A small plane crashed in Waianae mountains on Oahu Island, Hawaii, on July 28th.
The single-engine plane went down while it was performing a sunset flight from Daniel K. Inouye International Airport.
All four people aboard were killed in the crash. They were identified as Gerrit Evensen, his girlfriend Heather Riley, and their friends Dean Hutton and Alexis Aaron.
The incident is being investigated.
Hawaiian Airlines flight HA-37 made an emergency landing in Oakland, California, on October 22nd.
The Airbus A321-200N plane heading from San Diego, California, to Kahului, Hawaii, was diverted after the crew received indication of an engine issue.
The plane landed safely. All one hundred and seventy-eight passengers and seven crew members remained unharmed.
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.)
In a Fri Feb 12 release, Earthtimes says Lebanon announced 45 bodies had been retrieved and their DNA identified them as passengers of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409. 83 passengers and seven crew (or 82 passengers and 8 crew?) died in the 4 minute flight from Beirut international airport into the Mediterranean. However as we can not confirm that number anywhere, we believe the confirmed dna-identified deaths are of a much smaller number.
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), the French Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la Sécurité de l’Aviation Civile and Boeing are participating in the investigation.
A Bell 206 sightseeing helicopter crashed close to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Sevierville, Tennessee, on the afternoon of April 4th.
The helicopter caught fire right after hitting the ground. Five people lost their lives in the crash.
The FAA and NTSB are investigating the cause of crash.
Cargolux Airlines flight CV-603 had to return and make an emergency landing in Chicago, Illinois, on October 9th.
The Boeing 747-400 plane took off for Dubai, United Arab Emirates, but had to turn back due to an engine problem.
The plane landed safely. Everyone aboard remained unharmed.
What: UPS cargo plane en route from Louisville
Where: Louisville International Airport
When: May 21, 20125:30 p.m.
Who: UPS Crew
Why: At 5:30 p.m. after taking off from Louisville, the pilot told ATC of a fire indication in an engine, and said it must make an emergency landing.
Emergency services were on standby as the pilot made a safe landing. No fire was found.
(Details unconfirmed)
