este tipo volvio a nacer....
Ni hablar, a anotar en el registro civil que su nuevo cumple es el 4 de febrero..............
Accidentes en la Aviación Civil
- Tema iniciado Shandor
- Fecha de inicio
Ni hablar, a anotar en el registro civil que su nuevo cumple es el 4 de febrero..............
Cayó avioneta fumigadora en un campo cerca de Villa Huidobro
Ocurrió en una reconocida estancia de la zona. Murió el piloto.
Ocurrió en una reconocida estancia de la zona. Murió el piloto.
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VILLA HUIDOBRO. Así quedó la avioneta. Imagen publicada por HRDigital.
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VILLA HUIDOBRO. Así quedó la avioneta. Imagen publicada por HRDigital - Redacción LAVOZ
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Una avioneta fumigadora cayó en la Estancia "Los Hermanos", a 35 kilómetros de la localidad de Villa Huidobro, a unos 400 kilómetros al sur de la Capital cordobesa. A causa del accidente aéreo falleció el piloto de 53 años, señalaron fuentes policiales.
Personal policial trabajó en el establecimiento rural. La víctima es un hombre mayor de edad, de aproximadamente 50 años, cuya identidad no fue revelada. La tragedia se registró pocos minutos antes de las 9 de la mañana, confirmó el comisario mayor Walter Guzmán, jefe de la Departamental General Roca.
El accidente aéreo ocurrió a unos 30 kilómetros al norte de Huidobro, agregó Guzmán. Investiga el Juzgado Federal de Río Cuarto.
El establecimiento “Los Hermanos” pertenece a la familia Leiva de Huinca Renancó. El piloto era oriundo de la localidad de Jovita, informó HRDigital.
“Lamentablemente hay una persona fallecida, que es el piloto de este avión, es oriundo de la zona, tenia 53 años de edad y los peritajes para establecer las causas del hecho están a cargo del Juzgado Federal con asiento en Río Cuarto”, informó el funcionario policial.
Según testimonios de gente que se encontraba en el lugar, a la hora que ocurrió el hecho había una densa niebla por la zona. El avión cayó sobre un lote de soja y el piloto se encontraba fumigando en ese sector desde el dia miércoles.
"El avión, no era una avioneta común de fumigación, sino que era ultimo modelo y habría sido traído desde el exterior, pertenecería a la firma Cavigliaso. Por orden del Juzgado el cuerpo del piloto fue trasladado a Rio Cuarto para practicarle una autopsia", informó HRDigital.
Por lo que estoy leyendo en Avherald.com y pprune.com, la autoridad Taiwanesa ya tiene datos de los motores y sistemas del avión siniestrado.
Al parecer durante el ascenso inicial luego del despegue tuvieron un aviso de falla que se presentó a los pilotos como un MASTER WARNING, que es una luz roja en frente de cada uno de los pilotos acompañada por una alarma sonora que no cesa hasta que se presiona una de las luces.
Habría sido erróneamente identificada la falla y habrian cortado el motor izquierdo mientras el que realmente habría fallado es el derecho.
Los datos de los sistemas que están publicando indicarían que el motor derecho fallo y automáticamente paso a bandera.
Si se confirman estos datos seria otro caso de mala identificación de la falla y cortaron el motor "bueno".
http://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3&opt=0
Al parecer durante el ascenso inicial luego del despegue tuvieron un aviso de falla que se presentó a los pilotos como un MASTER WARNING, que es una luz roja en frente de cada uno de los pilotos acompañada por una alarma sonora que no cesa hasta que se presiona una de las luces.
Habría sido erróneamente identificada la falla y habrian cortado el motor izquierdo mientras el que realmente habría fallado es el derecho.
Los datos de los sistemas que están publicando indicarían que el motor derecho fallo y automáticamente paso a bandera.
Si se confirman estos datos seria otro caso de mala identificación de la falla y cortaron el motor "bueno".
http://avherald.com/h?article=48145bb3&opt=0
Bueno, en infonews dicen esto:
Se produjo un fallo en los dos motores, una llamada de la tripulación, un ruido externo y luego se interrumpió la comunicación", dijo hoy en rueda de prensa el director ejecutivo del Consejo de Seguridad de Vuelo, Wang Xingzhong, al ofrecer los resultados preliminares del examen.
Según los datos analizados, el vuelo GE235 de TransAsia se precipitó sobre el río Jilong a los 3 minutos y 23 segundos de despegar en un accidente que dejó 35 muertos, 15 heridos y 8 desaparecidos según el último parte.
Las autoridades ya dan por muertas a las personas no encontradas y cuyos cuerpos se buscan en el río entre serias dificultades, debido al frío y la falta de visibilidad en las aguas, precisó la agencia EFE.
Wang explicó que, muy poco después de despegar el avión, se detuvo el motor izquierdo, por lo cual el piloto y su segundo enviaron una señal de alerta y trataron de encenderlo de nuevo.
Después falló el segundo motor y también se intentó reactivarlo, tras lo cual se oye un ruido externo y se interrumpe la grabación de las cajas negras, añadió.
Un minuto antes de estrellarse el avión se registraron cinco alertas automáticas de que el avión estaba perdiendo el empuje suficiente para poder mantenerse en vuelo, concluyó.
Expertos taiwaneses apuntaron que, en una situación de fallo mecánico como la que ocurrió, el piloto no podía hacer mucho, por lo que pidieron un mayor control de las revisiones y más medidas de seguridad.
Por el contrario, los analistas destacaron la actuación del piloto Liao Chien-tsung, que murió en el accidente y fue encontrado aferrado a los mandos, al evitar estrellarse en una zona muy poblada.
Se produjo un fallo en los dos motores, una llamada de la tripulación, un ruido externo y luego se interrumpió la comunicación", dijo hoy en rueda de prensa el director ejecutivo del Consejo de Seguridad de Vuelo, Wang Xingzhong, al ofrecer los resultados preliminares del examen.
Según los datos analizados, el vuelo GE235 de TransAsia se precipitó sobre el río Jilong a los 3 minutos y 23 segundos de despegar en un accidente que dejó 35 muertos, 15 heridos y 8 desaparecidos según el último parte.
Las autoridades ya dan por muertas a las personas no encontradas y cuyos cuerpos se buscan en el río entre serias dificultades, debido al frío y la falta de visibilidad en las aguas, precisó la agencia EFE.
Wang explicó que, muy poco después de despegar el avión, se detuvo el motor izquierdo, por lo cual el piloto y su segundo enviaron una señal de alerta y trataron de encenderlo de nuevo.
Después falló el segundo motor y también se intentó reactivarlo, tras lo cual se oye un ruido externo y se interrumpe la grabación de las cajas negras, añadió.
Un minuto antes de estrellarse el avión se registraron cinco alertas automáticas de que el avión estaba perdiendo el empuje suficiente para poder mantenerse en vuelo, concluyó.
Expertos taiwaneses apuntaron que, en una situación de fallo mecánico como la que ocurrió, el piloto no podía hacer mucho, por lo que pidieron un mayor control de las revisiones y más medidas de seguridad.
Por el contrario, los analistas destacaron la actuación del piloto Liao Chien-tsung, que murió en el accidente y fue encontrado aferrado a los mandos, al evitar estrellarse en una zona muy poblada.
B
bullrock
esto necesita cortarse de una vez.
un simple sistema que no permita cortar el motor en situaciones de despegue sin que tenga alerta de fuego o de falla, permitira evitar ese error que tantas vidas costo
Hay que esperar el final de la investigación. De todas formas por lo que se viene leyendo el final de la cadena de eventos que terminó en un accidente fue la tripulación que actuó de formas equivocada.
Ahora la razón de ello habrá que determinarlo basado en la investigación.
Han habido varios accidentes como estos, uno muy conocido fue de un B737-400 en Inglaterra. Este accidente fue en 1989 y apagaron el motor equivocado muriendo mas de 130 personas.
Es por eso que hay protocolos para ciertas acciones en los procedimientos como apagar motores.
Primero se vuela el avión, se controla su trayectoria vertical y horizontal.
Una vez estabilizados y a no menos de 400 ft AGL se determina que paso y se da inicio al procedimiento.
En este caso fue un engine failure. En el ATR no se como será pero debe ser muy similar al A320 en cuanto a que las acciones de reducir el throttle a iddle y cortar el combustible son acciones confirmadas.
Que quiere decir esto, si me fallo el motor izquierdo (ENG 1) el Pilot Flying cuando se determina el motor fallado antes de reducir el throttle a iddle del motor 1 dice lo que va a hacer y espera la confirmación del Pilot Monitoring (antes se lo nombraba como Pilot Non Flying) y recién ahí realiza la acción de reducir el motor 1.
Esto lo hacemos todos los simuladores, en Argentina cada 6 meses, pero en Taiwán con China Airlines me tocaba cada 3 meses.
http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/transasia-ge235-shutting-down-the-wrong-engine-408790/
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. As you no doubt may be aware, we have a small problem with our engines …”
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-...-death-defying-ordeal-engines-failed-approach
Pilots reveal death-defying ordeal as engines failed on approach to Chek Lap Kok
When both of Flight CX780’s engines failed on approach to Chek Lap Kok, tragedy looked certain to its pilots, who hadn’t trained for such an emergency. However, outstanding airmanship led to a safe – if not smooth – landing for the 322 people on board. Now, for the first time, the unsung fliers talk publicly about their death-defying ordeal, Simon Parry reports
The cockpit announcement as the plane bumped through the air towards Hong Kong was a masterpiece of understatement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. As you no doubt may be aware, we have a small problem with our engines …” Minutes earlier, the pilot who spoke those calm but ominous words, Malcolm Waters, then 35 years old, had been struggling alongside First Officer David Hayhoe to prevent the crippled Cathay Pacific aircraft from plunging into the South China Sea. Filled with contaminated fuel before take-off in Surabaya, the Airbus A330-342, with 322 passengers and crew aboard, had been gliding ever closer to the sea with no power in either engine – and even when the pilot made his announcement, its fate was still far from certain.
In an extraordinary sequence of events, the plane’s two Rolls-Royce engines spluttered and failed in the final descent to Hong Kong, leaving the captain and co-pilot with an unprecedented challenge. For three to four minutes, the plane headed helplessly towards the choppy ocean below before the pilots managed to regain thrust in one engine to keep Flight 780 aloft.
The realisation of what could happen strikes you ... what you feel is fear
Then, in their final approach, the power setting jammed in the one functioning engine, forcing the pilots to land the plane at a dangerously high speed of 231 knots, some 177km/h above the normal landing speed.
The remarkable actions of Waters and Hayhoe were last month recognised when they were awarded the prestigious Polaris Award for heroism and airmanship by the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Associations.
Now, in their first newspaper interview since the drama four years ago, the two Australian pilots describe to Post Magazine how the emergency unfolded and the fear they felt as they battled to prevent a catastrophe.
Flight 780’s deflated tyres after the high-speed landing in 2010.
IT WAS A BRIGHT spring afternoon over the South China Sea, about 50 nautical miles from Hong Kong, when what began as a problematic but manageable flight from Surabaya turned into a life-or-death emergency. There had been some fluctuations, or misfirings, in both engines – particularly in engine No 2 (that to the pilots’ left) – as the plane climbed out of Indonesia’s second-largest city on the morning of April 13, 2010. Two hours into the flight, there were more fluctuations in engine No 2.
On both occasions, the pilots radioed Cathay Pacific engineers in Hong Kong, who advised them it was safe to continue the flight as all the other vital signs from the engines appeared normal. The A330 is designed to fly comfortably on one engine and there was no inkling yet of the chaos the contaminated fuel would cause.
But some 110 nautical miles short of Hong Kong, the situation worsened. The pilots received a message from the onboard computer saying engine No 2 had stalled. They set engine No 1 to maximum thrust and requested a priority landing.
Then, as the plane flew at 8,000 feet some 45 nautical miles southeast of Hong Kong, a stall message was received for engine No 1 – meaning that while the engines were still ticking over, neither was producing any thrust.
“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” says Waters, from Jamberoo, New South Wales, in Australia. “I thought, ‘It must be the original engine that’s giving us an issue. It must be the same message again’. My gut reaction was that we could end up ditching in the sea.”
A year earlier, US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger had made world headlines by landing a passenger plane safely on the flat waters of the Hudson River in New York after a double bird strike shortly after take-off.
“I looked out of the window and I looked at the state of the sea and I thought, ‘That’s not the Hudson’,” says Waters, of the choppy conditions below. The aircraft was already too low to glide to the airport.
“There are procedures for losing all engines at high altitude and we had practised that, but in our case … the engines were not working very late in the game, only 15 minutes from landing,” says Waters. “We were at 8,000 metres. We weren’t at 40,000 feet with 40 minutes of gliding time.
We only had six or seven minutes at most before we were at sea level.”
The plane sank from 8,000 to 5,000 feet in three or four minutes of gliding.
“Initially, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” Waters says. “Then you realise what the issue is. Then the realisation of what could happen strikes you and, I suppose, what you feel is fear.
“You know this is a dangerous situation and you always train for situations like this as a pilot. But a flight simulator cannot replicate the real threat. You go into the simulator knowing you are going to have fires and other situations and that you will be tested on your ability to handle them but, at the end of the day, you are not going to lose your life in a simulator. You can’t simulate the ‘startle’ factor.”
Co-pilot Hayhoe, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Sydney, says, “I felt a sense of disbelief. I spent a long time in the military undertaking much more adventurous flights. I certainly didn’t think that by coming to an airline anything like this would present itself.
“I couldn’t believe I had been in the military all those years and now I was going to put an airliner in the water.
“Then I started thinking, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something about it.
How do we dig ourselves out of this situation? How do we not hit the water and, if we do hit the water, how do we do it properly, to give us the best chance of getting the best result?’” Waters took the plane off automatic pilot as the two pilots declared a Mayday.
“I found comfort in the fact that I had something to do. You put one foot in front of another and once you do that you are in a place you’ve been before,” says Waters.
The passengers being evacuated via emergency inflatable slides.
“You think, ‘We are going to do this, then try that, then talk to this person’. The startle factor starts to recede a bit and you start to feel you have some control. Things seemed to flow more.
“There were moments when I would think about my family or my wife or my life. But just little pauses. I would shake my head and think, ‘I can’t believe it’s me sitting here. I should be watching this on National Geographic.’ Then something would happen on the radio or David would speak or there would be a task to do. It brings you back to the here and now. But it was a very surreal experience.”
With no precedent and no clue as to what was causing the problem, all Waters could do was slowly move the position of the thrust levers in the hope power would somehow return to engine No 1.
“I was trying a slow advance of the thrust lever and then I would just leave it for a while rather than trying this and trying that,” he says. “I had decided I would move it and leave it for a period of time.”
Although neither pilot knew why or how, gradually power returned.
“The thrust would come up a little bit and stabilise,” says Waters. “And so I pushed the lever just another few millimetres and initially nothing would happen but slowly over seconds it would come and you would get more.
“We got enough thrust on one engine to maintain altitude, which was the main thing, as it meant we weren’t ditching … I thought as long as we can get to the airport and we don’t have to go in the water ...”
JUST AS THE WORST appeared to be over, along came a second crisis. As the plane came in to land, Waters shut off the levers but found engine No 1 was jammed at about 70 per cent of total power.
“I quickly realised this was turning into another very serious situation – the same sort of feeling came like I’d had earlier, with the possibility of ditching,” he says. “We had to figure out how to get down to the runway from this altitude when we were this close and at this speed with an engine stuck on high thrust.
“At that point, we started getting a lot of warnings going off in the cockpit, too. The cockpit started to become a very noisy place. All the systems are built into the airplane to warn you you’re approaching a dangerous area … the warnings were coming so thick and fast they were going over the top of each other.
“I had to put them all to one side, ignore them, and concentrate on what I thought was the most pressing issue, and that was to get the airplane on the ground as close as possible to the end of the runway.”
The plane came in fast.
“We had 3,800 metres of runway and I couldn’t afford to land half or two-thirds of the way down with any hope of stopping in time,” Waters says. “I needed to land as close as possible to the beginning of the runway and use all that strip to try to dissipate as much energy as possible and, hopefully, we could stop or come off the end at a manageable speed and it will be much more survivable. So that became the focus.”
On first contact, the plane glanced back up into the air, rolling steeply to the left.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is it’,” says Waters. “Thankfully, the roll stopped and the airplane responded and I could fly it down again for a second try.
“I got the airplane back under control and the second touchdown was much better. Even so, I didn’t think we would stop in time. We were so far outside the envelope. When you look at what landing distances you require it was off the scale.
“I could see the end of the runway coming. Then we got reverse thrust … which was a godsend. As I saw the end of the runway coming I realised, ‘If we maintain this deceleration we are going to stop in time’.”
The plane stopped some 309 metres short of the end of the runway.
“When I looked out of the cockpit window, I was staring at the end of the runway. I couldn’t believe it,” says the captain. “I was like a schoolboy who had got away with something naughty. It was like almost nervous laughter. All the things you thought weren’t going to happen – going home, being on the ground again, seeing your family – were all going to happen, regardless of whatever happened next. Those basic parts of life – family and friends – I still had them.”
Hayhoe says, “I remember thinking, ‘How the hell did that just happen? Obviously, we are now on the ground. How did we get in this situation?’ We still had no idea what had gone on. The adrenalin was pouring through my body.
“Then we were faced with the next situation, which was the brakes.
Waters, with wife Sandra.Because we had landed at over 400 km/h and managed to stop before the end of the runway, the brakes were superheated.”
The pilots watched as the brake temperature soared to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius as the plane sat on the ground. That raised the possibility of the tyres exploding and rupturing the fuel tanks in the wings directly above the wheels.
“My heart sank,” says Waters. “No passenger had a scratch but with temperatures like that I knew fires were imminent.”
He took the decision to evacuate the aircraft using inflatable slides.
Fifty-seven passengers and six cabin-crew members received minor injuries during the evacuation process, the most serious of which was a broken ankle, received by an elderly woman. Waters and Hayhoe were the last to leave the plane.
“When I came off the slide, I turned around and looked at the airplane and it was like a Hollywood movie,” Waters says. “There was an airplane with pieces hanging off it. All the slides were deployed. The life packs and the food packs and everything that goes with the life rafts were hanging off strings from the door slide.
“They were swaying in the breeze, there was a lot of smoke and steam from the fire department putting the fires out on the wheels and paramedics, fire trucks and police driving around and people at the bottom of the slides being helped away.
“I couldn’t believe we had got away with it. There was a very good chance we weren’t going to be walking away that day. There was a lot of joy that we were going to go home to our families.
“An American businessman who had been on board found me walking around the side of the runway and he came over to me and said, ‘Are you the captain?’ He just was shaking my hand and saying, ‘Thank you so much’.
“He told me, ‘I fly a lot and knew this was quite serious with the manoeuvres you were doing for landing. I am just so happy that I will go home and see my children’.”
“It’s a strange feeling because while most of this process is going on, you are – to some degree – in control of what’s going on,” says Hayhoe.
“Once you step outside the airplane, you are handing over that control to a sequence of events, to the investigation, and to the people looking after you. But I do remember thinking, ‘Fifteen minutes ago I would have given anything to be standing on the ground’.
“That was mixed with the question, ‘What the hell just happened?’ but there was a humungous relief. I knew there was a chance I wasn’t going to be walking around like this.”
The investigation that followed found the incident had been caused by contaminated fuel uploaded at Surabaya. A series of changes in the way refuelling is monitored and controlled have since been implemented to prevent such an event happening again.
Waters, with wife Sandra, and Hayhoe, with wife Jane, pose with their Polaris awards last month.
Surprisingly, the actions of Waters and Hayhoe received relatively little attention until the awarding of the Polaris this year.
Darryl Soligo, president of the Hong Kong Airline Pilots Association, which nominated Waters and Hayhoe for civil aviation’s highest honour, says, “What really makes [the Polaris Award] so special is that it’s awarded by the piloting fraternity itself.
“We have all heard of Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and the Miracle on the Hudson. These pilots, however, displayed equally incredible airmanship, but they have gone largely unnoticed simply because of the successful outcome of the incident.
“All of Hong Kong should be proud of their aviation industry. From the incident itself, encompassing the great airmanship of these two pilots, to the assistance afforded them by the airline and air-traffic controllers, to the professional quality of the subsequent [Civil Aviation Department] investigation, it all demonstrates that our aviation system is one of the world’s best.”
Chris Kempis, chief pilot (Airbus) with Cathay Pacific, adds: “The most important thing to bear in mind is this is not a scripted or pre-trained event. We train for the events we consider the most likely and this was far from it. Most of us who are professional pilots hope we would behave in the same way. We don’t know for sure, but we hope we would meet the same standards. These guys have certainly proved there is a benchmark out there that is outstanding.
“We are very, very thankful they were there on the day, that the decisions they took were what they were. The result is we have 322 people whose lives were kept secure and who walked away from an event that could have been a total disaster.”
For Waters and Hayhoe, the greatest testament to their actions are the lives still being lived today. One year after the incident, a Dutch couple who were on board the flight sent a letter to them simply thanking them for giving them the chance to carry on living their lives.
“I think about all the people running around the airport that day,” says Waters. “All those kids on board can grow up and have kids of their own.
I’ve had a child since – he’s 19 months old now – and that wasn’t going to happen for me. I look at him and I think, ‘What a precious gift’.”
Fuelling a lawsuit
The life-or-death drama on board Flight 780 from Surabaya to Hong Kong was caused by contaminated fuel, which gradually impaired the two engines, ruled a Civil Aviation Department investigation into the incident.
Neither the pilots nor the Cathay Pacific engineers were aware of the fuel contamination before or during the flight and, until the engines began to fail, there had been nothing to indicate there was a problem.
Investigations found the 24,400kg of aviation fuel uploaded at Surabaya was contaminated with salt water, which caused engine pressure fluctuations and later near-catastrophic engine failure. The salt water damaged filter monitors, which meant the pilots were unable to shut down the one functioning engine when the plane came in to land, forcing them to execute a high-speed landing.
A series of steps have since been taken to improve the monitoring of the aircraft refuelling processes. Facilities in Surabaya have been upgraded and audited and refresher training courses held for refuelling staff; the International Civil Aviation Organisation has issued checklists; and Airbus has issued guidelines to pilots worldwide on how to handle such a crisis.
Two years after the accident, Cathay Pacific began legal action seeking unspecified damages from the supplier, Miami-based World Fuel, for pumping tainted fuel into the aircraft and a second Cathay Pacific plane, which had suffered less severe engine fluctuations after refuelling in Surabaya a day earlier.
Red Door News Hong Kong
http://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-...-death-defying-ordeal-engines-failed-approach
Pilots reveal death-defying ordeal as engines failed on approach to Chek Lap Kok
When both of Flight CX780’s engines failed on approach to Chek Lap Kok, tragedy looked certain to its pilots, who hadn’t trained for such an emergency. However, outstanding airmanship led to a safe – if not smooth – landing for the 322 people on board. Now, for the first time, the unsung fliers talk publicly about their death-defying ordeal, Simon Parry reports
The cockpit announcement as the plane bumped through the air towards Hong Kong was a masterpiece of understatement: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the captain speaking. As you no doubt may be aware, we have a small problem with our engines …” Minutes earlier, the pilot who spoke those calm but ominous words, Malcolm Waters, then 35 years old, had been struggling alongside First Officer David Hayhoe to prevent the crippled Cathay Pacific aircraft from plunging into the South China Sea. Filled with contaminated fuel before take-off in Surabaya, the Airbus A330-342, with 322 passengers and crew aboard, had been gliding ever closer to the sea with no power in either engine – and even when the pilot made his announcement, its fate was still far from certain.
In an extraordinary sequence of events, the plane’s two Rolls-Royce engines spluttered and failed in the final descent to Hong Kong, leaving the captain and co-pilot with an unprecedented challenge. For three to four minutes, the plane headed helplessly towards the choppy ocean below before the pilots managed to regain thrust in one engine to keep Flight 780 aloft.
The realisation of what could happen strikes you ... what you feel is fear
Then, in their final approach, the power setting jammed in the one functioning engine, forcing the pilots to land the plane at a dangerously high speed of 231 knots, some 177km/h above the normal landing speed.
The remarkable actions of Waters and Hayhoe were last month recognised when they were awarded the prestigious Polaris Award for heroism and airmanship by the International Federation of Airline Pilots’ Associations.
Now, in their first newspaper interview since the drama four years ago, the two Australian pilots describe to Post Magazine how the emergency unfolded and the fear they felt as they battled to prevent a catastrophe.
IT WAS A BRIGHT spring afternoon over the South China Sea, about 50 nautical miles from Hong Kong, when what began as a problematic but manageable flight from Surabaya turned into a life-or-death emergency. There had been some fluctuations, or misfirings, in both engines – particularly in engine No 2 (that to the pilots’ left) – as the plane climbed out of Indonesia’s second-largest city on the morning of April 13, 2010. Two hours into the flight, there were more fluctuations in engine No 2.
On both occasions, the pilots radioed Cathay Pacific engineers in Hong Kong, who advised them it was safe to continue the flight as all the other vital signs from the engines appeared normal. The A330 is designed to fly comfortably on one engine and there was no inkling yet of the chaos the contaminated fuel would cause.
But some 110 nautical miles short of Hong Kong, the situation worsened. The pilots received a message from the onboard computer saying engine No 2 had stalled. They set engine No 1 to maximum thrust and requested a priority landing.
Then, as the plane flew at 8,000 feet some 45 nautical miles southeast of Hong Kong, a stall message was received for engine No 1 – meaning that while the engines were still ticking over, neither was producing any thrust.
“I honestly couldn’t believe it,” says Waters, from Jamberoo, New South Wales, in Australia. “I thought, ‘It must be the original engine that’s giving us an issue. It must be the same message again’. My gut reaction was that we could end up ditching in the sea.”
A year earlier, US Airways pilot Chesley Sullenberger had made world headlines by landing a passenger plane safely on the flat waters of the Hudson River in New York after a double bird strike shortly after take-off.
“I looked out of the window and I looked at the state of the sea and I thought, ‘That’s not the Hudson’,” says Waters, of the choppy conditions below. The aircraft was already too low to glide to the airport.
“There are procedures for losing all engines at high altitude and we had practised that, but in our case … the engines were not working very late in the game, only 15 minutes from landing,” says Waters. “We were at 8,000 metres. We weren’t at 40,000 feet with 40 minutes of gliding time.
We only had six or seven minutes at most before we were at sea level.”
The plane sank from 8,000 to 5,000 feet in three or four minutes of gliding.
“Initially, I couldn’t believe what was happening,” Waters says. “Then you realise what the issue is. Then the realisation of what could happen strikes you and, I suppose, what you feel is fear.
“You know this is a dangerous situation and you always train for situations like this as a pilot. But a flight simulator cannot replicate the real threat. You go into the simulator knowing you are going to have fires and other situations and that you will be tested on your ability to handle them but, at the end of the day, you are not going to lose your life in a simulator. You can’t simulate the ‘startle’ factor.”
Co-pilot Hayhoe, a 41-year-old father-of-two from Sydney, says, “I felt a sense of disbelief. I spent a long time in the military undertaking much more adventurous flights. I certainly didn’t think that by coming to an airline anything like this would present itself.
“I couldn’t believe I had been in the military all those years and now I was going to put an airliner in the water.
“Then I started thinking, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something about it.
How do we dig ourselves out of this situation? How do we not hit the water and, if we do hit the water, how do we do it properly, to give us the best chance of getting the best result?’” Waters took the plane off automatic pilot as the two pilots declared a Mayday.
“I found comfort in the fact that I had something to do. You put one foot in front of another and once you do that you are in a place you’ve been before,” says Waters.
“You think, ‘We are going to do this, then try that, then talk to this person’. The startle factor starts to recede a bit and you start to feel you have some control. Things seemed to flow more.
“There were moments when I would think about my family or my wife or my life. But just little pauses. I would shake my head and think, ‘I can’t believe it’s me sitting here. I should be watching this on National Geographic.’ Then something would happen on the radio or David would speak or there would be a task to do. It brings you back to the here and now. But it was a very surreal experience.”
With no precedent and no clue as to what was causing the problem, all Waters could do was slowly move the position of the thrust levers in the hope power would somehow return to engine No 1.
“I was trying a slow advance of the thrust lever and then I would just leave it for a while rather than trying this and trying that,” he says. “I had decided I would move it and leave it for a period of time.”
Although neither pilot knew why or how, gradually power returned.
“The thrust would come up a little bit and stabilise,” says Waters. “And so I pushed the lever just another few millimetres and initially nothing would happen but slowly over seconds it would come and you would get more.
“We got enough thrust on one engine to maintain altitude, which was the main thing, as it meant we weren’t ditching … I thought as long as we can get to the airport and we don’t have to go in the water ...”
JUST AS THE WORST appeared to be over, along came a second crisis. As the plane came in to land, Waters shut off the levers but found engine No 1 was jammed at about 70 per cent of total power.
“I quickly realised this was turning into another very serious situation – the same sort of feeling came like I’d had earlier, with the possibility of ditching,” he says. “We had to figure out how to get down to the runway from this altitude when we were this close and at this speed with an engine stuck on high thrust.
“At that point, we started getting a lot of warnings going off in the cockpit, too. The cockpit started to become a very noisy place. All the systems are built into the airplane to warn you you’re approaching a dangerous area … the warnings were coming so thick and fast they were going over the top of each other.
“I had to put them all to one side, ignore them, and concentrate on what I thought was the most pressing issue, and that was to get the airplane on the ground as close as possible to the end of the runway.”
The plane came in fast.
“We had 3,800 metres of runway and I couldn’t afford to land half or two-thirds of the way down with any hope of stopping in time,” Waters says. “I needed to land as close as possible to the beginning of the runway and use all that strip to try to dissipate as much energy as possible and, hopefully, we could stop or come off the end at a manageable speed and it will be much more survivable. So that became the focus.”
On first contact, the plane glanced back up into the air, rolling steeply to the left.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is it’,” says Waters. “Thankfully, the roll stopped and the airplane responded and I could fly it down again for a second try.
“I got the airplane back under control and the second touchdown was much better. Even so, I didn’t think we would stop in time. We were so far outside the envelope. When you look at what landing distances you require it was off the scale.
“I could see the end of the runway coming. Then we got reverse thrust … which was a godsend. As I saw the end of the runway coming I realised, ‘If we maintain this deceleration we are going to stop in time’.”
The plane stopped some 309 metres short of the end of the runway.
“When I looked out of the cockpit window, I was staring at the end of the runway. I couldn’t believe it,” says the captain. “I was like a schoolboy who had got away with something naughty. It was like almost nervous laughter. All the things you thought weren’t going to happen – going home, being on the ground again, seeing your family – were all going to happen, regardless of whatever happened next. Those basic parts of life – family and friends – I still had them.”
Hayhoe says, “I remember thinking, ‘How the hell did that just happen? Obviously, we are now on the ground. How did we get in this situation?’ We still had no idea what had gone on. The adrenalin was pouring through my body.
“Then we were faced with the next situation, which was the brakes.
The pilots watched as the brake temperature soared to more than 1,000 degrees Celsius as the plane sat on the ground. That raised the possibility of the tyres exploding and rupturing the fuel tanks in the wings directly above the wheels.
“My heart sank,” says Waters. “No passenger had a scratch but with temperatures like that I knew fires were imminent.”
He took the decision to evacuate the aircraft using inflatable slides.
Fifty-seven passengers and six cabin-crew members received minor injuries during the evacuation process, the most serious of which was a broken ankle, received by an elderly woman. Waters and Hayhoe were the last to leave the plane.
“When I came off the slide, I turned around and looked at the airplane and it was like a Hollywood movie,” Waters says. “There was an airplane with pieces hanging off it. All the slides were deployed. The life packs and the food packs and everything that goes with the life rafts were hanging off strings from the door slide.
“They were swaying in the breeze, there was a lot of smoke and steam from the fire department putting the fires out on the wheels and paramedics, fire trucks and police driving around and people at the bottom of the slides being helped away.
“I couldn’t believe we had got away with it. There was a very good chance we weren’t going to be walking away that day. There was a lot of joy that we were going to go home to our families.
“An American businessman who had been on board found me walking around the side of the runway and he came over to me and said, ‘Are you the captain?’ He just was shaking my hand and saying, ‘Thank you so much’.
“He told me, ‘I fly a lot and knew this was quite serious with the manoeuvres you were doing for landing. I am just so happy that I will go home and see my children’.”
“It’s a strange feeling because while most of this process is going on, you are – to some degree – in control of what’s going on,” says Hayhoe.
“Once you step outside the airplane, you are handing over that control to a sequence of events, to the investigation, and to the people looking after you. But I do remember thinking, ‘Fifteen minutes ago I would have given anything to be standing on the ground’.
“That was mixed with the question, ‘What the hell just happened?’ but there was a humungous relief. I knew there was a chance I wasn’t going to be walking around like this.”
The investigation that followed found the incident had been caused by contaminated fuel uploaded at Surabaya. A series of changes in the way refuelling is monitored and controlled have since been implemented to prevent such an event happening again.
Surprisingly, the actions of Waters and Hayhoe received relatively little attention until the awarding of the Polaris this year.
Darryl Soligo, president of the Hong Kong Airline Pilots Association, which nominated Waters and Hayhoe for civil aviation’s highest honour, says, “What really makes [the Polaris Award] so special is that it’s awarded by the piloting fraternity itself.
“We have all heard of Captain Chesley ‘Sully’ Sullenberger and the Miracle on the Hudson. These pilots, however, displayed equally incredible airmanship, but they have gone largely unnoticed simply because of the successful outcome of the incident.
“All of Hong Kong should be proud of their aviation industry. From the incident itself, encompassing the great airmanship of these two pilots, to the assistance afforded them by the airline and air-traffic controllers, to the professional quality of the subsequent [Civil Aviation Department] investigation, it all demonstrates that our aviation system is one of the world’s best.”
Chris Kempis, chief pilot (Airbus) with Cathay Pacific, adds: “The most important thing to bear in mind is this is not a scripted or pre-trained event. We train for the events we consider the most likely and this was far from it. Most of us who are professional pilots hope we would behave in the same way. We don’t know for sure, but we hope we would meet the same standards. These guys have certainly proved there is a benchmark out there that is outstanding.
“We are very, very thankful they were there on the day, that the decisions they took were what they were. The result is we have 322 people whose lives were kept secure and who walked away from an event that could have been a total disaster.”
For Waters and Hayhoe, the greatest testament to their actions are the lives still being lived today. One year after the incident, a Dutch couple who were on board the flight sent a letter to them simply thanking them for giving them the chance to carry on living their lives.
“I think about all the people running around the airport that day,” says Waters. “All those kids on board can grow up and have kids of their own.
I’ve had a child since – he’s 19 months old now – and that wasn’t going to happen for me. I look at him and I think, ‘What a precious gift’.”
Fuelling a lawsuit
The life-or-death drama on board Flight 780 from Surabaya to Hong Kong was caused by contaminated fuel, which gradually impaired the two engines, ruled a Civil Aviation Department investigation into the incident.
Neither the pilots nor the Cathay Pacific engineers were aware of the fuel contamination before or during the flight and, until the engines began to fail, there had been nothing to indicate there was a problem.
Investigations found the 24,400kg of aviation fuel uploaded at Surabaya was contaminated with salt water, which caused engine pressure fluctuations and later near-catastrophic engine failure. The salt water damaged filter monitors, which meant the pilots were unable to shut down the one functioning engine when the plane came in to land, forcing them to execute a high-speed landing.
A series of steps have since been taken to improve the monitoring of the aircraft refuelling processes. Facilities in Surabaya have been upgraded and audited and refresher training courses held for refuelling staff; the International Civil Aviation Organisation has issued checklists; and Airbus has issued guidelines to pilots worldwide on how to handle such a crisis.
Two years after the accident, Cathay Pacific began legal action seeking unspecified damages from the supplier, Miami-based World Fuel, for pumping tainted fuel into the aircraft and a second Cathay Pacific plane, which had suffered less severe engine fluctuations after refuelling in Surabaya a day earlier.
Red Door News Hong Kong
B
bullrock
asi lo hagan 2 veces por dia, si sigue pasando es hora de hacer algo mas. no viene nada mal la ayuda de windows
Un grave incidente con granizo en Rio de Janeiro afecto a un Airbus A321 de TAM.
TAM A321 at Rio de Janeiro on Feb 8th 2015, hail strike.
http://s29.postimg.org/x976r3b3b/tam_a321_pt_xpb_rio_de_janeiro_150208_1.jpg
Accident: TAM A321 at Rio de Janeiro on Feb 8th 2015, hail strike
By Simon Hradecky, created Monday, Feb 9th 2015 13:08Z, last updated Monday, Feb 9th 2015 13:08Z
A TAM Linhas Aereas Airbus A321-200, registration PT-XPB performing flight JJ-3307 from Rio de Janeiro Galeao,RJ to Fortaleza,CE (Brazil), was climbing out of Rio de Janeiro's runway 10 when the crew stopped the climb at FL177 at about 17:26L (19:26Z) following a hail strike cracking both windshields and damaging the nose cone and returned to Rio de Janeiro for a safe landing on runway 10 about 40 minutes after departure. There were no injuries, the aircraft received substantial damage, the damage is still being assessed.
Metars:
SBGL 082200Z 06010KT 9999 TS FEW007 BKN020 FEW025CB BKN050 26/2 5 Q1013
SBGL 082100Z 03011KT 9000 BKN010 BKN020 26/24 Q1013
SBGL 082000Z 34005KT 9999 -RA SCT013 BKN020 27/25 Q1012
SBGL 081900Z 15012KT 9000 -TSRA SCT020 FEW025CB BKN040 28/26 Q1 010
SBGL 081900Z 15012KT 9000 -TSRA SCT020 FEW025CB BKN040 28/26 Q1010
SBGL 081800Z 13017KT 9999 TS SCT020 FEW025CB 30/25 Q1010
SBGL 081700Z 13017KT 9999 SCT020 31/25 Q1010
SBGL 081600Z 14010KT 9999 SCT020 32/25 Q1010
SBGL 081500Z 14006KT 9999 FEW025 31/23 Q1011
The hail damage:
TAM A321 at Rio de Janeiro on Feb 8th 2015, hail strike.
http://s29.postimg.org/x976r3b3b/tam_a321_pt_xpb_rio_de_janeiro_150208_1.jpg
Accident: TAM A321 at Rio de Janeiro on Feb 8th 2015, hail strike
By Simon Hradecky, created Monday, Feb 9th 2015 13:08Z, last updated Monday, Feb 9th 2015 13:08Z
A TAM Linhas Aereas Airbus A321-200, registration PT-XPB performing flight JJ-3307 from Rio de Janeiro Galeao,RJ to Fortaleza,CE (Brazil), was climbing out of Rio de Janeiro's runway 10 when the crew stopped the climb at FL177 at about 17:26L (19:26Z) following a hail strike cracking both windshields and damaging the nose cone and returned to Rio de Janeiro for a safe landing on runway 10 about 40 minutes after departure. There were no injuries, the aircraft received substantial damage, the damage is still being assessed.
Metars:
SBGL 082200Z 06010KT 9999 TS FEW007 BKN020 FEW025CB BKN050 26/2 5 Q1013
SBGL 082100Z 03011KT 9000 BKN010 BKN020 26/24 Q1013
SBGL 082000Z 34005KT 9999 -RA SCT013 BKN020 27/25 Q1012
SBGL 081900Z 15012KT 9000 -TSRA SCT020 FEW025CB BKN040 28/26 Q1 010
SBGL 081900Z 15012KT 9000 -TSRA SCT020 FEW025CB BKN040 28/26 Q1010
SBGL 081800Z 13017KT 9999 TS SCT020 FEW025CB 30/25 Q1010
SBGL 081700Z 13017KT 9999 SCT020 31/25 Q1010
SBGL 081600Z 14010KT 9999 SCT020 32/25 Q1010
SBGL 081500Z 14006KT 9999 FEW025 31/23 Q1011
The hail damage:
El granizo como tal el radar meteorológico de abordo no lo detecta. Lo que si detecta son áreas de concentración de agua. El código de colores dependiendo la densidad de menor a mayor son,
Verde, Amarillo, Rojo y Violeta. Este último mas que agua es turbulencia severa.
Donde uno puede suponer que hay granizo es en Rojo y Violeta.
Así que se trata de volar por lo menos a 10 NM del contorno Rojo, siendo 20 NM lo recomendable.
También puede pasar que uno este volando a 20 NM del contorno pero si uno lo hace del lado que sale el viento el granizo puede ser "escupido" del junque del Charly Bravo y soplado en el aire claro.
Depende mucho también del operador del radar en cuanto al tilt seleccionado (ángulo de la antena con respecto al horizonte), rango selectado, etc.
Debe ser un momento de lo mas interesante, estar sentado a los mandos a miles de pies de altura y que te cascoteen el rancho de esta manera.
Una botellita de Johnnie Walker al bajar, como para empezar a estabilizar el pulso.
B
bullrock
el golpe le abrio 2 ganchos del radome
De los pilotos de ATR de TransAsia que fueron a hacer el rechequeo oral de emergencias 10 fallaron el examen y los están bajando de vuelo por un mes.
Según dice el reporte de 49 fallaron 10, muy alta la tasa de failure y todavía no fueron al simulador los 39 que quedaron.
http://news.sky.com/story/1425373/transasia-offers-307000-to-crash-families
Según dice el reporte de 49 fallaron 10, muy alta la tasa de failure y todavía no fueron al simulador los 39 que quedaron.
http://news.sky.com/story/1425373/transasia-offers-307000-to-crash-families
Queridos compañeros foristas, he tenido cierto feedback de lo que paso con el A321 de TAM. Al parecer un rayo impacto la aeronave y dejo el radar meteorológico degradado.
Con lo cual no habrian podido detectar eficazmente el área convectiva y fueron sometidos a impactos de granizo.
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