Nepal air crash 2

[LittleInch]

Air crash in Nepal.

A bit down this link is a few seconds showing a severe wing dip and from eye witnesses the plane rolled.

Doesn't seem to have a lot of flap on and apprentice the co pilot only had 100 hrs.

New airport.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ourning-announced-as-recovery-effort-restarts

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[Alistair_Heaton]

its got a stick pusher system which gets turned off below 500ft rad alt. Which is meant to lower the nose after the stick shaker goes off.

its a relatively new airport so neither pilot will be familiar with it. Seems to have been some confusion over which runway they were meant to be landing on.

And i agree it doesn't look like a normal ATR landing flap setting.

That wing dip is pretty normal in a stall.

I don't think it will be a engineering failure though.

 

[LittleInch]

There a lot of talk out there about the plane seeming to line up on runway 22 of the old runway, but being cleared for runway 30, which still used the old runway approach.

They apparently have the two FDRs.

Suspect you're right as there was no indication of mechanical failure, but seemed to be very low and slow and got it horribly wrong.

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[Alistair_Heaton]

There is FDR and QDR.

the QDR is the quick read unit which isn't that well protected. Its for flight monitoring and gets downloaded every couple of days and run through a computer to make sure the pilots are not flying like cowboys. If its survived they will be able to get the data processed locally.

its quite high at 4300 ft

New runways in old airports always rings my alarm bells. They usually haven't completely got rid of the old paint work and its very easy to get confused if your not doing an instrument approach. So better use a few more track miles and reduce the risk until your 100% sure what you are seeing.

 

[Cool_Controls]

Reportedly a video from inside of plane during crash (Facebook live)

Link

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

that's chilling. No noises or strange yawing indicating engine fail.

 

[dik]

She was with the airlines for over a decade... Anju was the co-pilot.

"Anju Khatiwada, 44, joined Nepal’s Yeti Airlines in 2010, following in the footsteps of her husband, Dipak Pokhrel, who was killed four years prior when the small passenger plane he was piloting for the air carrier crashed minutes before landing."

More from that same article...

"A pilot with more than 6,400 hours of flying time, Khatiwada had previously flown the popular tourist route from Kathmandu to the country’s second-largest city, Pokhara."

Is ATR a type of aircraft? or does it have some other meaning?

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[LittleInch]

ATR is a manufacturer of turbo prop regional airplanes.

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[Alistair_Heaton]

ATR is an aircraft series certification group like the 737 in the manner I use it.

 

[dik]

Thanks... I thought it might have been something else, but all I could find, was an aircraft type.

-----*****-----
So strange to see the singularity approaching while the entire planet is rapidly turning into a hellscape. -John Coates

-Dik

 

[SWComposites]

https://www.atr-aircraft.com/

 

[LittleInch]

"ATR (French: Avions de transport régional; Italian: Aerei da Trasporto Regionale; or "Regional Transport Airplanes" in English) is a Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer headquartered in Blagnac, France, a suburb of Toulouse.[3]

It was formed during 1981 as a joint venture between Aérospatiale of France (now Airbus) and Aeritalia (now Leonardo) of Italy.[4] The company's principal products are the ATR 42 and ATR 72 aircraft, of which it has developed multiple variants of both types. ATR has sold more than 1,600 aircraft and has over 200 operators in more than 100 countries."

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[Alistair_Heaton]

I don't know that much about them to be honest haven't even been in a sim of them. They are not generally liked by pilots. They are loved by accountants because they only burn 600kg of fuel and hour for basically the same pax load as a Q400 burning 1000kg/hr.

The only have 2 flap settings and generally always land with flap 30. They fly the approach incredibly slow compared to other big turboprops. I think the Vref is around 105 knts compared to the Q400 with around 130knts flap 15 which was the normal landing flap which is faster than alot of medium sized jets.

Similar to the Q400 high wing T tail they have had a few stalling incidents and icing accidents and incidents. And they are very much a handful if your surprised and require loads of rudder to counteract the adverse yaw to stop a spin developing. When I first watched it I thought it might have been a Vmca rollover because of a failed engine but discounted that after the pax vid.

I still don't think they had flap 30 out though and that makes a huge difference to the attitude to hit critical angle of attack.

 

[LittleInch]

FDR and CVR going to Singapore this week apparently so no more data until they look at those I guess.

https://apnews.com/article/plane-cr...du-accidents-3b26342109872610d922f515fe94455b

Not sure why it's taken over a week to decide to do this, but at least some progress.

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[1503-44]

I'm betting loss of airspeed through wind shear.

Einstein gave the same test to students every year. When asked why he would do something like that, "Because the answers had changed."

 

[LittleInch]

I'm betting just too low on the approach to do a sudden left turn onto the new runway with not enough flap down. Now why is the critical question and who was flying?

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[MintJulep]

ATR 72 and 42 have a history of crashes in icing conditions.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

By the looks of the video it wouldn't have been wind shear or icing.

The ATR72-500 instrumentation may play a part. Its semi efis with analogue speed and altimeter. To set the various speeds on the airspeed indicator you have to move some plastic bugs round the outside.

Full efis systems you program them and it also shows you how near you are to the stall angle of attack with a yellow and red section coming up. So if you have set the wrong target speeds its pretty obvious. With the old instruments you had to feel the controls and look at the attitude to see that the "picture" was wrong.

There are now pictures of the landing flap deployed.

A common human factor threat with those old analogue speed gauges and speed setting is the bugs slipping or simply falling off. Then you had to remember what you were targeting if you are not a visual attitude pilot. Plus also setting them incorrectly is another mistake that does happen.

 

[enginesrus]

Most modern plane crashes are because the pilots never really learned how to fly. They depend too much on auto pilot. And the plane in the Hudson shows us what a real pilot can do.

 

[Alistair_Heaton]

Your not wrong, but then again the modern aircraft are designed to be managed not flown manually.

Sully is not normal for his generation either. His two big things were starting the APU up outside the checklist and deciding to go for the river. Both of which more than likely came from his vast experience in the simulator watching other pilots make a mess of things and being an accident investigator.

The starting the APU up meant that he never lost electrical power which meant the fly by wire computers didn't go off line so he stayed in normal law with all its envelope protections.

Those envelope protections, alpha crit, were triggered ignoring his pitch up input and prevented the aircraft stalling in the last 1500ft down to the water. So the aircraft systems did play a role as well with the outcome.

I am saying this as a Pilot who has 6000 odd hours on a Jetstream 31/32 which didn't have an autopilot and now fly's an A220 via Q400. You just don't get the issues regularly on modern aircraft that require you to fly it manually. And SOP's, airspace and workload means if everything is working its a PIA to take the automatics out. If something goes wrong with the automatics out it will be said root cause was poor command decision to allow manual flight. And it doesn't matter if the pilot has 200, 1500 hours or 5000 hours on light aircraft the first 1000 hours/400 flights(of which 200 will be controlled by the pilot 200 monitoring) on the first medium/heavy multicrew type is shall we say interesting even with the automatics in. Flying instructors have a better grasp of the fundamentals than other forms of hour building even though we don't actually touch the controls much while instructing.

This crash one pilot had over 15000 hours and the other over 6000. My normal day at work has less than half of that in the cockpit.