Hacker

I think we have to be skeptical of that number based on the evidence that is out there from the investigation. To wit: It isn't outrageous for someone to claim 1,000 hours in a year; I know numerous airline guys who hit this number somewhat regularly. Definitely unusual for a non-military, non-airline guy to be getting that amount of hours, but I wouldn't find it impossible to believe. It is, however, not possible that he flew 5,200 hours in one year. This would mean he was logging 14 hours of flight time per day, every day, for 365 days. And since he reported only 200 hours of time during the "last 6 months" of that year...well, apparently Mac was logging augmented crew time while he was sleeping. But, even that first number has to be taken in perspective of other evidence, like: So, if the B-17 was flying under 300 hours per year total, even if you make the assumption that Mac was flying every single one of those hours (which we know he wasn't - I personally know people who flew 909 during that timeframe, and not with Mac in the seat), where were the other 700-ish hours per year coming from? This would require him to fly *double* the amount of hours he was theoretically getting in the B-17 in some other aircraft on the tour. Remember, Mac was not a professional pilot at any point during his career and Collings was the only flying he was doing. The evidence here shows that there was some amount of "Parker P-51" time going on here. How much? Tough to say...but it could be a substantial amount based on the self-reporting from the FAA medicals. He had to understand that the hour report to the FAA on your medical is an official attestation of your flight experience. I admit, I bought into the Mac mystique too. The way he was spoken about by other pilots, as well as the way he spoke and carried himself, I'd have thought he was some old 'Nam vet, or old fire-bomber pilot, or retired airline guy. I was surprised to learn in this report that he'd only had his multiengine rating since 1999, and that he'd never actually had a professional flying career. The data here, as well as his actions during the emergency, give me many many questions about the authenticity of basically anything said about his credentials or experience.

The root of the issue lies in what people interpret "treated equally" to mean. The philosophers upon whose tenets western society has been built interpret that to mean "all individuals treated equally before the law". Unfortunately that is not a definition that is shared across the political and philosophical spectrum, and that is the crux.

You are. It isn't about the dictionary definition of equity. Just as how the social justice crowd has re-defined "racism" to hinge on power, "equity" has been re-defined to mean equality of outcome, usually with respect to money but also frequently with respect to social power. So, when the term is used in the context of that video, they are talking about social power, and not fair treatment in front of the law. It is a loaded codeword that is intended to sound like "equality" to those not paying attention. This new definition is used commonly in the social science sphere. Here's what Bret Weinstein, a self-identified progressive university professor says about equity:

That is not what "equity" means. It has nothing to do with "fair treatment". Equity means "equality of outcome".

So, leadership is telling us that they either still won't bring themselves to acknowledge that they are both the cause and the solution of the actual root problem, or they're so steeped in their own body odor that they *still* don't know it. They're still focusing on treating the symptoms of the cancer rather than cutting out the cancer itself. Brilliant, fellas. Just brilliant.

Awesomeness like this does not belong in the "What's wrong with the Air Force?" thread. 🥃

Well, aside from being a former "fighter guy" I also have spent the last 5 years wrangling #300,000 airliners around, so I'd like to think I have a little insight there as well. I took that photo I posted of a poster on the wall of where I work. Nowhere did I say it wasn't an area where people have and do make airmanship mistakes. I was making (theoretical) fun of a military branch, who kills people and breaks things in some of the most hazardous-to-life actions and locations in human existence, allowing the force's skills, training, and currency to degrade to a point where something as basic as a visual approach becomes "more challenging" than the mission things.

I can't wait for the day when Big Blue starts shooting off the same platitudes that the airline industry does about, "visual approaches are the hardest thing we do".

This is exactly the kind of "system failure" that the SIB and AIB were designed to identify. Will the AF wake up and take responsibility for its own leadership and decisionmaking failures that set this poor kid up for failure and, ultimately, his death?

Fake news. Huggy has a Jitterbug phone from the back of AARP magazine.

It is perfectly clear what it does, it's all right there in the article: "Its container-centric management environment orchestrates computing, networking, and storage on behalf of user workloads and allows for the deployment of complex microservice based applications with complete automation." To me, this sounds like it was written by the greatest OPR-bullshit artist of all time to describe the mail sorting room at Initech.

I can attest that SoCal Approach will "assist" you by keeping you high prior to your turn to final even to this day. Flaps 40, medium brakes, exit at Taxiway E. "No problem, GI!" But there's something fun about putting a 300,000-pound fatty into 5700', then cocktails in Newport Beach in an hour.

Only valid when the investigation hasn't actually been completed yet and the General doing the speaking is relaying "facts" that weren't in evidence. 🙂

The entire point of The Enlightenment was that logic and reason could be used to transcend individual human experiences and thus individuals could have empathy for that which we did not experience ourselves. So, it doesn't require a person of another gender, another race, another [insert characteristic here] to be present for any other human to comprehend, understand, and empathize with their perspective and/or lived experiences. You don't actually have to feel childbirth to understand what it is like. You don't have to be a "POC" to understand the experience of what it must be like, whatever that is supposed to mean. If you want to argue that people of different *cultures* bring different perspectives to the table, that's perfectly valid...but to say that immutable characteristics are responsible for (or an avatar for) differences in thought and character is precisely the kind of "logic" that was used to undergird actual tribalism (or racism, if you'd rather frame it that way) for hundreds (thousands?) of years. No two humans are alike, regardless of immutable characteristics, so Enlightenment logic on the issue is a truism for all humans to be able to form social groups. People of the same immutable characteristics can have a widely divergent set of experiences, beliefs, and character, just as people of a wide variety of immutable characteristics can all believe in the same orthodoxy. Diversity of immutable characteristics is not an avatar for diversity of perspectives, simply put.

Again, I agree that diversity of thought is vital...but that's not what any of this is about, and that's not what my comment was about that you responded to originally. You're sidestepping the larger issue, that the AF's focus on diversity of immutable human characteristics (which is the opposite of the teamwork concept of us all adopting the identity of "Airman") has literally zero to do with the cognitive diversity, or diversity of thought, that you're talking about. Even worse is the belief that must exist to support the idea, that immutable human characteristics are an avatar for an individual's thoughts, beliefs, character, or abilities. If the USAF wants to have a diversity of immutable characteristics in the crew force, for whatever social goal they seek, that's fine by me. What's objectionable is when that objective is sold as improving the ability to accomplish the mission (e.g. "diversity is our strength")...again, a statement which has never been put to a falsification test, and won't be because it exists to support an ideological perspective that has already decided what is "good."

Irrelevant? Hardly. What other organizational groups in human society have the specific purpose of waging state-sponsored violence, with a specific and acknowledged risk to one's individual life, in pursuit of political goals? There are a *lot* of unique leadership and teamwork aspects to the military that aren't found elsewhere.

I'm missing the relevant data about military operations in there. But, more importantly, "diversity is our strength" has *nothing* to do with your search terms. That statement is, and always has been, a reference to diversity of immutable human characteristics. I'm all for diversity of thought being a force multiplier, and there's plenty of evidence in the social sciences for that...but that's not what people mean when the term is used.

Well, I'm a staunch individualist...but that being said, there has never been any data or proof (outside of a cliche catch phrase that was foisted upon society in the 1990s in pursuit of an ideological narrative) that "diversity is our strength." I don't have a problem with the concept if it is actually true...but unfortunately we bypassed the "falsification test" part and went right to the "this is fact and we cannot question it" part.

I am wondering what happened to that thing they used to tell us all in initial training that we were no longer a gaggle of individuals, but that we were all "Airmen" now.

To be fair, both of those statements/decisions were made in a pre e-commerce dominated western world, and before a lot of the political/economic changes in Asia of the last decade that are the ingredients of the current global flow of goods and money. The whole foresight vs hindsight thing, and all.

The purpose was for operators of both DC-10s and MD-11s to have a common pilot type rating to streamline training costs, as well as modernize the avionics and remove the FE position (and remove the weight associated with both). I still don't know what kind of parts commonality there is in terms of the airframe, systems, etc, between the KC-10 and MD-11. The MD has a different wing, different horizontal stab, a different empennage, a different #2 engine design...so far as I'm aware, parts commonality with the DC-10 fleet was never a selling point of the MD-11. FedEx is slowly retiring the entire MD-10 fleet, so there could be a small number of MD-10s available in the boneyard to support KC-10 fleet sustainment, although as mentioned earlier it sounds like the parts which really matter to keeping the KC-10 mission capable are KC-10 specific.

You know the "MD-10" is a different aircraft than the DC-10, in that the MD-10 has been modified with the flight deck of the MD-11 (which eliminates the flight engineer position)? It is a different type rating (for the pilots).

Don't forget that, in the days/months between when international pax flying was shut down, and when the pax carriers decided they were going to conduct some cargo-only flights to keep the revenue stream open, the freight forwarding companies that were previously using the pax carriers still needed to move their product. UPS and FX (and I have to assume Atlas, Kalitta, ATI, Western Global, Sky Lease, and anyone else who picked up that slack) were all in quite a position of power when those forwarders pivoted to them to move their freight. I know FX, at least, rather than just take on that business temporarily, signed multi-year contracts with those freight forwarders. I'm sure there are smart business folks at the other cargo haulers as well who would have also penned longer-term relationships with the freight forwarders, rather than just picking up the work during COVID and allowing it to go back to the pax carriers when the capacity came back.

How much parts commonality is there between the MD-11 and the KC-10?

No..."X" planes are research aircraft, and "Y" aircraft are/were prototypes of aircraft intended for production. And the designation is "e" not "E".