PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Spanair accident at Madrid
View Single Post
Old 23rd Aug 2008, 21:50
  #697 (permalink)  
justme69
 
Join Date: Aug 2008
Location: Canary Islands, Spain
Posts: 240
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
Well, that's it. It seems the media has lost interest in the story and information has stopped to a trickle.

Information given is VAGUE and by non-experts, therefore conclusions as to what happened are somewhat speculative. But what was said before applies. Here are known facts coupled with my own free interpretation.

-Flight prepares for T/O but returns to gate after pilot warns PAX of a malfunction indicator (red light) he is unsure about and he wants checked by a technician. Plane returns to gate where technician and pilot agree it's a warning related to the outside temperature probe heating device (probably a faulty automatic on/off switch). Either the heating device (likely) or perhaps the whole probe (unlikely, just a few reports probably mistakenly speak of this) was tripped-off (or fuse removed). Pilot and technician agree no suspected wheather condition will make the heating device needed operative (no danger of ice to perhaps foil reading the outside air temperature). They both sign the plane fit-to-fly. Pilot informs PAX that the small problem with the "heating sensor" is fixed and they are now going to leave (after about 1h delay).

-Plane starts acceleration and rolls. Some account the plane as moving slow, rolling quite late in the strip (but at least +600m still available), perhaps having a "weird nose angle" (a bit too steep?) without any other visible indications of malfunctions. Politicians witnesses of the security tape insists on the plane looking like "it didn't have enough power to take off".

-Front wheels (and likely back wheels) leave the ground, only to have the airplane behave erratically and "fall" soon afterwards.

-Once on the ground, the plane suffers unspecified damage. Some official speaks of a wing briefly touching the ground. The plane, probably, tries to brake and briefly thereafter loses control and turns right, getting off the strip (when at least +300m, possibly +500m of flat surface was still available in front of them). It then crashes.

Information being insisted upon: No visible damage (i.e. fire) on the plane on the video recording of the accident until after it "came down and touched the ground". And "the plane looked like it lacked enough 'power' to take off", for unknown reasons. Fire or engine problems, from a visual point of view, only seemed to have hapenned as a RESULT of the inability to sustain flight (or fully take-off, as it can be interpreted also), and not as a CAUSE. Again, speaking visually from the outside of the airplane. There is definetly no "explosions" or obvious visual malfunctions of any kind with the engines at that point.

I have no idea how, in such a long runaway, the pilots couldn't notice on time a severe lack of thrust (presumably on both engines) and couldn't correct it (or abort) and instead tried to take off presumably below V2m and perhaps at a steep angle (or perhaps the angle was shallow and they were trying to compensate ... the angle is spoken of as only being "slightly weird" or "slightly unusual", but doesn't mention whether it was steep or shallow). No mention whatsoever of flaps/slats.

It seems reasonable that after hitting the ground (on the landing gear) and bouncing around a bit the pilots possibly decided to try to stop (i.e. deploy reversers, brake hard). Somehow control was lost and the airplane didn't continue (much longer) on a straight line, coming off the side and finally hitting terrain obtacles several hundred meters later at a very high speed (as plane damage and victim's injuries would suggest, where every single survivor spoken about had one or more fractures and reports of several hard to ID victims with limbs severed would suggest).

Unfortunately, the Flight Data Recorder suffered some damage, which would no doubt delay a better understanding of what happened and what could've caused it.

I have the feeling that unless some major startling discovery is made, the probable causes of this accident are a long time away. Those witnessing the tapes say things like "you can't see any problems on the plane from the footage" (perhaps the resolution is not good enough to calculate things like slats angles, etc, without heavy analysis)
justme69 is offline