords arent bungee! The straps used to affix the emergency masks are actually inflatable, so when the pilots grab them they fully inflate, before they constrict and create an airtight seal around the pilots face with only one hand!

[@carmastrikes]

One caveat for Rocz because he said he didn't know quite how it works: bleed air comes from after the compression stage, hence the high pressure. It's very hot so it gets hella conditioned before it gets used by anything that isn't anti-icing or starting other engines. The air conditioning inflow is at a set rate, and the outflow is what controls cabin pressure. Edit: For Alice: the full face masks are just for smoke and fumes elimination.

[@jamespocelinko104]

I am now fully convinced that forgetting to close the door is the mass casualty equivalent to leaving the oven on.

[@madmanmortonyt4890]

It's crazy how you can go on Google maps street view and see Lahaina before the fire (last updated 2019). I found the exact location displayed in the video. Its fucking sobering to think that its all gone.

[@opalpersonal]

i loved this episode of Headphone Chat. oh and also the disaster talk was okay

[@hikarikaguraenjoyer9918]

This accident gives me goosebumps reading about it

[@kyleshape8645]

mayday . . . mayday . . . helios . . . 5 . . . 22 . . .

[@hp8685]

just paused an episode from 2 years ago to watch one from 8 minutes ago. nice.

[@peterpanda5069]

Some episodes, you see the title and think “on no, not this one.” And then, sometimes you know you’re in for a weird one but it’s pretty low on the list of unnameable horrors.

[@cascara5607]

I would love to extend my deepest condolences and congratulations to Devon for his service to this podcast

[@PFMediaServices]

This is the best possible wording of the sentiment we all feel for them.

[@stonedzebra420]

I'm so glad my friends upoaded a new pod finally after 3 weeks. I have been so lonely lately.

[@nelfie253]

1:41:57 "They say of the Acropolis, where the Parthenon is: there are no straight lines!" Wouldn't have thought I'd ever see a QI reference in the wild, nevermind such an old-school one, but here it is.

[@hexus358]

"Bloody hell, Stephen, this better be good!" 😁

[@nelfie253]

@@hexus358 Glad to see I'm not the only one who has every single line of it etched into their memory, ha ha! Well, we got two minutes and thirty seconds of undiluted joy out of it, so it was very good indeed!

[@rancidmarshmallow4468]

once there's one cable you use it and a pulley thing to pull any additional cables across, you only need the one helicopter

[@segarallychampionship702]

It's been a long time. At least counting by the amount of God Damn News you had to sort through and we're still processing them all.

[@Attoparsec]

I've been in hypobaric chambers at the equivalent of 25K feet altitude, as hypoxia training. Everyone's symptoms are a bit different, so this lets you experience it safely to learn yours and maybe recognize them in time if needed. Mine are some slight tingling of my fingers, followed quickly by a loss of coherent thought. I basically become a happy drunk, who would have happily completely lost consciousness and died if the instructors hadn't talked me through putting my mask back on. And that's not even very high, where you theoretically have at least a couple minutes of useful consciousness in which to notice, diagnose and solve the problem. I have no illusions that I would survive that situation in real life. Absolutely unbelievable that there weren't multiple, distinct, redundant alarm systems for the pilots!