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Old 27th Dec 2015, 20:35
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booke23
 
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I have been flying for nearly 20 years and work in the aviation business. I have a keen interest in aviation safety and have read pretty much every AAIB report published since the early 1980's and a fair few NTSB reports.

I have read your entire pdf and would be happy to make a few comments.

I can see you have spent a lot of time and effort in researching this topic. At first I couldn't work out what 'Axe you had to grind' (understandable by the way, I probably would in your position), then I realised that your principle issue was the lack of credit given to the crew in almost pulling off a successful forced landing (according to your theory).

But a good accident report would never do this regardless of how well the pilots did or didn't perform. A good air accident report presents the facts in a completely unbiased manor so as not to prejudice any subsequent legal proceedings.

As for your theory on the impact sequence I have a number of observations that counter your theory on maximum bank angle.

Firstly as already mentioned by Megan, the CAB report is clear that the power lines were severed about 70 degrees from the horizontal. The investigators on the ground at the time won't have just guessed this, it will have been measured and is a major piece of evidence as to the bank angle at impact.....when you then consider that the captains AI was at 90-100 degrees at impact (possibly unreliable but corroborates the power line evidence). This makes a very strong case for the bank angle.

If the aircraft did only attain a maximum bank angle of 30 degrees then the question has to be asked......why didn't they just keep on flying? Had they been able to limit bank angle to 30 degrees they could have climbed (slowly) to a safe altitude and trouble shooted the problem.

The fragmentation of the wreckage also indicates a high energy impact consistent with a high bank angle.



From the CAB report I will say this. The flight crew performed impeccably. In the very short time they had to react they managed to make a distress call and turn off the aileron boost to try to regain control of the ailerons (very impressive when you consider the pilots were very new to the Electra with a maximum of 314hrs on type). They were at very low altitude and airspeed so would in all likely hood not have been able to safely try other options like lots of rudder and/or asymmetric thrust as this would have probably led to an immediate stall/spin. (The Electra is particularly sensitive to loss of thrust with regard to lift due to the huge amount of prop wash over the wing). Your father had the control wheel at full left deflection and even had the presence of mind to close the throttles at the last minute in an effort to reduce the impact. Impeccable.

If you programmed this failure into a simulator and got 100 Electra crews to fly this flight, I'd bet all of them end in this outcome. There was nothing more the crew could do.

I don't know the full aftermath of this accident (I'd be interested to hear it if you are able to divulge it), but the 2 mechanics, Foreman and possibly the Inspector that replaced the aileron boost unit 2 months prior to this accident with complete disregard to procedure or even basic aviation engineering principles, should have ended up in jail along with their managers.

Last edited by booke23; 27th Dec 2015 at 20:37. Reason: Omission
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