Aviation News, Headlines & Alerts
 
Tag: <span>pilot error</span>

Automated Cockpit Props up Undertrained Pilots

The Asiana investigation continues.

Back in July, the pilot who was insecure about making a visual approach in a 777 crashed at San Francisco International Airport on a visual approach in Asiana Flight 214’s Boeing 777. Specifically, he told NTSB investigators “it was very difficult to perform a visual approach with a heavy airplane.” The glideslope was not working at the San Francisco airport, and that was an instrument the (*undertrained) pilot was relying on. The plane came in so low the tail struck the seawall and broke off. The video below shows the plane rotate 360 degrees and catch fire by the runway.

New Asiana Crash Video

Video with news commentary

Before impact, the relief pilot in the jump seat repeated several times “sink rate” trying to warn the pilots at the controls that the jet was too quickly losing altitude. One of the pilots said “It’s low.” Then there was a stick shaker alert (which occurs when the plane is about to stall from flying too slowly. I once had a pilot do a presentation that included the disturbing grinding of the stick shaker alarm as it violently vibrated the control yoke. It’s an alarming direction to the pilots to increase thrust.)

When the stick shaker went off, the instructor called for a go around. It went off four seconds before impact. It was too late.

Both the instructor and the captain were relying on the auto throttle, and both were unaware it was off.

In George’s Point of View

I do not know how anyone can watch the surveillance video of the Asiana crash and not marvel that of the three hundred and seven people aboard the plane, there were only three deaths.

I’m not discounting the wounds of the injured, nor those three deaths, nor the tragedy of one of the teen victims being run over by an airport crash tender. (That’s a whole tragedy by itself—who knows if she might have survived but for being so obscured by foam that she was not visible to crash responders—through the firemen who carried her out surely must have known she was there.)

A dozen critically injured, a hundred-sixty-nine injured, but only three deaths.

It’s nothing short of a miracle. Especially on inspecting the condition of the burned out shell of the hull. Especially on reviewing the just-released surveillance video that shows the plane splintering after impacting the firewall, cartwheeling like a crippled gymnast down the runway and dissolving into a cloud of dust and flame. No jet fuel fire here——leaking oil ignited as it poured on to a hot engine.

The Kazan crash (Tatarstan Airlines Flight 363) from November 17th is fresh in my mind. Everyone aboard–fifty people (forty-four passengers and six crew) all died. The plane just fell from the sky while landing at an impossible 75-degree-nose-down attitude, piloted by a pilot whose license is apparently fake. Everyone in that crash died. (Tatarstan surveillance below.)

Of course one can see the physics—that everyone on the Tatarstan flight received the full direct impact, versus how the rolling of the Asiana plane dispersed some of the impact energy. Still, there is tremendous force in a crash.

I know I should be talking about pilot training, because this is yet another crash that appears to be due to pilots becoming too dependent on technology. But I will focus on that another day. Right now, I am overwhelmed after looking at the crash tape.

Asiana—Cartwheeling Catastrophe
I am surprised that I have neither heard or seen choruses of amazement that all but three people survived the rolling catastrophe in San Francisco. Some credit should perhaps go to the rescue crew, quick actions of the cabin crew, performance of the emergency slides, and maybe even the aerodynamics of the 777 whose seats are required to withstand 16g of dynamic force.

Sure, there was error involved in this crash, but when you look at the survival rate, some credit is due to the 5.5 billion Boeing put into research, development and safety of the 777.


Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/airflight/www/www/wp-content/themes/fluida/includes/loop.php on line 270

Spanair JK5022: Final Report

Update
What: Spanair Flight JK5022, a 15-year-old MD-82 jet en route to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands.
Where: Madrid airport Terminal Four
When: Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008 2:45pm
Who: Carrying 166 passengers and nine crew, at the time of this writing, the number of fatalities had mounted to 154 people.
Why: The jet swerved off the runway and caught fire during takeoff.

The final report of Spanair Flight JK5022 was released, it claims that the pilots failed to deploy the flaps for takeoff. The report blames the crash on “pilot error.” The automated voice warning to alert the crew did not sound.

Already more than one hour late, the flight experienced a technical issue with the plane (a sensor reporting excessive temperature in an air intake, and the temperature sensor was de-activated on the ground) that forced the first takeoff attempt to be aborted when there were failure signals taxiing away from the terminal. The aircraft was inspected and then tried to take-off for the second time, which ended in the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board said that “that the probable cause of the accident was the flightcrew’s failure to use the taxi checklist to ensure the flaps and slats were extended for takeoff. Contributing to the accident was the absence of electrical power to the airplane takeoff warning system which thus did not warn the flightcrew that the airplane was not configured properly for takeoff. The reason for the absence of electrical power could not be determined.

A similar disaster occurred in the Northwest Flight 255 in Detroit in 1987 when 154 people also died in an MD-82 due to incorrect flap settings.

As a consequence, Spanair and McDonnell Douglas now require a TOWS* system check prior to every flight.

The Interim Report is available here.

Final report (Spanish).PDF

*The Take Off Warning System is part of CAWS. TOWS provides alert warnings on the following components involved in the configuration of the aircraft for takeoff: Flaps, Slats, Brakes, Auto brake, Auto spoilers, Spoilers and Stabilizer Trim.


Warning: Trying to access array offset on value of type null in /home/airflight/www/www/wp-content/themes/fluida/includes/loop.php on line 270

Pilot Error Down

Blame it on better training.

Blame what? The good news that mishaps due to pilots’ poor decision-making declined 71 percent 1983 and 2002.

Thanks to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for doing the research that says that though the overall rate of airline accidents remained stable during that period, the proportion of mishaps involving overall pilot error has decreased 40 per cent.

The study’s lead author, Susan P. Baker says, “A 40 percent decline in pilot error-related mishaps is very impressive. Pilot error has long been considered the most prominent contributor to aviation crashes. Trends indicate that great progress has been made to improve the decision-making of pilots and coordination between the aircraft’s crew members. However, the improvements have not led to an overall decline in mishaps. The increase in mishaps while aircraft are not moving may require special attention.”

Read more about Baker’s study in Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine.

Content not attributed to or linked to original, is the property of AirFlightDisaster.com; all rights reserved.

Site Credits