it's a pattern that once you recognize, you'll reflect back in absolute horror. all of these little moments begin lining up, one after the other, forming this hideous tapestry that he's woven with the utmost care. how far back does it go? high school? your early 20s? you'll wonder when it all went wrong, only to recognize the futility of the thought. it was never right. you're not even a butterfly with clipped wings — you never left chrysalis. opportunities left by the wayside, years slipped through your fingers like sand. no audit could successfully capture the depth of what he's stolen.
if the universe shifted when he was born, it wept when he met you.
✶ DEFiNiTiON ꒱・❥・for queers who identify with "contradictory" labels and are proud of their contradiction . . .
for example: lesboy, turigirl, transmasc lesbian, bi-lesbian, gaybian, saphilean, cistrans, transfemasc, afab transfem, amab cisfem, butchbear and ect.
Emoji combo: 🌈💐🦋
About the flag (The flag was designed by @heinzeldarling):
Vivid pink — Queerness.
Soft pink — Passion and love.
Peach — Warmth and acceptance.
Cream — Inclusivity and diversity.
Pale mint — Going beyond "typicality"/"norms" and the binary. challenging established "rules" within the community.
Pistachio — Freedom.
Muted teal — Community.
Symbols (the symbol was designed differently):
The butterfly symbolizes the transition to one’s true self and is also a trans symbol.
The flowers — different flowers are depicted to symbolize uniqueness and diversity within the queer community, and to show that labels do not conflict with one another but complement each other.
Plain texts:
pt: definition, for queers who identify with "contradictory" labels and are proud of their contradiction. end pt.
pt: for example. Lesboy, turigirl, transmasc lesbian, bi-lesbian, gaybian, saphilean, cistrans, transfemasc, afab transfem, amab cisfem, butchbear and ect. end pt.
pt: Emoji combo: rainbow, a bouquet of flowers, butterfly. end pt.
pt: About the flag (The flag was designed by @/heinzeldarling). Vivid pink — Queerness ; Soft pink — Passion and love ; Peach — Warmth and acceptance ; Cream — Inclusivity and diversity ; Pale mint — Going beyond "typicality"/"norms" and the binary. challenging established "rules" within the community ; Pistachio — Freedom ; Muted teal — Community.
pt: Symbols (the symbol was designed differently). The butterfly symbolizes the transition to one’s true self and is also a trans symbol ; The flowers — different flowers are depicted to symbolize uniqueness and diversity within the queer community, and to show that labels do not conflict with one another but complement each other. end pt.
End plain texts.
0.1 : english isn't my first language, so I'm using a translator. Sorry for any errors!
0.2 : if this has been coined previously, please consider this as an alt.
0.3 : you can place my terms/flags on other sites or anywhere else, just don't forget to mention me as the author/creator!
That's the question of the hour. And honestly, you're gonna be coming along on this journey with me, because the question of how to make this not happen is something I can't quite answer yet. For this less formal writeup, I'm bringing you with me into the depths of the NTSB investigation to figure out how the fuck Air Canada managed to nearly pull a Tenerife 2.0 at SFO in the year of our lord 2017.
As a Canadian who reads a lot about aviation accidents, the things I associate Canada with are 1. The groundbreaking research done into airframe icing as a result of the Air Ontario crash, and 2. A whole lot of near misses. Canadian pilots' biggest hobby (apart from flying extremely loud Cessnas directly over my house) is running out of fuel for stupid reasons and then redeeming themselves by executing sick ass no-power landings. If I had a nickel, etc.
But even with my country's legendary near miss pedigree, nearly killing over 1,000 people in what may have been the world's only 4 aircraft collision brings things to a new level.
So... what just happened?
It was July 7th, 2017, at around midnight local time in San Francisco. The Air Canada pilots had been working a grueling schedule, with the Captain reportedly having been awake for 19 straight hours. They were cleared for a visual approach to Runway 28R. While San Francisco's airspace is notoriously busy, there were few flights coming in this late- only one controller was working, and he reported his workload was perfectly normal. Four flights, three United Airlines planes and a Phillipine Airlines plane, were lined up on taxiway C waiting for their chance to take off.
Now, SFO's runway 28L/10R was undergoing some resurfacing work in 2017, projected to take about 10 months. The runway wasn't always closed, but it would be closed during the nights to accomodate that work. When a runway is closed, there are strict guidelines- the normal lighting must be shut off, while a large flashing X must be placed at the threshold to show it is not in use. All of this was in place. The closure was listed in the airport's NOTAMs, or Notice to Airmen, a huge list of operational information the pilots are required to review before leaving. It can be hard to pick out which NOTAMs will actually impact the flight, and on this day, the Air Canada pilots had missed or glossed over the runway closure NOTAM.
As the approach was visual, the pilots needed to manually line up with the runway- but visual approaches are still standardized. In this case, they were using Air Canada's FMS Bridge approach, which was the only Air Canada approach that required the pilots to manually tune the Instrument Landing System frequency- a step that the First Officer missed. While the ILS would obviously not be used, having it tuned would provide the pilots with extra information, and seeing their offset from the localizer would surely have alerted them of a potential issue.
And finally, Air Canada had the Enchanced Ground Proximity Warning System in their aircraft, but didn't have the optional Runway Alerting and Awareness System installed. The RAAS helps pilots out by alerting them to which runways they're lined up with. Without it, the pilots were expected to figure this out by... y'now. Following the approach correctly and not making a huge mistake.
With no knowledge of the closure of Runway 28L, the pilots were expecting to see two runway-like lines of lights next to each other and line up with the rightmost set. So they did. While the lighting on a taxiway doesn't really resemble the lighting on a runway at all, as shown above, the several planes lined up with lights on their wings and bodies active may have given the illusion of edge lighting.
As you can hear in the video, the Air Canada pilots noticed something strange about the lighting and checked in with the controller. Their first thought, clouded by confirmation bias, was that this strange lighting indicated somebody was on the runway trying to take off. As they got closer, however, it became clear to everyone involved that something was incredibly wrong. In quick succession, a pilot in one of the planes on the ground expressed disbelief at the Air Canada's position, the Captain initiated a go-around, the First Officer called for a go-around, and the tower controller called for a go-around. While this is sometimes described as the United pilots averting catastrophe, it seems both the Air Canada pilots and the controller independently identified the problem on their own. Three different people directly called for a go-around based on their own assessment and all three of those commands would have been in time to avert disaster, so the system really did its job here. But man, does it feel like that???
The NTSB report recommended that aircraft be required to be equipped with systems like RAAS that would alert pilots to taxiway landings, control towers be equipped with alerting systems capable of detecting possible taxiway landings, 25 hour CVRs being mandated on all aircraft, as well as rest requirements in Canada being improved. The response has been mixed, but overall decently positive? Canada's rest requirements were amended swiftly, but according to the pilot's union, the new requirements still aren't strict enough. The FAA has since equipped 43 major airports with the described alerting systems, a rare FAA W. They also claimed that doing this meant they didn't need to mandate RAAS, which is like, kind of missing the point given that the planes are also flying to places that aren't those 43 US airports... but the NTSB called this one "Open- Acceptable Response." I assume the NTSB's bar is so low that the FAA reading their recommendations within a 3 year time span is considered Open- Acceptable Response.
Overall, it's hard to quanlify this one. In some ways, having read the report and seeing concrete steps that could be taken to avoid this makes me feel a bit more reassured. On the other hand, I still wonder... if this was possible in the first place, with so many layers of swiss cheese being breached, how do we know these next few layers are gonna help? My throughts are drawn to incidents like the Singapore Airways runway collision, where it feels like such obvious signs could be missed out of the sheer random obliviousness of the human mind. Are we just one stupid moment away from a second Tenerife at all moments?
If it's any small comfort, this bizarre incident was probably a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of bad luck. The reason it recieved so much attention is specifically because it was so out of the ordinary. And not only did it turn out okay even without the NTSB's recommendations in place, but it would have still turned out okay even if a couple more people hadn't noticed the problem. This is not the kind of horror story you should be too worried about. But dear lord, that's not gonna stop me!
Hello :) I'd be curious to see the flow chart you've developed to guide translational selections of the Odyssey if you're happy to share it! Both for using it for my next read and for guiding my friends/family into the book who are looking for recommendations after watching the Nodyssey. Thanks 💙
i formalized it just for you. and @ilions-end. but mostly you
areudirty
pixelskylines
tangentwithtanner
discoholicmusic
titsay
romaincrisis
gummygunk
turnnoffyourmind
stormborns
gracieabrams
theartofmadeline
yousharknotpass
