Hey hiostop,

After reviewing my notes, it looks you are right. That is only in the condition if the airplane is in a descending turn, however if the airplane is turning and stalling while level or climbing the nose will drop outside the turn due to the higher AOA/slower speed of the outer upper going wing.

The cabin video was being live streamed to Facebook, must be a first.

Climbing turn, the outer wing stalls first. Descending turn, the inner wing stalls first. In theory, and I have sucessfully demonstrated that many times. This was a descending turn.
Then in reality I guess many things could happen and disprove theory.

ATC WATCHER My original response seems to have been removed by the moderator for whatever reason..but I maintain that your remarks are discriminatory and unfounded.

Dear Mt Dynamite,

If I offended you I am sorry . My remarks was not against you or India as a country but towards the Press there, I could say the same when “unconfirmed info” would come from The Sun or the Daily Mail in the UK . This is a professional forum , not Facebook .

And there is indeed a lot of garbage coming from some Indian media , and to prove my point just look at what a link posted here eralier , and after my remark, referring to an INDIA TODAY article which said : When I read this, I disregard the rest of the article.

Indeed. By trying to work out what went wrong is at the least a good exercise, especially if it saves one pilot making an error.


I think that it will have been a combination of factors. Many are saying it's "impossible" for the pilot to have been heading towards the wrong airport but at this stage nothing should be ruled out. How many times have you moved house or changed job but still driven to the old place? Everyone does it especially if they have been going to the old place for years.


The seniority of one officer and the relative lack of seniority/experience of the other could also have played a major part of this. Either one of them could have had brain fade, thought they were heading to the previous airport.


What if one were heading for the old airport but the other set speed/flaps etc for landing at the new one, followed by a swift turn to the correct runway?


What I'm saying is that there are loads of things that can't be ruled out and everyone can learn by discussing the possibilities in an open forum.

Simon Hradecky posted BOTH videos (cabin and puffing engine) are fake.

Possibility of an asymmetric flap failure,as selection of full flap would be at about that point turning final..?

That bit of BBC reporting had me on Google Earth to try and work out what he meant. Gibberish being reported by the BBC, I regret.

An earlier post suggested a training captain was flying with a pilot under training with around 100 hours. The weather seems to have been good. Maybe he suggested they take the opportunity to fly a circling approach for training purposes, which then went wrong. My experience is mainly on jets so I have no insider knowledge on turboprops. But I have heard people say they can be hard to master and a circling approach is a rarity in an airliner. I was fascinated in any case by the post that suggested the stick pusher in the ATR was not active below 500 feet. Just speculation on my part, which I am sure will be overtaken by the facts.

The cabin video is confirmed fake on many other outlets, it clearly looks doctored, the initial part is supposedly from another flight and is all legit.

In the video you don't see the pitch up, you don't see the violent roll to the left, the screams are not synced to anyone's reactions, the moment you hear the screams and then fire like nearly less than a second later...oh and the phone just laying there in flames , come on... It's clearly fake

AT72 has feature to stop flap movement of asymmetric conditions is detected

they are not fake

the name of the one who was shooting came out today by friends and family who are confirming the live facebook video.

cannot post the link, just go to bbc news and search the article: "Indian passenger filmed Nepal plane's last moments'"

simon is very confused
in his site he says that the videos are fake because they show fire whilst no fire took place in the crash
yet his photos show post crash fire

Quite a bizarre situation where the co-pilot(who apparently had a fair amount of experience and may have been with a training captain) learned to fly after her husband died in a crash at the controls of a plane in the same airline in 2006. The speculation for the ATR crash was that there was a decision to change runways and a stall involved while maneuvering.

Now check out the circumstances for her husband's crash.

ASN Aircraft accident de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 300 9N-AEQ Jumla Airport (JUM) (aviation-safety.net)

A stall while maneuvering after a decision to land on a different runway.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-64287331

Despite me confirming since the video was released that the passenger was on the manifest according to contacts in Nepal, this debate has still raged on.

and you can see the plane pitch up, but in the cabin, whats your reference point? From the video you can see it if you look closely enough, but a camera will never full show it.

I am assuming that Simon was expecting a reaction from passengers at the nose up. This is Nepal. People are accustomed to rough and ready rides. Another comment a few posts back even mentioned his shock at the experience. Knowing many Nepalese people, this is common with steep descent, approaches and turbulence in the region. Only once the wing tipped and the aircraft had stalled, would they have thought anything was different.

back to Occams Razor. Rather than look for what isn’t there, you look for what is.

both the BBC and the Guardian have confirmed it. And without being too graphic, unfiltered Nepalese videos from the scene had already too.

Based on helicopter video of the scene, looks like below is where the crash site is.

GPS Coordinates = 28.197723 83.985007
(Right near the Pokhara Christian Graveyard)

Seems pretty convincing that they were in line to land at the wrong airport. The new airport opened 2 weeks ago. ATC said the plane was landing from the wrong direction. And the path based on the passenger phone video has them in line with old runway. Probably LATE in their landing sequence they realized this, and decided to redirect to the new airport. But they were too low, and speed too slow, and they were probably too busy/distracted with the change on the plan, and the VERY hard left turn they needed to make. All added up to the stall and crash.

Scary that the almost exact same thing killed the co-pilot's husband years earlier. I'm sure it's likely Anju the co-pilot was at the controls.

Are there any regulations in the US if you are need to change runways or are missing your landing path, when you need to abort and go around?

I had assumed that the BBC's "change from the assigned runway 3 to runway 1" actually meant the change from 30 to 12, which several sources have backed up.

How would you expect to see the pitch up or the roll while the camera is aimed inside the cabin? What are you expecting to see the phone do in the flames, besides laying?

I'm struggling to work out from Simon's conclusion about the videos whether he actually thinks they are fake or genuine:

Make of that what you will.

Poor piloting in all probability. The FDR and CVR should answer the questions and theories here. Best now to wait, but not to forget. After all, Pokhara is not Buffalo. It is an insignificant Nepalese city in most Westerners' eyes.