UPS cargo plane crashes near Alabama airport

reply to post by dowot


There have been reports for at least a year that RyanAir flights have been shorted on fuel to try to save money, leading to several emergency landings by their flights for fuel emergencies.

looking on Pprune, found this link.

www.rtl.be...

Looks like it might have been downed well short of the runway?

www.wsbtv.com...

On Pprune they are wondering why it was using "RW 18. Wonder why they went for that one,as they park at the SW corner of the field."

reply to post by dowot


It's not really well short of from what I've heard. It's about half a mile going from reports.

From the looks of it, 18 was on a pretty much direct heading from Louisville. It's 288 nm from Louisville to Birmingham, on a heading of 191, so using 18, which has a heading of 180 magnetic was easiest.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Sorry Zap, means bugger all to me, I just repeated what I saw on the other site. Seems the pros know not a lot more than me! haha. But I thank you for trying to educate me.

I think that it was something to do with the nearest runway to the unloading place?

Is not 1 mile short, (Sure I saw that distance reported somewhere) or even 1/2 mile, rather a long way short? Looking at some of those photos, looks like it clipped a small hill. I only say this as it might confirm, low on fuel, and that seems a very bad way to organise a flight. I am rather against pilots having to be a miserly with fuel, just to save a few pennies for the bosses/shareholders. (I am not knocking pilots, I would expect them to be as against running out of fuel as the rest of us, with the exception of a few bosses.)

Have you seen a picture which shows the front portion, seems reasonably intact, any views as to why the crew died?

reply to post by dowot


The reports all say 1/2 mile.

If you look at the runway number, that number is the compass heading of the runway. So runway 18, faces 180 degrees, or due south. To get to Birmingham from Louisville, it's a heading of 191, so slightly west of south. So if they use runway 18 to land on, it's only an 11 degree heading change (if they're flying a direct heading). The other runway is 6/24, which faces 060 degrees, with the opposing runway heading 240 degrees, which is an almost 70 degree heading change, if they're flying a direct route. Runway 18 was the easier runway for them to get in on. Yeah, it's a longer taxi, but a more direct runway, with less flying around to line up with it, so they saved fuel in flight.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Zap...Birmingham to me is a big city some way north of London!

Ok. Thanks, a really clear explanation. Even I can understand and it makes good sense.

I am not too sure if I can post this, as it is from another site and has no authentication.

"Moments before Flight 1354 crashed into a hillside less than a quarter mile away, it clipped two trees in Cornelius and Barbara Benson's yard. Splinters of pine tree tops and scraps of aluminum scattered across the yard.

The Benson's home at the intersection of Tarrant Huffman Road and Treadwell Road is the last house a plane passes over before it reaches the airport....

On Wednesday morning, a piece of the UPS cargo plane about the size of a dinner plate sat leaning against a patio chair on the back porch.

Barbara Benson said the sound of the crash woke her from a dead sleep. She saw a bright red flash through the windows

"I thought at first it was the End Time," she said.

About 50 feet past the Bensons' home, the Airbus 300 struck power lines on Treadwell Road and knocked out power for several blocks....

Judging from the broken treetops in the Bensons' yard, the plane had flown 20 feet or less above their home, which sits across the street from where the airport's property starts."

1/2 mile it is then. Is this another one of these step, fast descents do you think?

reply to post by dowot


That pretty neatly corresponds to reports that I've read saying that 70+ people lost power for a few hours after the crash.

They said that Flightaware showed a 9,000 foot drop in the last two minutes of flight. That would be about a 4500 foot per minute descent rate. That's high, but not extremely high (I've heard pilots say they average about 2-3000 fpm on descent depending on the area).

Something happened during the descent, but I'm surprised they didn't get a radio call off (at least that I've heard reports of).

reply to post by Zaphod58


I have to thank you Zap, Just looked it all up on Google maps and it all makes sense. Seems never too old to learn something new.

It was such a short distance flight. Many years ago, I watched as a restored US WW2 bomber did its stuff at the Biggin Hill Air show, saw the pilot and crew in the cockpit as it flew low down the runway, only for it to crash moments later. Rather took the edge off of the display. Flying is very unforgiving when things go tits up.

Hope some good comes from this crash.

Greetings, UnknownEntity

The Aviation Herald Website
Link --->> The Aviation Herald website

and the Air Disaster .Com website
Link --->> The Air Disaster Website

provide far more detail than is provided by the mainstream media.

Originally posted by Adonsa
Greetings, UnknownEntity

The Aviation Herald Website
Link --->> The Aviation Herald website

and the Air Disaster .Com website
Link --->> The Air Disaster Website

provide far more detail than is provided by the mainstream media.

Good link, It looks like the plane lifted up way up at the final stage, and perhaps belly flopped. Maybe any cargo shifted when it lifted up. If the crew were found outside of the plane maybe they were ejected by the force.

reply to post by smurfy


I'll have to look at those later, but the pics I've seen so far show the forward body intact and unburned. There's a lot of damage under the cockpit and to the nose as well as what appears to be a break just forward of the left front passenger door. The entire forward body almost to the leading edge of the wing appears intact, other than that damage.

Sad day for Brown, condolences to the pilots family.
The photo's are a real smoking gun, there is a hill there obviously.
Looks like some of those packages can still be delivered.

These crash reports don't exactly inspire interest in flying obviously.
Based on the initial reports I can't see how a haz mat issue could get to the engines.
Southern states have a lot more bird activity so I would be more likely to blame a large dense flock of snowy
egrets.
That would be consistent with the pilots steep descent if he knew there was bird activity in the area.
Probably didn't bother to call the tower after the bird strike knowing they would figure it out..

I'd probably rather crash than land in Alabama too. Good on them!

reply to post by Zaphod58


Zaphod, I know you are a bit of a whizz with these sorts of thing, so I would like to pick your brain a bit on one matter which concerns me greatly.

What I want to know is, wouldnt the pilot and co-pilot ordinarily be strapped into thier seats during a risky landing ?

Also, having looked at some of the pictures, it seems that there is pretty savage damage to the underside of the nose of the plane. Is it possible that this damage provided the route for the two pilots bodies to exit the aircraft before it came to rest? It seems pretty clear that they were not thrown through the window (as you would expect in a car crash when occupants are not belted in), and it seems unlikely that they could have been thrown out the cockpit door, and then thrown left, out of the passenger door, if they were actually buckled securely into thier seats.

Your thoughts on this specific point?

reply to post by TrueBrit


Pilots are strapped in for every landing regardless of how risky it is.

I was actually wondering about that myself, because my first view view of the pics was on my phone so I couldn't see a lot of damage to the forward body. The only two ways they could have been thrown clear were backwards through the break behind the cockpit, or down through the floor.

It looks like the tail section hit, and broke the nose off.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Am I right in assuming that under ordinary circumstances the cockpit would be isolated from the rest of the plane, by way of a wall with a door in it? The only reason I ask, is that from the looks of the wreckage, such a wall was probably still intact to a degree when the remains of the aircraft came to rest.

If that is the case, it seems more likely to me, that they went through the deck, otherwise they would have had to have passed directly through the wall behind thier seats, and as I say, it doesnt look as though the sundering of the airframe happened close enough to the cockpit to have destroyed that wall.

However, if they DID go out through the hole in the floor, then that means that the nose section must have been holed prior to landing in its present location, and that the nose may have tumbled rather than skidded to a stop, throwing the two deceased out through the floor at the top of a rotation. Must have been some hell of a lot of G being thrown about, to shake them out of thier restraints.

Mind you, perhaps the report just fails to mention the precise circumstances in which the two pilots were found. Perhaps they were still in thier seats, except that the seats were outside the aircraft.

P.S. I must be some kind of terrible human being. I am aware that two men are dead, and I am fully aware of how awful that news is. But now its happened, I just find the whole thing a bit fascinating. The physical actions involved in this sort of destruction have always interested me, how an object can go from one direction of travel, to a completely other direction, or several others (as in this case), the way airspeed and angle of approach can result in different kinds of mess at the ground level. Im horrible arent I?

reply to post by TrueBrit


Join the club. I've been fascinated by stuff like this since I could remember. I used to have books dedicated to nothing but aircraft accidents. It's incredibly fascinating to try to figure out why, then once you do it a few times, to try to figure out why and be right, before the NTSB says why (or whoever is investigating).

As for the cockpit, yes, there's a bulkhead at the back of it with a door in it for crew use. The most likely scenario is that the seats came out with them strapped in still. I would say judging from the damage that the nose hit, then the back of the forward body (the part just ahead of the wing), then it bounced up (at least the front part of it), then slid. It doesn't look like tumbling damage to me.

reply to post by Zaphod58


So the aircrew could have been dragged out of the cockpit by the initial impact at the nose end, and left behind when the section just in front of the wing impacted, causing the craft to lift again?

reply to post by TrueBrit


Yeah, if the floor gave on initial impact, it could have set the seats down and just lifted off them, leaving the crew there. The NTSB usually issues a report within ten days, although the final version will take up to two years.

reply to post by Zaphod58


It will be interesting to see what the cause of all this mayhem was at the very least. Roll on the publishing of the initial report I say!

Thanks for being patient with me while I poked my brain into gear by the way Zaphod. It takes a while to get up to speed