A cargo a/c has crashed in mountains near the Afghan capital - 12/10/10
 

from the beeb.


BBC News - Plane crashes near Afghan capital Kabul

That was fast news.. it is a 100 .. I can tell you that it's a TransAfric on charter to NAC... the remaining members billited here are awaiting news from a chopper out there now.. Very sad.. they started operating out of KBL only a few days ago having previously been operating out of Karachi... I did the same trip last night (not in the Herc) in much the same weather as tonight.. good VFR.. the thought occured to me that it's not difficult to confuse hill with a dark area of the ground... if you don't know the area.

There is some coverage here as well.

Always sad to see a herc mate go.

Will be interested to see a report on this. Bagram to Kabul is probably one of the most straightforward flights to do in the area.

RIP fellow Herksters.

A/C was former SAT N522SJ

Though I didn't know any of the crewmwmbers, the airframe is a bird upon which I flew many hours.

Still like losing an old friend.

It looks like they were VFR all the way and impacted the mountain whilst on visual approach due to "poor lighting". No GPWS on board either. Perhaps the haze gave some sort of perspective distortion or a combination of darkness/haze/reduced viz somewhat hid the mountain from view and the crew could have possibly not been entirely aware of how close they were to it?
Very sad accident.

Was on a visual approach at night, slotted in as number two. Had the preceding in sight, and went down about 7nm from the field. Visual approaches here are bad enough by day....

I know some of the posters here are in this neck of the woods, does anyone know the exact co-ordinates??
I know that a certain national here airline uses a Garmin in its 727 pax a/c (soon to be replaced) and think that is EGPWS,
but even that provides a good level of protection from CFIT in this part of the world..
How long has EGPWS beeen mandatory above 5700 kgs!!!

Does anyone know names of crew flying N522SJ? any former SAT guys?
~RIP~

The crew were all of Phillipino origin with the exception of one Kenyan and one Indian national who works on the ops side and boarded at Bagram.
The a/c impacted an almost vertical rockface 7 miles from the airport at a GPS alt of 7000ft. With the airport alt close to 6000 ft this is an extremely low alt for an a/c to be at a distance of 7 miles. The MSA for that area is in excess of 16,000ft. Approaching the airport at night even in VMC requires that the crew have good local knowledge and maintain good visual contact with the runway... even then there are risks. This a/c was initially visual and in contact with the tower (not app) and was instructed to follow another a/c already established on the localiser. This involved them turning downwind away from the a/p and effectively into a 'black hole'. No longer able to maintain visual contact and no longer in radio contact with approach radar the crew were now in a no-mans land surrounded by mountains rising to around 10,000 feet initially and considerably higher further on.

Thanks Mungo that makes sense for a flight BPM-KBL but as you say 1000 agl at that point!!!! The 727 that heads to Urumchi has a garmin on the dashboard that they use as EGPWS, better than nothing but not compliant, at ,least it will be retired soon, are you here in Kabul??

MTOGW

Afirm.. see your pm

So this trajic event is moved to "Freight Dogs" from Rumours and News, but the UPS 747 crash (pretty sure UPS is freight) stays there. Haven't looked, but is the Fedex (not sure,Fedex is also, I think freight) Narita crash still in the Rumours thread? Still learning my way around this place.

Note: there is sarcasm contained above within the brackets. Exercise caution within them.

The bulk of the discussion regarding the UPS crash in Rumors & News concerns rumor-based discussion and wild speculation about floating freight out the door in flight.

This thread is not the same (yet).

You'll note that this forum contains threads regarding the UPS crash, too.

Ahhso. Thnx

GUPPY...
 

floating freight ot the door in flight ? are you for a moment serious ? have you bothered to read the thread ? .. serious issues there, the reality of a commercial expedient vs the safety of an aircraft and well trained crew in flight.
Try it.

Yes Guppy has read the thread, that was raised as a possible solution on the "UPS aircraft down in Dubai" thread.
Unbelievable but true.

Guppy .. Spot on..

Apologies, some excellent and well informed posts !! I obviously didn't read the thread properly oops:O