Air Crash Investigations back on Ch7
 

The new series of Air Crash Investigations start on Ch7 tonight at 21:30 EST.

This weel is the Gimli Glider followed by next week with the DC-10 Cargo door failures.

If you haven't seen it, its a good watch.

Greg

IMHO it's a bit too sensational.

Yeah but that's what brings the ratings in, over sensationalized crap!

Nothing like watching the same piece of footage over and over again for an hour plus the same piece of CGI over and over again. Really, it could be a 15 minute program.

:ok:

Watch some boards warping instead

Depends on which Air Crash Investigations it is - the "real" one is vastly better - less over sensationalised, as opposed to "Seconds From Disaster", renamed by channel 7 as Air Crash Investigations - Now that is complete crap - made for Americans with an attention span of a Gnat - it completely over sensationalises the entire show, and as mentioned you get to watch the entire show over and over and over again.

Agreed, asked by my wife to 'Come and watch this, its amazing!' only to very quickly leave the room shaking my head.

Two items warned me this would be drivel;

It's on Seven.

It's made for people who do not have the faintest idea of what they are watching. Again. And again. And. Again.

It's on Seven.

They are the Aircrash episodes, or "Mayday" as they are known in Country of Origin. Seen 'em on Foxtel already. Gimli glider is a good one. Didn't know about the kiddies on bikes. Interesting to note the actual aircraft involved retired from service a few months ago.

ah whether it's 'Hollywoodized' or not I bet most will still watch it just so they can bag it latter here when it's been on:bored:
If it's on TV esspecially on 7 then it's purely entertaiment, afterall the TV stations exist for one reason, to make money by way of ratings hence attracting YOU, ME & them, the viewers!
It's a free world, love it or leave it!:)


CW

The captain once commented that if his airline had given him just one practice dead-stick landing during simulator training he would have felt more confident of pulling off the real thing when it happened. Instead he had to take an educated guess at how the aircraft would glide with no engines.

In Australia at least, airline managements and regulators disregarded his advice (if they ever saw it of course) and to this day, the risk of loss of all engines (although minimal, thank goodness) is what worries most pilots - be it flame-outs in severe weather conditions or volcanic ash penetration. Simulator practice at a dead stick landing following loss of all engines, is almost unheard of - despite documented evidence that the real thing has happened on other occasions, as well as the 767 Gimli Glider.

Where the sequence was thrown in during spare time in the simulator, the vast majority of pilots I observed either crashed well short of the 10,000 ft runway or misjudged their approach so badly they hopelessly overshot the far end. Surely there is a lesson to be learned there?

regardless of production values (repeating info), it's still the best reality TV on at the moment.....brb gotta go watch a glider

Why did the cabin crew tell the pax to extinguish cigarettes? Not as if there was any fuel to catch fire :}

Good point. In fact, the cabin crew should have been passing cigarettes around.

One point to watch for in both the Gimli Glider program and the other 'out of gas' program re the Azores landing is the ridiculous view out of the window as they approach the runway: way too low. Any pilot with no gas looking at that view would think "I'm going to be dead very soon".

That said, I never miss it.

The final bit of CGI footage with the aircraft almost at right angles to the runway was pathetic. Must have been done by the blokes/sheilas who can't get CGI work with Disney.:}

I think they drained out about 30 gallons or so afterwards...

I thought even MORE amazing was that the aircraft was flown out just TWO days later....despite the nosewheel / forward fuselage damage, and the 'minor' collision with the guardrail - and that the aircraft was retired from service 'only a few months ago'....Tks CRN.

And, the attitude of the Captain in later life.

What a magnificent 'Job well done' by all.:D:D

http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=2MHy6yy3Z00


Looks like its farewell flypast.....

I watched the program last night and I got the impression that the crew didn't know that the aircraft had run out of fuel. Their gauges were inoperative from the outset and as far as they were concerned they thought they had enough for the flight.

Something I wasn't sure of at the end was whether it was the crew or the refueller who made the mistake in converting weight to quantity. I understand that the problem was someone converted pounds to gallons instead of kilos to gallons but who?

I would have thought the crew would have done the conversion rather than leaving it up to a refueller but from the program it looked like the refuller did the conversion.

The A/C ran out of fuel plain & simple, who is ultimately responsible for that? Not too hard to guess who. The chain of events here demonstrates that humans are the weakest link in the event sequence. Check out the almost total blank look on the faces (probably again hollywoodized) in the cockpit when the low fuel pumps warning started to alert. That alone just goes to show that all the training under the sun won't keep us safe. Have we leant anything from that event? Nope not a thing but for some 'entertainment' value!
Congrats to the crew for saving the day:D, a task that is almost unimaginable but they where ultimately the reason why they where there in the first place.

CW

I dear say the reinactment may have distorted events but I found it strange that it took the crew so long to calculate ROD and maximum glide distance. When the emergency unfolded, they were about 65m from Winnipeg. I think it was with about 20m-30m to run that they decided they weren't going to make it to Winnipeg and and headed for Gimli.

Also of concern was the fact that when ATC were giving the alternate airports, they didn't know Gimli was now a drag strip:eek: