A Bolivian air force plane crashed in the suburbs of Santa Cruz city in Santa Cruz province of Bolivia on November 28.
Authorities said the plane was on a training flight with an instructor and a trainee pilot aboard.
It appears that the aircraft was attempting an emergency landing due to some mechanical fault when it crashed, just 30 minutes after departing from El Trompillo airfield.
Both people aboard the plane were killed in the crash.
The accident is under investigation.
What: Beechcraft B60 Duke
Where: Sedona Airport
When: July 26, 2012
Who: 3 aboard, 3 fatalities
Why: On takeoff, the Beechcraft failed to achieve adequate lift and crashed southwest of the airport. The husband and son of U.S. Olympic distance runner Pat Porter were aboard when the plane crashed. The third fatality was a 14 year old friend and classmate of the son.
The plane went straight past the end of the runway, crashed and sent up a black mushroom cloud on impact just before 9 a.m. At the end of the runway is a ravine (shown in the second video below) where the beechcraft impacted.
Witnesses say the plane’s engines appeared to be running normally. The cause of the crash was unclear.
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What: MAULE MX-7 registration 1052U
Where: AKRON, AL
When: 01/18/2009
Who: information not released
Why: On landing, the plane struck a windsock pole.
What: C172 Skyhawk XP
Where: MARCO ISLAND FL
When: 12/17/2008
Who: Pilot was the only one aboard.
Why: THE ONE PERSON ON BOARD WAS FATALLY INJURED, WRECKAGE LOCATED 10 MILES OFF THE COAST NEAR MARCO ISLAND, FL
A vintage Spitfire plane made a crash-landing in a field in Woodchurch, Kent, England, on the morning of September 7.
The plane crashed when the 68-year-old pilot, identified as Rob Davies MBE, was trying to make an emergency landing due to engine failure.
The plane sustained significant damage.
The pilot remained safe and walked away after the crash.
A Robinson R66 #N646AG en route from Lehighton PA to Endecott NY with five aboard was en route when it disappeared from radar during conditions of severe thunderstorms and heavy fog. The last communication to ATC was a report around 10 pm Saturday that he was “losing altitude and would try to return to a nearby airfield.”
The fragmented wreckage was located at 1:50 p.m. in a heavily wooded area. There was no fire, and no witness.
Emergency response vehicles and personnel traveled an access road on the Mehoopany Wind Farm, a BP Wind Energy location, to the top of South Mountain. The unofficial guess at the cause of the crash is that the helicopter was caught in a thunderstorm.
Flight Manifest:
58-year-old Bernard Michael Kelly, of Ellicott City, Md.;
daughter, Leanna Mee Kelly, of Savage, Md.;
29-year-old Carl Robert Woodland, of Lovettsville, Va.;
3-year-old son, Noah Robert McKain Woodland, of Leesburg, Va.;
pilot 30-year-old David Ernest Jenny Jr., of Towson, Md.
* N646AG ROBINSON R66 ROTORCRAFT CRASHED INTO A WOODED RUGGED TERRAIN, THE 5 PERSONS ON BOARD WERE FATALLY INJURED, 8 MILES FROM SKYHAVEN AIRPORT, TUNKHANNOCK, PA
So there you have it: the short version of the investigation’s reading of the Cockpit Voice recorder.
If you missed it, we have posted it here in this blog in it’s entirety:
https://airflightdisaster.com/?p=17147
If you don’t like the visual rendition, you can click at the bottom for the .pdf.
The problems seem to begin at 2 h 08 min 07; then at 2 h 10 min 05 autopilot & auto thrust disengages. The pilots note that the speeds do not agree,( which means the speeds are incorrect, and it is an indication that pitot tubes are malfunctioning. Around this time, ACARS sent a PITOT error message, which was not mentioned in the CVR summary.) The PIC (captain) re-enters at 2 h 11 min 40 and it is all downhill from there.
As far as we can tell, everything in the cockpit voice recorder still indicates that the main cause for this crash is Thales defective pitot tubes which froze over and sent incorrect data back. How could anyone make correct decisions without knowing the speed at which the plane was traveling? How would the pilots have discerned when the incoming data was faulty and which of it—if any—was correct?
Based on the pilots’ response to the stall, we can also reiterate points made at the February 24 hearing, where Justice Zimmerman pointed out a lack of training for pilots on how to respond to a catastrophic failure. Shouldn’t pilots (and not just the PIC) be trained in this procedure to the point that the correct corrective response is second nature? The time to try to figure out how to respond is not during the catastrophe, with 228 lives hanging in the balance.
There does not appear to be an emergency procedure from the manufacturer. (This was also noted in the February hearing by Justice Zimmerman.)
It appears that the plane stalled, and that could not be corrected in time to prevent the catastrophe.
So now, all eyes will turn to the DVR, which will hopefully help decode what happened mechanically in the stall.
And I do have questions about the notation, which seems to imply that even if autopilot is not online, some (background?) processes continue to be determined by digital input, which may be faulty.
When the measured speeds are below 60 kt, the measured angle of attack values are considered invalid and are not taken into account by the systems. When they are below 30 kt, the speed values themselves are considered invalid. (Or I am misreading the data and the fact of unrecoverability is due to other system factors. It does appear that the Flight Control System is unwieldy or badly conceived.)
It seems to me as a layman, that this is a fly-by-wire conundrum. If the plane is in crisis, but it is logically disregarding the correct input when it is beyond a “safe or logical” range, then how can it be corrected, if there are no manual controls? (Not to mention no emergency procedures to fall back on.)
