PPRUNE has photos suggesting they did a gear-up landing attempt which damaged both engines and led to engine failure during their second landing attempt. Further evidence is RAT deployment indicating failure of both generators, which matches engine failure.
They had gear issues and then a go-arounds then a dual flame out. The word on the street is they scraped the runway with the bottom of the pods during the go-around.
This has happened before in Tallinn with Smart Lynx.
Growing consensus on pprune is that they came in very "hot" at 3500ft, 5 miles out, tried to make the landing, then go around, scraped the engines as they lifted the gear too early then fatally killed the engines.
A survivor says he saw sparks and noise on the initial attempt.
So maybe gear issues but didn't seem any attempt to warn ATC or get the fire trucks out.
The final few moments seem to show almost stall conditions.
Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
it seems to be an issue with those engines. The FADEC and Perm magnet generator is on the bottom of the engine with virtually no physical protection for if the pods scrape the ground.
Normally you would only scrape a pod when doing a xwind landing droping a wing to low but then the other wing would be high so you wouldn't get a dual flame out.
The final moments the aircraft is going down at max alpha as per the FBW computer protection limitations.
They managed to get the gear down though which is a good effort.
I suspect what happened was they started the GA but didn't get the power right. So started going up so took the gear up. And then started to sink the same as the 777 in DXB when they got out of ground effect. Then realised what was happening and got the power on. But with the spool up time the aircraft made ground contact.
It looks like they never dropped to a low enough speed to safely lower the gear so the Airbus interlocks kept the gear up after they moved the gear lever to the down position. Had Airbus done their human factors correctly the lever itself would have been interlocked. Instead they ran a chime. Thank goodness the software saved the gear doors from aerodynamic load failure.
They were far too high and far too fast on approach, which is why ATC asked about it, but the crew assured ATC it was under control.
Anything above 260 knts apparently the handle will move but nothing will happen with a max gear extension speed of 250 knts.
It will reset itself if once you are below 260 if you select up then down again. But it won't put the gear down as soon as its under the 260 knts.
The gear lever on most FBW machines is not actually physically connected to anything. Its just microswitches on a fancy handle.
I haven't flown anything with an interlock on the gear for airspeed. Everything has one so in theory you can't put the gear up on the ground though. But it doesn't always work.
BTW I agree Airbus needs to redo it's human factors, its 1992. Not 1960 like the 737 max but it still needs a rethink before the next iteration.
Yup. Back in the 1960s they trained pilots, mostly coming from the military. Today, following a major mishap the pilots are unconcerned about how to fly; a hangnail could kill them.
Honestly Dave is a completely different skill set flying these modern Jets.
Just finished the theory part for the CS300/A220 and the systems side of things is just so simple mainly due lack of detail, but also its so simple compared to previous types. 4 electrical power sources, 3 busses which then cascade logically down to 2 emergency battery busses. You basically stick all the switches and knobs to the AUto setting and then don't move them until the ECIAS tells you to. The J41 had from memory 8 none essential AC/DC buses 5 essential DC and 2 battery. And you needed to be able to remember what was hanging off each one in case you needed to dump one.
The FMS and avionics part though is shall we say different even from the EFIS/FADEC Q400.
I have come from steam cockpit panel of 6 none FEDEC none AP twin turbo prop multicrew machine so have seen now the extremes of both worlds.
Mostly pilots are not allowed to manually fly through company SOP's.
I can fly ours manually with no restrictions. But its not like the auld heap of poo Jetstream's and Q400 that if you can see the runway you can just land on it and screw the GPS/FMS/TWAS/EGPWS.
If just one FMS is on line, if you haven't told it what your doing and plugged the data in your looking at the machine screaming at you from 1500ft rad alt. The only way to avoid that is to get down to emergency power battery direct mode. Even with the RAT out everything works which is number 5 in the failure modes regression.
But the main difference with the J31/32/J41/Q400 is the machine had absolutely no input into the controls. It might bitch when you doing over 200 knts at less than 1000ft rad alt but there was nothing that actually moved the controls normally.
As much as we all regard those aviators from the 60's as sky gods I really think they would face the same challenges as the rest of us when it comes to working out what's happening. The fact is that we just don't have to run the QRH nearly as often. 99% of the time we fly from A to B and never look at it apart from the 6 monthly sim check.
Jetstream by the time I had finished with it, it was a weekly if not monthly use of the QRH and I had used every card in the book apart from twin engine failure, fire and ditching. I think I had the QRH out 8 times in 3 years flying the Q400. Those aviators in the 60 as you rightly say had millions of dollars spent on them after a very tough selection basic flight training. These days a kid decides to become a pilot manages to get 100 000 euro/$ together and gets the ticket with 160 hours to 220 hours under there belts. Two months later they are in the RHS of an A321.
And to be honest ln regards to the accident stats, flying is many times safer that it was in the 60's. So mostly the views on the 60's standards are rose tinted.
BTW the Captain in the incident was ex MIL and I think read that he had over 10k hours total with 2-3k hours on type in the LHS. And the FO was another Captain of similar experience.
The crew definitely screwed this one up on the decent/approach. But Why?
Lack of currency due to the virus?
Tech issues due the planes grounded for long periods?.
Cultural issues not asking for vectors to get the height off?
Cultural issues not challenging put the gear down while over 260knts.
260knts is hellva fast to be putting gear down. And even if you asked for it the PM should have not done it, and called check speed. We do actually do this while training new FO's, screw things up on purpose and if they don't challenge our actions its a rather lengthy debrief.
Edited to add there could be a certification issue if the gear handle position is used by the EGPWS to give gear position data for warnings on approach about trying to land with the gear up instead of the gear downlock microswitches. Normally you would get 2 if not 4 audio and visual warnings with setting flaps and going below Rad alt values with the gear up. If the EGPWS has take the gear handle position as the indicator they will not have had any of them.
