Boeing 767 crash near Houston, TX

[4WD]

Originally Posted by CT8
freight dogs!!!


Well ... not all of them. I took quite a few long haul passenger flights with Atlas .... very senior pilots who would walk through customs with his crew and us ... Never any doubt who the Captain was ... all pro from what I saw

 

[Astro14]

NTSB report is out. Another perfectly good airplane flown into the ground.

Short version - an incompetent pilot with a history of training failures was hired without Atlas discovering these failures. He panics when the power comes up, shoves the nose down and kills everyone on board.

 

[edyvw]

NTSB report is out. Another perfectly good airplane flown into the ground.

Short version - an incompetent pilot with a history of training failures was hired without Atlas discovering these failures. He panics when the power comes up, shoves the nose down and kills everyone on board.

Didn't C5 crash in Maryland bcs. training failures, "give boy" another chance etc.?

 

[Astro14]

Aviation is replete with examples of pilots who were allowed to keep flying despite demonstrating a lack of ability.

 

[Cujet]

Aviation is replete with examples of pilots who were allowed to keep flying despite demonstrating a lack of ability.

Incredibly true. This guy was a problem for years and nobody had the guts to do the right thing.

 

[edyvw]

Aviation is replete with examples of pilots who were allowed to keep flying despite demonstrating a lack of ability.

My friend who was commander of Croatian air force academy told kid after taking his wings: listen, it is not that you will kill yourself, it is that I live close to airport. I do not want you to kill my kids, bcs. you eventually will if you keep flying.

 

[maximus]

What was the CA doing?

 

[ragtoplvr]

A lot of people can fly a plane. What separates the pilots from the seat holders is when things go wrong. Only a small percent of people are able to remain calm, logically and quickly process the information and do the proper action. These are not the pilots that are willing to work for a low wage.

Rod

 

[Kestas]

That video tells me the plane stalled.

 

[wwillson]

That video tells me the plane stalled.

No, it didn't stall, the incompetent FO thought the nose had pitched up, so he pushed the nose down, way down. They hit the ground at 450 kias. Pure incompetence.

Somatogravic illusions
The inversion illusion occurs when an abrupt change from climb to straight-and-level flight causes excessive stimulation of the gravity and linear acceleration sensory organs. This combination of accelerations produces an illusion that the aircraft is inverted or tumbling backwards. A common response to this illusion is to lower the nose of the aircraft.

The head-up illusion involves a sudden forward linear acceleration during level flight where the pilot perceives that the nose of the aircraft is pitching up.

The head-down illusion involves a sudden linear deceleration (e.g., air braking, lowering flaps, decreasing engine power) during level flight where the pilot perceives that the nose of the aircraft is pitching down.

 

[Astro14]

That video tells me the plane stalled.

Which video? The 747 freighter stalled, but the crew could do nothing about it, because the MRAP/cargo broke loose, rolled back, and put the CG out of limits, in addition to impacting and binding the elevator controls.

The Atlas 767 most certainly wasn’t stalled. The FO hit the TOGA switch, suffered from a somatogravic illusion of stalling caused by acceleration and shoved the nose down. 250-400 knots. Unloaded. Full thrust. That wing was at very low AOA all the way until terrain impact.

Edit: Ah, I see Wayne has answered with more detail. Concur.

 

[Astro14]

What was the CA doing?

That is the right question to be asking...

But any answer is speculative. There isn’t a yoke force measurement in the black box (FDR). We only know yoke position. Perhaps he was pulling back against a panicked FO, but without enough force to overcome him. The yoke on the 767 will “split” and decouple left/right at about 75 lbs of differential force. This allows either pilot to overcome a jammed flight control on the opposite side.

Read up on Egypt Air 990. Suicidal FO pushed nose down, Captain pulled nose up. Yoke split. Airplane hit the water off Long Island with one set of elevators up, and one set down...

This Captain may have been slow to respond to the FO mistake because of startle response, or perhaps the TOGA thrust caused the same illusion in him and he perceived that the FO was doing the right thing. We will never know, unfortunately.

 

[Kestas]

Which video?

My mistake. I was commenting on the video of the National Air Cargo Boeing 747-400 crash in billt460's video.

 

[CincyDavid]

So, let me ask a question. Let's say you're a commercial pilot, assigned to fly with someone who is inept...do you have any recourse to say "thanks but no thanks, this guy/gal scares me"? Or are you stuck flying with that individual and hoping nothing goes awry.

 

[maximus]

Technically a company can’t make you do anything, so you can refuse. You might have to answer for it later. From a cultural standpoint, pilots generally don’t “throw eachother under the bus.” A captain is expected to provide some degree of tutelage and a good captain will, within reason. The problem is when irregularities occur. Incompetence often isn’t realized till something goes wrong.

The FO in this case was probably performing to standards up until the accident. It may have also been their first leg(flight) together and they didn’t know each other.

Typically, pilots get their schedules weeks in advance and they can swap out of a particular trip if they get paired with a problem child.

 

[JHZR2]

NTSB report is out. Another perfectly good airplane flown into the ground.

Short version - an incompetent pilot with a history of training failures was hired without Atlas discovering these failures. He panics when the power comes up, shoves the nose down and kills everyone on board.

Can you explain what it means by “when the power comes up”?

I see the comments below about sensory “illusions”, and can more or less grasp the concept of that. But is the power coming up due to an overreaction due to same, or something else?

 

[Astro14]

Power coming up = increased engine thrust.

In the case of the 767, activation of the TOGA switches commands flight directors and autothrottles to Go Around mode. The flight director maintains current ground track (not heading), pitches to maintain the speed at which they’re activated up to +15 knots, and commands engine thrust to yield 2,000 FPM climb.

If, as was the case here, the airplane does not climb at 2,000 FPM, engine thrust will increase to maximum rated thrust.

So, FO bumps TOGA switch while retracting speedbrakes. Airplane accelerates. He feels like nose is pitching up (it isn’t, Google Somatogravic illusion), so he pushes down. Auto flight system doesn’t see expected 2,000 FPM climb rate, so engine power goes to rated maximum thrust, which increases the linear acceleration and increases the illusion.

 

[wpod]

I hate plane crashes for some reason.

 

[Astro14]

I hate plane crashes for some reason.

Me too...so, I try to avoid them...

 

[wpod]

Me too...so, I try to avoid them...

I can understand why ! The lost lives are sad but there is the business aspect. To get and keep the planes in the air Planes provides more jobs to well trained and highly skilled people than I can imagine.