Jet goes down on its way to Medellin, Colombia

[RV8GGRVy]

PANS and MAYDAYs

This cause of this accident should be explained extremely clearly in due course once the analysis has been carried out professionally. There is no shortage of data and recordings etc.

However......

In my P46T single engine turbine, I had a simple Shadin Fuel Computer ($20,000 bit of kit) which was extremely accurate and throughout my flights the system monitored fuel consumption, remaining fuel on arrival, range and endurance. It was integrated with the Garmin 530s and flight plan, and minute by minute updated me estimated remaining fuel at destination. It was extremely accurate provided that the correct fuel reading was were entered prior to startup. Its accuracy could be checked every time I topped up the tanks. Throughout the flight I would check the data to ensure that the situation had not changed due to headwinds etc. My pilot management role was to switch on a regular basis from one wing to the other wing tank, as the fuel was only drawn from one wing at a time. So I could still run dry if I mismanaged the fuel by running one tank dry. But the SHADIN was extremely reassuring and when i flew the Northern Polar crossing West to East was a godsend on the long legs in terms of determining safety margins and power settings. The point is making is that if this type of gear is available in a single, there must be much better equipment in a 146.

On this route the consensus is that the aircraft was at best pushing its limits in terms of range. In this situation one would have thought that a good hour or even two hours out from destination, the crew would have been monitoring the fuel situation perhaps even more closely than usual. The CVR in due course might reveal if there was any discussion between the crew about endurance and safety margin. Hopefully the CVR will show whether this crew was even aware that the margin of safety of arrival was, it seems, at best becoming marginal ?

One assumes that if the crew was fully aware of the fuel situation they might have had ample time to issue either PAN or MAYDAY thereby escalating the situation with ATC. Or did some psychology prevent the crew from a declaration ? Or were the gauges not working ?

However it appears that the flight progressed without any communication with ATC re fuel and also that the crew allowed the aircraft to be put into the hold without escalation with ATC. Indeed rather than referring to a fuel issue, they referred initially, I believe, to an electrical problem - for reasons already covered in various posts . So even this did not alert ATC to a fuel problem.

Had a PAN or MAYDAY been declared, even one hour out, from then on one would expect that ATC would have expedited the descent and arrival. So it will be interesting to know in due course if the issue was raised earlier than we hear on the tape. The controller seemed to be pretty busy on other aircraft issues and cannot be psychic. The tape suggests that the real seriousness of the situation only became fully apparent when the aircraft (I understand unauthorised) left its given holding level because, (maybe ?) at that moment with no fuel the engines had failed and there was no alternative but to descend. Even then the captain's voice remained remarkably calm when his aircraft turned into a large glider and he informed ATC (finally) of his woes. (electrical failure and fuel starvation).

The polite "senorita" transmissions from the Lamia aircraft in the hold and in descent, at least in transcript, don't really give any sense of urgency until the the cry for vectors only a few miles out.

All will become clear in due course and it is easy to be a comfortable armchair observer trying, perhaps riskily, to read between the lines of a translated YOU TUBE transcript. But I feel very inclined to defend ATC lady in this situation. The media at present in some quarters are suggesting that the crash would not have happened had the plane not been put in the hold. This is a travesty as when the aircraft was asked to hold the ATC had not been informed of a fuel starvation issue, and secondly because the ATC was dealing with what she had thought was a more urgent issue, She had other things on her plate and the tape suggests that until very late on there was apparently little sense of emergency. I am fairly sure that if in my single I was out of fuel, in the dark over mountainous terrain and with very limited instrumentation (via torch) for the ILS approach and had a windmilling prop, I would be omitting the "senorita" bit. As I say all easy with perfect hindsight and I apologise to those who may dispute my view. As so often happens, the media is reporting on an ill informed and ill educated basis.