Who in the F#$k said it has anything to do with Maintenance procedures? For all we know it could have been a missle, a bomb, drugs gone bad.:ugh:
Why can't we just be happy their were survivors and wait for the investigation to complete instead of speculating the MX procedures on older aircraft. My entire 27 years of flying was on old from the DC-6 to the 747 classic. Sh*t happens...deal with it !:E

No comment apart from the condolences.
This link was placed in the US Air Thread, but contains some info

JACDEC - Current News

same source giving registration as N714CK, a 1981 model

Kalita 747 CNN UPDATE
 

Maintenance
 

I knew that the possibility of maintenance will come up. Before I get shot and killed by the pprune police (No not the moderators) I want to say that I am in no way trying to guess the reason or reasons leading to or contributing to this accident. I am more than happy to wait for a report. However I would like to comment maintenance in general.

Airlines are forced to comply by rules and regulations set forth by the manufacturer of the aircraft, component or part or their respective CAA/FAA. Many companies find it cheaper in the short term to reduce the maintenance burden by performing the absolute minimum required to keep an aircraft flying. The older the aircraft more maintenance is needed to keep it in the air. Not just any kind of maintenance but a specific type that seems to be done less and less: Preventive Maintenance and associated Trend Monitoring.

Trend monitoring of individual components such as an engine will show the deterioration of performance and should prompt an engine change before a catastophic failure occurs. Many companies will tend to fly their engines to TBO limit or until the performance reaches unacceptable values. This saves money in the short term but how about in the long term?

An engine failure in one of the more obscure places in the world requiring a landing back an engine change and the downtime with a possible charter to move the time critical cargo can run into the millions. What is the cost of having engineers work on aircraft during the downtime and perform old fashioned preventive maintenance, certainly less than the scenario above. The older and the more complex or the larger the aircraft is, the more care it requires. This places a huge burden on shoestring operations where cost of operating the aircraft and revenue are virtually the same. One factor in the equation increases and the company will start to lose money. Solution is to save somewhere else. While the savings make perfect sense to the book keepers operationally they might be totally wrong.

MEL has become the Holy cow of an operation. One needs to ask several questions before accepting an aircraft with deferred maintenance items DMI or equivalent. Is it OK by MEL to go? Is it smart even if the MEL allows to go and how do multiple DMI's interact and affect the aircraft operation. One DMI item might be ok, but if you have several and it is still legal to go, operating according to normal procedures can become extremely difficult.

Again I must say that the above post does not judge or guess the reasons leading to the 2nd Kallitta accident rather is my 2 pence worth on the maintenance brought up by other contributors to this thread.

I would appreciate seeing a google earth (sic) type graphic of the runway vs the actual impact location.

I can't figure out phase of flight or expected power from the engines without a little bit more information.

From FlightInternational:

PICTURES: Colombia crash destroys second Kalitta 747F in two months

It is amazing that anybody in the aircraft survived that!!.
Looking at the camera panning the scene (in the CNN vid.) the debris is spread out along a pretty long path, obviously (to me) that helped dissipate the energy.
An aerial shot would be informative.
f

Maintenence?????
 

Quality Maintenance is it's own reward. The opposite is also true.

Lomapaseo,
Just had a quick look at the satellite map for SKBO/BOG:

Wikimapia - Let's describe the whole world!
(most of the others are cloud-obscured!)

If you use the search function (top right), the town/area of Madrid is about 14kms (roughly) west of the airport (there appears to be a military airfield there - crew may have attempted emer. landing there?). Presumably departure from one of the 31s.

When I checked Google-Earth, Madrid in colombia is more like South-South-West of Bogota, not west..........
Is that the place?

I think so; you're talking about the city of Bogota; I'm talking about the airport.

Colombian media talks of the aircraft coming down near a place called Mosquera, which is very close to Madrid.

Ok, Mosquera is more or less on a right-base-leg for the airport, landing 13L or R.
Madrid is much further distance to the south-south-west

If you look in Google Earth, Mosquera is about 2.5 miles and slightly left of the departure end of Rwy 31L. Those old 747 classics are typically operated by these outfits on the very ragged edge of the performance envelope. Having to max perform the aircraft, old airplanes, and engines that are are subjected to a high percentage of max power takeoffs, tempts fate. Not at all uncommon for the EGTs to go yellow or even red on takeoffs out of Bogota.

Sad to say, but the FAA just isn't real interested, for whatever reason, in the bottom feeder freight operators. It'd be real interesting to see what an real and comprehensive investigation by an outside objective panel of experts of maintenance practices of the bottom-feeder freight outfits would turn out.

It will be real interesting on how the Colombians handle this investigation. The last big 747 accident was the Tradewinds runway departure in MDE, I think. However, no one was killed or seriously injured in that one.

ZIP departure?
 

I've often flown the Zipaquira departure from BOG to the North, looking down and thinking where to go if we'd lose an engine in the climb. Glad we never did.

BOG is a tough spot; it lies at 8400', and is pretty much surrounded by mountains. The SID's are rather involved, and the required climb gradients quite steep. An engine out there would be a handfull with a heavy airplane. Towards ZIP there is upsloping terrain until some 50 miles from the airport, to over 12500' elevations if I remember correctly. The engine out procedure there doesn't end when you're clean.

But perhaps they didn't get that far, as the crash site is just a few miles west of the airport.

Most likely they were relatively heavy, as a full load of flowers will max out the zero fuel weight of a 747. MIA is some 4 hrs away, requiring more than a light fuel load. Performance-wise it would have been very tight, I know our departures usually were.

Glad to see the crew came out alive, sorry for those on the ground who didn't.

Hi,

Bad luck.
Will not speculate on this accident .. but will speculate about my next comment if in the two months forward a other plane of this company go badly on the ground ... my comments will not be "bad luck" anymore.

Regards.

Luck has little to do with aviation. Good maintenance, experience, and pilot skill does.

Don't be so literal
 

Suggest you make due allowances for the guy/s trying their best to help with quick translations. I read nothing there to CONFIRM that the 10 were all crew, or even on board - making allowances for, with respect, amateur translations, they could well have been people on the ground. Similarly the 3 "trapped on board" could well be people on the ground.

Whatever, please make allowances for (with all due respect) "non-qualified translators" trying their best to come up with info for us all.

Very best of luck to all living involved, condolences to those families with loved ones lost.

AES

ya fueron rescatados con vida siete de los
tripulantes de la aeronave

It does say they rescued "7 of the crew members". They don't give any other information about the other 3.

I am a native speaker, no amateur translator!

Regards.

Two fatal crashes south of the border in two days for Ypsilanti based freight operators...