It's pretty obvious at this point that there's nowhere near enough publicly available data to support a "why" analysis, even if the "how" seems fairly clear. That said, I think we should all be careful when comparing other accidents to this one.
Originally Posted by
AerocatS2A
...the Colgan Dash 8 had two qualified crew who failed to note a speed decay and once it was pointed out to them by the stall warning system, failed to do anything constructive to recover.
That's not what happened. The "speed ref" switch was (incorrectly) left in a position appropriate for icing conditions when there were none - thus the Stall Warning was triggered well before the aircraft was actually approaching stall. The crew response to the warning was inappropriate and resulted in a crash, but the real devil in the detail there was that both pilots were considerably more fatigued in real terms than they would have appeared on paper, and on top of that the F/O was evidently sick.
Company policy at the time was clearly coercive in terms of putting crew in the flight deck who were clearly at risk of impaired ability and expecting them to, for want of a better phrase, "suck it up, dig deep and be glad you have a job".
Given that, us westerners might want to do a little soul-searching regarding our own business culture before making judgement calls on others. In aviation, poor decision-making and culture outside the flight deck can be just as dangerous as inside, if not more so!
Originally Posted by
Kraus
Korea + no glide slope = disaster
Check out the KIA crash at Guam.
Again, fatigue was considered a possible factor there - at least by some. That devil is lurking in the details again - namely that the Guam equipment was still broadcasting a partial signal on the ILS frequency, and the result was a false glideslope capture - which was at odds with the NOTAM. The crew did not clarify the situation with ATC, which was undoubtedly a mistake (though like Colgan forgetting to set "speed ref" properly, very much the kind of mistake that fatigue can make more likely). The last oversight was the assumption that the DME equipment was at the runway threshold when it was in fact offset some distance ahead.
One of the things I've noticed about the posts on Korean crew and airlines is that a lot of them indicate that their experience was some time ago. I can't speak of Asiana, but I do know that after KAL afflicted themselves with a woeful safety record about a decade ago they were supposed to have completely overhauled their crew training, operations and company culture. Their record has since shown a dramatic improvement as far as I know, and it'd be interesting to hear from those with experience in, say, the last 5 years.
Originally Posted by
phil gollin
The testing NEVER reproduced the accident conditions properly. They only managed to have engine failures using totally unrepresentative amounts of water in the test fuel system.
Interesting - but two things occur to me. The AAIB spent an inordinate amount of time and effort trying to replicate the problem, and that was the only scenario that came close to doing so. Secondly, I don't know a great deal about fluid dynamics as they apply to water and kerosene - but unless you were to build a test rig that simulated the 777's fuel tanks at full size (do they even have a building large enough to do that?), then those that do know would probably have to adjust the water:fuel ratio accordingly given the smaller volume of the test rig's tank.
It's usually the nature of experiments that it's enough to demonstrate the principle of the hypothesis when it's not possible or practical to mimic the conditions precisely - especially when there are so many variables involved. This goes all the way back to when RAE Farnborough built the giant water tank to test a Comet 1 airframe to destruction (though it should be noted that it was the other team working on the wreckage reconstruction that determined the failure point and break-up sequence first).