What the heck? I was literally just reading about the Cornfield Bomber yesterday! I guess somebody else read the question on Aviation StackExchange [0] asking what autopilots are programmed to do upon pilot ejection.
Another very interesting case of a plane flying after the pilot ejected happened with a Soviet MiG-23 in 1989, which flew from Poland to Belgium, before crashing into a house and killing a man [1]. The map of its flightpath is interesting [2], imagine being one of the F-15 pilots that intercepted it. It would be nerve wracking having to intercept a plane heading straight into NATO airspace, and then completely bizarre when you discovered there was no pilot on it.
I scan HN fairly extensively (if sometimes quickly).
There's a fair amount of OP's that pretty apparently start when someone takes a resource cited in a comment and makes a new top-level post out of it.
I don't keep track of who and what. I just see a new post and think/remember, I saw that in a comment 3 hours ago - 1 day ago. (Sometimes, quicker than that.)
The behavior doesn't seem to be overwhelming HN (maybe the moderators throttle it?), and often significant conversations seem to ensue, so, as they say, "what the hey..."
There does seem to be a tendency on HN for there to end up being a series of stories on a particular topic.
One person will post a link, then somebody who reads the linked article will do some further reading, discover something interesting, and then post a link to their interesting discovery to HN, and the cycle continues.
I rather like it. It happens at a low enough level, as you mentioned, that it provides a nice stream of information on a particular topic.
It would be nice to capture those reply chains and package up a bunch of related links at once. Kind of like a shared mapping of our unexpected deep internet dives on Wikipedia, just automated.
I like it too. I tend to be the only person in my close circle who finds HN-type content interesting, so it’s fun to go on a tangent and then see what others who went on the same tangent think.
My old Chief Flying instructor was a test pilot in the RAF back in the 50's and 60's. He has many stories about pilots who ejected from their 'out of control' jets only to hang in their parachutes a minute later watching their aircraft flying along perfectly normally.
His opinion was that most planes have a better idea how to stabilise than the pilot does, and in fact when taking us through emergency recovery manoeuvres in the air, he used to suggest in most cases the first reaction should be "hands off stick and throttle" (obviously only where altitude and time permitted) just to see if the airplane would self correct, before applying any inputs ourselves.
In the armed forces, there is usually a hearing to find out the cause/reason. If it is due to pilot error, then I think demotion or transfer to non flying duties is usually the punishment.
Although I remember many years ago when a RAAF Macchi jet crashed here during a training exercise. It was found that pilot error was the cause of the incident, and the instructor & student I believe lost their flying status, but there was a concerted campaign by a old lady in the city where the crew were based to get them to pay for the lost jet via garnishing their wages. I don't think she got her wish.
Well, to be fair, this was back in the 70's or 80's, and the little Macchi back then would have had a 'fly away' price from the lot at probably about $1million - but still, more than a lifetime's wages back in the day, even for an Air Force flight instructor! :D
Am i the only one who is irritated by sentences like "In 1970, a plane got fed up with its pilot so it hatched an audacious plan. First, get rid of the pilot. Second: land. Third: enter history. The result was amazing."
Especially irritating the the last sentence "The result was amazing".
Is there a word for describing this type of writing in English?
To me it generally came across as "self-indulgent" where authors write for themselves more than the readers. Cynically I can just imagine the author thinking "oh yes that's clever" while writing this part... And with AI in the media these days, it may just confuse readers. And for what, to fit in some fancy anthropomorphism?
But I don't think I'm using the term quite right, this seems to be a more specific issue in fiction.
That was my first reaction to. But it isn't clickbait as you ware already reading the article, you could of course argue it baits you into reading on.
As I see you can split the question/answer in two, first the anthropomorphising of the plane and the events that happened. And second, something I see a lot on sites like "Hack a day", seems to me like the need to add more to the story, because the journalist otherwise cannot justify publishing it as a story. As it would only be a summary of the events already documented in the sources.
It wasn't actually that rare an occurrence; I've heard at least a dozen Cold War stories, all verified, of self-landers. Danish Hunter serial 415 was probably the most famous, it flew itself pilotless down the approach at Skrydstrup and landed beside the runway.
More morbid was the WW2 92 Sqn Spitfire that nearly made it back to its home airfield with a dead pilot at the controls. It landed in treetops near Biggin Hill after flying all the way back from France where he had been killed.
This has happened many times in civilian aviation as well, many times with the pilots still inside but incapacitated.
I remember one famous story of a doctor in a beechcraft who passed out from hypoxia -- only to awaken hours later by the jarring of the airplane bouncing along in a cornfield. The plane's autopilot had kept the wings level until it ran out of gas. Then it slowly descended into a field.
What a story that guy had to tell! I wonder if he flew very much after that.
Author is just being cute. No automation at all was involved, simply a naturally stable system and a fair amount of good luck. (Before fly-by-wire and computers all aircraft had to be at least neutrally stable, or they would be literally unflyable.)
im surprised that the mission even took place seeing that one of the pilots had to ditch his jet on the runway. different times i guess, but i doubt that the sortie would continue as normal today.
Another very interesting case of a plane flying after the pilot ejected happened with a Soviet MiG-23 in 1989, which flew from Poland to Belgium, before crashing into a house and killing a man [1]. The map of its flightpath is interesting [2], imagine being one of the F-15 pilots that intercepted it. It would be nerve wracking having to intercept a plane heading straight into NATO airspace, and then completely bizarre when you discovered there was no pilot on it.
[0] https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/52862/if-a-pilo...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Belgian_MiG-23_crash
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20120426041634/http://images3.we...