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Southwest Airlines vs. Pilots
Southwest Airlines pilots apparently have been “sicking out” in response to news that if they are not vaccinated, then the airline will fire them to conform to Biden’s Executive Orders. The airline has insisted that the pilots are not striking. The union (covering its rear) also insists that they are not striking.
Governor Abbott gave the airline an “out” — and a big one. He declared that vaccine mandates are not legal for Texas corporations. It looked like the situation was saved – hurrah!
But… The idiotic management at Southwest decided that since Southwest (like all US airlines) is a federal contractor, the Texas “out” does not apply. So the vaccinate-or-be-fired ultimatum remains. The pilots, who were relieved, are now back threatening action.
The Southwest pilots provide a great opportunity to defeat the Federal Government. How can the rest of us support it?
Published in General
Something like:
Mark, I can’t claim any special expertise on nullification. I don’t think that there’s any good precedent for nullification. Here’s what I recall.
There were the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the objections stated in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions. There was a nullification controversy during the Jackson administration, in which South Carolina claimed the right to nullify a federal tariff. In the latter case, South Carolina backed down when Jackson made it clear that he was not going to tolerate this action. Wisely in my view, SC decided not to tangle with Old Hickory. Though Henry Clay worked out a legislative compromise that addressed some of SC’s objections.
Of course, there was the Civil War, which is not exactly a legal precedent. It was settled by force of arms. I do not consider it to have settled the question of secession permanently, but it’s not really a legal question.
I should make something clear. If a state blocks enforcement of an invalid federal law, then this isn’t really nullification by state action. Such a law is a nullity in any event, whether a state objects or not. However, under the Constitution and in a judicial case, the validity of a federal law is a question of federal law, and therefore within the ultimate jurisdiction of SCOTUS. The Supremacy Clause would require a state to defer to such a judicial determination by SCOTUS. The states would have political alternatives, of course, by seeking legislative changes in Congress or executive action by the President.
That would probably be my post ‘You Better Go to Raw Data’
Yes that was it, I tried to find it in the (mostly useless) “search” feature but had no luck.
Fortunately it is subtle, it required a “trained butt” to recognized the hunting for the glide slope needles (for those planes so equipped, some newer planes now have little display of boxes on the EFIS to “fly thru” to do approaches). The important reason to have those guys is when either the flight systems start failing, or something unforeseen by the designers occurs (like ingesting a whole flock of birds, toasting two finely operating GE turbines, and you have just moments to decide who’s day you are going to ruin).
More importantly they changed the pilot training so the folks up front know what the system does and how to turn it off when needed. Boeing was guilty of trying to sell the 737 MAX as just a “minor” mod/upgrade to avoid making the airlines spend a fortune on re certifying their pilots, which is a not so trivial cost bucket.
The new engines on the MAX were sufficiently bigger in diameter that they had to move them forward and up wards on the wings, this changed the plane’s CG, and they thought they could get cute and just fold it into the planes operating software (MCAS) for the few instances where it mattered (ie takeoff, w/full fuel). Everyone want the 4 to 6% fuel savings of the new engines (which typically don’t require a full recertification), but Boeing management did not want to acknowledge they change the plane enough for a required full recertification, and all the associate costs.
Well they certainly lost money on that decision. Physics is a harsh mistress.
From what I understand a law is both valid and a nullity at the same time until the Supreme Court opens the brief and looks in side it.
Schrodinger’s Supreme Court.
Yes. And I read once that they actually put in a lighted switch or rather relabeled an existing light, I think on the center console (or perhaps under the yoke).
That’s what Khan needed:
You did a better job with that than I could have.
In addition to the change in the CG, the 737 MAX has two Angle of Attack (AoA) sensors. These are usually little wind vanes that deflect based on the amount of air moving past them. They generally work pretty good, but being exposed to the outside, they can get dinged. They can fail. Because they can fail, the aircraft usually has two of them. The 737 MAX had two of them. It was only using the output from one of the two, and that one failed in such a way that it thought the AoA was 20° higher than it actually was. So the MCAS tried to bring the nose down.
Of course, John Podhoretz and fanatical-at-all-cost pro-vaccine Commentary podcast are enraged at Governor Abbott…
I can understand with the autopilot, going from A to B is easier to manage. But there are significantly more variables on takeoffs and landings such that I wouldn’t feel comfortable as a passenger, much less a pilot, if the plane were allowed to fly the entire route by itself.
” [Justice] John Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it.” President Andrew Jackson
Can an autopilot see the extent of flames on engine number 2? Or does it not need to?
It’ll have temperature sensors that ought to let both the system and the cockpit know.
But I mean when no one’s in the cockpit. Can any, does any, auto=pilot handle a duck sucked into the engine on take-off, or over the ocean? Or an even less-expected event?
I know that military jets can avoid a collision with the ground if a pilot blacks out, but can one navigate back to the airfield and land on it’s own?
I just want to know the state of the art.
Generally, no.
Sounds like they can do without licensed pilots about as well as self-driving cars can do without licensed drivers.
You get things out of a pilot that no autopilot can ever give you. Intuition. Judgement.
Same with a human driver rather than Google Driver or whatever.
A lot of the newer airframes that are passenger/commercial now have engines (GE, Rolls Royce, Pratt & Whitey) that are in near communications with ground (typically data logging to the engine’s manufacturer) on the status and performance of the engine. It has become the way they track required maintenance and inspections based on how the engine is being operated.
I suspect that certain parameters became immediate attention getters with a requisite call to the flight crew.
A Flight Director in commercial, and some GA aircraft, have the ability to track a preplanned course from departure to arrival and it controls the course, attitude, altitude, fuel management, and throttles. I don’t think they have the smarts yet for abnormal occurrences (ie sucking a duck), nor am I sure how they handle a go around scenario beyond the pilot punching the missed approach button, and it takes the plane to the correct holding location for the approach that was just missed. Some are sufficiently sophisticated to land a plane hands off. This is a feature the Garmin flight systems just introduced to about a dozen GA aircraft this last year.
Essentially correct, but there is far less things too bump into at altitude. We call it the big sky safety check.
ACARS (Aircraft Communications, Reporting, and Addressing System. Yeah, the acronym is out of order. I blame the French.) I haven’t worked directly with it, but from what I have read it sends information on where to look in the Flight Data Recorder for potential problems. FDRs hoover all that data up. Satellite comm can get pretty expensive pretty quick. It will also log position information periodically, which will prevent situations like Malaysian Air Flight 370.
FlightAware lets you track most traffic now. I used it to track a PiTizen’s progress across the Atlantic not too long ago. (Now that’s stalking.)
Except right around airports, anyway.
It’s easier to day “ACARS” than “ACRAS.”
I’m going to blame the French anyway. Saves time.
I find both acronyms equally difficult to day.