Thai Airways flight TG-349 overran the end of the runway upon landing at Benazir Bhutto International Airport in Islamabad, Pakistan, on December 4th.
The incident happened when the Airbus A330-300 plane was coming from Bangkok, Thailand.
No injuries were reported.
What: Syrian Arab Airlines
Where: Duma east of Damascus
When: Sept 20, 2012
Who: 200 aboard, no injuries
Why: The Syrian military helicopter that crashed near Damascus struck the tail of a Syrian Arab Airlines plane.
200 aboard were uninjured. Pilots managed to land the plane at Damascus.
A release stated that “The control tower at Damascus airport confirmed that the plane landed safely at Damascus airport and all 200 passengers are in good health.”
The Mil helicopter was damaged beyond repair. No one aboard survived.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Alberto U.
What: Sol Linaeas Aereas Saab 340A
Where: 20 km (12.5 mls) N of Prahuaniyeu, RN Argentina
When: May 18, 2011
Who: 3 crew, 19 passengers
Why: Was it wing icing, a failure of the inlet deicing system or pilot error which caused the May crash which killed 22 people? The plane was flown by pilots John Raffo and Adriano Bolatti.
The brother of John Raffo, Víctor Raffo cites his brother’s 2400 flight hours, and denies that the crash was the pilot and copilot’s fault. With that many hours under his belt, John knew how to fly, he knew the area, he knew about icing.
These are the questions which are nagging at experts who disagree over the causes. The investigation is ongoing, but there is disagreement.
The flight stalled and then lost control, and impacted the ground, apparently due to wing icing. Was the pilot’s flight plan at fault? Was there a lack of situational awareness among the crew? It is all speculation now, until facts are turned up the investigation.
The pilot’s decision to descend is also being questioned.
Some say the pilot’s decisions are moot, and that the plane was not in optimal flying condition to begin with, as it had failed two mandatory inspections.
Portions of the transcription of the pilot’s dialogue have been published, but we have not heard the actual audio. Desde la Asociación de Pilotos de Líneas Aéreas, a pilot association, is threatening action because of transcription inaccuracies, mistakes and misinterpretation. We apologize for any errors, as we can only repost the transcription, as we don’t have the audio.
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What: Kananaskis Heli Tours Bell 206B JetRanger II sightseeing tour from Stoney Nakoda Resort and Casino to Bow Valley
Where: Canmore, Alberta
When: March 30, 2012 10:30 a.m.
Who: 1 fatality, 4 survivors
Why: A sightseeing helicopter crashed near Grotto Mountain near Banff National Park, Canmore, killing pilot Matthew Goodine of Prince George, British Columbia. The crash occurred at 10:30 a.m. Canadian Forces Base Trenton heard the emergency beacon at 12:30 and notified the mounties. EMS did not arrive until 2:45 and the pilot died while waiting to be airlifted to a hospital in Calgary. Rescue efforts on the remote back country mountain slope were hampered by high winds and snow, along with the rugged terrain. Rescue personnel rappelled from the chopper, and the two couples from Britain were airlifted in slings to be flown to hospitals.
It began to snow around 10:30 a.m., and that may have been a factor. Weather will delay the investigation as much as a week due to snowy forecasts. There is no black box.
Click to view full size photo at Airliners.net
Contact photographer Erick Stamm
What: Piper PA-23-250 Aztec F en route to Fort Pierce, Florida
Where: Near the Summerville airport, not far from the S.C. coast
When: 21-OCT-2009 6:45 am
Who: 4 on board; 4 fatalities
Why: The plane took off and then made an inexplicable U turn, and crashed in a wooded area near the Summerville airport and burned. Those on board included:
pilot Peter Radding of North Charleston;
passenger James Randolph Hargenradar of Summerville; passenger Edwin Steeble of Summerville
passenger Dallas Carter of Laurel, Del.
Witnesses say the engine didn’t sound right; and that they heard two explosions after the plane impacted the ground.
The individuals on board were en route to attend a ham radio competition in the Bahamas.
Lion Air is compensating the passengers of the plane that crashed in Bali on April 13. The 101 passenger (we don’t know if the 7 crew are included) is handing out $5600 to each passenger.
Lion Air is working with Jasa Raharja, an Indonesian insurance company to cover the medical bills for five injured passengers. The insurance company is paying up to IDR 25 million ($2500) and the airline is covering anything in excess of that.
Unofficial reports state the plane was flying low.
Twenty-five people have yet to receive their compensation.
The alcohol and drug tests of the crew, cockpit voice recorder, and the flight data recorder are still in process. No conclusions have been public on the cause of the accident.
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.
