Wow. That’s not at all unexpected, but the details and having it out in the open are good. Although that just means they’ll find another way to play the system. 
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Booiiiiiiuuuuuunnnnng!
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And there we have it. Brilliant!
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Yup. The Simpsons were never coded as rich, but nevertheless, that is a lifestyle millennials (and many – especially later Gen-X) can’t even really dream of.
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Remember the Frank Grimes episode (“Homer’s Enemy”)? It was basically calling out this whole lifestyle as unrealistic.
Frank: God, I’ve had to work hard every day of my life, and what do I have to show for it? This briefcase, and this haircut! And what do you have to show for your lifetime of sloth and ignorance?
Homer: What?
Frank: Everything! A dream house! Two cars! A beautiful wife! A son who owns a factory! Fancy clothes and [sniffs air] lobsters for dinner! And do you deserve any of it? No!
Homer: [gasps] What are you saying?
Frank: I’m saying that you’re what’s wrong with America, Homer Simpson. You coast through life, you do as little as possible, and you leech off of decent, hard-working people like me. Heck, if you lived in any other country in the world, you’d have starved to death long ago.
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What a fucking asshole.
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Agreed. What an incompetent piece of trash.
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(Just to clarify, this is about Paul Allen. I couldn’t pass up this quote.)
Maybe dedicating his fortune to a global benthic mapping project would have been worthwhile, given that no one, especially someone like Paul Allen, no one can take their wealth with them.
Chartering the Petrel, fully crewed, as the United States Navy has done when American aircraft have been lost at sea, costs about $80,000 a day. But to Allen, at least, its expense was trifling. In 2010, he pledged to give away more than half his wealth. That goal proved impossible within his lifetime: His investment portfolio grew faster than he could spend it. Allen bought superyachts, estates and sports teams that barely dented his pile. He collected vintage planes, guitars and cars. He threw Gatsby-esque parties. He started a minor space program. He also gave $2 billion away in the fields of education, health care, science and the arts, and appeared on The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of the 50 most generous Americans 17 years in a row. Nevertheless, he was worth more at the time of his death ($20 billion) than he was in 2010 ($13.5 billion). (Allen’s portfolio of business and philanthropic interests — including the Petrel — is now being managed by his sister, Jody, and the senior management of his company Vulcan.)
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Has anyone here watched these shows?
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That this is happening the same day as a 14 hour + outage across all applications is… interesting.
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“Safety” system that automatically noses the plane down: included in base price.
A warning light that tells humans the plane is confused and is about to crash itself automatically: that costs extra.
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To be fair, before the Lion Air crash, I don’t think Boeing knew1 that a single broken Angle of Attack sensor could cause the plane to crash itself automatically.
They probably haven’t made a change to make the AoA disagree a standard feature since the crash, though, and, if that’s the case, that’s just pure profit-seeking.
1Yes, someone should have put it together, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an engineer or two did, and had their concerns brushed off by management, but I doubt that concern made it to the team who were making decisions about which features came standard and which were options.
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Thread:
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The extra cost is for the second AOA probe. The disagree light is probably free. The fact that you can spec just one AOA anyway is zupastoopid.
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I’m sorry, but that’s entirely contrary to all of the coverage and commentary I’ve read so far.
For example, the latest story on Ars:
The New York Times reports that both vehicles lacked an “AOA disagree” light—a warning light that indicates when the aircraft’s two AOA sensors provide different readings—and an angle of attack indicator. Since the MCAS system relied only on one of the aircraft’s AOA sensors, the disagree light and AOA indicator would have given the flight crew visible evidence of a sensor failure and prompted them to disable the MCAS. But both of these features were sold by Boeing as expensive add-ons. And many discount and smaller airlines declined to purchase them, as they were not required by regulators.
The commentary I’ve read says that the fact that there are two sensors is because every commercial aircraft is required to have two completely-independent, completely-redundant flight computers, and one AoA sensor is hooked up to each.
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So the customer was signaling for no disagree indicator? And the no-budget no-feedback stick pusher is not part of the redundant computer software. Off on its own, twiddling tabs on the high prairie with nothing but an arrogant disregard for the passenger-customer. What a mess.
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