'Dozens dead' in Russian plane crash

reply to post by Phoenix


The same condition has led to at least half a dozen crashes in recent years, as well as a number of near accidents. It has nothing to do with a "sane" crew or not. You can't climb out and retry, because you're listening to your brain, which is telling you that you have to get the nose down, instead of looking at your instruments, which would tell you that you were in a nose down position.

Just a few of the accidents caused by this:

China Airlines A300-600, Nagoya Japan: 264 dead
Gulf Air A320, Bahrain: 143 dead
Airmavia A320, Sochi Russia: 113 dead
Afriqiyah A330, Tripoli Libya: 103 dead

That's just four accidents caused by this from 1994 onward. There were more before these, and there will be more after this one.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Having had some flight training and ground school taught by Air force Vietnam veterans in light aircraft its difficult for me to believe commercial pilots would be so "amateur"

My AF trainers were "hard asses" and quite insistent on procedure - got to give-em credit.

reply to post by Phoenix


It happens to fighter pilots with thousands of hours. I'm not sure if it's still in effect, but when fighters were on ferry flights they had to be on the ground at their destination before local sunset because this could happen to them just as easily as it can happen to that new pilot in a Cessna. It doesn't care if you're brand new, or if you've been flying 50 years, and have 25,000 hours in type.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Trouble is, pilots rely too much on using auto pilot studies show they are not flying the planes themselves as much as they used to do these days.

reply to post by scotsdavy1


This flight had the autopilot off, and was flying manual. They didn't trust their instruments, and it led to disaster.

reply to post by Zaphod58


That's what I meant as I knew they had the auto pilot off but both made mistakes they shouldnt have done at that time if you see what I mean.

reply to post by scotsdavy1


Right I got it now. Was half asleep when I typed that.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I thought it was very 'plane' easy to read it

reply to post by scotsdavy1


It is when both eyes function properly and your brain isn't doing pretty good impression of a zombie.

reply to post by Zaphod58


That's what I felt like today driving can't imagine what those pilots were going through when that happened or the passengers. RIP all of them....

reply to post by scotsdavy1


Fortunately as low as they were they barely had time to realize they were dead before they hit.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Very true and at least they never suffered or knew much about it.

reply to post by scotsdavy1


They probably never even knew they were in trouble. The report I read said they were around 750 feet when they pushed over. Assuming no acceleration, 125 knots, which is their speed when they pushed over, is about 210 feet per second. So about 3.5 seconds from pushover to impact.

The last word on the Cockpit Voice Recorder was "circle". They reported being in the wrong position to continue the approach, and acknowledged the tower controllers command to go around.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Not really heard much since the crash, been a bit quiet on that front lately....

reply to post by scotsdavy1


It'll quiet down until a preliminary report is released at least. Once the investigation hits full swing, things tend to go quiet for awhile.

reply to post by Zaphod58


Love watching those shows that explain exactly how some planes have crashed. Right down to the last detail. Even a loose bolt has crashed a plane for example...

The Captain had 2,500 hours in type and was qualified for Cat I approaches, the First Officer was approaching 2,000 hours and was qualified for Cat II approaches.

The aircraft was 2.5 miles off runway laterally when they started the approach (instrument approach). They attempted to correct but were "significantly off", and didn't intercept the localizer until just under 1.5 miles out. They made a turn to line up with the centerline, but were still 1,000 feet which was well above glideslope. They aborted the approach at the middle marker.

They selected 83% power, raised gear and flaps. As they climbed (at 25 degrees), the airspeed bled off, and the aircraft attempted to input nose down trim. Airspeed dropped to 117 kts (135 mph) before the crew pushed forward into the fatal dive.

www.flightglobal.com...

It's believed that both the Captain and First Officer trained at one of the schools that have since been shut down, that were believed to be handing out fake licenses. There are doubts as to whether they trained there or not.

www.washingtonpost.com...