Talk:Eastern Air Lines Flight 212

Cockpit voice recorder excerpt

Removal of the following transcript does not change the fact that the crew was discussing inappropriate, non-flight related things less than 5 minutes prior to the crash. Whitewash it away, but it is certainly not original research as someone claims. --Dual Freq 14:36, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The cockpit voice recorder reveals the level of desultory conversation taking place on the flight deck during the final five minutes of the flight, when all attention should have been focused on making either a safe landing or a safe missed approach. Captain James E. Reeves and First Officer James M. Daniels, Jr. can be clearly heard having this conversation instead:

• 11:28:37 Captain: "Right. I heard this morning on the news while I was... might stop proceedings against impeachment [of the president]"
• [sound of altitude warning beep]
• 11:28:49 Captain: "...because you can't have a pardon for Nixon and the Watergate people. Old Ford's beginning to take some hard knocks..."
• 11:29:46 First Officer: "We should be taking some definite direction to save the country. Arabs are taking over every damned thing."
• 11:30:01 First Officer: "...The stock market and the damned Swiss are going to sink our damned money, gold over there..."
• 11:30:32 Captain: "Yes sir boy. They got the money, don't they? They got so much damned money."
• 11:30:38 First Officer: "...Yeah, I think, damn if we don't do something by 1980, they'll [presumably "the Arabs"] own the world."
• 11:30:46 Captain: I'd be willing to go back to one... to one car... a lot of other restrictions if we can get something going."
• 11:33:58 Sounds of initial impact.

• Dual, the transcript, and the overall investigation report are a lot longer. Taking any specific item out of those, and thereby emphasizing it, becomes WP:OR, even if it is factually verifiable on its own. This is why we have to be careful in accident reports to try to adhere to the reliable secondary sources, normally the 'probable cause' statements in the report. For example, in this case the futile attempts to visually acquire and rely on the amusement park tower were clearly an important factor, perhaps the dominant one. If we highlight the idle chatter, then we should highlight the tower search, too. And then there are other issues, that are not so clear in the transcript itself. So by taking one aspect, the idle chatter, and highlighting it like that, we are disproportionally putting weight on a single element out of many. Our goal, per WP:NPOV, WP:UNDUE, WP:NOR and WP:SYN is to closely follow the secondary sources in the neutral presentation and properly balanced weighting of the various issues. Thanks, Crum375 15:01, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

The 30 second tower search is highlighted in the article, but the several minutes of non-operational conversation is now described only "as discussing subjects "ranging from politics to used cars"." Which seems to downplay it. The long term legacy of this disaster, besides the deaths involved, is the Sterile cockpit rule and the above excerpted conversation is pretty much the exemplar for why that rule was put in place. At any rate, because of Delta Air Lines Flight 1141, we'll probably never here this type of idle talk or see the transcripts of future flight crew conversations. I think its important to the article, I don't know who picked those particular items, but some quotes of the idle conversation are needed here. --Dual Freq 16:34, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Recall that our mission here is not to weigh items based on our perceived importance of them, short or long term, but based on their notability and their importance in the reliably published sources. In our case of aviation accidents, we normally have an excellent objective and reliable source, which is the NTSB (or equivalent outside the US). So to decide on relative weights, we look at the NTSB final report for guidance. The 'probable cause' statement should always be the key, because it summarizes the cause of the accident most succinctly, and it should be the skeleton over which we build much of the rest. Of course if there are special circumstances (say a famous person killed), which are described by reliable mainstream media for example, they would also get weight. But the important point is that we must be driven by our sources, weighted by reliability and notability, as per WP:V, WP:N, WP:UNDUE, etc. We should try our best to ignore our own editorializing (even in the form of weighting), since this is not a magazine article but an encyclopedia. I do happen to share your views about the Sterile Cockpit issues, and I wrote this article and the Sterile Cockpit one for these reasons specifically, but our personal views may only be visible through the properly weighted reliable sources, not directly. Crum375 04:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:OR, and the CVR transcript. The transcript was widely discussed by pilots at the time. Digging a hole in the ground because you are not paying attention is a serious lapse of cockpit discipline and simply having read the transcript isn't exactly 'Original Research." A 'neutral' presentation is one thing, but suppressing the degree of pilot inattention by suppressing the CVR recording is taking things a bit far. Mark Lincoln (talk) 23:51, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

References

Picture

I don't really know how Wikipedia handles pictures, and what is and isn't appropriate. But the current picture accompanying the article seems odd to have -- it's a DC-9, yes, but it's a different airline and time. Perhaps someone might see if the owner of this picture http://www.airliners.net/photo/Eastern-Air-Lines/McDonnell-Douglas-DC-9-31/0651328/L/ might release copyright for Wikipedia to use? or at least try to find a photo of an Eastern Airlines DC-9? 21:01, 24 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.236.170.228 (talk)

possible reference

• Kropf, Schuyler (September 11, 2009). "Today a grim reminder of Charleston lives lost in crash". The Post and Courier. Charleston, South Carolina. Archived from the original on September 14, 2009. Retrieved 14 September 2009.

I havn't compared to see if there is any new information, but several facts are verified in the article. - ¢Spender1983 (talk) 03:23, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

I've added your ref; thanks! Crum375 (talk) 03:37, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

1+1=3 ? Numbers not adding up

According to the summary, there were 82 (78 passengers + 4 crew) on-board. It also claims that 13 people survived the initial impact. This would leave 69 people (82 - 13 = 69) dead initially. The summary states that three later died of burns, and one of other injuries much later. It is not clear if the one is included in the three, but in any case I don't see any way of reconciling these numbers with the statement "killing 71 of the occupants". Where is the error? 70.126.94.234 (talk) 18:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Why even bother doing this? All the Wonderful Wikipedia editors will do is classify your simple arithmetic as "original research."LOL68.37.103.210 (talk) 06:05, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I fixed it. 72 is not just arithmetic, but supported by the sources. Per the page history, 71 was there for a very long time, during which time the other numbers were adjusted. Paleolith (talk) 06:04, 9 January 2015 (UTC)

Translating from the Russian WP

@Tigerdude9, another editor and I already tried once to explain to you why suggesting to import from the Russian Wikipedia an article about an accident occurred in the US, to a US-built aircraft, operated by a US airline is a nonsensical piece of advice. All of the sources worthy of consideration covering this event will be in English; you have no problem in understanding English; therefore, if you want to improve the article, get reading the sources and add information directly from there. The Russian article can never be more accurate than the English sources it is presumably based upon, and in fact could contain errors made by some WP editor, or by some translation software. If you then retranslate it back into English, you risk adding errors upon errors.

The banner in question is meant e.g. for accidents occurred decades ago in Russian-speaking countries, for which very few English sources are available, and instead many sources in Russian are. In that case, it is the Russian WP article that is likely to be better sourced and more accurate than the English one based on English sources. Only in that case does it make sense to expand the Eglish WP article with text taken from the Russian one. --Deeday-UK (talk) 19:49, 7 July 2019 (UTC)