subject
 

Take him up on that Mary!

The gliding is pretty good too.

:ok:

Porter, if you are representative of the pilots at your aerodrome, then at a $1, it was over-priced.
You have NFI, both about me, and the subject matter. Pick up your dummy from where you've spat it, and toddle off to bed like a good little lad. The grown ups are busy talking here. :ugh:

In USA there are airports which have an over-run area made of specially designed crushable material that aids to decelerate an aircraft quickly in event of a high speed abort going into the over-run.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engine...rrestor_system

Many years ago I wrote to the then Essendon airport authority suggesting it might be worth considering these retardation systems for installation at the western end of Runway 26 and southern end of 17. The Tullamarine Freeway runs at 90 degrees close to both areas. A severe over-run off the end of either of these runways during peak hour traffic has the potential to cause chaos.

If ever an airport needed safe over-run surfaces it was Essendon with its close proximity to houses and freeways. Needless to say I received no acknowledgement. Gave it a few weeks and paid a visit to the then management offices in the hope of finding someone to show interest from the flight safety point of view. Was offered a nice cup of tea and politely shown the door.:ugh:

People talk about an airborne abort if a light twin loses an engine seconds after lift off. Of course that depends on several factors including runway and over-run remaining. Crushable material in the over-run zone could be a life saver especially if the runway is wet and aircraft braking capability degraded

Auto feather
 

Harry Cooper
That's a 17 knot reduction in Vmca.

If the aircraft is 100 AGL, OEI at Vmca and then the auto feather system is turned off it will be 17 knots below the mandated Vmca & will roll over/ be over.

The weak link in King Air auto FX is the pilot. The auto FX must be armed by the pilot to function - and it must remain armed/ on to continue to function. If the pilot neglects to select the correct switch & misses the appropriate annunciators prior to takeoff he could find himself low level OEI and 17 knots below his planned Vmca. Similarly, should the pilot launch into a typical engine failure drill appropriate to a piston twin (say PA31 or C404)...the proceedure, power lever idle to confirm the failed (piston) engine, will disable the King Air auto FX with predictable results.

Not saying this is the case in the Essendon tragedy but there is a cohort of experienced B200 pilots endorsed on type, trained and checked long before simulators became available in Australia. These pilots may never have actually experienced OEI ops and procedures other than touch drills at a safe height. It is quite likely that any engine failure for these pilots will be the first they've experienced and taken to a logical conclusion. Add to this a strong background in flying piston twins and the understandable tendency to revert to the drills first learned...piston proceedure that will disable the King Air auto FX, then the weak link in the King Air auto FX becomes evident.

Different pilots lift off at different distances though. I can remember watching on separate occasions two pilots flying the same aircraft off the same runway with the same load on board. One would be airborne halfway down the strip while the other would hold it on the ground for a lot longer. The latter used to scare the crap out of me sometimes, especially on the shorter of the two strips!

DF.

Thruth(ers) is stranger than fiction
 

Essendon crash is a hoax, according the Melbournian who recently said the Bourke St Mall rampage was staged by the government.

https://youtu.be/SHn52ByBhWs

Mickjoebill

Perhaps he should be forced to meet the loved ones of the deceased - I am sure they could set him straight on that! :ugh:

DF.

Arrestor Systems
 

Centaurus says a number of years ago he tried to convince the Essendon authority that it would be sensible to install Arrestor systems on the West end of runway 26 and the South end of 17. His suggestion was not taken up.

It is still very much a good idea. The current technology involves "lightweight crushable concrete blocks, similar to a runaway truck ramp, and if properly designed can substitute for a runway safety area, or RSA"

In the US the following aircraft found the arrestor system handy:

May 1999, Saab 340, with 30 souls on board
May 2003, MD 11, cargo, 3 souls
Jan. 2005, 747, cargo, 3 souls
July 2006, Falcon 900, 5 souls
July 2008, Airbus 320, 145 souls on board at Chicago
Jan. 2010, Bombardier CRJ 200, 34 souls
Oct. 2010, G-4 Gulfstream, 10 souls
Nov 2011, Citation 11, 5 souls
Oct. 2013, Citation 680, 8 souls on board

I bet that you could build a runaway truck ramp for a fairly reasonable cost...

EMAS is a good idea if you don't have the real estate for a true RSA. I agree small airports with little open space around like YMEN could probably benefit from EMAS, but I am not sure it would have helped in this case.

Given the choice between certain death and pancake in at 100 knots, I took the latter, very bent aircraft but I'm still here.

There are two plausible options:

1. Even he doesn't believe his own bull**** and should be forced, as others have said, to meet the loved ones of the crash victims.
2. He does believe his own bull**** and should therefore be committed urgently for treatment for a delusional condition.

This bloke is **** on your shoes, scrape it off, move on.

Agreed.
The salient point is these days especially in the USA and now in Australia, the downside of being the subject of any media attention is one becomes a target for these delusional ratbags whose right to free speech (the abusive, vile anti semetic, homophobic rants ) apparently outweighs the human rights of victims, loved ones and anyone else involved in an incident.



Mickjoebill

Traffic, you don't like a comments I've made on previous threads and you want to carry it on here, your own small minded vendetta, that's ok, there's not much you could say to me that would either have an effect on me or I'd take notice of.

My post gathered quite a bit of support, so NFI would apply to that support right? You spent your working life in a sheltered workshop (I know, I spent a good deal of my working life in that same workshop). You wouldn't have a clue of the day to day pressures on an aviation business. I'm more qualified than you will be in 2 lifetimes ;). Come out sometime and I'll run you through it, I'm not one for broadcasting how good I am on a public bulletin board.

In the meantime, keep educating the aviation world on the public servant perspective, a no risk business, backed up by taxpayer money. Easy to make decisions with that backing you up huh?

Crushable material in the over-run zone
 

The runway end safety area (RESA), an area twice the width of the runway and either 60m (code 1 and 2) or 90m long (code 3 and 4) based on runway classification, is meant to accommodate both overruns and undershoots. While your solution might be well suited for overruns it is most assuredly not suitable for undershoots.

Word on the street is that the owner of Spotlight has just bought a Global business jet to operate out of Essendon too.

There should be some clout for EMAS.....

Here's another recent U.S. EMAS save, it's good stuff in my opinion:

Collapsable runway saves Mike Pence's plane from disaster - Business Insider

There have been several other airliner overruns at LGA in the past four decades, some with fatalities.

I have often wondered about the commonly taught practice at some flying schools of "power lever idle to confirm the failed engine."
This practice is not mentioned in any of the aircraft manufacturer's flight manuals I have read over the years with the exception (if I recall correctly) of the Beech Baron series. The primary identification method is normally by rudder use as in 'dead engine dead leg."

The problem with pulling back the throttle of the assumed dead engine, is how fast does the pilot pull it back? Slowly or quickly? All the way back or just enough to see if any change in foot load or direction of yaw?

All this takes several seconds with the dead engine propeller still windmilling with associated high drag and loss of airspeed. Keep in mind some propellers on piston engine aircraft will not feather if the windmilling RPM gets below a specified figure - typically 800 rpm.

Having said that, with the four engined aircraft of yesteryear, there was a case for confirming a dead engine by pulling back its throttle. A strong yaw could indicate either a port outer or a port inner engine problem. Dead side dead leg was primary identification on which side. But which of the two engines on that side? Selective throttle closure combined with engine instruments narrowed down the culprit and then appropriate feathering action made.

With an engine failure at a critical moment after lift off in a light twin, the priority would be to quickly reduce drag. That means feather asap. For every second the prop is allowed to windmill, its drag will cause aircraft speed to will degrade alarmingly. In some aircraft there is more drag from a windmilling prop than from an extended landing gear. Often the pilot cannot afford the luxury of a careful pull back of the throttle to confirm the already identified engine.

Ok. Here : https://youtu.be/M4DUGhokgKE



is a link to a zoomed. stabilized, tracked and slightly sharpened sequence with the usual YouTube compression issues. It is from the original car cam posted here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H0sbCbtPJk

I hope the privacy settings are ok and you can all see it as YouTube is not that familiar to me.

Steve

Whole time airborne can't be much more than 10-15 seconds.
I wonder if that crane in the full video, on the right, was in the pilot's field of view and caused a distraction.

Centaurus, when learning to fly twins around 25 years ago myself and my peers were taught pitch up, power up, gear up, flap up, confirm, fix or feather. All of which could take precious seconds whilst effectively sitting in ground effect. The confirm was taught to me as dead leg, dead engine.

I was taught mostly in the Duchess for an EFATO to Power Up, Clean Up (Gear and feather, flaps and cowl flaps as required) Trim (raise dead engine 5 degrees). A failure at height you had more time to do the Identify (dead foot), Verify (slowly pull dead throttle enough to confim), Rectify (try a restart), Secure (feather dead engine, fuel off etc). And Mayday radio call was only done in a Single if it failed; not in a multi. So big difference for EFATO was not Rectifying or trying a restart and quickly getting to Secure, whilst always still Aviating.

In my flying time I never had a real failure in a twin but did in a Single (glided in no damage). But I also never had simulator training for engine failures which would have been useful as all the simulated EFATO's were done after gear up and usually when reducing to climb power so at 100-200 feet up and predictable when the check pilot would pull the lever. A simulator would have given practice when lower down and gear still down etc.

I've driven past the accident site several times in the last few days.

Alongside the southern boundary fence between DFO and the freeway there are three substantial cellphone towers in a line, perhaps 100 feet apart.
Also the building has 14 verticle billboard towers along its length that extend above the height of the building.

As seen on the video there is an extraordinarily high wall, perhaps twice as high as the building itself, on the eastern side of the complex that serves no apparent use other than as a 100 meter long advertising billboard.

These towers and structures form a 400 (?) meter long line that creates a increase in obstacle height (perhaps 50ft) right on the edge of the high embankment, to the possible salvation onto the embankment and freeway below.

Even if they had cleared the building they probably would have hit one of these structures.

Are cellphone towers and gigantic billboards essential to a modern airport?

Should they be removed immediately?

Mickjoebill

I wonder if those of us engaged in the fascinating world of aviation have a view towards safety that is a little outside the mainstream, and too focused on the 10^-9 risk probability that rules our world.

As an example I'll use the obstacles that abut our roads, trees, ditches, power poles, head on collisions etc. We accept that people are going to collide with such obstacles in their vehicles and be injured, maimed or killed. Besides being enormously expensive to fix the deficiencies, we make no hue and cry as a community. Why is that? Because we willingly accept it as part of life? Because those events are ho, hum, every day news items? Everything we do entails risk, slipping over in the bath tub can involve a trip to the morgue.

Do aviation accidents attract the lamentations and attention because of their rarity? Calls to close the airport because of the risk comes to mind, whereas a B Double or car driving into someone's bedroom is just another all too common event we accept.

mickjoebill, I blame you for the train of thought. ;)

Not quite true at least here in Victoria with probably thousands of kilometres of guard rails and wire crash barriers separating traffic from the trees in rural areas. Reports today again highlight the higher fatal crash rate on country roads and the clearing of verges is one of the tactics employed to save drivers from themselves along with speed limits.

Kaz

Bravo! Well said. :ok:

Bradley Golding: Thank you! Great effort on that video.

Do we have confirmation that the undercarriage was ever retracted on this flight?

Based on the video are we thinking of he'd managed another 50 ft in altitude, it would have been put down on the Tulla freeway inbound? (Traffic aside)

Seriously, are you trying to say someone would commence the takeoff without checking the annunciator panel or ignore an annunciator?

27/09,

Once again I'm not making any comment in relation to this accident.

But a general comment below.

The AFX annunciators in the 200 series King Air are green and illuminate when the system becomes armed (in basic terms- switch on and takeoff power set). They are located in the middle area of the cockpit below the main panel area housing the engine instruments, forward of the engine control quadrant (and also avionics dependant, some secondary indications possible on a glass MFD too).
Now, if a pilot was lax/distracted, or used to flying older/un-modified B200s where AFX isn't required and they didn't use it, then the lack of the green auto feather armed indication when they are now in a different aircraft (where AFX is actually now required) could quite easily be missed.

I'm taking a guess here and thinking that you are a licensed pilot. You've never seen people make "simple" mistakes that leave you shaking your head and wondering "how did they do/not do that?"

No I don't think they do megan. I think it's directly related to the horror factor. A single pilot prang somewhere remote doesn't really generate any more attention than a car prang.

Add a few hundred people atomised in a heavy jet CFIT or a few hundred litres of burning Jet A1 in a shopping centre and people start to pay attention.

It's not about aviation, it's about the impact on our senses and sensibilities.

I think it's directly related to the horror factor.

In the literature, this is characterised by "dread risk" (low control and significant consequences) versus "continuing risk" (the normal risks that we tolerate and manage on a routine basis).

Not surprisingly, the nuclear and aviation industries figure strongly in public dread risk perceptions.

Seriously, are you trying to say someone would commence the takeoff without checking the annunciator panel or ignore an annunciator?

I watched a program last night where there were 2 separate accidents in the US involving DC9s/MD80 where pilots routinely pulled a circuit breaker which disabled the takeoff configuration warning system to remove nuisance warnings because they were taxiing on one engine with takeoff range thrust. When they missed the pretakeoff check to ensure they had takeoff flap configuration... guess what.... there was no warning...... in excess of 100 pax lost their lives. Gobsmacking!

I'm having trouble blaming DFO being where it is because there have been buildings in that area for the better part of 60 years. And if it missed the DFO its next stop was probably a concrete wall or the bank on the Tulla as a best result. Worse would have been the freeway itself at peak hour.

1960 ladies and gents. You can see the area where DFO is has buildings already
http://collections.museumvictoria.com.au/items/2005434

1967 - 68. Tulla under construction.
http://www.radschool.org.au/magazine...mages/YMEN.jpg

A Decade of Aerial Photos | Essendon Airport

A clearer photo of what was there in some of the photos in that gallery.

DFO is just a development of an area that already had buildings.

And if you go off 35 and have a failure that sends you right at about the same angle, welcome to fuel tanks. That's not going to be any better result.

Unfortunately whatever went wrong was probably not going to end well. Whether DFO was there or not.

And at other airports in Aus there is every chance of that sort of accident hitting a terminal building or some other aviation related building. This one hit a DFO that was put in a spot that was previously developed.

Its lovely that you want airports to exist in vast open expanses, but that clearly isn't really possible.

The picture at post 362 shows that there were some buildings in that area before the DFO (thus correcting my incorrect belief that the area had been vacant prior to the DFO).

If the particular shop in the DFO had been a 'Babies R Us' full of young couples and babies, I reckon the DFO would not last long.

The worst place for the worst thing to go wrong is near or just after take off. The most safety-useful open space is therefore near the runway. Why that space within the boundaries of an aerodrome is allowed to be taken up by buildings that have no function in the operation of the aerodrome, and worse, by buildings and car parks that can be full of people who don't have anything to do with the operation of the aerodrome, needs to be thought about more deeply.

Watch CASA squirm:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9lA6hscEXc

Buck passing Muppets.

Lurker, I think I have to agree with you there.

Whilst it is vaguely possible that if there was green grass rather than a DFO in that location, the pilot could have used the extra height to continue a left turn and flare and land safely on the grass rather than the freeway, I don't think we can use the development of the DFO as a contributing factor to this accident.

As you say, if the building was an airport terminal or aircraft hangars, I don't think we would be having this discussion.

With regards to airport "safety", while it would be lovely to have 10,0000 hectares of fields around every airport, that is never going to be economically feasible. Twin engine aircraft are certified to be able to climb away within a splay in the event of an engine failure, and that is generally considered an acceptable level of safety.

The reason this particular aircraft didn't is yet to be determined.

With regards to the previous suggestion by another poster that developers should be responsible for the costs of go-arounds or diversions due to mechanical turbulence caused by non-aviation buildings on airport land, I would have to say "toughen up". There are far bigger risks to aviation than this. I would like to see any incident statistics based on this phenomenum.

Perhaps some statistics would help with this question.

Road deaths in Australia over the last 5 years average around 1200 per year (source).

Commercial aviation deaths in Australia over the last 10 years average around 3.6 per year (source).

We just exceeded our average with one prang, and we don't yet know why it happened.

Obviously, the ideal goal for both road and air would be zero, but we don't live in an ideal world.

We spend billions on road safety, and yet we lose so many souls. Road transport tends to be regarded as a "right", but air transport a "privilege". If we trained and licensed road drivers in the same way we train and licence pilots, and if we subjected cars to the same level of roadworthiness that we subject aircraft, and if we build roads with the same levels of safety margins that we build airports, maybe we could significantly reduce the road toll.

But because we as a society regard road transport as a civilian "right", the economic and societal cost would be unacceptable. So we put up with the road toll.

Aviation is different. It is a privilege, and along with the "horror factor" mentioned above, it is expected to be perfect. Zero accidents. That's why a normal go-around by a commercial airliner is reported in the news as "seconds from disaster", when we all know that every car on a road is constantly "seconds from disaster", and an airliner actually never is.

Would have 2 crew made a difference ? One monitoring / managing with other just trying to maintain a attitude AOB ? No idea what happened .

You are merely stating the obvious. The discussion is about a high speed emergency stop. Most major runways including Essendon have PAPI guidance or an ILS to warn pilots if they are undershooting on short final.

Agreed. An undershoot is either an engine failure on final approach (unlikely) or a pilot who can't fly.

Derfred you sound like a simpleton :ugh:

Additional Fixed Wing emergencies that MAY require additional space at recovery airport (departure/destination/alternate or diversion airport):

• Flapless approaches – requires additional runway/clearway due high approach speed

• Hydraulics failures – may require additional landing area (lateral/longitudinal) – extra runway width/length likely to be required

• Electrical failures – may adversely affect flight controls

• Flight control malfunctions (stuck controls, control surface damage due impact with UAV, birds, another aircraft etc.)

• Engine failures (multiple engine failure/stall/surge)

• Engine fires / Aircraft Fires

• Bird strikes – resulting in severe engine damage (usually multiple)

• Landing gear malfunctions

• Over-speeding Propellers

Additional Helicopter specific emergencies that MAY require additional space for recovery at an airport or helicopter LZ (or available open space):

• Tail rotor failures – may require landing at speed (run on landing)

• High rotor RPM / Low Rotor RPM

• Gear Box Failures (Main Rotor and/or Tail Rotor)

• Flight control malfunctions (cyclic, collective, tail-rotor and/or combination) – may require landing at speed (run on landing)

• Engine failures – if near / above field – may require immediate auto-rotation and landing in any open space immediately below flight path

• Engine Fires – as above

Last night's display in Senate Estimates was seriously concerning..

Mr Carmody was previously a Deputy Secretary in the Department of Infrastructure and Regional Development (DIRD). In that role he was responsible for the the Aviation and Airports Division.
He is now acting CEO CASA. The acting Executive Director (Aviation and Airports) Ms Pip Spence, was previously the General Manager Aviation and Airports. They should both know this space inside out!

Given Senator Fawcett (South Australia) and others have been agitating for Commonwealth planning guidance regarding Public Safety Areas both 'on-airport' and for land 'off-airport' immediately adjacent to airports for sometime, WHY has nothing been done yet?

As far as I understand the NASAG last met in 2012. Hello - it is now 2017!

NASF Guideline B is inadequate and an additional Guideline regarding the protection of Public Safety Areas is still not complete? Why has it taken nearly 5 years to address these deficiencies?