J
James Fallows
fallows.substack.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2021
James Fallows, a longtime journalist and pilot, writes on aviation, politics, media, and China.
What HN saysHN commenters link his posts on aviation incidents, such as an aircraft landing itself after pilot incapacitation, and one criticizes a ProPublica story he covered.
19HN people shared it
4linked it in comments
26stories submitted
127story points
7 months agolast shared
2021people per year2026
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What HN people wrote when they linked it
andyjohnson0 · 2026-01-01
Possibly a reference to the recent event described here:
https://fallows.substack.com/p/a-positive-sign-for-flying-in-the
tl/dr: The aircraft detected pilot incapacitation and landed on its own initiative.
rapnie · 2025-01-30
Just learned about it here: https://fallows.substack.com/p/it-had-been-16-years-since-a-fatal
Likely more affected are learning about the aftermath via investigation, but I am not sure.
Edit: No wait, that article mentioned the disbanding of Aviation Security Advisory Committee a week ago.
civilized · 2023-06-04
I used to think so, but they badly embarrassed themselves on a COVID origin story a few months ago. They relied on a single source who claimed to have unique expertise in translating ambiguous Chinese Communist Party language. Most commentators with knowledge of Chinese language and politics criticized his interpretations heavily. A decent review of the events is here: https://www.semafor.com/article/10/31/2022/pro-publica-scrambles-to-ch…
This review is also very helpful for understanding the specific mistakes, and perhaps even bad faith misrepresentations, that their source made: https://fallows.substack.com/p/on-that-propublica-chinese-lab-leak
In one particularly disturbing case, their translator stopped midway through a sentence, omitting the remaining half of the sentence which completely changes the interpretation.
hackernewds · 2023-04-16
Here is a similar deep dive into such an incident.
https://fallows.substack.com/p/as-bad-as-it-gets-without-body-bags
These happen pretty often, and go unreported. So there's not much benefit in people finding out, on the downside there's bad PR.