This page has been archived and commenting is disabled.
Video Of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 Crash Released
Still confused how Asiana Airlines Flight 214 crashed yesterday, leading to the first fatalities associated with a Boeing 777 airplane? The following just released video from CNN should answer all lingering questions, and also explain why all airport landing systems should always be turned on (especially to assist those who apparently are clueless when it comes to operating without computer assistance, such as 9 out of 10 modern equity "traders").
And inside:
»
- 67977 reads
- Printer-friendly version
- Send to friend
- advertisements -
As a commercial pilot with over 10,000 hours, if you can't land a plane visually when its 10 miles and clear.....well what can I say. As for the ILS being out....I know the plane I fly and I'm sure the 777 has it as well, in the FMS (flight management system) one can input the visual approach to a given runway. In a case like this, the localizer was working (horizontal guidance) but the glideslope (vertical guidance) was not. However, with the Visual Appraoch loaded into the FMS one would have a "snowflake", which looks like this *, which shows you where you are realtive to the glidepath to the runway. If the snowflake is above the centerline on your instrument, then you are low, if the snowflake is below the centerline, then you are high.
So although the glideslope was not working there are other ways to fly this approach than just by visual doing it.
This Asiana pilot was low, slow, throttles at idle. A very bad place to be in a heavy 777 or any aircraft for that matter.
The NTSB briefing, which is on as I'm writting this, stated the "stick shaker" went off 1.4 seconds prior to impact, meaning a stall was imminant.
My guess as to the cause.....bad judgement on the part of the pilots which put then too low, too slow, and should have executed a "go-around". As usually is the cause: Pilot Error
Your glide-slope theory is excellent. I think the plane picked up a piece of airborne (FOD) foreign object damage On final approach.
{Seagull/Pelican} ? After 10.5 hours inflight the plane wasn't heavy. (fuel expended)
The left engine was sheared off, which leads me to an { external engine injestion, or icing (thermal exchange) issue.
Sounds 'bout right. Since the engines were likely at approach idle rather than ground idle, plenty sufficient stall margin and performance was likely there to push throttles to TOGA and get out of the situation without issue but we'll find out the reality eventually.
Where's the HD footage from the "HiDef" airport runway cams? Better yet, I'm sure we have some nice satellite footage.
Sometimes those 8 megapixel i-phones are nice to have around. (sometimes)
Ha!
The video reminds me of most of Fwancis Sawyer's posts on ZH.
Unnecessarily low, crash and cartwheel.
So apropos.
Thanks Tyler!
And after all you are the Divine Wind
I feel like I could break Divine Wind.
Broke wind?
So, we have an Asiana pilot who apparently doesn't know how to land a B777 without glidepath assistance. Glidepath technonlogy is not essential for a safe landing, especially at SFO on a clear, fine day.
Several years ago, we had Air France pilots (AF447) who didn't know how to deal with a stall in a A330.
In both cases lives were lost.
Airlines, like banks, are very quick to take our money but less quick to guarantee safety of what we entrust to them.
Ban them.
...if it saves just one life....
With today's technology the best way to "guarantee safety" is to get rid of the pilots.
Modern airplanes can take off, cruise and land without pilot control.
As we correspond, plans are being made to get rid of co-pilots on freight planes, like those for FedEx and UPS.
The "new copilot" will be called the "eCopilot", some new software.
Once people get "comfortable" with eCopilots, the "ePilot" will be introduced.
The biggest problem is the Unions, they will take advantage of the public's "fear of flying" to keep the incompetent pilots killing passengers.
And what happens when the computer malfunctions? Will the eCopilot look like Otto Pilot in the movie Airplane!?
I'm really looking forward to riding on a drone someday.
If you compare the rate of "computer malfunctions" to the rate of "pilot malfunctions", you'd choose the "ePilot".
Another good reason NOT to fly. Haven't for years:
Like the autopilot they blow up in "Airplane!"?
Sorry, I want well trained humans paying attention.
The problem is pilots relying on auto pilot and auto navigation instead of having to know their shit.
Just enough technology for them to mentally and physically slack-off; bad combination.
"... I want well trained humans paying attention"
Like the Air France pilots that stalled the airplane they were flying from Brazil to France?
It just gets boring in the cockpit and they let the computers do their work.
Meanwhile these overpaid prima donas just whine and complain about how hard of a job they have!
Yeah, poor them, but they at least have their own lives on the line versus an engineer sitting at a desk or an executive checking his bank balance.
I wouldn't want a robot surgeon either.
Fact is, commercial aviation the safest mode of transportation BAR NONE. You drive on our roadways day in and day out and never give it a second thought. And your chances of dying on the road are probably 100 times worse than of dying in a commercial plane crash.
And as far as a totally automated aircraft goes, I'll pass. What happens when the Iranians hack into it and you suddenly find yourself on the tarmac in Tehran??
.... or another country hacks into it and it flies into the side of a skyscraper?
Tell you one thing...next time I fly (and have my nuts tugged by some half wit at security), the second I get through the airplane door, I'm checking the pilot for his Fight Club credentials because it seems the only pilots worth a fuck are here on ZH.
So if the pilot has a black eye, split lip and a pocket full of gold...you're good. Check.
On a serious note, I have enjoyed the inside scoop.
Question to the pros...given the tweets and what is known, what would have been the CORRECT procedure to the clusterfuck that they found themselves in @ 1.4 secs?
Bend over, kiss own ass bye bye?
With time the pilots get dulled about the danger. Letting the computers do their work gets them that way.
Today's flight systems have multiple levels of redundancy that makes it highly unlikely that they will fail.
Also the reliability of the engines has improved to the point of being almost fail safe.
Of course you still have to deal with foreign object damage but we are getting smarter about how to deal with it.
The point is that accidents such as this one should never happen.
That a pilot can't land an airplane is bizarre.
That we should not use today's technology to prevent accidents like this one is absurd.
But I agree with you I would feel very afraid about having a robot operate on my prostate.
The AF A330 wasn't stalled by the pilots. They just didn't know how to deal with a stall.
The pitot tubes froze up after flying thru super-cooled water. This deprived the auto-flight-computers of their most basic piece of data (air speed) used to calculate a lot of other things. The computers then decided that since the air speed was zero (0), the plane must be on the ground and it should shut down. That's what it did, leaving the pilots to wrestle with speed/altitude et al at 35,000 feet. That lead to a stall.
All A330/A340 have been retro-fitted with modified pitot tubes.
Oooh the problems of technology!
I'm very dubious of allowing software to take control of flying altogether. And if - God forbid - Microsoft or Google had anything to do with it, I'd stop flying immediately. Both of these outfits have serious gaps in their competence and skill levels. Plus a big problem understanding simple logical issues.
yep, that's it ... its the unions' fault. Thanks for clearing that up.
Here is a comment from a friend who landed at the airport recently:
My return trip to California took 10 hours and 3 landing attempts with a diversion to San Jose for refueling. The airport had low clouds (although most of the rest of the Bay Area was clear). Apparently they shut down instrument landing systems for weeks. I was thinking, someone is going crash with this off.
Here's the NOTAM to pilots:
!SFO 06/005 SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359
Glide Path (GP) Navigation systems on runway 28L out of service. If pilots for some reason tried to rely on instruments for glide slope on landing, they may have been surprised and unable to correct in time. Not sure why they would do that on a clear today yesterday but maybe after a long trip, they just figured it would be better to let the instruments do the job.
Were they landing on 28L? Also, there would have been other visual glide slope indicators such as a VASI.
Slope indicator was overwhelmed due to an over crowded cockpit. VFR was the only default measure left.
VASI is a VFR system.
VASI: Visual Approach Slope Indicator
VFR: Visual Flight Rules
As a low time, inactive prvt pilot, even I still remember my instructor told me to look at the VASIs. If you green over green, you're on too high a glide slope. If green over red, you're on, but red over red, you're dead (too low). Not rocket science, no high tech gadgetry, just fixed directional lights. Not much more than a basic traffic light.
No shit dumbass. Notice the clear blue sky in the backround? Thats VFR conditions. Just because you are on an IFR flight plan doesn't mean you don't look out the cockpit window and take a look around. If they had, they would have seen a red over red VASI and known they were too low.
.
Ummmm, yes, I was agreeing with you...
This was Bush's fault.
And planes kill people like guns. Ban them, it'll save the lives of babies.
indirectly yes, but the word Sequester is the new Bush
blame it on the Sequester - just wait
They already did...
electronic instrument landing system (or whatever they called it with a whole lotta big words) has been dysfunctional/broke/turned off/fucked up/dead/whatever for months due to... (insert fucking excuse that makes no sense like money shit) ...
seriously...
....that's what they're saying, now.
....so predictable...
....so if it was so fucking predictable, maybe Bo coulda not gone home and saved the money and these people wouldn't be dead, goddammit...
They still have money to pay the airport strip searchers, but no money for something actually useful. That figures.
Thanks for the video, Tyler, from those of us who have thrown out the TVs.
Press conference: 137 Knots called for in descent, but was "significantly lower" on approach.
Bet the pilots relied on the autopilot too much.
At 4 seconds before impact throttle up.
At 1.5 seconds before impact called a "go around" (abort landing, try again).
Too late.
If the autopilot was on.... the auto-throttles would not have let it get slow.....
You mean human engineered, built, and maintained technological wonders never fail?
I seem to remember some batteries bursting into flames on an airplane recently; and some O-Rings and Tiles on a Space Shuttle.
Not too big to fail.
NSA had the video before CNN did...
SATCOM>NSA>(doucheville)><interns> public.
This looks like a big effin' case of pilot error, but to be on the safe side, we'll blame it on Eddie Snowden hacking into the flight control system.
/sarc
Die Hard 2 bitchez
I am happy as far as we know, no undercover ZHer was onboard.
I feel really bad for the passengers and their families.
With almost daily opportunities, why can't AF1 fall into the ocean, with everyone but Chalky getting a parachute.
"We're bailing out, Sir."
"Hey! My chute is full of Foreign Student Aid Forms! WTF?"
"Try your spare, Sir."
"It's full of blank BC forms. So that's where I put them. Wait!"
"Happy landing, Sir."
Shit, that was funny!
Auserity just wondering, saving some volts so turn off the system. This being Amerika we the little people will never find out.
ZH's readership seems to contain as many amateur pilots, proportionally, as Wall Street has cheesepopes.
What do you make of this, francis_sawyer?
As the pilot yells to the co-pilot.. "push broth engrines to frull brast!" As the co-pilot was busy tieing on a kamikaze headband...
I would like to know what the pilots in the plane at the beginning of the runway saw and reported. They had a direct view of the plane coming in to land.
Might not have seen much, they were texting their wives/girlfriends.
Or had already engaged auto pilot and were in the head taking a crap
With all the money budgeted to TSA, the best video available is from a cellphone?
Most of those funds goes towards unearthing new methods of molesting little girls at the security checkpoints...for 'your safety'
Automation leads to complacency. With Flight Management Systems controlling almost every aspect of flight, flight crew interaction with "flying" the aircraft drops to a minimum. In this case with the glideslope system down, the aircraft had to be hand flown in. Descent rate vs distance is critical. From what I'm hearing, he knew he was short and executed a go-around. Nose up-full power, but after minimums (200' or so) it's a lost cause.
but after minimums (200' or so) it's a lost cause
That's not true at all. We practice balked landings in the sim all the time. That is where your wheels actually touch the runway and you go back into the air.
The problem with the Asian plane is he was low and slow prior to the runway and waited to long to execute the go-around.
So he's low and slow and executes a go-around. Hummm..... to you do "that" in the sim?
Remember this, when the auto-pilot is on, maintenance is flying the aircraft.
I don't know what all that means. But at least it sounds dirty.
what do you suppose CNN paid for that piece of shit video - did the dude have his cam turned around backwards it`s like looking thru the wrong end of a telescope
his house is paid for now
If the pilot had done nothing at all in the final 4-7 seconds of the flight would the plane have crashed? Or would it have just been a very hard landing at the edge of the runway.
SEOUL SURVIVORS BITCHEZ
Tragedies always come in groups of three. Now Teresa Heinz Kerry taken to the hospital in critical condition.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/07/07/teresa-heinz-kerry-taken-nantucket-hospital-with-unspecified-medical-condition/UNj3fJBvN1XIhtCiA4n2eO/story.html
No word yet if John Kerry has stopped his sailing vacation yet.
To land an airplane .... you have to stall it .... preferably when it is a RCH from touching down .... if you stall it 50 feet above the ground .... there is no time to recover from the stall .... you recover by getting the nose down .... when something that big falls 50 feet at 190 mph .... it's called a hard landing .... by those of us in the know ! Monedas 1929 Comedy Jihad World Tour
FAIL!
You never stall an airplane on landing. It's impossible to know the exact speed that particular airplane is going to fall.
Icarus
That's how you get it to stop flying .... and stay on the ground .... you flare it out as long as you can .... as close to the tarmac as possible .... you yank the stick .... and it stalls as you touch down !
It's common, but not necessary, to do full stall landings in small, single engine aircraft. Large transport aircraft do not do full stall landings (at least on purpose).
I think it's pretty obvious from watching this several times is that the plane actually landed on the water and then went airborne again when it hit the seawall. Watch the white foam spray from the moment the plane hits the water and then watch how that turns to dirty brown once the place shoots up and around.
Wow. Imagine if this thing has nose down at the last moment.
In my book, I call that a belly flop.
When the altitude is being called out, shouldn't you be over the runway when 100 is called out? Apparently, this pilot never landed at the Old Hong Kong airport...
Should have had the British Airways pilot in command from the flight into Hong Kongs old airport in a raging thunderstorm back in 1994. Thought we were all goners. Huge amounts of wind shear/turbulence. He kept the throttles on the 747 on for a perfect shortfield landing. The small bounce was nothing compared to the turbulence. Wonder why did not divert, but proabably no other suitable site, especially in view of fuel reserves.
Ha, you guys ever fly into Cartegena?
That's a hell ride. I remember looking out my windows and looking OVER at local fishermen in their skiffs, and waving to me.
Phuck yea.
Ever land on Isla Cedros .... in a DC3 .... full of peeple, washing machines, pallets of beer and soda .... you land on an uphill dirt runway .... after clearing a 50 foot cliff with breakers .... no brakes needed .... you take off down hill .... with less weight .... that's a cinch !
Sounds like the airport in Charleston WV...except its paved...or was the last time I was there. It's a landing you want to be right with The Lord before doing. Alternatively, you'd want to be a very confident atheist, I suppose.
That's what I was always afraid of when I landed at SFO. Planes are attracted first to air, then to water, and then land. Given a choice the plane will always choose water over land.
Coincindentily, an exact 777 broke out in a fire 5 minutes earlier and had to emergency land in Greece. At least according to suspicious observers.
It would of been a perfect approach if they were a few thoysand feet higher
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Official-Crash-victim-may-have-bee...
Turns out one of the victims may have been killed by the fire department.
Know how to make anything worse? Invite the government!
Ohhh the huge Manatee!
http://www.azcentral.com/video/2532369080001
For the iPhone set....
There has been a culture (military) in all Korean airlines that allows incompetent pilots to remain in the cockpit.
What @neidermeyer said about depth perception is my experience also.
Visual approaches are not easy if you have not flown them regularly but competent pilots draw on "their experience" to do a good job. If the picture looks wrong you power up, go around, and execute another approach.
Good decision making is what makes a good Captain.
Additionally, the Flight management computer allows the pilot to put a fix in the navigation display with a height requirement. This allows the pilot to fly with reference to this profile using the VNAV. Also there is a flight path vector which gives flight angle information. Plenty of tools for any fool.
Max
What kind of sick prevert watches this show all day from on high and does nothing?
I was talkin' 'bout the NSA!
Official: Asiana flight tried to abort landing
by JASON DEAREN and JOAN LOWY / Associated Press
NWCN.com
Posted on July 6, 2013 at 12:10 PM
Updated today at 4:05 PM
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal safety official said Sunday the cockpit voice recorder from Asiana Flight 214 showed the jetliner received a warning that it could stall because it was flying too slowly and tried to increase its speed before it crashed.
National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman said at a news conference Sunday the recorder also showed the Boeing 777's crew called to abort the landing about 1.5 seconds before impact.
National Transportation Safety Board chief Deborah Hersman said at a briefing on the crash of the Boeing 777 said the plane was traveling at speeds well below the target landing speed of 137 knots per hour, or 157 mph.
"We're not talking about a few knots," she said.
Hersman also said the aircraft's stick shaker -- a piece of safety equipment that warns pilots of an impending stall -- went off moments before the crash. The normal response to a stall warning is to increase speed to recover control.
There was an increase in speed several seconds before the crash, she said, basing her comments on an evaluation of the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder. They contain hundreds of different types of information on what was happening to the plane.
And at 1.5 seconds before impact, there was a call for an aborted landing, she said.
Pilots normally try to land at the target speed, in this case 137 knots, plus an additional five more knots, said Bob Coffman, an American Airlines captain who has flown 777s. He said the briefing raises an important question: "Why was the plane going so slow?"
The plane's Pratt and Whitney engines were on idle, Hersman said. But the normal procedure in the Boeing 777, a wide-body jet, would be to use the autopilot and the throttle to provide power to the engine all the way through to landing, Coffman said.
There was no indication in the discussions between the pilots and the air traffic controllers that there were problems with the aircraft.
Hersman said investigators are looking into what role the shutdown of a key navigational aid may have played in the crash. She said the glide slope -- a ground-based aid that helps pilots stay on course while landing -- had been shut down since June.
http://www.nwcn.com/news/Airliner-crashes-during-landing-in-San-Francisc...
Due to the diameter of the 777's engines, it takes some time for them to spool up and provide power -- too long if the pilot hasn't been keeping up with the aircraft. The autopilot knows this and applies power before it seems to be needed in anticipation of the poor throttle response.
From another board...
I just found this!!!
SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L LLZ/DME OTS WEF 1307072000-1307072359
SFO NAV ILS RWY 28L GP OTS WEF 1306011400-1308222359
source: https://pilotweb.nas.faa.gov/PilotWe...trievalByICAOs
Does asiana crews know how to fly visuals?
the pilot had less than 100 hours flying experience with 777
Flying is about 3 things: 1) airspeed 2) AIRSPEED and 3)AiRsPeEd
Missed it by that much!
@ Tyler.
Is it correct that there's been a push to fly this story over Canada? UK media, RT etc is covering it, the Americas, not so much.
"We had a 10 year safety record, I think we've blown it" < direct quote from the Corporation that owns the rail stock. Yeah, you think there might be a case of the old They Live's here?
This shit is getting edited in real time: The Telegraph's earlier copy had the links and pictures of the train on fire before it hit the town, and direct quotations about how the fire service was called to the same train prior two hours prior to it exploding in a death bomb. Now? All gone. Same for multiple sources, showing someone is running around demanding edits.
First story with video + pictures + MSM copy: Train was parked over-night, one engineer leaves for the hotel, his replacement doesn't show up, a fire starts and some-how burns out the 8 mechanical brakes that are legally required to always in place then destroys the air brakes and the train storms in like the wrath of God. In front of the MSM, it's admitted that the fire fighters visited the same train earlier for a fire, then left. There's (hard saved) evidence that the train was on fire before it hit the town.
There's other shit I won't bother with.
Reddit is getting nuked, with the Twitter shot of the train on fire before it hit the town now pruned, and with heavy shill action claiming "environmentalists might have done this" [hint you fucking retards - 1) most, if not all, environmentalists are pacisfist hippies and wouldn't know how to disengage the 8 brakes required and b) there's serious evidence that a cover-up is being done on a nation MSM level, which is waaaay beyond even Greenpeace levels. You think this gamma level shit flies? Fucking muppets]
Top tip: if you want to play Games, the tells aren't the initial board, it's the way the pieces get moved around. Whoever is running this shit show, you're on TV. You're proving that the MSM is dead and you should be fired. Amateurs. Oh, and you're fucking murdering scum, or at the very least, unethical scum who are shaping the plays. You killed Canadians, they're friendlies. Way to sell out two World Wars of Allegiance and Good Faith.
These people fucking died with you in Iraq and so on. Cold, slimy, traitorous snakes. Apep.
i forgot about this story in March...
A mile-long train hauling oil from Canada derailed and leaked 30,000 gallons of crude in western Minnesota on Wednesday, as debate rages over the environmental risks of transporting tar sands across the border.
and now let's get back to more plane crashes...
Ten killed in Alaska air taxi crash
He was providing the bigger fish (big story hits: you need a larger one to cover for it).
Look at the kid who gets pulled by the cops for talking about how "the ceiling caved in" [it's going viral], and the pitch perfect placement of the ex-Samsung employee with the instagram'd piccies (with everyone carrying fucking hand-luggage). The two dead, anyone know who they are, or more importantly, would they still be alive if people hadn't stopped to open the over-heads for their fucking luggage?
This shit is starting to stink worse than Vietnam. America was fucking inept over there as well.
dude, you have to show some links we aren't watching over your shoulder like the NSA or something.. (no clue what thought train you are on)
This is being run by a 'pro' team, and they're fairly fast [Oil money - not the fastest, but they have serious clout, and are pulling rank globally to run edits on all major MSM sources, which shows how connected they are. Plus the spend on the plane dump, which means G O VC I A spend].
Hint: if I dump a link on ZH, it will get nuked quickly. Some retard dumped the intact Prisoner originals on Reddit, they're now all DMCA'd. Remember how that was a thing I gave you, and only one was illegal? Yep - all trashed now.
Do you not get how this works yet? ZH is as compromised as Reddit, so it's a Game. Their game is Chess, ours is GO. They're blitzing YouTube [25 million take downs, from 20 million > 25 in six weeks, they're pumping power to the algos] and they've even got a stupid fucking Congress chimp demanding that YouTube prune all "instructional terroristic" videos as USA law. I'll let you imagine what that scope is: hint - every instance of a Policeman killing a dog, and so on.
We're fighting for your genome, dummy. And we're losing (or, rather, we're being pushed to wipe vast numbers of you out). Don't ask for links: FUCKING GO LOOK FOR THEM, SPREAD THEM AND STOP BEING A POTATO.
you can store a page as a file and then post it on your own blog
so even if they nuke it yours is fine and even if they nuke yours you can repost it
see how that works?
you say you cant post them. but then you say spread them.. if you cant run a blog when you seem to have a handle on all this, then you are pretty much the bigger potato
Yeah.
You need to wise the fuck up, or you're a spook taking the piss.
Question: Which "blogging service" do you think is immune to a US<redacted> cyberwarfare?
They're nuking content from fucking Twitter, which has a fairly large economic share - and your "MAGICAL PIXIE" advice is host it on WordPress?
Yep: you're either a spook or a tool. We're done here [junks engaged]. We've encrypted the sauce, we're really not going to allow you fucking scum to nuke it twice.
Call it: Operation - we will preserve history, against you fascist fucks, until it's needed again. Your type is so close to the ultimate waaaar you don't even grokk it. Here's a thought (taking your pitiful mental flash for a second, and boy, your mental space is boring as fuck): ever had a super, super, super sexy car that you owned, and wanted to drive, but if you did, you know you'd destroy your wife, kids, family and everything in the neighborhood? It's sitting there, all shiny, on your driveway. It's hot. It's sexy. But, if you get it, and rip it up, it's all over?
That's about 1% of what we feel every fucking second. We love you, but you're still fucking monkeys to us. And none of us get in the car, from both "sides". (Which is fucking silly, we don't do sides).
Now: imagine that temptation, but you only had to kill your dog. Better yet: you only have to kill some scum-bag's dog.
Yep, well, there's a lot of police who would jump straight into that hot sexy beast of a car and kill their dog, but are you one of them? Hint: this is designed; you're being shaped into an unthinking, obedient, violent bioweapon. They get you to kill the dog as a joke. It's a joke, because you don't get it, but they do.
Fuck you all and your monkey dualism. There's two predators at work; one is homo sapiens, the other is <REDACTED>. (No, seriously: if you can't see them they will drive that car into the fucking wall to protect themselves, and they're really not homo sapiens before you get your "anti-jew" or "anti-black" card out).
We are neither. But you sure love blaming us. Oook.
god played a joke on abraham
thanks for the hints
get it now...time to go 3.0?
POOF.
There's blood here, so leave.
perhaps
Project Mockingbird, all grown up
you are clever enough to post on a chat board.
don't you know how to use search queries on the internet?
boy yanked away by cops
samsung guy photo
winnie the pooh is shitting on us...
You guys here are beginning to look like irrational lunatics.
Nothing sinister about the cause of the crash just because the police are fascists and the company wants to put a good face on it. That is just PR. It doesn't meant the crash was caused by Illuminati.
It's obvious what happened just by looking at the video and if you talk with pilots they will tell you about the common sink issue with the 28's at SFO from the SE.
The two dead Chinese girls wandered out onto the runway and got run over, by not paying attention to the vehicles. Maybe they were on their mobiles, being distracted.
This is pilot error with an experienced pilot who was very inexperienced on this aircraft at this airport, from a culture where the second in command does not question the captain. There were 3 other pilots on the flight and everyone was rested.
They just messed up the landing by getting behind the aircraft, getting fixated, and not looking out the window.
This will make for a great one for the CRM psych section.
"our initial reaction was.... how much fucking money can we sell this clip for?"
Given the condition of the interior a bunch of crew and passengers need medals for heroism.
The plane approached the runway like a flatly hit golfball; the glide slope was screwed up. I wouldn't be too quick to blame the pilots. SanFrancisco is notorious for crappy, overcast weather. With the ILS off, hopefully the tower told the pilots, they didn't have their instruments to rely on.
So, the pilots suddenly realized their approach had bottomed out at least a mile from the runway. The video seems to indicate that the pilots probably knew they were already on the deck and were simply doing their best to fly the plane to the runway. Then they tried to pull up and go around but didn't have the altitude.
IMO this will end up being blamed on 1) the airport for the ILS being turned off, 2) Pilots didn't watch their altitude on approach.
FWIW, no way there was anything wrong with the plane, or we'd already know about it.
It was a VISUAL APPROACH in PERFECT WEATHER- are you kidding me!!!! The the ILS wasn't working, who the fuck cares. You only use it if you're in IFR conditions or if they put you under the hood training you. OOOPS, maybe he was under the hood after all as he only had 43 hours on this plane. OOOOPS!
They shut this kid up fast enough
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5D235xKhS4
"The two who piloted the plane at the time of crash were Lee Jeong-min and Lee Gang-guk."
Here's an excellent thread. http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/general_aviation/read.main/5810...
Tyler, stick to economics. One landing-guidance system out of several was shut down for maintenance -- and had been for over a month without any problems. Amazingly, thousands of takeoffs and landings occurred without anyone trying to land in the water.
The whole point of having a flight crew is so that manual human intervention can take place. Unfortunately, reality says that this is more often the cause of an accident than a solution for one.
All indications so far are that the pilot in command screwed up, and the other flight crew member (or members, some reports say all four were in the cockpit) didn't speak up to say "Yo, dude, you're fucking up." One report says he did, but only seven seconds before the splat, which wasn't enough time.
I don't know how good the Nav systems are in today's planes, but when I learned Avionics in the late 80s we used to joke that all a pilot could do was screw up an otherwise good landing.
Suffice to say that this 777 has GPS and proabably an Intertial Nav System feeding data into a Navigation computer 100x better than what the Space Shuttle had. This plane knows it's location everywhere it flies, all over the world. And the Nav computer knows the Lat/Long of the SanFran runway.
In the next few days we'll know whether the pilots were flying visual or not....right now we don't know the conditions in the air - they may have just come out of the clouds at less then 500 feet, and at that height it doesn't give them much time to realize they're too low.
If they were counting on the airport to provide a glideslope and there wasn't one there, then the finding will likely exonerate the pilots to some degree. Still, the crash didn't have to happen. With very, very few exceptions, pilots have to trust their instruments.
I'm taking the train
Pilot fora discussing this and basically lots of issues.
-Korean command structure where the 1st Officer is scared to question the Captain or he could lose his job.
-SFO has an odd tendency to push the landing envelope up and then down as you approach on CAVU. Cause unknown. It means that you throttle back to not overshoot but then you have to throttle up to make the glide slope. Tricky.
-Most of the ILS, PAPI were offline.
-This Captain had probably 2 cycles in a 777. Long distance flights the crew get less experience. They spend 12+ hours flying rather than 3 for a 737 crew, for each flight.
-Tunnel vision, fixating on solving the problem that caused...
-...the captain to narrow his attention so that he missed his airspeed and other instrumentation.
-Captain was likely 'behind the aircraft', in that he was behind on this checklist wrt what the aircraft was doing and what stage he was in the flight.
You can see in the Hayes video that he pulls up to return to glide slope, then noses down, then up again and this 2nd one causes the plane to stall. It 'slides' down and the tail hit the breakwater.
He stalled the plane into the ground on a picture perfect day from an altitude of 25 or so feet.
Asians. Unsafe controlling any moving method of transportation.
airport had its ILS turned down and the pilot was new to this type of plane probably had only minimal training (how to use autopilot to land the plane)
Next time managers should allow company's pilots to have more training before flying new types of planes
"managers should allow company's pilots to have more training" No, They need to tell passengers, " To day we have a trainee in the cockpit with only 43 hours of experience and good luck you all".
News reports this Monday morning say ... ...
...the pilot in control of landing the Asiana B777 had 43 hours of flying experience in this model of plane, although he was an experienced pilot in other planes.
He was a "trainee" on this model of plane, a possibility I raised in an earlier article comment.
There was no 1st officer on board; instead the "trainee" was accompanied by an experienced B777 pilot...the "trainer".
Between them they screwed up and came in too low and too slow. Leaving no time to correct the landing trajectory when the automatic warning signals sounded in the cockpit. They obviously tried to do that, according to video and witness evidence, but due to the time it takes to reconfigure a plane, it was too late and the plane's tail smashed down onto the seawall after the "trainee" turned on the power and pulled the stick back to touch down further along the runway.
This accident had little to do with the electronic landing equipment at SFO not being in use at the time as already explained by others. It has everything to do with pilot error.
There's been a lot of comment about the cultural hierarchy that exists in Korean airlines and this may have caused communication problems between cockpit crew members which may have contributed to the crash.
First let me say that I've never piloted large aircraft, so take that into account. Nonetheless, the dynamics of all airplanes are similar, so maybe the following experience has some relevance.
Many years ago I was on final approach to runway 28 in Monterey and was probably within 200 to 400 meters of the runway threshold when all of a sudden I was in a strong downdraft. It was a very strange experience, because the pitch of my airplane wasn't altered by the downdraft and I was still well above stall speed --- I was simply being sucked downward, strongly.
Before the downdraft started, I could have easily glided to the runway without power. Once the downdraft began, and it happened very fast, I immediately applied full power, reduced flaps and managed to reach the runway. But I was shocked at the power of that downdraft, and nothing in my training or experience had ever led me to believe a downdraft could be that incredibly powerful.
Now, I would guess that they didn't encounter a downdraft in this case (over extended flat water), but... I can't be certain. What I do know, from more experiences than my downdraft scare, is that all sorts of unusual events occur seldom, rarely, extremely rarely, and so forth. The fact is, almost every physical phenomenon exists over a wide range, moderate outliers happen now and then, and extreme outlier events happen rarely... but more often than never, which is the point here.
Of course, more likely is, the pilot thought his tail was high enough to clear the rocks in the nose-up pitch he chose --- on the basis of flying other aircraft. Nonetheless, before he reached the runway, he obviously knew he was too low. Another possible difference between the aircraft he was used to flying and the B777 may be the performance to expect upon application of full throttle. Maybe this mistake ended up causing him to wait just a bit too long to go full throttle.
This does seem like pilot error due to limited pilot experience, but watching this video instantly made me recall my downdraft experience. So there might be some outlier effect of some kind in addition to the obvious inferences. I don't discount this possibility.
Later: I just read elsewhere the pilot didn't go full throttle until just before the crash. That makes no sense to me. Also very surprising: the stall warning began only 4 seconds before impact. It also doesn't seem likely headwinds could have increased drastically in the 10 or 20 seconds before the crash, but... also not impossible. These are so surprising that it almost feels like the pilots thought some automatic device was engaged that wasn't (like automatic thrust control to keep velocity constant). They appear to be so far below the appropriate glidepath for so long that full throttle would be the obvious instinct for any pilot. Weren't they looking out the front window? Also, how could they possibly call for a go-around 1.5 seconds before impact? It must have been obvious long before then that the plane was definitely and unavoidably going to hit the water or ground somewhere. Something doesn't add up.
ann,
Keep in mind the 777 aircraft type has actually encountered a loss of power on finals on three prior occasions. All of these were traced back to a water-ice crystals (slushy) in the residual fuel after a long flight at high-altitude (~ -40 degrees C).
In each case the ice blocked the oil-fuel heat-exchanger, a device designed to preheat the fuel to melt any ice crystals in it, before it enters the fuel pump and fuel lines and injectors on turbofans. Check out the image in the link:
Laboratory replication of ice crystals clogging the fuel-oil heat exchanger on a Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engine, from the NTSB report on the BA38 and DL18 incidents[189]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_777
--
So all of the mass media were so keen to rule out mechanical issues, and to blame the pilot's, and question their experience and competence and hours on type, but you and me know these pilots should have and would have had several glass-cockpit visual warnings and several CRS audio warnings to tell them something was wrong - to add power.
Note also that the early media reports all said the engines were "at idle", but these reports did not actually say the throttles were at idle. And that is a very important distinction, because if it was ice in the fuel then that's what we would expect to occur - throttles fully open, but engines not making power.
Indeed if it was ice in the heat exchanger, the pilots would have had at least these many warnings, and in fairly rapid succession;
(1) fuel pressure low warning (due ice blockage of fuel in oil heat exchanger)
(2) visual and audio below glide path warning
(3) visual and audio below Vref speed warning
(4) visual and audio stall warning
(5) stick-shaker
(6) view out of the cockpit would have been an unmistakable warning they were below the normal glide-path.
(7) audio CRS radar-altimeter TAWS warning
--
Given all that, how's it possible that the engines were still "at idle"? Unless there was another problem? Because the media and authorities are implying both pilots forgot their training, panicked, pulled the nose up, but left the engines at idle!
As a pilot, does that seem credible to you?
I would say it's extremely unlikely to have occurred like that mainstream allusion... unless maybe they were fast asleep ... and we know they weren't asleep.
But if it was ice instead, then this is what may have occurred. They are coming eastward from Korea, dropped engines to idle at the top of their descent at or near aircraft service ceiling level, then flew a straight-in approach, to finals. If they did the engine oil will have cooled in the descent. So if there was a lot of water in the residual fuel load, it would have then been like slushy, full of ice-crystal plates, enough to block most of the fuel flow through the heat exchanger, if the oil was cool, but not block all of it.
Thus leaving enough fuel flow and enough fuel pressure to maintain idle RPM and allowable fuel system pressure. (i.e. they may not have got a fuel-pressure warning from this until they opened the throttles again on the glide path, when they required a higher flow than the system could provide)
So they won't have known they had a problem until they tried to establish in the glide-slope. At which time they'll find the engines aren't revving much or making enough power when they push the throttles forwards ... but then they suddenly hear an audible "fuel pressure low" CRS warning, and will immediately be wondering if they are actually running out of fuel.
So they won't realize it until they are already below the glide-slope, and can't intercept it ... without washing off speed ... which they then can't recover. But the engines are making SOME power, just not quite enough power. So they're not going to attempt a go-around, as they have no revs, and no lift, plus they suspect they may even be running out of fuel. So they'll attempt to continue the approach, what else can they do ... and they will keep on slowing sinking below the glide slope and pushing the AOA higher, and losing air speed.
So I suspect the flight data once released may show that the fuel pressure was indeed low and the throttles were actually advanced, but they weren't getting the fuel-flow even though the tanks were not empty.
In which case all they could do was to try to get it to the runway - and they did!
That occurred on three previous occasions with this Boeing 777 and RR Trent 895 combination - it would be silly to ignore the possibility that it has happened again.
When I saw MSM media talking-heads IMMEDIATELY saying that "the 777 is a jet with an almost perfect safety record", blah blah, I knew that was untrue, as three incidents very much like this had previously occurred on finals. Thus when media and spokespeople for 'authorities' seemed to be blaming or suggesting pilot error, even before the flight-data had been analyzed and released, this was especially suspicious to me.
Let's not forget the Flight-Club pre-Tyler character had a job assessing defective car accidents, to decide if it was cheaper to pay the legal damages or to fix car defects. The same apples here. Assert and pretend the jet has "a perfect safety record" (which it definitely doesn't, and yet I heard that claimed repeatedly within the media in the first 12 hours or so), then blame the pilots, so that takes the public wrath and suspicion away from Boeing and RR. Then the story falls out of the headlies, then they manage the release of the flight data six months later, as to what may have really happened, as observed within the flight data.
And that can limit the anger and legal damages to both companies, if done right, but that RR engine defect will actually have to be fixed, properly, this time .. if ice in the fuel really was the cause of this accident.
We'll see.
So we know the throttles were fully opened, the autopilot auto-throttle mode was eventually disengaged (not sure if it was nav-ing on the ILS), but the engines were still unable to rev above idle even then ... which is perfectly consistent with what would have occurred if lots of ice had clogged the heat exchanger.
What we don't have is the log of the CRS warnings and their types and sequence, or the fuel-pressure data. From that quote, if the jet was on auto-throttle, then apparently the PIC didn't think so, as he had already fully-advanced the throttles in his attempt to arrest the descent below the glide-path.
So I'm now fairly confident it was ice within the heat exchanger(s) ... so for a fourth time with this jet/engine combo we see the same circumstances ... with two aircraft now lost, plus two near-losses, and two former purported attempts to re-design and rectify a lethal fuel system defect. If so, what should we conclude about the two previous attempts to 'fix' this engine's fuel system?
If this is true it's not going to go down well for either company, and RR is already getting sued for the Trent 900 A380 Qantas engine explosion, in 2010. If this was the same ice problem again RR are going to get absolutely SMASHED, and Boeing's sales will take a huge hit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qantas_Flight_32
http://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/2011/05/18/investigators-detail-even...
(Fuel literally gushed out of that engine's exposed hot-section, like a fire-hose, all the way to roll-out! They wouldn't even let the passengers off after the landing due to the fuel leakage, as it was considered safer to keep them on the jet then to evacuate them.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJN8Paj8I4g
PS: WX at the time appears to have been benign, flat blue water, no chop, clear sky, dust lingers close to the crash, as did the smoke plume. Re your finals experience I've heard of vertical gusts measuring up to 80 meters per second. In Europe 25m/s is considered to be "severe turbulence", but over flat and very hot terrain during a summer 'heat-trough' (which can be 1,500 km wide or more), the rising hot air cells combine but necks-down and narrows as it rises (think hour glass shape), so this hot dry air destabilizes then shoots upward in a narrowing sharp-edged 'tube' of rushing air (low moisture so no clouds form to give them away). Such gusts have been recorded as high as 15,000 ft. So you can imagine what happens to light aircraft that hit one at high cruising speeds ... well that Croatian guy who flew around the world in a Virus SW recently apparently did hit one, and the virus only just survived:
http://blog.aopa.org/blog/?p=3068
Such severe thermal turbulence is more common here than people realize, it's just that now we have more long-range small light aircraft, like the Virus, flying over wide areas of very hot terrain and below 10k ft with a relatively high cruise speed. For example:
Moral; fly slower over flat and very hot terrains, as it's not just severe mountain-turbulence that's dangerous. I've considered the possibility of making an IR camera that could detect these violent thermals before you slam into them though you need a camera at each wing tip to get binocular triangulation for accurate range estimation that could provide an early warning to sidestep them, thus you could cruise faster more safely.
There's an excellent discussion of the structural implications of hitting these ultra-strong vertical gusts within this link:
http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/safety/wind_shear.html
Without a doubt, if they did not completely fix that problem with the RR engines, that would be a top cause to consider. However, I have another speculation that presents in a similar way, though I don't think either fully explains the crash (unless we get a little supporting information from the pilots).
I'm thinking about the control/instrument that keeps airspeed constant. No small airplane that I have flown has such a control, but apparently all these big jets do. As I understand this control, the pilot sets an desired [landing/minimum] airspeed at the beginning of final approach (or before), then the pilot can focus on the pitch of the aircraft, staying on the desired flight path, staying in runway alignment, etc.
What if he engaged this airspeed control, but it didn't "take"? Normally this control would be engaged when airspeed was significantly greater than the specified [landing/minimum] speed, so the control would have little or no effect when engaged. We must assume this control only prevents too-low speed, and otherwise has no effect, otherwise this control would prevent the pilot from adding thrust to reach the runway.
So, what if the pilot didn't push/flick/toggle this control quite far enough, or what if he did but the control did not engage for some reason (it might be automatically prevented from engaging by many factors). Or what if this control was engaged, but later automatically disabled by some automatic system, due to some obscure combination of conditions or situations?
The flight path makes me speculate that the pilot thought this automatic system would assure his aircraft would not go too slow (too close to stall), and thus all he had to do was control pitch to keep sufficient altitude to reach the runway. He would think to himself, "if i need to pitch up to extend my glide path, the automatic speed control will add thrust to keep up airspeed". By the time the pilot realized this control wasn't working, it may have been too late.
This possiblity gets us into another discussion that media will probably not mention, and is somewhat messy conceptually and not exactly politically correct. I refer to the relationship between pilot and instrumentation.
What most non-pilots don't know is this. Even the lowest level VFR pilots are trained to fly blind by means of panel instruments (with a visor over your eyes that prevents seeing out of the windows). True, VFR pilots do not land blind, but they try pretty much everything else blind (at safe altitude). This is done with VFR pilots because weather can sometimes change faster than a pilot can find a path into another VFR volume, and thus VFR pilots must learn to fly blind to get through clouds, even thought they're never supposed to do that.
The point I'm trying to make is this. ALL pilots, even VFR pilots, but especially commercial IFR pilots are trained and massively habituated to above all TRUST THEIR INSTRUMENTS.
There is an inherent and unavoidable tension between TRUST YOUR INSTRUMENTS and the prime directive of flying, which is THE PILOT IS RESPONSIBLE... for everything (pretty much). Certainly the pilot is responsible for all decisions he makes, but this includes whether he trusts his instruments or not.
Unlike most VFR pilots, I had no problem trusting my instruments. If I couldn't clearly see a big chunk of horizon, my instinct was to trust the instruments over my sensations. And believe me (or any pilot), when you fly an aircraft sometimes (fairly often) your senses are totally misleading you. Mostly this refers to your sense of flat-and-level (yaw, pitch, roll), but also speed, engine revs, etc. From what I've heard, most VFR pilots have a difficult time trusting their instruments over their own senses. But what you can be absolutely certain of is this... by the time you are a commercial IFR pilot, much less an airline passenger plane pilot, you totally freaking trust your instruments over anything else. Otherwise, you are thrown out on your butt, as you should be.
Now, let's be honest. Probably NO pilot flying in daytime on a crystal clear day would ignore his view out the windows of the aircraft. If his instruments told him he was in a 60-degree bank to the left, but a wide clear horizon out the front window says he is flying flat-and-level, even the most instrument comfortable airline pilots will probably trust this view and start pounding on his instruments to try to knock some sense into them (probably not gonna work on modern glass cockpits, but what the hell). However, short of such a clear-cut situation, pilots are absolutely trained to trust their instruments... period. And for good reason. 99% of the time, and perhaps 99.99% of the time, that's the correct call.
But what about the other ~0.01% of the time, when the instrument is wrong?
In that case, what is the "responsibility" of the pilot? We can't just say, "well, he is pilot, and he is responsible, so he should be omnicient and know better than his instrumentation"... because that totally contradicts the principle "trust your instruments". Sure, when a pilot has multiple ways to determine a questionable instrument reading, he will check his alternate instruments or sources of information. And where they disagree, the pilot will make his own judgement on the basis of all the information he has.
But let's return to this crash. What if the pilot correctly set "minimum airspeed" and correctly engaged his "automatic thrust control" instrument to hold that minimum [landing] speed?
The answer to this question is not clear-cut. It is still pilot responsibility to check the displayed airspeed on his instruments from time to time. And this should be habit, even with flying with "automatic thrust control" engaged (or whatever they call this control). This habit of checking airspeed should not just vanish when a pilot sets the control. However, after hundreds or thousands of flights in which this control operates perfectly, perhaps the habit becomes slightly modified? Perhaps the pilot gradually looks at the airspeed display less and less often as years pass, since the "automatic thrust control" always keeps the speed at appropriate levels.
I've never been in the cockpit of a large jet when it lands, but just from flying small planes, I can say that times do arise when the pilot gets very busy... too busy. On a number of occassions I was not able to do-and-check everything I wanted to do-and-check as fast as I wanted to. And make no mistake, when landing an airplane, you can't just "take however much time you need", because the moment of touchdown is coming up fast, and can't be delayed.
So maybe the pilot was extremely busy. The fact that his flight path seemed too steep, then became much too low and flat indicates that the pilot was busy making decisions and adjustments of various kinds. So maybe his confidence in the "automatic thrust control" led him to pay attention to other items and issues that seemed (but in fact were not) most critical.
I can easily believe this scenario.
Of course, this presumes the pilot DID believe he had set the appropriate "minimum speed" and engaged the "automatic thrust control", which I do not know for certain. But I would imagine this is common if not standard practice in such an aircraft. If this is correct, the next question becomes "did he set the minimum speed correctly, and did he properly engage [and activate if necessary] the "automatic thrust control" instrumentation?
If he did, then "aircraft [control/instrument] error" is at least part of the cause of the accident.
I will add a personal opinion, which I freely acknowledge is opposite of most pilots. I prefer the KISS principle in almost every endeavor. I do not enjoy memorizing 37000 different aircraft, and the endless subtle behaviors of all controls and instruments of all those aircraft in every possible flying situation. I know a LOT of pilots just love this aspect of flying, which includes knowing just about everything about every aspect of every airplane they ever fly (or sometimes, every aircraft ever built). Frankly, I must admit that I am in awe of folks like that! Unfortunately for me, I simply cannot do that, because my memory has never been my strong point (to say the least). So my personal approach to just about everything is "identify fundamentals" and "minimalism". I'd rather have multiple instances of the most fundamental instruments (each with independent sensors) than dozens of fancy special-purpose controls and instruments. I'd rather understand and habituate responding to these fundamentals than try to memorize endless fancy accessories, variations and interactions that "do it for me". I'll do the flying, thank you!
I only raise this issue because these large aircraft seem to have an enormously large number of "fancy modern gadgets". While I have nothing against "fancy gadgets" (I invent fancy gadgets, though not for aircraft), I know human beings have a limited ability to handle complexity [in real time]. My personal solution is to minimize complexity, to [as much as possible] have one and only one simple way of doing things, and stick to that. That way my habits work, and I know they work, because I repeat them endlessly without variations (that might trip me up when funky interactions exist).
Do not take the above two paragraphs as more than a personal observation, I'm not suggesting anything for others. Nonetheless, it is an obvious fact that when you always handle everything yourself manually, you absolutely become and stay proficient, and never get confused by "fancy gagdets", because you're not using them. Having said that, I certainly wouldn't eliminate certain gadgets, like stall warning alarms or GPS, for example. For those few I consider important, I'd prefer duplicates!
-----
Thanks for all your comments about downdrafts, thermals, sheers and weather. That's incredibly fascinating, interesting and helpful information. This raises yet another topic, the topic I sometimes call "extreme outliers".
The fact is, physical phenomenon, most certainly and extremely including weather phenomenon, occur on a bell-curve of sorts... sometimes incredibly mild and subtle, often at moderate levels (top of the bell curve), and sometimes at extreme levels (outliers). But these curves don't reach zero frequency until far, far, far "off the chart". The fact is, once in extremely rare cases, "extreme outliers" occur.
I thought my downdraft experience was an "extreme outlier", and maybe it was. But your descriptions make me wonder if it was only somewhere between "outlier" and "extreme outlier". Yes, I have also flown (even in australia in fact) through turbulance so extreme that I literally thought it would rip our small airplane to shreds. Frankly, I'm amazed that one or two of these extreme experiences didn't lead to the plane being damaged to the point of malfunctioning and then necessarily crashing. And since I know (and you re-inforce) that even more extreme outliers exist here and there on a rare basis, I must say that I don't believe it is reasonable to say that "all crashes are due to failures by the aircraft or pilot". The most extreme of these extreme outliers are simply too vicious to expect an aircraft (or watercraft or groundcraft) to survive. I mean really! If you are flying and a tornado forms around you, or right next to you, can you really blame the aircraft designers or pilot for "errors" when the plane is shred to pieces? No way!
Maybe this example (tornado) is too extreme, because people will say "they only form when the weather is known to be bad". But as you indicated, some extreme outliers exist when the weather is clear and seemingly benign. That has happened to me too, and my downdraft experiences is just one example. I can only imagine how many pilots (and sailors, and captains of oceangoing vessels, etc) have run into even more impossible situations. The obvious candidates, like category 5 cyclones, are only the most obvious.
My bottom line (about this topic) is this. It is completely unreasonable for anyone to set a goal or standard of "no accidents, no destruction, no deaths", etc. We'd have to build aircraft in such ways that they'd weigh more than the engines and wings could lift off the ground, thereby ending air travel. I'm almost afraid to say this, because some lovers of tyranny will certainly propose the end of air travel as the appropriate solution, as if they have a right to prevent us from risking our lives. We won't even mention the fact that commercial flying is 1000 times safer than highway travel per mile, and even the wimpy, funky, flaky aircraft of private civilian flying is 10 times safer than highway travel per mile. Because the statists will just make cars illegal too.
It simply isn't rational to expect safety levels much higher than they are already. Frankly, I personally find it amazing that flying, sailing, ocean travel and even driving are as safe as they are. It is funny really. I suspect that just about every pilot with more than 1000 hours has had at least one experience that was a "close call". I certainly consider my downdraft to be a close call, and I had less than 200 hours flying experience at that point. And that wasn't my only close call (depending on how "close" we consider "close"). Let's rephrase "close call" to "potentially very dangerous situation". If all those situations had ended up being fatal, I'd guess pilots would have a mean lifetime of 200 hours flying time, and commercial travel would not exist.
Probably we shouldn't even post rational discussions here, because we'll scare people who believe every aspect of life must be inherently safe, and that some kind of gods design and fabricate impossibly safe craft that can take us to other cities, across oceans, to asteroids, moons and other planets, and eventually to other star systems. The fact is, at this point in history at least, life is terminal, so why not take a little risk and enjoy it? A life with a moderate quantity of danger is infinitely more satisfying, and nobody with excessive fear is forced to risk it. They can sit at home in front of TV and eat snack food until they die younger than we do of heart disease, cancer, or terminal boredom.
Which reminds me of wingsuit proximity flying, probably the most fun way of all to fly. Geez, let's not even mention that one to the statists.
I'm with you on the 'KISS' principle, dislike complicated fastidious avionics, but love fully integrated large displays. They're much simpler than you might think.
What you suggest could occur if it were only humans involved in the cross-checking process, but if that case were so, there would also be a real-time self-diagnostic, and a CRS visual and audio warning to alert the pilots that auto-throttle mode had failed.
This cross-checking is pretty thorough in glass cockpits at this point. If you're not very familiar with their functions and architecture you might be surprised how integrated and redundant they are, and how they manage redundancy and isolated or progressive failures. In practical use it works and if the auto-throttle had failed the pilots would have been immediately verbally and visually alerted by CRS.
Even very small jets have auto-throttle capable autopilots these days. The very smallest twin-engine jet (Eclipse 550) has auto-throttle capability since 2012.
They are fully software-driven with button and knob interfaces on the upper dash, that are integrated directly into the flight management/nav system, plus mapping displays and EFIS.
The integration is so thorough they can even be cued by the flight plan in the FMS to auto-load the appropriate IFR SID or STAR, and fly them precisely like cruise missile would, including automatic digital climb and descent rates, and throttle and speed intercept settings. It all works hands-off, once set in the flight-plan and FMS. It can typically automatically drop out of a cruise phase, fly the descent and STAR to intercept ILS or RNAV glide-slope, and will fly you all the way to the threshold. It can't cope safely with unpredictable crosswinds, shear and wake-turbulence at low-levels of course.
The throttle signals are typically delivered to duel-redundant FADEC controls on each engine. A FADECs are basically an elaborate duel-redundant ECU controllers for a turbofan. As the FADECs are crucial to engine operation they are constantly monitored with diagnostics, cross-checked with other sensors and data is comprehensively logged.
In newer jets the entire flight and avionics plus engine data feed may be streamed in real-time back to the manufacturer's base via a SATCOM link. Thus avionics and engine health 'trend-monitoring' data is available to the manufacturer for maintenance logistics cuing, even if the 'black-boxes' have been lost or destroyed in an accident.
In short, the system's self-checking and diagnostics reporting integration is incredibly thorough, and that data is linked and integrated within the CRS (crew reporting system), which is specifically tasked with telling the pilots immediately if some vital flight function like that had failed or become unreliable.
So the auto throttle was very unlikely to not be working without the pilots knowing that. Auto-throttle is typically engaged all the way from wheels up, until taking manual-control on finals.
So the aircraft is basically 'flown' by the pilots adjusting the 'target' parameters of the autopilot via the knobs and buttons, for literally about 99% of any normal flight.
So any new 777 pilot with 9000 hours on other similar jets knows what he's doing with the autopilot's auto throttle and FMS and has probably used that same system, or one just like it for years before converting to the 777. For certain he's done a full flight simulation course using that autopilot and FMS and demonstrated competence before piloting the actual jet.
And all three pilots said they set and engage the autopilot's auto-throttle to intercept the target of 137 knots on approach (presumably this was the calculated Vref for sea level, their weight and OAT).
However, at some point the 'new' pilot determined the auto-throttle was not yet engaged, as he was going below the glide slope, and increasing AOA did not stabilize airspeed on 137 kts, as it should have.
So he apparently thinks and has then assumed the autopilot is already off and that he's flying the approach manually, so he's using the throttle manually but still getting no airspeed recovery with the increasing AOA to track the glide-slope.
But this does not mean the auto-throttle was not functioning.
It most probably was functioning, or the pilots would definitely have been warned it had failed. It's just the engines were unable to draw the fuel the autopilot was instructing the FADEC to provide to the engine. So the FADEC's way of dealing with this is to eventually log and immediately report a fuel-pressure low warning, via on-screen CRS message pop-up and a verbal voice audio warning at the same time.
Three pilots can not miss or somehow ignore such a warning. If your avionics told you your fuel pressure was low you'd snap-out of whatever you were doing and notice this - right?
That's why the fuel-pressures on both engine's sensor logs is going to be critical. The fuel system plumbing on those engines should also still contain some of the water if the system was sealed and it couldn't evaporate or spill out after the accident.
But if we assume for the sake of argument that it was a failure of the autopilot; then what are the chances it failed in a very time-limited phase of flight, on finals, where three other jets suffered almost identical power failures, due to ice? Pretty low, I'd say. Combined with what are the chances that all three pilots did not see, hear or get an auto-throttle failure message?
Certainly I'd fully investigate ice in the fuel as being a known-issue on finals prior, long before I cast aspersions on three experienced senior airline pilots, as the MSM has, and as authorities seem to wink at.
--
RE the turbulence info you've very welcome, glad you enjoyed it. That whole online 'tutorial' series is brilliantly written and linked in, very thorough on practical and theory aspects of GA VFR. There's another online book I can recommend as well, an American one called, "See how it Flys"
http://www.av8n.com/how/#contents
http://www.recreationalflying.com/tutorials/index.html
The knowledge experience and advice of both authors is impressive stuff.
--
What you say about flying as a faux 'hazard' it very true. In oz the average GA fatal accident rate for the whole country is 5 to 7 fatalities per year, but the MSM and Govt carry on like that's the end of the world! Yet that extremely low rate is always smothered with more red-tape and more training to try and make that finally "go away". And in the past few years it's failed to make even a significant dent in the numbers.
This mentality also applies to cars and motorbikes. We are speed-fined into oblivion. I love riding and I've had numerous close-calls, and even one accident, and I've learn each and every time. But as you say, I can never prevent certain things occurring, but I accept that. It is not a failure, it's just how reality is. So I keep riding anyway, because that's what makes being a sensate being, worth 'being'. Whereas a Govt ALWAYS wants to robs from me the freedom to live and die by my wits or choices. I'm told that would be a 'tragedy'! Who for? ... the Commissioner of Taxation?
One thing I find really intolerable and completely insulting is the wrote Pavlovian-responses imparted by the MSM and the State moronosphere, that any suicide should ALWAYS be intervened upon, in all instances. That we MUST step-in to 'save' people who want to die. The State insinuates that each poor schmuck's life is really the state's that they're a possession of "The Crown", and the Crown can freely mistreat and kill you, as it pleases the Crown, but you can not kill you, because you have no personal rights to "criminally attack nor damage the State's Crown-property. That's exactly what this insane farce of 'Crown-ism' implies. That some vile fascist royal family scum on a 'throne' in England presides over others, at all times, and in all places. I can't think of anything more insane, arrogant, insulting, and objectionable than that. I'll never accept such conceited outrageous royalist bullshit, still fronting-up with the gall to assert they have some right to other human being's lives. In the past such filth were just strung-up, then left to rot. In London they get a palace and garlands, while in Canberra sniveling brainwashed complete idiots kiss the royal feet, and worship at their 'crown' ... as though it means something significant ... stunning cartoon-like insanity is all it is.
Well, I'm sure the glass cockpit in B777s and other modern aircraft are a lot more "fully integrated" than my pipistrel. But I agree with you, and have two of the biggest and most modern displays pipistrel offers. After some time to adjust to the "merged" nature of the display, it really is nice, and efficient. Now I'd hate to go back to 27 little round dials, plus 3 or 4 custom gizmos (like the "bank and pitch" and "keep the ball centered" gizmos).
I can't argue with you about the probable cause of the accident, since you obviously know a whole lot more than me about how those systems work on larger [far more integrated] aircraft. However, don't you find that comment the pilot made about the auto-throttle to be at least a little interesting? Not yet engaged? Surely that means he didn't turn it on just after takeoff or in flight. That makes me think he only expected to engage the sucker during the landing process. What do you think about that? Did he say exactly WHEN he noticed this, and did he then engage this control? I must assume the black-box records when this control/instrument is engaged.
I don't know what types of warnings those other warnings are (I only know the stall warning sound, which is always noticed immediately unless the cabin is insanely noisy). Are all those other warnings also sound warnings (which inherently ARE noticed, and noticed immediately, while indicator warnings might not be noticed for some time if the pilots are looking elsewhere)?
Yes, of course they better check fuel ice! Just because they supposedly fixed the problem doesn't mean they ignore that possibility after another problem. And your story certainly sounds plausible, though I am still stunned that the stall warning is only heard 4 seconds before impact. I would think just about any plane could glide without power for more (but maybe not much more) than 4 seconds after the stall warning begins. Of course pulling the nose way up might shorten that, though I'm still rather surprised.
I'm still betting on pilot error CAUSED BY some malfunction in instrumentation, if you understand my meaning. Of course if you are correct, no pilot bears any fault or responsibility. Personally, I don't have a horse in the race. Whatever is the cause is the cause, simple as that. But yeah, the MSM is such a complete bunch of jerks, but so they are about everything.
-----
Of course I completely agree with you about the so-called "crown" and every variant of that idea. The notion of royalty is just about the most offensive idea in the history of human language. Of course abstract fictional dispersed authority may be more harmful, simply because humans become even more clueless when things become more abstract or fictional. Plus you can't put a bullet between the eye of an abstract dispersed fiction to end the problem. Humans are just a tad more likely to say BS to a single individual saying "I flat out own you, and you must obey whatever I say, period". On the other hand, these days humans are dumber than rocks. Literally.
Now I completely ignore all claimed "authority". All "authority" is pure fiction and has no basis in fact.
I may yet regret this, but now that I live far away from the largest and most egregious nations, I pretty much completely evade and ignore all authority. For example, I've flown to a dozen countries and never filed a flight plan or otherwise notified anyone. The notion that birds have an absolute right to fly anywhere on earth, but I need permission... is too much for me to take at this point in my life. Ditto for renewing my pilot medicals and other such official hoop jumping. Screw them all. I'll be happy to never land at any airport with a control tower (just in case). Who needs them? Frankly, I haven't landed at ANY type of airport in quite some time, not even abandoned airstrips with no buildings nearby.
Yes, I am very careful about my routes and altitudes when I pass in and out of their fictional boundaries, but someday they might notice. I certainly hope not, though. I really don't want to deal with any federales equivalents. Fortunately, most places I go are nearly devoid of "officials", or the "cops" that do exist wouldn't have a clue what to think of such a strange little aircraft in the middle of nowhere. For sure, very few people would imagine it can fly 4000km non-stop (or 6000km with in-cabin fuel blatters connected). I always land somewhere like a remote farm. But my favorite, reserved for extremely remote places, is landing on a road without traffic for tens of kilometers or more, then roll into one of those remote gas stations in the middle of nowhere to fill up. The gas station attendants always get a kick out of that, no matter where I go.
You know the kind of places I mean... in countries that have such long sections of "nothing" that they need to establish a gas station in the middle of nowhere, otherwise everyone would run out of gas on the road. Obviously you know all about such things, the outback of oz being one of the most obvious places for this sort of situation, I'd imagine. I'm remembering Alice Springs at the moment, but I can't recall whether there are gas stations between cities like Port Augusta and there or not. I guess there must be, cuz my totally unreliable memory makes me think that's something like 1000km. But that was over 20 years ago, so who knows, maybe I'm full of it.
I can't even imagine what I would have done if I hadn't escaped the USSA about 3 years ago. The tyranny has gotten completely insanely intolerable there, and in every western country in the past few years. I would probably have gone ballistic by now. I don't want or need permission to do anything as far as I'm concerned. Screw them all. I am sovereign. I am a free agent. Period. I'm freaking done with them, all of them!
EDIT: Just found out this version of the 777 was powered by Pratt and Whitney PW4090 engines rather than RR Trent 895s of previous events on finals, so the previous 777 problems with the oil heat-exchangers can not be the cause here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214
So much for the ice in the fuel theory.
=====================================
Your logic is water-tight! :D
lol! I can't believe you do that! That's just awesome ann! RESPECT! lol I guess they do get a bit of that in South America, and the carbon-fiber must help with RCS signatures if they even want to come looking. I'm guessing you don't use an ADS-B transponder for air traffic updates on the fly. lol!
Regs here say you can only land at known registered aerodromes, no landing where you please. And mandatory high-power ADS-B is coming for all GA flights, and not just via radios which have big line-of-sight propagation issues in Australia, but via satellite, thus to get continuous coverage over every last km2 of Australian airspace. ADS-B it's like having the NSA in your cockpit, it will see your flight's data and log everything you do, plus it's linked to your flight plan and ATC audio record. So all will be time-stamped and available to be flagged for regulatory review. yup ... free as a bird!
If you tried to refuel your virus at a service station here it would very likely make the MSM National News now - no, I'm not kidding. This used to be a country where people were cool about stuff like that, not now, arseholes are in the ascendency. The proprietor would call the cops or something. There are Servos on the highway south of Alice Springs, of course, but I haven't been to Port Augusta by road from there for many years (good guess though it's 1,036 km by air).
I'm with you there, I'm done with all of it but it's not possible to escape the system here, you have to 'integrate' and play-along to some degree, it's a fine-line. There's nothing about this country I admire, it's rubbish, a cheap stupid demented culture full of shallow two-faced idiots and the politics and insane hypocrisy makes me want to puke. I can hardly believe I was borne into this psychologically degenerate crap-fest. lol :D
It's not just the Chinese who need a "cultural revolution".
I guess I shouldn't be surprised oz has gone so completely down the tubes since my visit. Why would oz be any better than the bad old USSA? I probably I had the notion that low population density implies laid back. So much for that idea. Yeah, it is nice to live and travel places where extreme flaming hyperactive nazism isn't standard operating procedure yet.
But I just can't imagine that some farmer or rancher in the middle of nowhere oz isn't allowed to land his own little airplane on his own fields or dirt roads or driveway. That's just un-freaking-fathomable to me. Do these insane rules even apply to light sport aircraft and ultra-lights?
Fortunately most tiny islands in the middle of the south pacific ocean aren't bad yet, plus a few other regions, also mostly in the southern hemisphere. Of course almost no tiny aircraft can fly to these islands from "elsewhere" due to the distances involved, so the natural assumption is probably that any tiny aircraft anyone sees is obviously a local.
Seems the whole freaking world needs a revolution, to match our revulsion. Hopefully neither of us sees each other on any MSM news reports. I'm sure that wouldn't be a happy day.
It's like this:
http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_reg/car1988263/s92.html
--
So people who want to fly must register a compliant designated aerodrome with CASA, or risk being found in breach of the 'Criminal Code'.
'Aerodrome' is defined as:
A perfect bureaucratic self-referential Canberra control-freak definition. lol
Absolutely EVERYTHING is done in these terms in Australia now, there is not a damn thing you can do that they don't have a detailed codified law for ... it's "World's Best-Practice", doncha-know? The country is just drowning under the weight of this ever-worsening Nanny-Statist regulatory shitstorm Ann. There's no let-up and no escape, it's corrosive suppressive influence is everywhere. It was nothing like this here when I was a kid, it's the complete destruction of all that we knew and enjoyed - that place is gone.
I can't believe people still want to get on a boat to come here, but they sure get a shock when they get here and find sociopathic Hardline Statism has completely run-amok.
"Citizen, will you comply?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xMMyVKm9BjM
--
Asiana 214 Crash: Pilot Says He Was Blinded by Light
By Stephen Pope / Published: Jul 11, 2013
The National Transportation Safety Board on Wednesday revealed that the Asiana pilot at the controls of the Boeing 777 that crashed at San Francisco International Airport over the weekend has told investigators that he was temporarily blinded by a “bright light” on the approach while passing through 500 feet.
http://www.flyingmag.com/technique/accidents/asiana-214-crash-pilot-says...
Geez, freaking insane. Maybe every pilot in oz should claim they are a "bird brain", and note when necessary that birds are not required to follow any of these nanny-state absurdities.
You know, when I went through pilot training they'd cut power and make us find somewhere to emergency land, and sometimes actually land. Now I guess that would get student pilots in oz shot.
Aren't news articles great? They don't say how long was the flash (0.1s, 1s, 10s, etc), they don't say what color was the light (white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, etc), they don't say whether any other pilots noticed the blinding light, and they don't say whether the pilot asked whether the trainer-copilot could take over controls when he was temporarily blinded. They must have completely clueless dimwits in the media these days.
Perhaps what bothers me most about the nanny-state absurdity is... that most "regular folks" in the western countries back the statists. Not always strongly, but nominally, which is all the predators need.
We really need to finish ice and get off this moldy rock, because it really does appear certain that humans today are terminally braindead. Most of the current generation can't even imagine in their wildest dreams a world in which people were at least nominally free in a few ways. Very sick. I forget why you stay in oz, but at the rate things are going in the western world, maybe you should reconsider, and live out your life somewhere less intensely offensive. Humans are finished.
Don't know that I'll leave, maybe, but I sure don't think much of this 'Commonwealth', it is nothing but a front for the british 'royal' family and bankers and scoundrels in suits. Oh, and a "royal birth" is but days away. All phoney pretentious crap that's so stupid the MSM will go bananas pushing the vapid royalist agenda, for them ... think I'm going to puke just thinking about the next month-long parade of drone-ish royalist suck-ups ... and then there's a federal election right after all that ... oh god, the horror! ... I'm gonna projectile-vomit for sure.
--
RE the "bright light", seems a strange thing to even mention if it were not a serious problem and distraction for the Pilots. No one in authority seems to want to talk about that. We'll have to wait for a Korean version of the story to get a fuller picture of what went on.
All I can say about "moving out of fascism-central-land" is... I am so much happier every day that I can't even begin to express how huge is the difference. I think I can say without doubt that "a move is vastly more than worth the effort" for anyone with any significant sense of individualism.
-----
This was a daytime landing as I recall, right? Now and then, when working at night (not necessarily flying), I have been momentarily distracted or almost blinded when a crack in a display or an indicator cover-glass exposes a light or bright LED beneath. This is only "blinding" for an instant, and only while one of my eyes is exactly aligned with the tiny, bright light-source and crack in the display/indicator cover, and therefore is easy to understand and avoid within less than 1 second.
I doubt that happened in this case, due to the nature of the instrument panels, but it could have. If so, this would impact only one pilot, and only for a brief instant. In fact, this wouldn't even happen unless the indicator in question is only ON during the landing phase, because otherwise it would have been discovered long before. Furthermore, these situations are only "blinding" at night, when our eyes are well dark adapted (something I am very used to, because I performed thousands of hours of observing and research with telescopes in past years). So if they were landing in the daytime, I tend to discount this report completely (as being of much significance) until and unless we learn something new.
Frankly, it sounds like something someone would make up to attempt to protect themself and/or their airline. I do not want to pretend I know this, because I would hate to even slightly besmirch the honor or reputation of someone who may well be in the process of getting ganged up on now. But I really would like to know whether anyone else in the cockpit saw this flash of light, blinding or otherwise.
One other (probably more likely) source of blinding light is a simple reflection of the sun off a shiny metal part. I've certainly had that happen to me before, many times, in many different situations. However, it was usually quite clear what was happening (what part was reflecting sunlight), and therefore usually easy to move my head to one side to escape the consequences. However, I would imagine everything in the view of pilots would be purposely designed to not be highly reflective. Otherwise zillions of pilots would encounter the exact same situation every year at similar times of day on a given runway (at least for a month or two as the sun slowly moves north or south).
I still have my money on the auto-thruster somehow being involved. I tend to guess that the fault was not entirely with the pilot, and not entirely with the aircraft either... but this remains to be seen. Possibly.
Sadly, we many never learn the truth, due to the egregious way these situations are handled. In my opinion, no pilot or aircraft manufacturer should be liable for punishment unless someone was knowingly [and clearly] reckless. This especially applies to the pilot, because he makes decisions and takes actions in real time, when careful review and consideration of every last detail is not possible (events happening too fast). The aircraft manufacturer can be give a little less slack if their designs or procedures are somehow less than perfect [in extraordinary and difficult to imagine situations], because they have lots of time to assess and test their systems.
Nonetheless, my view is, people accept risk when they drive, fly, train, taxi or do anything else in life. To be sure, when you place yourself and your life in the hands of another individual, that individual has an obligation to be diligent and ATTEMPT TO act responsibly. In my view, intention is massively important. Of course, intention cuts both ways --- it protects people when they are doing their best but make an accidental mistake, but it also makes them liable when they start to cut corners in ways that seem (or objectively are) "not very risky" in the vast majority of situations, but then blow up in their faces in an unusual situation.
What we see in the media, and even in forums of semi-reasonable people, is little focus on intention, and little focus on what is reasonable to expect of real human beings with real equipment in real situations in the real world. I want to keep my perspective completely real.
If this was an accident, whether caused by pilots or aircraft or equipment or some combination, I think people need to lighten up and let things be. I'm sure the airline or its insurance company will pay all medical bills for everyone involved, plus additional tens or hundreds of thousands per individual for pain, suffering, psychological trauma and inconvenience, plus a million or three for every death... even if they are found to be entirely NOT responsible. If so, people should leave it at that, unless irresponsible behavior is detected (pilots, aircraft design, maintenance, etc).
BTW, when I think about this accident from many angles, and consider how "many people" think about risk, I wonder why so few people jump on the fact that that runway was in use for many weeks with some of the instrument approach equipment out of operation. Yes, I understand that pilots must be able to land VFR in VFR conditions. However, if having the additional instrument guidance systems operational makes landing SAFER (that is safer, even if still safe without), then why would people accept this so easily? Surely the airport could organize the work so this device was operational. If I understand the facts correctly, they could have had this device working, but simply didn't bother. How is this automatically not a consideration? Because reporters in San Francisco tend not to point fingers at San Francisco operations? Anyway, when I try to put myself in the job of airport operations director, I can't imagine not trying to have all equipment fully operational whenever doing so is possible. And I am NOT someone who demands excessive safety. Seems like they had to know they were making thousands and thousands of landings just a tad less safe, don't you think?
I'm still bothered by:
- auto-throttle
- engines at idle or not - contradictions
- crash only 4 seconds after stall warning
- possible fuel slush, even on other engines
It seems like some people claim the engines were powered-up and spraying water around when the crash happened, while other reports claim the engines were still at idle. But maybe I misunderstand the context (or timing) in some of these reports.
It is my understanding that 4 seconds are required to go from "idle" to "substantial thrust", and perhaps another 3 or 4 seconds to go from "substantial thrust" to "absolute maximum thrust". But here too I might be someone off.
PS: I assume the pilot pulled his nose up because he estimated his landing gear might be torn off if he didn't gain a few feet of altitude before reaching the runway... OR... the nose went up due to forces involved when the tail was ripped off. Another slightly interesting question.
posted in wrong location - deleted by element