Fire Fighting 737 Crashed in WA

[PiperCameron]

Originally Posted by tossbag

You poor bastard, you actually believe what you wrote? Maybe sometime in 2027 we'll hear something.

Since I quoted the ATSB blurb directly, I guess they're free to believe whatever they want. Do I believe it?!? don't be silly... however, based on past performance, I do think 2027 is a perhaps tad optimistic.

[Lucerne]

Originally Posted by malabo

Bear with me, not an Australian, but why would the ATSB give a rat's ass? No loss of life, not even an injury, Part 138 utility operation - no public safety issues, foreign aircraft, foreign flight crew . It more or less burned as much useless scrub as it put out on its last pass. Let the operator figure it out, or not.

Surprised you're still on about cabin crew visibility when non-pprune rumours have graduated to power loss after completion of the last run.

What reason has there been to suspect power loss?

[tdracer]

Originally Posted by Lucerne

What reason has there been to suspect power loss?

Ah, they hit the ground? Power loss is always one of the first items investigated after a force landing.
However given that both pilots walked away, I doubt it'll take much effort to find out why they hit the ground (inadvertent ground contact, power loss, other control issue, etc.). Assuming it's not pilot error, then the real trick becomes figuring out why what happened happened.

[Lucerne]

Originally Posted by tdracer

Ah, they hit the ground? Power loss is always one of the first items investigated after a force landing.
However given that both pilots walked away, I doubt it'll take much effort to find out why they hit the ground (inadvertent ground contact, power loss, other control issue, etc.). Assuming it's not pilot error, then the real trick becomes figuring out why what happened happened.

I wouldn't mind betting that the cause was a stall from a too low and too slow scenario in an inappropriate configuration. That seems much more likely than a power loss on that aircraft and was the overall (nutshell) cause with regard to T134. We'll soon see I suppose. (well, maybe much later than soon as these things evidently take time). When the footage becomes more public this will become more evident I'm sure.

[43Inches]

Pretty sure it wasn't power loss, as you can see in the circle round aerial footage what looks like jetblast damage at high power leading up to the crash site, that is two lines of cut down scrub narrowing down to the impact point before the slide marks. It's either a stall with not quite enough alt to recover or target fixation and same result. I think the talk about clipping the ridge gives away what they already know.

[SIUYA]

Over the coming weeks, the collection of evidence will allow the ATSB to determine the scope of the investigation and gain a better understanding of its timeframe.

Why does it need a few weeks for the ATSB to work out the scope of the investigation?

I would have thought it was fairly obvious even at this stage that who, what, where, when, why and how were the scope of the investigation.

PC, I agree with you that 2027 is a bit optimistic for the ATSB report on this event. I'm with LB on this one and am also happy to be labelled as biased about the ATSB ​​​​​​​

[Lucerne]

Originally Posted by 43Inches

Pretty sure it wasn't power loss, as you can see in the circle round aerial footage what looks like jetblast damage at high power leading up to the crash site, that is two lines of cut down scrub narrowing down to the impact point before the slide marks. It's either a stall with not quite enough alt to recover or target fixation and same result. I think the talk about clipping the ridge gives away what they already know.

Agreed. My thoughts also.

[josephfeatherweight]

Assuming it's not pilot error, then the real trick becomes figuring out why what happened happened.

A kind assumption and hopefully(?) correct, but not what I'm putting my money on...

[ehwatezedoing]

Originally Posted by 43Inches

Pretty sure it wasn't power loss, as you can see in the circle round aerial footage what looks like jetblast damage at high power leading up to the crash site, that is two lines of cut down scrub narrowing down to the impact point before the slide marks. It's either a stall with not quite enough alt to recover or target fixation and same result. I think the talk about clipping the ridge gives away what they already know.

Power loss or not, ground scrapping engine's nacelles could leave the same "trails"

[fdr]

Originally Posted by Fris B. Fairing

The question was; How can it improve cockpit visibility by eliminating four windows that were there as original equipment? When they were converting DC-4s to tankers they would often install an eyebrow window for the very purpose later described by Checkboard.

Originally Posted by Checkboard

I flew 737s with eyebrows out of Perth. They were very useful in visual circuits and circling. On a base turn to the otherside (i.e. flying left seat and turning right or vise versa) the threshold is nicely visible in the eyebrow window.

The required visual field is laid out in §25.773, in very little detail, and amplified in AC 25.773-1. It is of interest on occasions, when near miss or un near misses (hits) happen. My old P3 and the Hercules as well had lots of glass up top, and the P3 was also good for a suntan but not much else, then again we were often well over 30 bank, up to 70 degree for some tac stuff, and that could be dealing with a single light source on a dark night in the middle of nowhere. The eyebrows were not overly useful even in the low level circuit. It's an interesting discussion, not related to the incident at hand, but the perception of a pill box visual for the B737 has come up on a number of bad events, and does not seem to really hold much water. (LAT's got the water tho...). I'm doing a test in a B737 next week, and also in another aircraft with eyebrows, and will take some snaps of the cross cockpit FOV, I am surprised that the B737 eyebrow actually gives meaningful cues to a visual circuit, but it would be interesting to see that. It's a simple process to determine the FOV from the design eye point, and then work back to see if there is pilot assistance from an expanded criteria. The A350 has a larger FOV than the vanilla rule and the GM on the subject, maybe that helps drive around the pattern. Large aircraft visual patterns are replete with examples of the drivers getting down into the weeds for various reasons, many the "100" "50" "40" "30" calls happening without a runway in front are the big cues, or the fish nets caught on the windscreen wipers...

[Capn Bloggs]

Originally Posted by FDR

Large aircraft visual patterns are replete with examples of the drivers getting down into the weeds for various reasons, many the "100" "50" "40" "30" calls happening without a runway in front are the big cues

Love ya work, FDR!

Eyebrows were great when turning right base from seat 0A, YPBO 24 being a good example!

[Eclan]

Originally Posted by 43Inches

Pretty sure it wasn't power loss, as you can see in the circle round aerial footage what looks like jetblast damage at high power leading up to the crash site, that is two lines of cut down scrub narrowing down to the impact point before the slide marks.

Can you please post the image you've seen with evidence or indication of the "jetblast damage" to the scrub?

[tdracer]

IF it was pilot error and they either struck the ground or stalled trying to avoid ground contact, the critical visibility would have been what's below, not what's above. How would eyebrow windows help?

[john_tullamarine]

Explanation sideline time out -

but the perception of a pill box visual for the B737

I've not come across such a reference previously. Might you be able to expand a bit upon its significance, please ?

[Captn Rex Havack]

Bloggsy - are you still flying or is seat 0A just a distant memory now?

[43Inches]

Can you please post the image you've seen with evidence or indication of the "jetblast damage" to the scrub?

The 7 news footage above has an aerial view circling around the crash site. You can clearly see the two retardant drops in the background and the swaths cut out from the scrub leading to the wreck. It also shows more clearly that the jet has slid down the back of a small ridge line after hitting the top of it, there's what looks like jetblast marks leading up to the ridge. Post #110.

You Tube

[Cedrik]

Could those marks be where the engine intakes were scooping?

[Lucerne]

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but both this accident and that of Tanker 134's remind me also of the close call with the RJ a few seasons ago. There's a reoccurring problem here that needs addressing. We can talk about potential power loss, weird and irrelevant conversations about visibility and eye brow windows, and what the ATSB should be doing until we're blue in the face. However, what about the repetitively poor management of flight in the lower levels.

You Tube

[43Inches]

Could those marks be where the engine intakes were scooping?

I'm more leading to blast marks rather than impact marks, as they converge, if they were from the engines themselves they would be parallel. That is leading up to the ridge, after impact the more solid marks are most likely from structural impact and sliding.

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this but both this accident and that of Tanker 134's remind me also of the close call with the RJ a few seasons ago. There's a reoccurring problem here that needs addressing. We can talk about potential power loss, weird and irrelevant conversations about visibility and eye brow windows, and what the ATSB should be doing until we're blue in the face. However, what about the repetitively poor management of flight in the lower levels.

It was mentioned in the video earlier involving target fixation and why were they bombing this fire etc. You can see the pattern of jet blast I was talking about converges as the jet closes in on the ground, which I feel is very similar to the damage pictured in the aerial 737 aftermath footage. It also shows how low these LATs get to tag the second pass, meaning even relatively low terrain like in WA comes into play.

In the video below you can see the pilots scan approaching the target and the workload he is under, and then during the drop and recover there is a lot of flying happening... Imagine that with speed multiplied in a large jet.

You Tube

[Eclan]

Is this what you're talking about? It could even be where the vortices swept away the lighter scrub, leaves, dry fuel etc on the ground. Or maybe they're too close together, dunno, but as evident in the Avro/146 video a lot of dirt gets thrown up with a wing that close to the ground especially at that weight and only 101kts GS.

Target fixation and low airspeed do not necessarily go together. The Avro got close enough to the ground to raise dust to the ground because the terrain was hilly and the hill wasn't noticed whereas this terrain was relatively flat.