Originally Posted by
punkalouver
A while back I started a thread about what you as airline pilots might do to prevent departing with a mis-loaded aircraft, as I thought there could be some good information passed around for our benefit. Perhaps, you know of an incident in your company that could provode useful information.
I was looking at an old accident thread recently and a couple of posts discussed an incident of a large airliner getting into the air after being very mis-loaded. There was information on what the crew did to help the situation and I thought that perhaps, there might be some other stories out there that could be beneficial to the rest of us. Things such as crew shifting cargo in flight, reduced flap for landing to minimize pitching moment, and what I believe to be maximizing trim range by using manual trim are quite interesting. Here is the post and reply......
Cargo Crash at Bagram - Page 2 - PPRuNe Forums
"In 2004 a Korean Airlines Cargo 747-400F in Oslo, Norway was loaded incorrectly and began its takeoff roll with a CG of 37.8% MAC. Thus being loaded 4.8% past the aft limit of 33% MAC.
Once in the air they contacted KAL operations through SATCOM and determined they could improve the situation by shifting a few pallets in the air. FO and relief FO proceded to shift a few pallets and the flight continued to Seoul.
Aircraft ended up landing with CG 7.2% aft of the limit.
When taking into consideration a possible rapid and extreme load shift far aft of the limit, it becomes evident that even with quick crew action the situation could become irrecoverable."
"
yeah... right... FWIW, to add to my comments in response to that when this was first posted, one of the issues I was asked to look at was related to the commentary from vested interests that there had to have been an instrument failure, the numbers couldn't be correct on the QAR and DFDR. Basis of that piece of folklore was that the plane had a very high attitude when it got airborne yet didn't lose any paint (aft bulkhead/APU etc)... ergo figgers gotta be suspect.
So, I ended up doing a simple deformable model of the plane to slow what had happened, as the boys had just under 9 degrees bank on and didn't touch a pod. The bank resulted in an increase in tail clearance at the point that the WOW transitioned. Wasn't the last time deformable structure was needed to get heads pointed in the right direction... One other notable one was a #2 and #3 pod strike on a landing that didn't reach the roll angles of the FCTM geometry limit guidance material. Well, if you whack mother earth hard enough, the blender at the end of a lever tends to torque the wing and you gonna get a curious rash on occasions much further forward on the nacelle than you would expect from a simple roll/pitch geometry.
Anyway, back to the story...
Yes, the 2 trusty FOs did try to move cargo, and no, it didn't get much done. by memory a very light pallet just aft of the wing root center chord got moved with great difficulty, and that was aided as a number of the locks hadn't been put in place. the rest of the stuff was left where it started. The load was spectacular. there was nothing in the front half of the main deck cargo area, it was a ballroom upfront and everything down back, and no one thought that was odd.
The call to OCC wasn't immediate, I was woken up to give input, and they had already burnt off the CWT which was a shame. cuz, the cg on landing was further back than it had been on the T/O. The CG was far enough back on the taxi for takeoff that the NLG WOW was intermittent just in the taxi, and the plane wasn't responding well to the tiller input.
Did suggest they fly a nice stable final, as a G/A was going to be worthy of a director's chair & popcorn. It landed on 33R, was going for the cargo apron which is a right turn off the strip, but ended up with it's nose wheels dangling over the left side of the runway edge, over the grass. the nose tyres never touched grass,
Manual speed brake and no more than idle reverse had been suggested, can't recall if they actually followed that suggestion. The data rate on the elevator channel was not bad, and it showed oscillation of the elevator in the cruise on autopilot, which supported my contention that the boys had been rather lucky. The suggestion to reduce altitude to improve damping had been made, and that wasn't done IIRC.
It was memorable for the nose starting to rise at 56kias, and passing 9 degrees at 100kts without input by the crew.
The loading error arose as the GHA (pretty good normally)had used the envelope limit not the APS index to start the load plan. They sure needed some big hammer blows to get it to accept the load. Can't recall right now, but I think the load sheet ended up being manual, (I think the screen printed loadsheet was of an A320-200 out of Paris.... or it could have been this one... some of this stuff is a bit hazy now, and in all honesty, can't even say this was the most spectacular whoopsie that week. Those were pretty interesting days, and the effort did seem to get some improvements. There were a lot of really good people there, the ex army and navy chopper guys were a hoot to fly with, they knew where they were in space n' time; the F-4 guys were not too bad, the F-5A's some were good, the F-16 guys were children of the magenta line.
There was the one F/O that totalled 2 A300-605s in a week... one on the final leg of his command checkout, and a week later as a newly minted captain on the 4th leg in command. That actually was funny in bits, while crying it was hard not to see the funny side. On taxi in, the APU wouldn't start, as it was mainly still on the runway following the G/A attempted by pitching full up while still in reverse thrust. that got resolved by stowing the T/Rs and continuing the tail drag down the runway emulating a Vmu test, without the bit of mahogany on the tail.
Still love flying back there; best engineers in the world, bar none.
IMHO