Airbubba
13th Aug 2001, 11:16
Most U.S. carriers have had a "no-fault" go around policy for years. However, this is not the case overseas as numerous posts here attest...
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MONDAY AUGUST 13 2001
144 air passengers died to save £197
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW
A RUSSIAN airliner that crashed in Siberia killing all 144 people on board may have done so because its pilots were afraid of having their pay cut for wasting fuel.
No official cause has been given for the loss of a Vladivostok-based jet that went down near Irkutsk last month, but a report based on a reconstruction of the disaster by Russian crash investigators has concluded that the pilots lost control of the aircraft while trying to avoid a gradual descent that would have burnt an extra 500kg of fuel.
The Tupolev 154, a threeengined jet used for half of all civilian flights within Russia, was approaching Irkutsk on July 4 en route from Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok when it vanished from air traffic controllers’ screens and plunged to the ground from an altitude of nearly 3,000ft. It began its final approach travelling too high and too fast, according to Ogonyok, a news weekly that obtained a copy of the investigators’ preliminary findings.
“Normally, in the interests of safety, the pilots would perform a second circuit (to lose height),” the magazine’s aviation correspondent writes, “but these ones decided against a second circuit”.
The report, headlined “A Tu-154 crashed for $280 (£197)”, goes on to claim that the pilots stood to have that amount docked from their pay for flying a second circuit if it was found to be a result of their earlier error in judging their final approach.
Officials were swift to blame pilot error because the aircraft’s landing gear and flaps had been properly deployed.Its autopilot appears to have pulled its nose up as an automatic response to the pilots’ rapid braking. The jet then appears to have stalled, banked to port and gone into a spin.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001280637,00.html
______________________________________
MONDAY AUGUST 13 2001
144 air passengers died to save £197
FROM GILES WHITTELL IN MOSCOW
A RUSSIAN airliner that crashed in Siberia killing all 144 people on board may have done so because its pilots were afraid of having their pay cut for wasting fuel.
No official cause has been given for the loss of a Vladivostok-based jet that went down near Irkutsk last month, but a report based on a reconstruction of the disaster by Russian crash investigators has concluded that the pilots lost control of the aircraft while trying to avoid a gradual descent that would have burnt an extra 500kg of fuel.
The Tupolev 154, a threeengined jet used for half of all civilian flights within Russia, was approaching Irkutsk on July 4 en route from Yekaterinburg to Vladivostok when it vanished from air traffic controllers’ screens and plunged to the ground from an altitude of nearly 3,000ft. It began its final approach travelling too high and too fast, according to Ogonyok, a news weekly that obtained a copy of the investigators’ preliminary findings.
“Normally, in the interests of safety, the pilots would perform a second circuit (to lose height),” the magazine’s aviation correspondent writes, “but these ones decided against a second circuit”.
The report, headlined “A Tu-154 crashed for $280 (£197)”, goes on to claim that the pilots stood to have that amount docked from their pay for flying a second circuit if it was found to be a result of their earlier error in judging their final approach.
Officials were swift to blame pilot error because the aircraft’s landing gear and flaps had been properly deployed.Its autopilot appears to have pulled its nose up as an automatic response to the pilots’ rapid braking. The jet then appears to have stalled, banked to port and gone into a spin.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,3-2001280637,00.html