A small plane had to make an emergency landing on a private airstrip in Grey Highlands, Ontario, Canada, at around 1:44 P.M. on August 16th.
The plane, en-route to Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, Ontario, from Brampton, Ontario, had to make an emergency landing due to mechanical failure.
The airplane dug into the ground, damaging its nose.
The pilot and his only passenger remained unhurt.
A KLM Airline Boeing 737 had to make an emergency landing at Norwich International Airport, Norfolk, United Kingdom, at about 2:37 p.m. on Tuesday, May 13.
A KLM spokesperson confirmed that the plane en route from Manchester to Amsterdam landed in emergency after fumes were discovered in the cockpit.
Full emergency protocol was deployed at the airport when the plane carrying 114 passengers touched down. All the passengers and crew members were safely evacuated.
The aircraft was taken for examination and repair.
What: Kiunga Aviation Cessna A185E Skywagon en route from Nadzab to Baindoang
Where: Papua New Guinea
When: Dec 30, 2009
Who: 7 aboard, 6 fatalities
Why: It is conjectured that the plane developed engine trouble. (Apparently the engine caught fire.) The pilot radioed a distress call before it went down in a hilly region, scattering the wreckage on the hillside.
The passengers, four adults and two children, were all fatalities. Their burned remains were taken to Angau Memorial Hospital.
Pilot Richard Leahy survived the crash and was evacuated to Australia for medical attention.
Noar Linhas Aéreas Flight 4896 took off from Boa Viagem, Recife, Brazil, on 13 July 2011, issued a mayday shortly after, and after experiencing trouble with one engine, the Let L-410UVP-E20 crashed 1,300 yds from the end of the runway. Two crew and fourteen passengers were killed on the scene.
From the final:
The CVR data indicate a change in the emotional state of the PIC on account of the aircraft adverse condition, to which he had to respond with an operational procedure that was different from the one for a normal flight situation.
The copilot, in turn, in his communications, gives the impression of being highly tense on account of the emergency situation.
This became clear with the delay of the copilot in retracting the landing gear, and in the PIC’s initiative to “feather” the propellers that had already been feathered by the copilot, after an order given by the very PIC.
The evident anxiety identified in the cockpit is reflected in the barriers and filters that influenced the process of communication between the two pilots, sensitively affecting the PIC’s situational awareness.
Moreover, it is a known fact that non-routine situations can cause a rise in one’s level of anxiety, but such alteration of the emotional state may be intensified when one does not have enough knowledge to manage the circumstance, and this interferes in the analysis of the scenario and adoption of appropriate measures.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Ralf Meyermann
What: Lufthansa Airbus A340-300 en route from Frankfurt/Main (Germany) to Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Where: Dubrovnik Croatia
When: Jan 18th 2011
Why: While en route, 2 out of 4 of the Lufthansa engines had to be shut down.
Pilots diverted the plane to Dubrovnik Croatia where they made a safe landing.
Bishop Joseph Point, Deacon Eric Fennis and press chief Wim Peeters were aboard the flight en route from Frankfurt to the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to host the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. Wim Peeters is quoted as saying he saw smoke coming from the engine.
Lufthansa said there was smoke from the galley, but that would not have caused two engines to be shut down.
No injuries were reported. The flight is under investigation.
http://www.katholieknederland.nl/actualiteit/2011/detail_objectID722788_FJaar2011.html
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.)
