Cumulus From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2006, 1390 posts, RR: 2 Posted (1 year 4 months 6 days 18 hours ago) and read 1671 times:
I thought this is fascinating, but who or what ultimately to blame? There are so many factors.
i.) Pitot blocked by possibility of a Wasp nest when aircraft parked for 25 days and no Pitot cover put on, hence false data being fed to ASI and subsequently the Autopilot and EFIS.
ii.) Failure by Captian to abort T/O at 80kts when seeing his ASI not working, but in his defence it was a wet runway and a high speed abort in the wet not encouraged.
iii.) When the Captain throttled back, the ADI clearly indicates "nose high",the F/O picks up on this straight away so why didn't Captain do something about it when bought to his attention? Also why didn't the F/O push his Control Coloumn forward?
So many factors on this one and I can't make my mind up!
What Goes Up Must Come Down, Hopefully In One Piece!
Kaitak From Ireland, joined Aug 1999, 8615 posts, RR: 28 Reply 1, posted (1 year 4 months 6 days 18 hours ago) and read 1667 times:
I seem to recall the book being thrown at Birgenair over this accident; clearly pilot error, but the real question was, did poor training or procedures by Birgenair contribute to it?
"What are we going to do tonight, Brain?" "Same thing we do every night, Pinky. Try to take over the world".
MD11Engineer From Germany, joined Oct 2003, 10402 posts, RR: 66 Reply 2, posted (1 year 4 months 6 days 16 hours ago) and read 1618 times:
Quoting Cumulus (Thread starter): I thought this is fascinating, but who or what ultimately to blame? There are so many factors.
i.) Pitot blocked by possibility of a Wasp nest when aircraft parked for 25 days and no Pitot cover put on, hence false data being fed to ASI and subsequently the Autopilot and EFIS.
ii.) Failure by Captian to abort T/O at 80kts when seeing his ASI not working, but in his defence it was a wet runway and a high speed abort in the wet not encouraged.
iii.) When the Captain throttled back, the ADI clearly indicates "nose high",the F/O picks up on this straight away so why didn't Captain do something about it when bought to his attention? Also why didn't the F/O push his Control Coloumn forward?
So many factors on this one and I can't make my mind up!
I just finisheda EASA Part 66 B1 course on the 757 (though I worked on them for many years before under my FAA A&P licence). We discussed this (totally avoidable) accident and a very similar accdent with an Aeroperu 757 the same year (in fact we listened to the CVR tape of this accident).
First, there was the maintenance issue of leaving the pitot probes unprotected for 25 days. The American airline I was working for on 757s had the policy that if the plane was on ground for more than 12 hrs, pitot covers would have to be installed. In fact, the 757 pitot tubes were already known to attract insects. We had a company policy to remove and bag any pitot tube we suspect insects insideand to sent them to the company HQ, so that they could have an insect specialist have a look at them to identify the species. The goal was a redesign which was less attractive to insects.
Secondy, there were extremely poor crew relations and management procedures in place.
Culturally there is a lot of deference in Turkish culture to elder people and people of higher status. The F/O didn't dare to push his opinion on the captain and was not willing to question the captain's descisions, even though he knew that they were wrong. The captain is always right, like in European or American airlines of the 1950s. The F/O has to move the flap lever and shut up (It was found on the CVR tapes that the F/O adressed the captain as "Effendi", which AFAIK is very much more respectfull than "Sir", unlike the airlines I worked for, where the crew usually adress each other by first names).
But it has been seen before (e.g. with acrash near Zurich), where a captain decreed that his (defective) instrument (in this case an altimeter) was correct, just because it was the captain's, even though both the F/O's and the standby instruments were showing the same, but different from the captain's, values.
Then there must have existed a lack of basic flying skills in the captain (flying by the seat of the pants), experience should tell that to reach a certain airspeed, the plane has to be in a certain attitude, with certain power settings.
Almost the same applied to the Aeroperu accident the same year.
In this case the regular plane, which was supposeed to fly from Lima to Santiage de Chile, a 727, went AOG. The maintenance manager, pulled a 757 out of the hangar, which just had finished a paint job. The painters were lacking proper orange masking tape to cover the static ports and used speed tape instead (aluminium tape), without making a techlog entry (In all companies I have worked for, covering the static ports requiresa techlog entryand a duplicate inspection for removal) . The painters and mechanics were under pressure by the manager to get the job finished fast to minimize the delay for the flight, so they didn't clean up properly and nobody did a last walk-around.
Operations had to get a standby crew from home. The captain was a management pilot, who wanted to take the flight, so that he would get his minimum flying hours together to keep his licence (and flight pay).
They arrived late at the airport, and from what I have heard the captain sent the F/O straight up to prepare the cockpit while he did a "run-around", not a proper pre-flight inspection. It is also quite possible that he didn't do an outside check at all, and went straight up to the cockpit (the F/O asked him if he did the walk-around and the captain grumbled something like "yes"). Nobody noticed that the static ports were still covered.
On take off he 80 kts crosscheck was ok (all static sytems were on ground pressure), but on climb the speed indication went over the top. The aural overspeed warning went on (on the 757 an annoying beeb beeb beeb, it cannot be silenced), which makes it hard to think properly.
For the next 15 minutes the captain keeps cursing f%king maintenance and tries to silence the warning. Both pilots had their heads down, looking at the instruments, trying to figure out what was wrong. They ask ATC to tell them how high they are, but the mode C signal ATC receives from the plane is depending on the air data computers.
Finallyyou can hear a first class passenger shout that theyare all going to die (he apparently looked out of the window and saw the water right beneath them).
A second later there is a crash, followed by a pilot shouting "pull up" and "there is water", apparently just now looking up. out of the window.
They pulled up, but didn't know that this first impact had damaged one wing. The last words are "We are upside down!", before the tape stops.
BTW, concering the Birgen Air accident, the plane was supposed to fly to SXF. When the newsabout the accident came out, the airport company in SXF had security intercept all the relatives of the victims and escort them to the VIP building inside the airport security zone, to keep them away from reporters and paparazzi.
One of our apprentices, on hisway home adffter work, just coming out of the airport gate, was stopped by a reporter from the unsavoury tabloid "Bild" (similar to the Sun in the UK). The reporter tried to bribe the apprentice with 100 Deutschmarks (a lot of money for a young apprentice back then) to take a camera inside to take pictures of the bereaved relatives. The apprentice told the reporter to f%ck off and reported the incident to his boss.
Cumulus From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2006, 1390 posts, RR: 2 Reply 3, posted (1 year 4 months 6 days 10 hours ago) and read 1428 times:
Quoting MD11Engineer (Reply 2): Secondy, there were extremely poor crew relations and management procedures in place.
Culturally there is a lot of deference in Turkish culture to elder people and people of higher status. The F/O didn't dare to push his opinion on the captain and was not willing to question the captain's descisions, even though he knew that they were wrong. The captain is always right, like in European or American airlines of the 1950s. The F/O has to move the flap lever and shut up (It was found on the CVR tapes that the F/O adressed the captain as "Effendi", which AFAIK is very much more respectfull than "Sir", unlike the airlines I worked for, where the crew usually adress each other by first names).
There was a crash with a private jet at my local airport (SOU) where it was being flown by one of the company pilots in the right hand seat and the owner of the company in the left. The owner of the company decided to fly the ILS for 20 as vis was poor, but a heavy tailwind. The Pilot did suggest they shot a VOR/DME for 02, but was "ruled out", hence the thing skidded off the end of the runway.
Tricky one!!!
What Goes Up Must Come Down, Hopefully In One Piece!
Sponsor Message: 
From United Kingdom, joined Aug 2006, 1390 posts, 
From Ireland, joined Aug 1999, 8615 posts, 
From Germany, joined Oct 2003, 10402 posts, 
Printer friendly format 
