747-200F down in Bogota ?

[oceancrosser]

Interestingly there has never been any reference or acknowledgement on the Kalitta´s website (Welcome To Kalitta Air) to either accident. No press report or any attempt at PR or what have you. No acknowledgement that their airplane killed people.
The accident aircraft (N714CK) is still in the fleet list, took them days to remove N704CK the last time.

Stick your head in the sand and keep it there...

[mustangsally]

Pprune mods, shut this thread down! The subject line has nothing to do with the content after page two or three.

Respect beholds respect, and I see none here.

Let us wait for the experts to finish their investigation and report.

God Bless those poor soles, may the father and his son find peace in heaven.

[unconcerned]

I'll second that, mustangsally. This thread has degenerated past the acceptable point.

[BenThere]

I disagree. It's a good thread and interesting to me.

If you don't like it Mustang/Unconcerned, just don't click on it. Simple.

[Need to Know Basis]

Way off Mark

I third the proposal and back Mustang & Un concerned.....the thread went way off down the highway to nowhere very quickly. Close it. Its very disrepectful to lay into K4 less than 24 hrs after the accident that killed people on the ground and injured the crew. This thread smells like vultures all gathering around. Not what I expect on this forum.

Thanks for letting me rant. I`m off to Freight Dogs where I belong.

[PaperTiger]

Re-visit my post #16

Or do a search for posts by Mr. Fyne on the subject of "speculation" .

[unconcerned]

If you don't like it Mustang/Unconcerned, just don't click on it. Simple.

You normally talk good sense BenThere but I must disagree here. Where is the value in reading post after post slagging off an operator in particular and class of carrier in general with no concrete evidence of improper behavior?

History has proved that even the big boys cut corners at times and too many people are being too fast to put the boot in as far as I'm concerned. Cut out the vilification, stick to the facts and carry on. If not, it's time to close.

[400drvr]

All,

It gets a little more personal when you start hearing some names of those involved. I have shared the same cockpit with these guys and they are professionals working under difficult conditions.

I wish them a speedy recovery!

[BenThere]

Thanks for the compliment, Unconcerned. I think we're on the same side of this debate.

Because one poster inserts a poorly/non-thought out position isn't reason enough to shut down the entire discussion.

I'm certainly not slagging off on Kalitta Air or its crews. In fact I highly respect the job they do flying long hours in old airplanes to strange places. In fact, to me they are at the pinnacle of aviation today, while the rest of us can fall back on autoland and the APPR PB.

My fondest wish is that Kalitta, the company, and Kalitta, the crews come out of this with heads held high and the determination to make the international cargo world as safe as it can possibly be.

[rob rilly]

Tampa Tribune

McClatchy-Tribune
Published: July 7, 2008
BOGOTA, Colombia - A Valrico man was one of three South Florida crewmen who survived a Miami-bound cargo jet crash outside the Colombian capital early Monday that killed two people on the ground and injured five others onboard.
The crew of the Boeing 747-200 Kalitta Air jet reported a fire in one the plane's turbines two minutes after taking off from Bogota's El Dorado Airport at 3:50 a.m, said Martin Gonzalez, spokesman for Colombia's Civil Aviation Authority.
As they turned back toward the runway, the plane crashed into a wide grassy field near the town of Madrid and plowed into a small wooden home where two people — Pedro and Edwin Suarez — were killed. A third person who was sleeping in the house was treated for serious injuries in a nearby hospital.
The crew members were identified by Ypsilanti, Mich.-based Kalitta as U.S. citizens Joseph Kendall, 59, of Valrico; Steve Szynkowski, 28, McDonough, Ga.; Richard Dunlap, 65, Marietta, Ga.; Mohamed Shah, Coral Springs, 30; Bryant Beebe, 51, Big Pine Key.; Ivan Dankha, 49, Surprise, Ariz.; and Frank Holley, 45, Milton, as well as Dominican national Jimmy Herrera, 45, Miami.
Kendall suffered serious head wounds and internal injuries and underwent surgery, according to Nader Lujan, the director of the police hospital where six of the crew members were taken. Szynkowski apparently suffered a serious injury to the spine, he said.
Dankha and Holley were treated for minor injuries at a hospital close to the crash site and were expected to be released.
Hours after the crash, television images showed the still smoldering debris, which was spread out over a one-kilometer wide radius.
Civil aviation authorities said they had found the plane's black box and that it would be analyzed to determine the cause of the crash. The aircraft was thought to have fallen from an altitude of 1,650 yards, Gonzalez said.
The National Transportation Safety Board said Monday that it was sending a team of investigators to assist the government of Colombia in its investigation.
Local farmers rushed to the site as soon as the plane went down, but could not get close enough to help the injured because of the roaring flames, farmer Heli Dussan told the Colombian television network Caracol.
The Colombian Air Force responded to the crash and pulled the crew members from the mangled remains of the cockpit before dawn. Air Force nurse Laura Maria Linares told Caracol that she crawled into the cockpit through one of the windows and first tended to Kendall, who was in serious condition but conscious.
Kalitta was operating the plane for Miami-based Centurion Air Cargo. Centurion has an annual contract with Kalitta to lease an aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance, said Kalitta Vice President Pete Sanderlin.

[pacplyer]

I agree with Benthere,

This thread is interesting to those of us who "measured" the whole runway and sat there eyeball-to-eyeball with office workers in buildings who were just as suprised as we were that the thing wasn't climbing properly.

"Let me just recheck those weights and Vspeeds" was the comment crews heard from the Captain after a ridiculously slow climbout with all four turning normally.

We ran those machines on takeoff at the ragged edge of disaster twenty years ago. It was legal. But it really made you wonder.

The subject is interesting because how the government proceeds will determine the operation of machines in the future. Benthere's suggestion to redo the performance for old vintage 747 airframes and engines is a good one. The argument against that will no doubt be one of cost and government rectification of old airframes that will exceed their value.

Perhaps the FAA should step in and use a percentage weight/stopdistance penalty (i.e. 5 or 10 percent) for airframes and engines past a certain age. Old engines could be de-rated back to the level of thrust they were originally certified and designed for. A notice of proposed rulemaking could be sent out to operators to give them time to respond with comments. Operators like CK provide a valuable service to the gov and the economy (kind of like Air America did) and should not be viewed in the same light as passenger carriers (after all, they are supplemental 121.) They should not be shut down for doing the hard dangerous job that all of us need done. You sign up at one of these outfits and you know what you are getting yourself into. You're probably going to have some close calls. But it is still safer than riding to the hotel.

I feel for the dead and injured, but in the same time period in the same city, you will find that dozens where killed and injured in automobiles without hardly a mention and no concern about how to prevent it from happening tomorrow. Who knows? Maybe PPrNe could become a useful tool in crafting policy for feds charged with making a decision about an aircraft and operations they have limited experience with. NASA's ASRS (Aviation Safety Reporting System) was highly successful and functioned in a similar manner. "Confess to ASRS" was their slogan. It's my opinion we should all quit worrying about getting fired and relate our experiences to reduce the stress of having to operate "at the edge" of what is safe.

I've learned a great deal in my readings here and think the moderators do an incredible job of having to wade through the huge volume of post here.

[Junkflyer]

The computer based performance used now on the classics seems pretty accurate. The engines do a max-power take off at least once a week (more if conditions warrant) to ensure epr and egt are within limits. That was a highly experienced crew-I'm sure there's a lot more to the story than anyone knows right now.

[kwick]

This was said by the Chairman of United Technologies back in 1997:

"We've seen same kinds of gains in basic engine reliability, what we call in-flight shutdowns (IFSD). When we began with high bypass turbofans in the late 1960s, we regularly saw IFSD rates in the forty per 100,000 engine flight hour (EFH) range, or 400 per million EFH, or an expected shutdown of about once per engine per year. Today's ETOPS standard (the long range, over water operation), is one twentieth that rate, 2 IFSDs per 100,000 hours or about one event per engine per twenty years."

Any idea what is happening here, two engines (and their corresponding aircraft) with the same operator in such a short term?

[SNS3Guppy]

Any idea what is happening here, two engines (and their corresponding aircraft) with the same operator in such a short term?

Facinating that everyone who has no information and knows nothing becomes an expert on the mechanical state of the aircraft involved in these mishaps. Automatically it's a company maintanence problem...has to be, right?

Not possible that the EBBR airplane ingested a bird and experienced a compressor stall, and actually had no mechanical problem that was induced by the airplane? It's really irrelevant to guess until actual information is available...but truly amazing at the conclusion upon so which many jump...has to be an operator with bad maintenance.

Then we have a situation in Bogota. We know nothing other than the airplane is down. Sketchy details. Did the company have bad maintenance, everyone wants to know....after all, it had to be the company, right?

No possibility of bad fuel with a multiple engine flameout and torching, and an amazing case of surviving an impossible situation from the cockpit. Why would anyone want to consider something like that when one can simply rush to crucify?

Vultures. Wait for the facts.

[pacplyer]

Well,

Loyalty to your carrier is indeed an admirable quality; CK was wise to hire you Guppy. I have no doubt you're a fine employee and a great pilot. But multiple posters have commented on the high numbers of incidents that they were personally aware of while flying there. One hears one report, one tends to dismiss it. One hear another, one might also ignore it. But one hears several more and then you start to wonder.... it begs the question: is this happening at other carriers? Is this happening to other models of heavy jets in operation? Surely, migrating birds and bad fuel don't just cross paths with one model of aircraft: the B-747-200? The odds of your scenerio: bird ingestion taking out two on one side are remote (but possible.) The odds of bad fuel only being delivered to your carrier and nobody else are also remote imho (but possible.) But your hypothetical defenses are based on what? Worse speculation than what other posters here are correctly focusing on:

There now are two individual Columbian Aviation officials from two independent news sources that state the crew made radio transmission of an engine fire. Pretty bad journalism if they're both wrong, but it's been known to happen.

Were these also JT9D-Q engines in Bogota as was the case of the Brussels crash? That might be a common thread that an investigator would follow if it is the case. It is not unheard of for a carrier to have outsourced engine overhauls to an operation who does them incorrectly.

Those In flight shutdown stats are interesting however, and the poster Kwick was fair to introduce them. I should point out, that I am not aware of any operator using old -Q engines on ETOP's (Extended Twin Engine Overwater Ops) so those numbers are not applicable: one shutdown in twenty years. ETOPs requires meticulous, audited, parts inventory control. I once worked for a carrier who applied for it and was turned down. We therefore were not permitted to be out of range of an alternate for more than XX minutes according to our POI's restriction on us.

IIRC, the 747 (partially due to it's low cycles per block hr) is the single safest commercial airplane ever operated in history (again as rated in deaths/seat/nm; excluding a/c with no appreciable history of course.) Source: AW&ST.

So, I would in fact, consider it unusual for one individual pilot to see four IFSD's in a couple of years as the previous poster relayed, if that information is true.

[point8six]

For those unfamiliar with Bogota, it is a high altitude airfield in a 'bowl', surrounded by high terrain. Departures even on all four engines, require careful planning and precise flying. I think that there is more to this accident than just one-engine out - let's wait and see before criticising crew procedures and maintenance. As for old engines not producing the rated power, that's a "red herring"! I don't think that the a/c would not have been up to max. permitted weight(for the conditions) for a flight to Miami, so there should have been some reserve left to cater for the engine out case.

[acmi48]

in view of this incident one would expect the DGAC in colombia to reintroduce
the weighing of freighters again prior departure BOG - a time consuming process

[SNS3Guppy]

Loyalty to your carrier is indeed an admirable quality; CK was wise to hire you Guppy. I have no doubt you're a fine employee and a great pilot. But multiple posters have commented on the high numbers of incidents that they were personally aware of while flying there. You hear one report, you tend to dismiss it. You hear another, you ignore it.

I said nothing about working for Kalitta, nor did I indicate my employer at all. It's not relevant. I don't speak for Kalitta any more than I speak for USA Jet or any other operator that has recently experienced a mishap or fatality. I will say the same for every single event, however; wait for the facts.

I said nothing about dismissing a report, nor have I done so in any way, shape, or form.

Wait for the facts.

Poster after poster beats his chest and cries bad maintenance, but there is no such indication. It's guesswork, unsubstantiated and wildly placed. Wait for the facts.

This is hard to understand? It dismisses nothing, excuses nothing, and has made no attempt to do so. It's really quite clear. Wait for the facts.

[pacplyer]

Correction

I wasn't implying that "Guppy" dismissed a report. Bad verb-age on my part I suppose.

I have edited/changed post number 100 from "You hear one report....." to "One hears one report and dismisses it." (i.e. repetitive worker complaints.)

But if ONE doesn't cut off the quote in mid paragraph, the meaning of my post is more apparent, wouldn't you say?

You win, you win, Guppy..... we're waiting for more news.

[SNS3Guppy]

Fair enough. Lots of interesting rumors. I'm particularly interested in hearing more about a very unsubstantiated (friend of a friend of a friend) fuel contamination issue. No doubt if such might be the case, we'll learn soon enough.