What you're forgetting is it absolutely would not work when you first put it together. You would then begin a journey of debugging which would teach you a lot more than any YouTube video ever could.
There's a very weird asterisk about it not being considered vegetarian. I would understand it not being vegan with the bun and all, but how did they manage to incorporate meat products into a cauliflower sandwhich?
This article (https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/national-international/chick-fil...) says it is because they include milk and eggs, which doesn't make sense, because while vegans avoid those, vegetarians eat milk and eggs. However, the article also says they don't have any designated area for prep, so your cauliflower may touch chicken or may share a fryer with chicken.
As an aside, I can kinda understand vegetarians eating eggs because chickens will just lay them and you either eat them or they rot, but vegetarians who eat milk have no moral ground to stand on.
I have a friend who won't eat any animal which has died for religious reasons.
She eats plenty of dairy, as nothing died, and considers herself vegetarian. She has in fact never eaten meat once in her life yet you have entirely discounted her moral standing.
I just think that the condemnation of others who one considers less pure than is ideal is extremely counterproductive.
For example, I often imagine what our carbon budget (and theoretical karma budget) would look like if we could get more people who are pro-animal welfare (and people who are concerned with climate change,) to accept the idea that getting a few billion people to eat less beef might be more beneficial than getting a few million to eat no beef.
There is a really interesting paper on this topic which often comes to mind titled "The seductions of clarity." [0]
There is also an interview by Sean Carrol with the author of that paper titled "C. Thi Nguyen on Games, Art, Values, and Agency" [1]
Not technically true, although the reality of how the industry works means that the offspring of dairy cows are often used to make veal.
A cow must get pregnant to begin producing milk, but because we breed dairy cows for milk they produce much more than the calf needs anyway. Male calves are doomed either way to be slaughtered by the realities of how the industry works, but there is no requirement that things be this way.
Eggs are similar in that they don't technically require any particular cruelty, but the realities of how the industry functions means that male chicks are killed shortly after birth. Again, it need not be this way.
One view of how this informs our diet is that eating eggs and dairy are not necessarily cruel, they are just cruel in practice. Whereas meat consumption necessitates the killing of animals.
I don't drink milk (I don't like it), but I do eat meat. But I totally agree that the dairy industry is pretty grim, even here in the UK where we have pretty good animal rights.
Loads of calves die to supply milk, and cows are kept in a near permanent state of either being in milk (and missing their calves) or pregnant.
I really don't mind what anyone eats or drinks - but anyone who claims to be vegetarian 'because of the animals' - but then consumes dairy, is on pretty weak ground.
It’s possible to do something for moral reasons and have some measure of hypocrisy in how consistently we apply those moral principles. That doesn’t mean the effort in doing so was a waste, or that it would be better to not have tried! Let’s not let perfect be the enemy of good.
Eggs aren't a good choice either by that reasoning unless you go way out of your way to ensure they come from a source that treats their chickens well. Chickens in general are very poorly treated.
“McPlant”, a 100% plant based burger from McDonalds (might be a Netherlands-specific thing) has the same caveat and it’s because they cook the plant burger in the same kitchen as all regular meat products and they don’t want to guarantee that there won’t cross-contamination.
I think that for many vegetarians, that’s good enough. But not for all of them of course.
UK BK Vegan Bakon King is a chickenoid thingy deep fried with the chips, hence vegan. It’s edible! and has supplanted ur-chicken on our occasional dinner-and-a-show car wash outings.
Why? Why not? Considering how mass food animals are treated, fed, medicated and processed. My understanding is the chicken flavor is exogenous anyway, the flesh a near-flavorless substrate for lab-made enhancement.
I believe the target market for this sandwich is larger than just vegan/vegetarian and should include the general health conscious crowd. I imagine there’s a number of people who don’t eat Chick-fil-A because it’s not healthy. This sandwich be a way to tap into that audience. I personally eat meat, but often eat veggie burgers and other plant based burgers because (most of the time) it’s healthier (and I enjoy the taste).
I don’t think many health conscious people would even be thinking of eating at this place. Highly processed white bread with unnaturally thick highly processed batter on a small amount of vegetable cooked in god knows what oil that has probably been heated so high it has hydrogenated and turned into trans-fat… it sounds like a glycemic insulin spike artery destroying nightmare death food.
Thank you for adding this. I should have included this in my original comment.
These fast food chains are using the meatless options as a marketing ploy for people
to believe there is a healthier option. It likely is healthier than the 840 calorie fried chicken with fries, but that doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
People like to believe they are health conscious. That’s why they order a 1200 calorie salad when they go to Apple Bees.
That's not what your source says tho, eggs are vegetarian
The key part is:
> But it is not isolated in our kitchens. We have chicken all day, every day, and that's not going away, so we want to be very candid and open and honest with our customers."
First mainstream fast food restaurant to go back on this being a bad idea and offering “non vegetarian fries” is going to financially obliterate restaurants chasing the vegan meme.
Once you’ve tasted what you’ve been missing with tallow and dripping fries the rest taste like trash.
So what you're saying is that big corporations run by some of the greediest people on the planet have somehow failed to recognize this? Or do you just think they are using plant based oils out of the goodness of their hearts?
Plant based oils ARE the chase to the bottom you're implying about.
Shipping one inferior product so make sure vegetarians/vegans order your fries at the expense of taste for everyone.
My suggestion requires integrity/vision to know that either having to ship two products or forfeit the sales of a group of people for the betterment of the product will fill a gap in the market.
One of the reasons McDonald's fries used to be so loved was because they were fried in beef tallow. That went away in the 80s/90s, they're just not the same now.
They probably don't want to have to deal with all the animal rights ideologues nitpicking them and starting drama, so they're just saying they don't care about the politics, and they can mean that by saying it's not vegetarian, so eat it if you want, otherwise go somewhere else.
Just to give a little context as a pilot: It is the job of the tower controller to decide who uses the runway when. There are often multiple planes waiting to take off, and multiple planes nearing the airport to land. It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway. The theory is, of course, that the flight will depart in plenty of time.
In this case, the controller failed to tell the departing flight to hurry (the references to 'no delay' or 'immediate' in the blog post), AND frankly timed things pretty close given the weather. Without the ability to actually see the approaching plane, or perhaps even the plane on the ground, it will probably be found that timing a departure that close at all was reckless. That said, I feel for these tower controllers, it's not common for many planes to get stacked up waiting to depart, and it is their job to get them out. What may have worked just fine on a clear-weather day simply became too dangerous on that day.
The official manual for air traffic controllers in the US is the FAA Order JO 7110.65W [1], if anyone cares to review it.
I would feel for this tower controller if there wasn't a bunch of comments in r/ATC saying how this particular controller has transferred between facilities because he keeps messing up and makes workplace complaints instead of owning up to his mistakes.
Edit to add source:
> a controller who, according to everyone who has worked with him from the last facility where he washed out and now AUS, say has no business being a controller and they can't fire him because he files EEO complaints habitually.
> It's not uncommon for a tower controller to allow a plane to takeoff while another is approaching the runway.
Only in the US is it permitted for the controller to clear an aircraft to land while another is using the runway. The rest of of the world does not allow "anticipated clearance".
(Apart from a "land after" clearance where the landing aircraft must accept responsibility for separation.)
Edited to add: how it works everywhere else in the world: the controller is not permitted to clear an aircraft to land unless and until the previous one is confirmed clear. That's why the term is "cleared".
I'm not sure how many people know this, but one of the first instances of "union busting" ever committed by the US federal govt was against air traffic controllers. The job used to be extremely competitive and prestigious, but overall lower wages and security has made it way harder to attract as many highly talented individuals.
And with how many rules there are in that pdf, it's shocking we don't see multiple accidents a year.
Police unions improve the lives of police officers but do little to improve policing. Teachers' unions improve the lives of teachers but have little effect on student outcomes. It's not obvious to me that a powerful air traffic controllers' union would do anything to improve safety. In fact if other public sector unions are informative, the result of a strong ATC union would be to protect and insulate poor performers.
> The median annual wage for air traffic controllers was $129,750 in May 2021
SOME unions do take advantage, given the traffic controllers' 'single point of failure' it can be very attractive for some unions who are greedy. Again I reiterate, unions are not a bad idea, just not all of them are solely in the interests of the actual employees.
I personally think stability and having some bureaucrat monitoring hours is good. I don't want my air traffic controllers popping pills and pulling double shifts, or showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick. People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves
> showing up to work drunk because they're worried about getting fired for calling in sick
Much like air hosts and pilots, air traffic controllers (at least in the EU) are tested frequently for substance issues including alcohol. A friends father who was an air traffic controller was tested daily for the very reason you mention. Nobody WANTS an accident.
> People with dangerous jobs need to be kept safe from themselves
Absolutely agree, they're professionals though and well trained. I believe they can be responsible adults. That's why it's so rare to see unfortunate mistakes like this seems to be.
Which also limits the hiring pool as many people, myself included, would refuse to be tested daily on principle. Hell I object to pre-employment screenings.
And I have not drunk a drop of Alcohol in over 25 years, nor done any drugs, dont smoke, nothing. That said I am not taking your little test to prove that to you unless you have a reasonable articulable reason to suspect I may be under said influence.
Then you shouldn't be involved in safety-critical areas. That's just entirely the wrong outlook. You should never skip an important verification step because someone promises things are fine.
yes, Freedom, Personal autonomy, Privacy, and Innocence until proven guilty are all the "entirely the wrong outlook " and people holding that "wrong outlook" clearly can not be anywhere near "safety-critical areas"
that is just absurd, Safety Theater is basically what you are advocating for
Let me ask you this, do you think forcing me to remove my shoes is a "critical safety" process before boarding a plan, and that allowing someone to pay $100 to bypass that means it is secure?
So, you're advocating for permitting ATCs to just decide to start transmitting in cockney rhymes as an expression of their personal freedom and autonomy and for people to be able to walk around town pointing loaded guns at other peoples' faces with their fingers on the trigger?
You believe your absurd statement is in any an analog to refusing drug screening?
You think the response to security theater, no security it all?
You think that is we do not do a daily drug screen on an employee that has no indication they are on any type of drug or alcohol is the same as "transmitting in cockney rhymes "
So you believe in absolute personal freedom except when you don't like its consequences and in curtailing personal freedom except when doing so might inconvenience you personally?
Where did I say anything about "absolute personal freedom"
I clearly outlined that my freedom (in this case my privacy and body autonomy) should be respected unless there is a reasonable and articulable individualized justification to preform a search (i.e drug screen) on the basis I am a danger to others
Your position is we assume everyone is on drugs and they have to prove they are not
My position is we use logic and reason to look at a situation, and if the reasonable suspicion someone may be under the influence then we make the accusation and attempt to collect evidence to prove that.
My position is one of rationality and respects freedom as much as possible while still keeping people safe
your position is authoritarian with no rationality to it at all
I disagree with this take when it comes to safety-critical applications, especially when you are directly responsible for the safety of thousands of lives at any given moment in the day.
At the end of the day, I don't see potentially sacrificing the lives of multiple planeloads of people as a worthy tradeoff for foregoing verification that the controller is not under the influence of mind-altering substances when performing their job because it invades their privacy. Performing the job must inherently be approached with a collectivist attitude.
For other jobs where the magnitude of the mistake doesn't involve bodily harm or significant resources, I agree 100%.
IIRC that figure is partially due to understaffing leading to long hours and six day workweeks, and it’s not exactly ideal for us to have overworked ATC
That's not some statement unique to unions. Every organization suffers from the principal-agent problem and every union has a tension between what the union wants, what it's officers want, and what the members want. Also, there's nothing wrong with greed: it's one of the prime human motivators and is encourage in capitalist/individualist societies.
Unions are frequently reasonably well aligned and sometimes not.
There are many solutions like government mandated elections of the officers, rotation of the officers, multiple unions for a given sector or company or factory, etc... Each solution of course comes with a cost including weaker officers coming in, dilution of the power of the union, etc...
This pattern also exists for governments, transnational organizations, corporations, non-profits, etc... and it doesn't make them bad or good or greedy or saintly - it just is the nature of any group.
In 2020, ATC directed an incoming United 787 on the wrong runway at Paris-Charles de Gaulle Airport. The only reason nothing terrible happened is that the Easyjet pilot on the wrong runway called for go-around after looking out the window, moments before the would-be collision.
Didn't make it beyond aviation news, probably because recording ATC is not allowed in France.
Human error will creep up everywhere, all you can control is the frequency.
This is clearly bad law. Not only is it unknowable and unenforceable, but it serves to reduce oversight if actually followed. Society is better off when we pay attention to how it runs and this type of law directly criminalizes that.
And it shows a basic misunderstanding of government, if it's paid for by your tax money it clearly involves you.
This is what the USA has over almost every other country - an acknowledgement that ultimately the people charter the government not the other way around.
People seem to believe other nations have freedom.. In reality when looking at it objectively Most nations lack a huge amount of core freedoms we in the US take for granted
PATCO went on an illegal strike, continued the strike in contravention of court orders, and then remained on strike after a deadline from the president.
They could have returned prior to the final deadline, they could have had a sick-out, they could have worked to rule.
I’m sympathetic to labor demands, but if your oath of office makes it illegal to strike and you participate in a walkout, well, that’s on you.
A union not allowed to strike isn't really a union, when you boil it down the only real leverage a union has is the ability to withhold labor. If the government is allowed to come in and force a contract on people then the bargaining power of the union is severely curtailed. All the business needs to do is wait and lobby the politicians to impose their preferred contract instead of negotiating with the actual employees.
We saw this essential pattern play out with the recent near railway strike. The rail companies barely had to give up anything because the strike would have been too effective to be allowed to happen.
There is a fundamental difference between private and public sector unions.
"All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt (the guy who created the NLRB and was responsible for modern labor law in the US.)
If a private employee union strikes and makes unreasonable demands, the employer eventually goes out of business.
If a public employee union does the same, the government can't go out of business. So what that means is, as long as the union is granted monopoly on its kind of labor supply, they are holding the taxpayers and their infrastructure hostage.
Public employee unions should not be allowed to strike without giving up their monopoly on labor. And we would do well to not entitle private employee unions to mandatory membership and rigid seniority rules (I know from personal experience that these rules make them incredibly corrupt).
Air traffic controllers do have a union. PATCO, the previous union that was "busted", was a public employee union that chose to hold critical public infrastructure hostage, which is unacceptable. Any union that does that should expect to be stripped of its monopoly on that kind of labor.
No, they did not. Reagan very much wanted to spread that lie, but no infrastructure was held hostage. The laborers who held the skills needed to run that infrastructure declined to work when their compensation negotiations were declined.
Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class that is still being felt today.
Had they all quit that would have been fine - nobody can force you to work. But they chose to not work and keep their jobs.
> The laborers who held the skills needed
So did many other people. They conspired to break the law by arranging to violate their employment contracts in a group so as to cause undue difficulty to their employer and they held public infrastructure hostage to prevent anyone else operating it.
> Reagan's actions have had a profoundly disturbing effect on the American middle class
The death of unions is a lot broader of an issue than RR killing the ATCU, and generally much deserved. Unions exist to save lives where the law isn't capable but for every plausibly relevant situation like air-traffic control or deep mining there are a hundred overreaches like trying to unionize Amazon warehouses.
As society and work got safer in general it became less important to have such an option as the right to blockade someone's property and dictate who they can hire.
A union that can't strike is a shared suggestion box at best. The ultimate power of a union boils down to the ability to deny labor to businesses and support it's members through that period in order to bargain.
I always assume that a movie like Pushing Tin is about as accurate of a portrayal of the job of ATC as Swordfish or Antitrust is for software development.
The linked article (more interesting than this one IMHO) asks
> Why were they arriving and departing on the same runway when parallels were available?
and it's a good question! If there's more than one runway available, and bad visibility, why make two planes use the same runway so close to one another??
Unless the terminal is between the runways, using parallel runways will still require clearing planes to cross runways. The conflict risks are different, but they don’t go away.
Intuitively feels like the safest way to operate would be landing planes on the farthest runway, with takeoffs on the near one, because it would only require clearing just-landed aircraft to cross the takeoff runway and you have more discretion to time departures than arrivals.
But what about the Southwest crew? The article says they waited a full minute between being cleared for take off and starting to roll. Surely they wouldn't assume the runway is the right place to hang around in a busy airport, planes typically take off straight away. If they do that it will eat into any safety margin.
It's very likely the Southwest pilots were completing a checklist, programming their flight computer, or some other minor pre-takeoff activity before being ready to takeoff. A minute just isn't all that much of a delay. If the controller needed it to happen immediately, they should have first asked if the plane was ready, and then should have issued a takeoff clearance with 'without delay' or 'immediate' in it. Only then would be the Southwest pilots job to refuse the clearance if they couldn't comply immediately.
I am unaware if there is a formal definition of how long a controller should expect a flight to take before following a non-urgent instruction, but 60 seconds doesn't seem wild to me.
Now you could say that the Southwest pilots should have heard 'traffic 3 miles out', and understood that things need to move quickly. But as a pilot, I can say we don't have the traffic picture controllers have, particularly in bad weather. The general understanding is if we can't see other aircraft, we manage our plane, and its ATC who can get a picture of how fast the other aircraft are moving and what is safe from a separation perspective.
As a passenger that flys almost exclusively long haul from very busy airports, it is rare that my plane will come to rest on the runway, generally accelerating in the turn onto the runway and taking off.
Did they come to rest on the runway, or did they wait a minute at the side of the runway and then proceed to takeoff? I don't think you would notice the difference as a passenger, unless you were listening in on the ATC transmissions.
As a passenger there's a pretty obvious difference between "swing a turn, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send" and "swing a turn, come to a stop, sit there a minute or so, stand on the brakes, floor it and full send"
I can not recall a flight where I was not in a queue to depart, nor an airport where there was not a 90 degree turn onto the runway.
Without ATC I do not know when "cleared to takeoff" is given; it may be given off the runway, pilots spend a minute checking the mirrors and blindspot before turning onto the runway.
There are many runway intersections that are not 90 degree turns. They are frequently mid runway so typically only used by smaller planes for departure
Cleared to takeoff can be given before you have entered the runway, or you can be asked to “lineup and wait”.
The first means that you have permission to enter the runway, if you haven’t already, and takeoff. The latter means that you are cleared to enter the runway, but not takeoff and wait for takeoff clearance.
There is zero evidence that happened. They could absolutely have been sitting at the threshold to the runway for those 60 seconds and immediately took off when they turned the corner 60 seconds later
The training I got as a lowly ppl, was that a takeoff clearance meant that the runway was yours to do with as you pleased within reason. If the southwest crew needed to sit on the runway for a few moments getting setup they had permission to do it. Their job is to follow atc directions, which they absolutely did.
If the controller wanted you to do an immediate takeoff they normally make damn sure that you are able and you know the context. At least in my experience mixing it up with jet traffic at Boeing field.
Something like: “Southwest xxx cleared for immediate takeoff, you have a FedEx heavy on 3 mile final”
To the pilot that is saying: you can go, but you only have 90 seconds or so.
Kind of. It’s not unheard of for the plane to have issues on the runway. Flat tire, avionics settings, whatever. That causes you a delay on the runway, or to just have to sit there and close the runway
On a regular day the controller could see this, and ask what is going on. At a small GA airport with training ops the controller is likely used to people pulling out onto the runway and taking their god damn time. The FAA actually advises wait times of as long as 2 minutes for wake turbulence, and that’s something I’ve done. Just sit there on the end of a runway.
Things get a little different, in practice, at busy commercial airports, but the rules are the same.
Used to fly out of MEM in the co-pilot seat when it was still a hub for NWA. Usually, the small planes they lined up on an alternative runway, but occasionally wind direction / strength required using one of the two (now three) parallel runways.
More than once I remember a 747, 777 or A340 taking off and getting the call "cleared for immediate departure". The pilot I was with routinely would say something like "I'm not even taxing onto the runway for 2 minutes, then we can talk".
Yeah. Turbulence from a large plane can affect small planes in really dangerous ways, and it can exist for up to 2 minutes.
So if a large plane has just used a runway, small planes will wait before taking off, whether that’s on the runway or off the side on a taxiway is up to the pilot and the tower controller.
Yes, agreed - this certainly appears to lean towards ATC error given the conditions. Maybe the ATC rulebook needs to be updated for conditions, maybe it doesn't.
And it might be time to think about TCAS extensions to ground ops for aircraft with clearances?
Question, when FedEx says "Southwest Abort!" and then the controller tells them to turn right and Southwest says "negative" is that because they didn't have enough runway to do either?
I just tried the experiment myself and I get very similar results to what the article describes.
It's mostly sponsored (4 of the top 10 are sponsored). There is only 1 on the entire first page where I recognize the brand. It's the 2nd last on the page (Cuisinart). I see no KitchenAid or OXO.
My experience is more similar to the parent. Granted, the first row seems to be a sponsored spot with 3 listings of spatulas for a brand called "MOACC", but the KitchenAid spatula is the first in second row, which is also prominently labeled "results". A good portion of the search results are also for brands that I don't recognize, but it's not impossible to find name brands. The third row is labeled "AMAZON’S CHOICE", which contains products from KitchenAid, OXO, and Rubbermaid. The fourth row (ie. second row of results), also contains KitchenAid and OXO products.
This is done on amazon.com, from a US VPN ip, using chrome browser on desktop.
Tried and my results are all spatulas, most kitchen implements type and a few tool types.
I think these anecdotes need some more data to establish patterns, ie. the region. I've done my search in the Spanish store. My account in this region is fairly recent, less than a year. My spend is quite high, as we rely on home delivery for everything that is not supermarket type goods.
I have noticed as the economy does worse, the amount of advertising on Google and Amazon search results goes up and up as well as more difficult to distinguish between paid and organic results. They have a lever they can throttle at their will, and when they need more money, they increase the ads. It takes people a while, maybe 6 months+, to realize their go-to search engine or online store has trashed their UX in favor of increasing the price of stonks.
It looks like the search results got better in the last couple of months. Back in the fall when I was searching for "2TB SSD" the results were completely awful and included things like HDDs (why?!?). Trying the same search today seems to get a lot more relevant results.
I think this is the answer, I opened Amazon in Firefox where I have an adblocker and the first result was KitchenAid. In Safari w/ no adblocker the entire first row was ads and there was an extra ad above that for spatulas taking up another row's worth of space for effectively two rows of ads before real results.
Unlike the NOTAM outage, a METAR outage will and should actually affect flights. Without weather at your destination it becomes impossible to know if it’s safe to land there. The forecasts (TAF) are actually used more in flight planning, but actual weather is very valuable while enroute, when not close enough to hear weather over the radio from the destination airport.
To add some nuance to what other commenters have said, 95%+ of all NOTAMs are useless, telling you about grass that might be mowed, animals that might be present, temporary "obstacles" that you could only hit if you were flying both dangerously and illegally, correcting immaterial typos in the charts, or updates to dubiously helpful information published in the charts (number of hotels in the surrounding area).
Others are potentially useful, but not essential for safe flight. Things like closed taxiways, nonavailability of services at an airport, etc.
And a very few are really critically important. Runway closures, correction to vital chart information, airspace changes, malfunctioning navigation aids.
The FAA's reaction to the NOTAM outage was probably the correct course of action. But make no mistake, the volume of spam NOTAMs combined with the lack of an easy way for a pilot to quickly sort for important NOTAMs makes us all less safe.
> But make no mistake, the volume of spam NOTAMs combined with the lack of an easy way for a pilot to quickly sort for important NOTAMs makes us all less safe.
The system is in desperate need of some modernization, no argument there. The fact that there isn't a simple criticality filed with them that makes it easy to see what will actually impact flight planning (airspace closure / runway closure vs stupid chart updates) is insane.
The problem is that "criticality" is too binary. A tower light NOTAM might be low-criticality for a fixed-wing airplane pilot flying day VFR, but high-criticality for a helicopter pilot flying at night in IMC.
Similarly, chart updates are very important if you're flying IFR. Going below minimums while in the soup ends... very badly. If somebody's changed the MEA/DA/MDA, you can bet I want to know.
NOTAMs do have keywords to tell you the subject (i.e. airport closure vs tower light), and most briefings will highlight the ones likely to be urgent.
(That said, I'd argue printing out all the tower notams in textual format is somewhat useless. The NEXTGEN FSS briefings are plotting them graphically now, which is an improvement.)
The idea is probably that is you included a criticality flag, pilots would ignore low priority notices and potentially miss something (like grass being mowed at the time they plan on landing) that could affect them, but is otherwise immaterial for most others.
I can’t say one way or the other, as I’m not a pilot, but that’s the argument I’d make to keep the system w/o priority levels.
As a pilot of single-engine airplanes, I disagree that mowing is useful. I need to look at the runway I'm landing on for obstructions no matter what. The time of year when mowing might occur, I might also have to contend with deer, who are just as hazardous and don't file NOTAMs before grazing near the runway.
Unrelated to aviation, but I actually find METARs and TAFs are useful for hiking and skiing. I use the altimeter settings for my altimeter when hiking, and knowing the altitude of cloud layers is useful to know what the visibility will be like on the mountain (you have to do a bit of math with the airport elevation and the mountain’s elevation, but hey—it works!).
I used METAR for running, or rather to say which days I'm allowed to not run.
I noticed that when the day was long, and I was feeling tired and lazy it was a lot easier to find some excuse why not to run that day. This excuse was often the weather. But on the other hand I didn't want to say no matter the weather I must run, because that is obviously excessive. So I made up a simple "algorithm" to decide if the weather fits the minimums, and if it did I must go and run. And I choose to base it on the measurements from the METAR of the local airport.
I think it was something super simple. Like temperature above X, no percipitation at the moment, no percipitation predicted during the next hour.
(I also remember I was willing to skip running in case of anything “exciting” being reported. Like tornados, or sandstorms or vulcanic ash. Not that any of that was a real possibility.)
In the era before cell-phone internet, being able to call the automated weather reporting station at the nearest airport and have it read out conditions was hugely useful.
For folks who haven't seen what's in a METAR/TAF: https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/weather/asos/ (By default, clicking a station gives you the abbreviated format; you can select the "decode" radio button and click "update" to translate it into English.)
I like your idea of visibility a lot, and would like to know more. Are you using a barometric altimeter? I use one hiking, but mainly for dead reckoning using an USGS elevation map. I usually just set my altimeter using those maps.
A pilot can legally land without a METAR, and this happens all the time. The stations can and do go offline. Sometimes they break, especially after a severe storm. Many smaller airfields don't have on-site weather reporting, some others don't have a network connection.
You look at the closest available weather station and you look at the forecasts — human-authored (TAFs) and computer-autored (GFA/MOS). And when you arrive, you look outside at the actual conditions — the windsock, actual flight visibility, etc. If the conditions are worse than expected, you divert to your alternate.
Each airport does measure and report the local weather-- that's where METAR data comes from. And busier airports broadcast that data locally, via ATIS or D-ATIS, for pilots in the immediate vicinity to use (either on the ground or on approach to the airport).
That doesn't help a pilot plan ahead for conditions on their route or at their destination, though-- that's where METARs come in.
They are. I've even seen small aircraft pilots call the automated weather line from the cockpit while they're preparing to approach the destination airport.
That automated weather frequency relies on METAR data from the Aviation Weather Service here in the US, and that's where ATC gets their information from as well when they're advising pilots of surface winds when giving landing clearance.
Per the source, 167 airport weather stations are not reporting correctly (either due to a highly unlikely concurrent fault with the stations, or more likely an issue with the system they report to).
Local weather is always used, but that's precisely what is unavailable right now.
You have it backwards, ATIS doesn't pull from METARs... the METAR and ATIS recording are both produced at the same time locally by the local weather observer (usually a controller in the tower), reading raw data directly from the on-field weather station and making manual edits as necessary. The two should match up exactly, but that's because they're both produced by the same process.
If the tower is closed, or it's an untowered field, the system can run in automatic mode. In that case the radio broadcast gets updated every minute, much more frequently than METARs get updated (every hour).
I think the title is using the word 'inevitably' where they mean 'eventually' or 'ultimately'. It's not inevitable that people who invest in Bitcoin lose money, for example, they could have changed their mind and sold then next day, making it avoidable. What they mean to say is that most people who invest _end up_ losing money, not that it was unavoidable (the meaning of inevitable).
It’s worth pointing out that the last row on a plane often doesn’t recline, so the idea of everyone reclining is a bit of a red herring. That said, you do know that when you book your flight (if you’re wealthy enough to pay for a specific seat), so it could be considered one of flyings many taxes on the less than wealthy.
