anybody fly? that pilot did well.

D

dnmun

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you can see how he was trying and able to lift the nose enuff to clear those apartment towers and then it stalled and the left wing bank as it lost lift.

he coulda maintained control with his nose down but by the time he had cleared the towers he already lost control and was stalled.

don't you wish the pilot over buffalo or the co-pilot on AF447 could fly as good as this guy. he feathered the stall just perfect imo.
 
i am sure they will find the plane was overloaded for the single engine ratings. this may condemn the brand for failure for a single engine to provide adequate thrust.

all he needed was a small rocket to assist. just enuff to maintain airspeed.
 
markz said:
Give us a youtube link
Click to expand...

I suppose he's talking about TransAsia Airways GE235:
http://i.imgur.com/VqYd37j.gifv
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60VAf_Nu4DM
 
You can see he was trying hard. But even loaded normal, he might have needed more room (less apartments) to glide that thing around and get back to the airport safe. Might have been able to fly level on one engine, if the airport had no obstructions nearby.
 
he saved at least the 28 lives on his plane but if he had hit one of those apartment buildings it coulda been much much worse imo.

i think this plane will become jinxed. they will have to find why that turboprop flamed out. just not enuff power to keep it flying so i bet it was overloaded too unless the other engine was only partial power but it looked like it was full power.
 
I used to fly, never anything that big. I assume that wing drop was caused by a stall and not the cause of one. Then again, just a nick of the tail on that building, the nose a mite high as it did, a little roll. . . .

Earnest Gann, in 'Fate is the Hunter,' depicts his own incident with a C-49, the transport version of the B-24 Liberator. Overloaded wartime cargo, with more than 1,000 pounds of fuel that wasn't supposed to be loaded, the plane lifted off but wouldn't climb. Not a casual little inconvenience. The weight created a need for additional speed to generate lift, but kept it from gaining speed as it kept it from climbing. An attempt to turn at that low speed would rob what little lift there was and the dropped wing would stall; you'd see much the same thing as you see in that landing. And he was heading straight at the Taj Mahal.

In the last seconds as he was about to make history with an international incident, he went full flaps, creating a momentary 'Bounce.' He mentions seeing the wide eyes of workers doing maintenance up top. Basically if the rest of the city past the Taj Mahal has lower roofs he then had time to nose down and gain some speed, somehow he got through after avoiding the one obstacle.

I don't know any emergency procedure for that particular plane, but I'd expect there'd be a little bit flaps involved. As mentioned, he might have been getting creative trying to reduce drag and generate a little more speed, but then the nose seemed up as it would have been with the flaps. I'd think it would have had more drag that way with less lift than it would have with the flaps, which keep the nose up and lower the stall speed. Even if I'm right it would be excessive to call it pilot error because just as with Earnest Gann it was a seat of the pants situation and he might have almost guessed right. That's not such a good video to judge the configuration some, but the tail being low will create some instability. In some situations the aft instability is valuable, I don't think that would be one. If that left side was a little lower than the right, the drag on the tail hitting the building would turn it left a little, maybe that little slowing of the left wing was all it took for the stall. When you learn to fly they have you deliberately stalling at high altitudes and you really get comfortable getting out of one.

I can't find a mention of whether the the guy in the van surived, looks like it clipped the front of it. Bigger story if the pilot survived. If he did, will he fly again? This is going to up the ante on all the recent talk of how unsafe Asian air travel is. I never had a crash, I just can't afford it lately. I wonder if this pilot would still yearn for the sky after he was grounded. I wonder what would have happened to Earnest Gann, who went on to become the greatest aviation writer yet, if he'd survived piling into the Taj Mahal. . . .

As soon as this yarn starts moving, the lift is leaving the wing because the air is not flowing over the top fast enough. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFcW5-1NP60 Usually one wing will drop before the other. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5adECFNFMok If both drop you have a spin, then you're REALLY in trouble.
 
Guy in the van did survive. Saw vid of him get out, and try to convince his dispatcher on the phone an airplane just hit him.

I would say overloaded for one engine, and get over the apartments. Though he might have been able to safely fly to a landing on one engine from height, he was too low for that, plus the need to get over the building.

Not that I know that much fixed wing, my rating is hot air balloon. Losing an engine during the takeoff is just always bad. If it happens to a big passenger jet, a crash is very likely. Even if loaded normally, it's the wrong time to lose an engine for sure. A superb pilot died on the end of the runway the same way in my town recently. Not overloaded, but his engine stopped and the plane stalled.

That pilot did great to miss the building, that's for sure! But after that, I doubt he had any real control left to do a water landing. He was just stalling and the water happened to be there.
 
The good engine was inadvertently shutdown and they were attempting to restart, in vain.

I sound like a broken record (does anybody know what that means anymore?) but for aviation news sans "sensationalism" this is the place to go:

http://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3&opt=0
 
who knows what sans is either. so they even had an instructor in the cockpit too. i wonder if they got a mental block because they were being observed by the instructor and stress blocked their response. or maybe they were conflicted and getting multiple demands for their attention but this is really sad since it is now obvious it coulda been avoided.
 
Related to SANS: Synonyms - absent, minus, without, wanting.
 
dnmun said:
who knows what sans is either. so they even had an instructor in the cockpit too. i wonder if they got a mental block because they were being observed by the instructor and stress blocked their response. or maybe they were conflicted and getting multiple demands for their attention but this is really sad since it is now obvious it coulda been avoided.
Click to expand...
I believe the phrase is "skipping record".

I know driving a public bus was suddenly very much easier after I was able to dispense with the instructors over my shoulder.
 
From Ykick's link: http://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3&opt=0

Taiwan's ASC said:
  • 10:52:38Z at about 1200 feet MSL, 37 seconds after becoming airborne, a master warning activated related to the failure of the right hand engine,
    [right hand engine (#2) reports a failure]
  • 10:52:43Z The left hand engine thrust lever was progressively retarded to flight idle.
    ['Flight idle' is high speed idle.
    Response to compensate for yaw resulting from drag of failed right hand engine would be to throttle back failed right hand engine - see reference below]
  • 10:53:00Z the crew began to discuss engine #1 had stalled.
    [left hand engine (#1) stalls]
  • 10:53:06Z the right hand engine (engine #2) auto-feathered.
    [right hand engine (#2) loses so much power that it feathers the prop automatically to reduce drag;
    left engine (#1) is stalled]
  • 10:53:12Z a first stall warning occurred and ceased at 10:53:18Z.
  • 10:53:19Z the crew discussed that engine #1 had already feathered,
    [both engines now producing no thrust]
  • 10:53:24Z the condition lever was set to fuel shut off position resulting in the shut down of the left hand engine (#1).
    [The crew] decided to attempt a restart of engine #1 [stalled left hand engine].
    Two seconds later another stall warning activated.
  • 10:53:34Z the crew radioed "Mayday! Mayday! Engine flame out!"
  • 10:54:20Z left hand engine was restarted
  • 10:54:34Z a second master warning activated,
    0.4 seconds later both recorders stopped recording.
Click to expand...
Interesting read on procedures for flying twin engine plane with failed engine: CAST Guidelines: ASYMMETRIC FLIGHT.
Excerpt:
Commercial Aviation Safety Team said:
Failure on Takeoff:
  • Control the yaw with rudder input; if necessary, use aileron to assist the rudder.
    Accelerate to V2 for the climb. (V2 is the speed to which the airplane should be accelerated after takeoff.)
  • The landing gear should be retracted as soon as the airplane is safely airborne.
  • Directional control should be maintained by use of full rudder, with aileron, as required, to maintain up to 5° bank towards the live engine.
    Maintain airspeed at V2; it is essential not to allow the airspeed to fall below V2, as the airplane will become increasingly difficult to control.
  • As soon as a steady climb is established, feather the propeller of the failed powerplant.
Click to expand...
Nothing like armchair quarterbacking a life and death situation after the fact...
More details to unfold for sure...
 
both pilots had plenty of hours so i wonder if the instructor was ridealong because they were new to the ATR cockpit so the instructor was assigned to train them or provide experience while they gained skills.

so this may be simple lack of training in the new planes that transasia has just brought into their fleet. maybe the same was true in the previous crash where they crashed in bad weather on approach.

that could account for the errors of judgement and slow response to the mistake.
 
Wow. both engines off would have made it really hard to get stall recovery.
 
now the poor pilot has gone from hero to goat. i find it amazing that he could put his hand on the wrong throttle, not confirmed by copilot or the instructor, and then they both allowed him to kill the wrong engine. maybe more will come out of the voice recorder.
 
I'm an RC pilot. For anyone who flies RC, that crash was almost a textbook tip stall. Tip stalls don't happen by accident, unless you are a very bad pilot. They are the result of trying to hold a plane in the air after the the plane has started to stall, without using the flaps.

Normally if you lose power, the plane slows down until it starts to stall. For safety reasons, the center of lift is slightly ahead of the center of mass, making it slightly nose heavy, so when it loses lift, the nose drops, the plane speeds up as it falls, and the plane regains lift.

For a tip stall to happen, the pilot has to fight the plane's natural response by puling the nose up as the plane slows down until so much lift is lost that the plane can't stay in the air any more. If he drops the flaps, the plane will slow rapidly and fall flat because the center of the wing maintains lift longer than the tips. This is what happens when a plane lands, and why you see them come in nose up. But in a tip stall, the flaps aren't down, and the center of the wing loses lift first. The lift is then lost progressively from center to tip until finally the very tip of the win loses lift and falls. And because of prop wash, it will always be one wing before the other, causing a violent hard roll before the plane plummets from the air.

So I guess the question is why the pilot would be trying to get the nose up without deploying the flaps. The only reasons that seem to fit are either gross incompetence, or great heroism. By not deploying the flaps and their added drag, the would have been able to keep the plane up longer, clearing the apartments and probably trying to clear the highway. But by doing it that way he also doomed the plane to an unrecoverable tip stall.

I'd like to think it was a great act of heroism. Sometimes great acts of stupidity and heroism are hard to tell apart.
 
dnmun said:
i find it amazing that he could put his hand on the wrong throttle, not confirmed by copilot or the instructor, and then they both allowed him to kill the wrong engine. maybe more will come out of the voice recorder.
Click to expand...
CAST said:
  • In most circumstances, the yaw due to powerplant system failure is identified visually, either by reference to the external cues or to the lateral accelerometer instrumentation. In some airplane types, the dominant visual cue may be the roll attitude. ... Take the time to positively identify the failed engine.
  • Maintaining directional control with rudder also aids in the identification of the malfunctioning powerplant, ... A common memory aid is "Dead leg - Dead engine"; that is, the leg with increased foot force is on the side of the good engine, and the leg without any foot force is on the side of the malfunction. While it is good practice to trim the airplane, early use of directional trim may mask vital cues in determining the location of a malfunction. In addition, when the airplane is accelerated to the enroute climb speed, a trimmed airplane will begin to yaw away from the malfunction as the rudder effectiveness increases with increasing airspeed.
Click to expand...
Not a pilot, but the CAST doc referenced above indicates that the rudder is a primary indicator of which engine has failed - however - when accelerating and climbing to speed, the yaw effect of the failed engine can actually be overwhelmed by the trim - making it yaw in the opposite direction - so the good engine appears to be the culprit.

Since this all occurred only about two minutes after takeoff, the flight path choices were quite likely restrictive and the plane still climbing/accelerating - kind of a handful.

Again - armchair quarterbacking, but it looks like this may be an issue of a kneejerk reaction to properly compensate by throttling back the failed engine but a identification of wrong engine - not grabbing the wrong throttle. By the time they figured it out, the good engine was throttled back and the fuel cut. At low altitude with no power, there weren't really many recovery options.

As crash investigators always say - planes crash because of a confluence of failures.

Beyond the pilot's actions, it's curious that (1) the right engine failed under normal operation and (2) the left engine stalled with the throttle at flight idle. Sort of looks like mechanical issues caused precipitating failure incidents, the failure at takeoff limited recovery options and may have caused confusing symptoms, and lastly the pilots decisions may have finally "broken the camel's back"...

Voice recorder will indeed be interesting....
 
yes, voice will tell us. correct procedure is for pilot to place his hand on throttle and tell the copilot that he has put his hand on the throttle and is gonna throttle down. the copilot is required to verify he has put his hand on the correct throttle, then confirm. there was also the instructor, i assume sitting behind them, who would also have notice he had his hand on the wrong throttle.

so the pilot may not have waited for confirmation or the other two mistakenly confirmed.

from experience i know the disconcerting startle from getting a response you did not anticipate from the your current actions and it slows down the response as the mind reorients back to a level of known and perceived inputs.

if he had not killed fuel flow, but instead had only throttled the left engine back to idle then it would have responded to full throttle. instead they had to go through restart. that one thing prevented them from flying out of it.

that is my impression from looking at the engine parameters on that press release.
 
Just like the 1989 Kegworth air disaster when the pilot shut down the good engine!
You would think by now someone would have designed a failsafe system to prevent this.
 
First I thought nice flying to try to safe that plane etc in the decent...

After reading some of the facts it seems rather being an human error turning of the wrong motor? If thats the case then he doomed the flight to crash. Having a minute to fly turning of an eng e needing a minute to start... Kind of suicide.

Was this really two engines being BAD? As the plane design could fly and gain altitude whatever with one engine anyway?

Why did the engines be replaced on the right side two times before this event. The instructor survived so he was in the end of the plan NOT i the front. Saying it feel something was bad with the engine(s) before takeoff?

Heorism or not. I think. NOT sorry. Keeping the human error turning off BOTH engines really when he could (offer on engine for replacment) keeping speed steady on both and get it landed for money losses instead of lifes.

The plane was a year old.

Culture is different in the world but the education has become Worldwide and doesn't give into culture or submissive talk that can be missunderstood in the arline chat.

The best to answer is of course real pilots. Some articles had some small plane comments as well as real airline pilots answering giving their comments. Some said keep both engines on, some said do the drill turn on/off after testing for faults. They followed procedure and probably got sidetracked did a human error or in the unlickely event had two engine failures, not the same but one on each engine.

One problems after another isnt good and so the circle begins.

It s sad it happens. I cry a tear sometime when I se these news so much of this but it happens...
 
Drunkskunk said:
But in a tip stall, the flaps aren't down, and the center of the wing loses lift first. The lift is then lost progressively from center to tip until finally the very tip of the win loses lift and falls.
Click to expand...
It's the other way round. In a tip stall the tip of the wing stalls first, hence its name. For a stable aircraft you want the centre of the wing to stall first so it stalls flat, hence you put washout on the wingtips of trainer RC aircraft.

Michael
 
yep tip first because it has the smaller area but from the video i saw no aileron inputs on the wing so i do not think he was trying to hit the river by turning the plane, i think it was already in yaw because the of rudder inputs but he had stalled when he cleared the apartment tower and there is almost no lift left on the entire wing. i think his airspeed was under 80 knots by that time.

if he had not pulled to throttle off then he coulda applied full throttle and the left engine woulda pulled him out of it i think because they had maintained altitude on that engine up until that point.
 
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