Latest news with #MikeMcCormick
Daily Mail
9 hours ago
- Sport
- Daily Mail
Golf fans left stunned by insane US Open course preparations at Oakmont: 'Surely there is a more efficient way?'
Golf fans were left stunned on Monday as they got a glimpse of the tedious US Open preparations at Oakmont. Venezuelan PGA Tour pro Jhonattan Vegas shared a video of the rough being cut, and fans couldn't believe that the job was done by a large army of employees pushing around lawn mowers by hand. 'These are the mowers they use... Is this AI?,' one replied on X. 'Am I the only one that find's this video rolling on the floor laughing my a** off funny,' a second added. 'Neighbors at 7:30am,' a third cracked. And a fourth said: 'surely there is a more efficient way of doing this.' Good news guys, they are cutting the rough but, it's still unplayable. Have fun 😳😳😳😳😳😳 #USOPEN2025 — Jhonattan Vegas (@JhonattanVegas) June 9, 2025 Vegas himself called the rough 'unplayable,' with the mowers appearing to take little off in the video he posted. However, that's actually intentional. Oakmont Grounds Superintendent Mike McCormick previously explained on the The Fried Egg Golf Podcast that the course actually uses custom mowers to cut the rough higher. The reasoning for that, he said, was to make the course more difficult and prevent the ball from laying on top of the grass when it's hit into the rough. Oakmont, located outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is known to be notoriously difficult and that should remain the case as the world's best golfers descend upon this year's US Open. Vegas last competed in the US Open in 2021, managing to make the cut and finishing tied for 57th. Before that, he missed the cut in 2019. Bryson DeChambeau will be looking to defend his US Open title from last year when the tournament begins this week. Wyndham Clark (2023), Matt Fitzpatrick (2022) and Jon Rahm (2021) are all recent winners as well.
USA Today
18-02-2025
- General
- USA Today
Upside-down plane: Experts weigh in on Delta flight flip-over in Toronto
Upside-down plane: Experts weigh in on Delta flight flip-over in Toronto Show Caption Hide Caption Delta passenger jet crashes at Toronto airport Officials from Toronto Pearson International Airport say a Delta jet crashed there The drill is familiar for most airline passengers: how to buckle up your seat belt, put on the oxygen masks and use the seat cushion as a flotation device. What they don't tell you is what to do if you suddenly find yourself in an upside-down aircraft. For the passengers of a Delta flight on Monday, that suddenly became an extremely crucial detail. Expert engineering, the size of the aircraft and seatbelts all likely played a factor in protecting people aboard a passenger jet that flipped over at a Toronto airport, experts said Monday, the latest in a string of high-profile crashes that have raised questions about aviation safety. The plane, a Bombardier CRJ900 aircraft, flipped upon landing at Toronto Pearson International Airport. All 80 people aboard were evacuated, according to Delta. Seventeen injuries were reported, most of them ranging from minor to moderate. While it is extremely rare for an aircraft to flip on its back, they are engineered to handle it, said Mike McCormick, associate professor and program coordinator for air traffic management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The structural elements of an aircraft are designed so that the wings and the tail will break off and away in the event of a tip over, McCormick said. The seats are designed to withstand impacts up to 16 times the force of gravity, so they will remain in place when the plane is upside down. That's why people are asked to be strapped in at takeoff and landing, he said. 'Absent any loose things flying around the cabin, the seats are designed to keep the passengers strapped in.' Scenes showing the cabin crew swiftly evacuating the passengers out of the aircraft are a testament to their training, McCormick said. 'Most people think of them as flight attendants serving refreshments and answering questions. Where they really perform their true function is during experiences like this when their experience and training comes into play.' Despite the high profile crashes this year, "we are in the safest time in aviation history," McCormick said. Small size of plane cushioned the fall Arnold Barnett, a leading aviation safety expert and statistics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told USA TODAY he was surprised to see the plane flip over, noting the crash could add to flight anxiety after recent crashes near Washington D.C., in Alaska and Philadelphia. Barnett said the plane going belly up was akin to a "horrible rollercoaster," but the small size of the plane and use of seatbelts likely helped minimize injuries. 'It's the kind of thing that can be, to say the least, unnerving," he said, but would not necessarily cause serious injuries. The CRJ900 jet's cabin height is roughly 6 feet, which meant people didn't have far to fall when it overturned, Barnett said. Fire danger spurs speedy evacuations Najm Meshkati, professor of engineering and expert of aviation safety at the University of Southern California, said the biggest concern in any plane crash on land is the risk of a fire igniting. He cited a recent disaster in South Korea that killed 179 people when a commercial plane veered off the runway, slammed into a wall and burst into flames. The fire risk Monday likely prompted speedy evacuations. Meshkati noted the flight crew acts as another layer of protection for passengers by ensuring a quick and orderly exit, which may have saved lives. Hassan Shahidi, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation, lauded the first responders on the ground at the airport. 'They were there immediately dousing the aircraft with fire resistant foam,' he said. 'The Toronto Airport is known for being on top of these emergency type situations.' Their training was also 'very visible' on Monday, with emergency crews arriving moments after the crash, he said. 'All these things are very important in today's accident that passengers were able to walk out of that airplane without any fatalities.' Shahidi also lauded the actions of the cabin crew 'under very difficult circumstances," that they were able to help the passengers get out from the exit doors and the exit doors were operable. He noted crew members go through rigorous training for emergency evacuations, including in unusual circumstances such as a flipped aircraft. From a design perspective, the aircraft are engineered to withstand all different sorts of pressures. 'They are put through extreme stress tests to look at all sorts of different scenarios to ensure they're safe,' Shahidi said. It's remarkable the passengers were well enough to stand and walk out of the plane, Shahidi said. 'We're thankful and grateful that there were no fatalities and people were actually walking out." Contributing: Zach Wichter, Nathan Diller and Thao Nguyen; USA TODAY
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Airspace expert explains what needs to be evaluated to determine cause of Reagan Airport crash
The Brief A former president of the FAA Air Traffic Organization says the communication between the control tower and pilots will be critical to understand why the helicopter and plane collided in Washington D.C. He believes visibility challenges could have hindered the helicopter and jet pilots from seeing each other. The traffic collision avoidance system, or T-CAS, limitations at low altitude flight could have been a contributing factor also. It'll take months for investigators to pinpoint the exact cause of this Reagan Airport tragedy. We're getting a better idea of what transpired moments before the collision. The routes being used by both pilots show an intersection on the map. We spoke to someone very familiar with this airspace. He believes the communication between the control tower and the pilots of both aircraft will be key in getting to the bottom of this tragedy. What they're saying "What we have here is a very unfortunate confluence of events," said Dr. Mike McCormick. McCormick is a former vice president of the FAA Air Traffic Organization and an expert on airspace rules over the D.C. area. What we know He says military helicopters are taught to give the right of way to commercial jets landing at Ronald Regan Airport. "That route is designed so that the helicopters would fly east over a peninsula away from Washington National Airport in order to allow for arrivals and departures on the primary runway," said McCormick. He says because of strong northwest winds, Flight 5342 requested and was given approval to land at a secondary runway. Air Traffic Control then instructed the Black Hawk to pass behind the commercial flight. Doctor McCormick believes the helicopter pilot didn't see the incoming jet. "With the attitude of the aircraft landing at Washington National runway 3-3, it would be difficult for the helicopter to visually acquire it because the lights would have been turned away from the helicopter," he said. He says the same would have been true for the pilots of the American Airlines flight. "The aircraft would have difficulty visually acquiring the helicopter because they were focused on the landing," he said. Dig deeper Then, there is the question of the traffic collision avoidance system, or T-CAS. It is designed to alert Air Traffic Control when aircraft are too close to each other. Dr. McCormick says the system is only designed to operate in-flight and not when aircraft are at low altitude or close to airports. "Otherwise, there would be a constant T-CAS alert going off in and around the vicinity of the airport," McCormick said. The flight data recorder or black box has not been recovered yet. We expect the NTSB preliminary report to be out in about 30 days.
