A small plane crashed in Turtlecreek Township, Warren County, Ohio, on October 16th.
The plane, carrying two people, went down in a wooded area near the YMCA Camp Kern.
Both occupants of the plane were killed in the crash. They were identified as Eric Hackney, 43, and Jesse Loy, 36. Both of them were from Punta Gorda, Florida.
The cause of crash is being investigated.
NTSB to Hold Investigative Hearing Into August 2013 UPS A300 crash in Birmingham, Ala.
Jan. 30, 2014
WASHINGTON – The National Transportation Safety Board has scheduled an investigative hearing on February 20 into the crash of a UPS Airbus A300-600 on approach to Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport in Birmingham, Ala., on Aug. 14, 2013.
The two flight crew members were killed and the airplane was destroyed when it impacted the ground less than a mile short of Runway 18. The cargo flight had originated from Louisville, Ky. Runway 18 was being used because the main runway at the airport was closed for repairs at the time of the airplane’s arrival.
The one-day hearing will examine:
• Execution of non-precision approaches, including initial and recurrent training, adherence to standard operating procedures, and proficiency
• Human factors issues associated with effective crew coordination and resource management applicable to this accident, including decision-making, communication, fatigue and fitness for duty, as well as monitoring and cross-checking, policies, standard operating procedures, guidance, and training provided to UPS crewmembers.
• Dispatch procedures, including the training, evaluation, roles and responsibilities of UPS dispatchers and the limitations of dispatch-related software.
The investigation is ongoing and this hearing will develop additional facts to support the investigation. The hearing will be held in the NTSB Board Room and Conference Center in Washington, D.C. A detailed agenda and a list of attendees will be forthcoming.
Parties to the hearing will include the Federal Aviation Administration, UPS, Airbus, the Independent Pilots Association and the Transport Workers Union. The accredited representative from the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’aviation civile (BEA) will participate on the technical panels.
The determination of the probable cause of the crash will be released when the investigation is complete. Just prior to the start of the hearing, the public docket will be opened. Included in the docket are photographs, interview transcripts and other documents.
What: Chopper II LLC Aérospatiale AS 350B Astar en route from from Sedona to Scottsdale.
Where: Sedona AZ
When: June 30, 2012
Who: 4 aboard, 4 fatalities
Why: A Aérospatiale AS 350B Astar, N729DP that was reported overdue on Saturday was found by a private pilot at 8:45 a..m. Sunday crashed into the Verde river south of Camp Verde, Arizona. According to FAA reports, “THE 4 PERSONS ON BOARD WERE FATALLY INJURED.”
The wreckage was consistent with a pilot flying at low speed and low altitude.
The remains were found of the pilot, 70-year-old Raymond Perry of Phoenix, 68-year-old passenger Karen Stinn of Cave Creek and 63-year-old Mike Dunaway and 64-year-old Linda Dunaway of Glendale. They were taken to Yavapai County Medical Examiner’s Office. Perry is the CEO of the Arriba Mexican Grill restaurant chain.
A helicopter mechanic reported that it looked as if the chopper nose-dived and the blades from the chopper and the transmission tore through the main cabin where the pilot and passengers were sitting. Wind may have factored in. The helicopter was found in the Verde river.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Robert Matthews
What: United Nations/Georgian Airways Canadair CL-600-2B19 Regional Jet CRJ-100ER en route from Kinshasa-N’Djili Airport (FIH) to Kisangani (FKI) and Entebbe (EBB), Uganda and back.
Where: Kinshasa-N’Djili Airport (FIH) Congo
When: 04 APR 2011 2 pm local time
Who: 29 passengers 3 crew
Why: On the final leg of the flight, the plane crashed in rainy weather. The pilot attempted a landing in heavy rain, and broke in two. There were some who initially survived who were taken to Biamba Marie Mutombo hospital in the town of Masina, which is fifteen minutes from the Kinshasa airport. Twenty UN workers were aboard. The plane ignited on contact.
One person survived the crash according to a UN Farhan Haq spokesman.
* A second source said the plane was a Fokker 834.
As activists chanted anti-government slogans, on April 10, 2012, Poland remembered the crash that wiped out 96 Russians. Memorials were placed in Warsaw at the Presidential Palace and in Smolensk, Russia, where the crash wiped out dozens of top Polish civilian and military leaders.
Investigations concluded the crash was due to bad weather, inadequate crew training and poor guidance from Russian air traffic controllers. Some say that the disaster was not properly investigated and others say it was a deliberate assassination.
The wreckage remains in Smolensk, and according to reports was only recently covered by a tarp to protect it from the elements.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, twin brother of the late president and leader of Poland’s Law and Justice party, boycotted the state ceremonies. He believes the disaster was inadequately investigated and that the state findings were in error.
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.
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.
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.
