A REACH Air Medical Services aircraft crashed in Humboldt County, North Coast, California, on July 29th.
The Piper PA31 flying from Crescent City Airport, to Oakland International Airport, California, was mid-air when the crew declared emergency due to smoke in its cockpit, and later it lost connection with radar.
The plane debris was found the next morning.
All 4 people onboard including 3 crew members and one patient were killed.
What: Air France Airbus 380 en route from NY to Paris
Where: JFK, NY
When: April 11, 2011
Who: Air France Airbus passengers; and Comair passengers;
Why: A Delta/Comair Bombardier CRJ-700 (N641CA) which had just flown in from Boston was struck in the tail by the left wing of an Airbus.
There were no injuries, but a lot of inconvenience, plus damage to both planes. (The Comair left horizontal stabilizer and the Airbus wingtip.) The Air France flight was cancelled because of the damage. Both flights were cancelled, although the Air France flight hadn’t gone anywhere. The Air France passengers had to disembark and retrieve their luggage as alternatives for reaching their destination were sorted out.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Icelandair flight FI-352 rejected taking-off at Keflavík International Airport, Iceland, on July 6th.
The Boeing 757-200 en-route to Helsinki, Finland, was about to take-off because of some fault with its anti-ice system.
The plane returned safely to the apron.
No one was injured.
An Air New Zealand pilot collapsed shortly after she landed the Flight NZ175 full of passengers in Perth, Australia, on October 26.
It is suspected that Captain Ann Barbarich, 59, one of the first female pilots to work for Air New Zealand, suffered a brain aneurysm, just minutes after landing the Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. One of the 3 other pilots took controls and taxied the aircraft to the gate.
Captain Barbarich was examined by 2 doctors aboard and was then rushed to the Royal Perth Hospital where she died 2 days later on October 28.
None of the 233 passengers aboard was injured.
According to Air New Zealand chief pilot David Morgan, “Ann was at the controls when the aircraft landed in Perth and the aircraft landed normally…Unfortunately after landing she became seriously ill. Another pilot took over and taxied the aircraft to the gate while the other pilots began to assist Ann. The aircraft was safe and under control at all times…Ann will be sadly missed by everyone at Air New Zealand. We have been actively supporting her family over recent days and will continue to do so. Our thoughts continue to be with them at this difficult time.”
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.
Pictured: A Delta Connection (Chautauqua Airlines) Embraer EMB-145LR (ERJ-145LR) over Baltimore
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Mark Kopczak
What: Delta/Chautauqua Embraer ERJ-145 en route from Boston,MA to Columbus,OH
Where: Boston
When: Jan 2nd 2010
Who: 38 passengers and 4 crew
Why: Right after takeoff, the plane developed smoke in the cabin. Oxygen masks were deployed, and the plane returned to the airport to land on the runway, and taxi to the gate.
SAS Scandinavian Airlines flight SK-596 had to divert and make an emergency landing at Bornholm Airport, Ronne, Denmark, on December 26th.
The Airbus A320-200, flying from Keflavik, Iceland to Copenhagen, Denmark, was mid-air when the crew had to divert due to bad weather followed by a lightning strike.
The plane landed uneventfully. The flight was cancelled.
All passengers were rebooked onto other flights.
