Two Clinton Informants Killed In Russian Plane Crash

a reply to: Cauliflower

The backup system input froze too. Both pilots have an indicator, plus the backup, as well as the VSI that can help determine if you're still at flying speed.

In this case they got a differential warning, and the indicator on the captain's side dropped, eventually hitting 0 knots. The backup still read near 335 mph, plus or minus. Then the backup began to drop, eventually dropping below 125 mph. They still could have used other means to determine if it was a real drop or instrument failure, but when at least two of three instruments read drops like that, instinct is to push the nose over.

To calculate the airspeed the way you're describing, requires time. When you're watching airspeed drop on multiple instruments, you're not worried about calculating speed that way, you're worried about staying in the air.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Then, when your airspeed drops, your first instinct isn't "I have a sensor malfunction" it's "oh crap, we're about to stall". That means get your nose down to build up airspeed again.

That is why the pros drive them planes.
That is exactly opposite of what one would expect.

a reply to: howtonhawky

In any emergency, you fly the plane first, troubleshoot and communicate later. You can't fix anything if you're a hole in the ground. Unfortunately, sometimes the attempts to fly the airplane makes it worse and you still end up a hole in the ground.

a reply to: Zaphod58

But people love to do this type of association/conspiracy creation. This particular crash also kills another conspiracy around 9/11 around crash debris. Look at the pictures of this crash and find me any sort of wreckage that is large. This plane had neither the mass/speed at impact of Shanksville.

a reply to: mzinga

And I get that. Hell, I've done it with other accidents. But at some point there has to be some recognition that accidents can simply be accidents.

They actually weren't much slower than Flight 93 at impact. According to the backup indicator they were at 497 moh at impact.

originally posted by: CIAGypsy
Now I am not a pilot.... So maybe a pilot can answer this question to my satisfaction.... But here's what I find odd. Your plane is registering malfunctions as it relates to speed. So you make the decision to shut off the autopilot.... Why the hell would you suddenly nosedive with your sensors malfunctioning and no autopilot? This seems to be an illogical decision to me....

Because you don't want the computer flying if something is feeding it bad information. But mainly anytime something is apparently going wrong, you want your hands on the controls. You push the nose over to regain airspeed. If you nose over to gain airspeed, but you're not gaining as much as expected, then it'd be instinctive to push the nose down even more to try to get enough airspeed. This is where training and experience can make or break you, and it also depends on knowihg /guessing how accurate the information on your instruments is. It is drilled into you to trust your instruments. In clear daylight, there would be visual cues and markers that would allow you to see where the nose is pointed in respect to the horizon. You could puzzle it out much more quickly. "I've got the nose down at 10°, pouring on the thrust, scenery is moving -- there is no way this aircraft is only moving at 233kts". When all those visual cues are gone, and the instruments are giving you bad data, it's a lot more dangerous. Especially with only a little over a mile of vertical space to play with and figure it out.

originally posted by: RadioRobert
a reply to: cosmania

Could be looking at a scenario where along with airspeed indicator they lost reliable VSI, altitude, and attitude indicator, etc, too with the air data sensor(s) iced. Whiteout in the cloud, below it low vis conditions and the sky and ground are all shades of whites and greys. Could become a very bad time quite quickly.
Maybe trying to troubleshoot the problem instead of concentrating on flying the plane by analog instruments first.

^that's from another thread on the same topic. Planes use air sensor data for all sorts of things, not just measuring airspeed. They could have been getting unreliable data about altitude, how fast they were losing altitude, as well as attitude (where the nose is pointed in relation to direction of flight) all while seeing only white and grey out the window. Really easy to get disoriented in a whiteout even when you're getting good data from your instruments.

a reply to: Zaphod58

Agreed Zaph. Good to know the speed was similar. I saw pics of the debris field and first thought was, look at how small all of it is. It virtually blew to itty bitty pieces.

a reply to: mzinga

They ended up between 30 and 35 degrees nose low, in a 25 degree right bank at impact.

As compared to -40° at 563 mph for flight 93, remembering that ke= m*v^2, and there was a lot more energy in the 757.

a reply to: Zaphod58

That makes sense now the on-board windshear detection modes would have been out as well.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: CIAGypsy

Except that it's far from unexplained. They already have the preliminary cause for it, and it was remarkably simple, and surprisingly common.

I know it is hard to belive for some, but these people have to travel too and many fly commercial. Which means when they crash, they die too.

The first articles out I read said it was very rare for a crash like this to happen.

Question...woudnt the pilots feel the plane losing airspeed or hear it? Why didnt they try to increase speed to see if they were still flying? maybe they died or passed out somehow and nosedived since saying mayday was to much trouble.

originally posted by: yuppa
Question...woudnt the pilots feel the plane losing airspeed or hear it? Why didnt they try to increase speed to see if they were still flying? maybe they died or passed out somehow and nosedived since saying mayday was to much trouble.

They'd feel something in the event of a significant acceleration or decel, but you don't feel "speed". They did try to increase speed. That's why they pushed the nose down. Nose down, power on. That's the quickest way to gain speed. And when you're only a mile up and think you're about to fall because you don't have enough speed/lift, you want to gain speed quickly. But if you do that and can't see outside and the speed is coming down on the gauge, you probably give it a little more nose down and see if you can raise the speed to a safe level. Pretty soon you could be in a bad spot before you realize what is happening.

a reply to: RadioRobert

staying level and increasing speed first seems to be smarter.

a reply to: yuppa

Takes a lot more time to do that without unloading the aircraft, and stalling and leaving the envelope of controlled flight can be rather unpleasant, not to mention all those paying passengers in the back.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

It's not common, no. But it's not unheard of either. Air France 447 had issues with their pitot tubes, which played a big role in that crash. Birgenair 301 crashed in 1996, killing 189 people. It's believed that mud dauber wasps got into the pitot tubes on one side and built a nest. The aircraft sat for 20 days, the last two of which had the pitot tubes uncovered.

There have been a number of incidents where the crew was able to maintain control of the aircraft and recover safely.

I'm just saying that it seems awfully coincidental and goes against what I (a non pilot) would think is logical....

Zaph, you're saying a system and all its various back-ups failed.

Plus the pilot turns off autopilot and nosedives at 5000 feet with little to no time to recover from such a maneuver.

Plus we have witnesses who said the plane was on fire and/or falling apart in midair.

Plus you have reports that there were parts from something other than the plane at the crash. Couldn't be determined if they were from a helicopter or a drone because of blizzard like conditions.

And the guy who is involved with the Clintons and uranium deal happens to die before he can testify....

But our best conclusion is that witnesses were wrong and it's just a sensor failure which happens all the time?

Color me skeptical, Captain.... 😊

a reply to: CIAGypsy

What backups? There are three airspeed indicators, of which we know one failed. One is on the captain's side, one on the First Officer's side, and one backup. If you aren't expecting one to fail, you won't react to it as a failed instrument, but as if it's reading right. One report I read made it appear the backup indicator had problems, but it was reading correct at impact.

We have unreliable witness reports, which even if we take them as gospel, which is laughable in a crash investigation, they might very well have had structural failure just before impact, if they over stressed the airframe. Personally, after many years of experience, I'm going with the investigators over eyewitnesses. The debris field confirms that they were largely intact, if not completely intact until at least just before impact.

goes against what I (a non pilot) would think is logical....

Plus the pilot turns off autopilot and nosedives at 5000 feet with little to no time to recover from such a maneuver.

So you have no flying experience, but know that was the wrong thing to do? How does that work? Whether it seems logical to you is utterly irrelevant. It was the correct response to what they thought was an impending stall. They had enough altitude to recover from a normal stall situation, but since his airspeed indicator didn't come back up he delayed until it was too late.

You have unconfirmed reports of something else. There has been no visual evidence, no witness reports of them colliding (funny how you'll take witness reports of them on fire or exploding in mid-air, which are two radically different events but ignore that no one saw another aircraft in the area, or them collide with anything).

Who said they fail "all the time"? I've said repeatedly they're pretty bulletproof. There were a number of incidents over recent years, but comparatively the percentage of failures to aircraft flying is tiny.

Trying to hit an ascending airliner in a snowstorm with a helicopter seems like the least likely path to success if you wanted to being down an airplane. As conspiracies go, that's pretty much a dead end.

a reply to: RadioRobert

And a drone would have to be a big drone. It would have to be military. Which would have been seen or heard in the area by both radar and people around there.