Afghan airliner (737?) reported missing in freak weather

[16 blades]

Snow isn't that rare in the area, however snowfall that heavy and intense is, I believe. Kabul city sits some 6,000' AMSL and snow in the mountains tends to be permanent at this time of year.

For those who have not had the pleasure, Kabul (and Bagram to the north) sit in a 'bowl' that pushes into the Hindu Kush, the lowest point of which is roughly 14,000' AMSL. Terrain to the far north east rises to 20,000'+, and at the last look Kabul had no radar. Flying there is challenging in poor vis, let alone snowstorms. Rescue efforts will more than likely be difficult due to terrain and weather.

16B

[fly babe]

So here it is, the worst news has been confirmed. To those who have lost lives, and family or friends in this tragic accident... rest in peace.

fly babe

[M609]

Supposedly all Civilian traffic have to fly VFR in the Afghan FIR,

From DOD enroute supplement:

AFGHANISTAN (......)VISUAL FLIGHT RULES - Civil flights must be carried
out in accordance with the visual flight rules (VFR) as specified in
ICAO Annex 2 and 11. Civil flights shall operate in daylight hours
only. Compliance with these procedures does not relieve pilots of
their responsibility to see and avoid other aircraft or for
maintaining safe terrain/obstacle clearance at all times. All civil acft
are restricted to DAY VFR Only Operations operating to/from
destinations within the Kabul FIR. All military acft operating under
a ISAF Callsign may manuever during hours of darkness. Landings
after sunset will be restricted to qualified NVG crews. Take-offs are
at the discretion and training of the crew after all risk assessment
has been done.

But according to a buddy that has been pax on the jumpseat of an Ukranian An-12 into Bagram, that's not exactly the case. (IFR approach using a Garmin 90 only.......)


You don't need much snow showers to mess up a flight in alpine terrain!

[16 blades]

Kabul was running with Special VFR on days of low vis when I was last in theatre. Practically, it meant a 10 min-ish procedural separation between arriving or departing traffic in the zone. I believe the controllers there are locals, but they were quite sharp and professional (put some european area controllers to shame, in fact) and the SVFR system seemed to work for the main part.

As one who has lost friends and collegues this week, I offer my condolences to anyone involved. This has not been a particularly good week for the wider aviation community.

RIP

16B

[ORAC]

(AP) KABUL, Afghanistan -

NATO troops reached the wreckage of an Afghan airliner Monday, four days after it crashed into a snowy mountain peak, and began the gruesome task of searching for survivors among the 104 people on board, an alliance spokesman said. Officials hold out little hope for finding any of the 96 passengers and eight crew - including more than 20 foreigners - alive.

Clear skies allowed helicopters to drop a small team of medics, mountaineers and explosives experts near the site, 20 miles east of Kabul, on Monday morning, an alliance spokesman said. There was no immediate word on what they saw. "The weather is much better today, which allowed them to get to the top," Maj. Joseph Bowman said. "They're looking for survivors and trying to make the site secure" for more forces to join the operation, he said.......

NATO helicopters spotted parts of the wreckage some 11,000 feet up Chaperi Mountain on Saturday, but heavy snow and low cloud coverage had prevented alliance and Afghan forces from reaching the site by air or on the ground.....

At Kabul airport, Slovenian mountain troops from Afghanistan's NATO-led peacekeeping force loaded supplies into helicopters heading to the crash site. At the town of But Khak, German and French soldiers ran mine-detecting equipment over a makeshift landing pad that Afghan officials said would be used as a staging post once the first bodies are found and flown out.

Afghan soldiers set up a checkpoint on the nearby road to stop relatives and media from traveling to the foot of the mountain and getting in the way of the recovery operation, but decided against halting a truck, full of angry relatives, who insisted they be allowed to go and search for their loved-ones.

[ORAC]

BBC: 'All killed' in Afghan air crash

All 104 people on board an Afghan airliner which crashed on a mountain near Kabul are dead, an official inquiry has said. Nato-led troops and Afghan soldiers who reached the wreckage of the Kam Air Boeing 737 on Monday found human remains but no survivors......The joint inquiry commission said its rescue operation was over and it would now investigate why the plane crashed.

The airliner, on its way from the western Afghan city of Herat, lost contact with air traffic controllers on its approach to Kabul airport as it flew into a heavy snowstorm.

Afghan authorities are to call in experts from the US to help establish why it then came down, the Associated Press news agency reported. The plane's flight recorder has not yet been found, AP said.

The first human remains were found by five Slovenian mountain troops dropped on to the mountain 30km (20 miles) east of Kabul on Monday morning. The soldiers, who had braved deep snow and possible landmines to reach the site, were airlifted off again as weather deteriorated.

"The troops found that no-one was left alive from the crash," the inquiry commission said in a statement. "Now the search and rescue operation is complete, the recovery operation has started to investigate the cause of the crash."

Most of the 104 people on board the plane were Afghans but there were also about 20 foreigners, thought to include nine Turks, six Americans and three Italians. Of eight crew members, at least four were Russian and two were Afghans.

Bad weather, not foul play, is thought to have caused the crash.

[twenty eight]

Pictures

[fourplay]

reply

F**K, I applied for a cabin crew position for that op through an agency in NOV and would have worked on that A/C.

[JammedStab]

It has been over a decade and I don't remember seeing a final report(please post a link if you know of one) but I did find an interesting article about the investigation in this link which shows some of the challenges faced at the time. The link is an accident investigation newsletter that does have some other interesting info as well.

http://www.isasi.org/Documents/libra...dings-2005.pdf

"Kam Air Flight 904—
Investigation Challenges in Kabul and on Chaperi Ghar
By Robert Benzon, U.S. NTSB
Robert Benzon began his aviation career in the United States Air Force flying EC-47s from Da Nang
Air Base, Republic of Vietnam. He later transitioned into KC-135 Stratotankers for two further stateside assignments. Upon leaving active military duty in 1984, he joined the United States National Transportation Safety Board. He has been the Investigatorin- Charge of 29 major aircraft accident investigations within the United States and has been the U.S. accredited representative on numerous major overseas accident investigations. Among his assignments as Investigator-in-Charge or U.S. accredited representative were the loss of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, and the loss of
American Airlines Flight 587 in New York City, the second-worse aircraft accident in U.S. history.

Experienced accident investigators probably feel that after a while, there is a certain “sameness” to major accident investigation protocols, even though, as we all know, each accident itself is distinctly different. We investigators fly to a location near the accident site, find hotels, rent automobiles, drive to a central meeting point to join counterparts from industry, other government officials, the press, and the like. Then we hold some sort of organizational meeting, and, finally, we proceed to examine wreckage. The investigation then progresses in an orderly manner, familiar to us all. Accident after accident, these basic steps, with minor variations, seem to always take place.

Not so, my small team and I discovered when we assisted in an aircraft accident investigation in an active war zone.

On Feb. 3, 2005, Kam Air Flight 904 was reported missing during a flight from Herat to Kabul, Afghanistan, during conditions of extremely low visibility in the area surrounding Kabul
International Airport. It was subsequently located on the top of Chaperi Ghar, an 11,000-foot mountain about 20 miles east southeast of the airport, 2 days after its disappearance. None of the 104 people on board survived. The aircraft was a 23-year-old Boeing 737, which meant that under the auspices of ICAO Annex 13, the NTSB was obliged to assist the government of Afghanistan in its investigation of this tragedy. Kam Air is a company in Kyrgyzstan serving Afghanistan air travel, and the airplane was registered in Kyrgyzstan. It was operated by Phoenix Aviation, headquartered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and there were citizens from Afghanistan, Italy, Turkey, Canada, Iran, and the United States on board. Many of the victims were associated with various humanitarian aid missions helping to rebuild
Afghanistan.

My agency was nominally aware of the difficult political and security situation in Afghanistan, and became acutely aware of it after lengthy telephone conversations and e-mail exchanges with U.S. Embassy personnel in Kabul following the initial accident notification. We were told that the Embassy compound, where we would be staying, was an armed, walled camp, replete with guard towers, sandbagged revetments, armored vehicles, and the like. We were also told that we would always be accompanied by heavily armed escorts when we left the compound to do our work and that climactic conditions on top of the mountain were very severe. Conditions in Afghanistan did not appear to be conducive to an orderly accident investigation. Because of these difficulties, participation by NTSB investigators became voluntary. It quickly became apparent that this would not be a normal overseas assignment for us.

Although usually eager to do so, the U.S. airframe and engine manufacturers declined to accompany us on this overseas trip. Personal safety concerns were uppermost in their minds, of course. Their expertise would certainly have been put to use, but the reluctance to travel to Afghanistan was understandable. So, our team consisted of representatives of the governments of Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Italy, Turkey, the United States, and Kam Air and Phoenix Aviation.

The very task of getting to Kabul proved to be quite difficult. The non-stop flight on Emirates Air to Dubai was the last routine portion of our trip. Once we arrived in Dubai, we not exactly sure of how we were actually going to get into Afghanistan. We need not have worried. While checking in at the reception desk at the hotel, I was handed a telephone. On the other end of the line was a U.S. Army colonel who told us to be at a small terminal at 6 o’clock the next morning to board a U.S. Air Force C-130 that would take us to Kabul. Under the mistaken belief that this would be some kind of an interesting clandestine VIP flight, we soon discovered otherwise and found ourselves crammed into the aircraft with about 60 quiet soldiers on their way to the war zone. Several hours into the flight, we were told that the aircraft was refused clearance to overfly Pakistan and would have to return to Dubai. To the credit of the flight crew, they set up an orbit off the Pakistani border and finally secured overflight clearance some time later.

Because the delay that occurred would have caused us to arrive at Kabul after sunset (something no airplanes were allowed to do…Kabul was day VFR only), we were forced to land at Bagram Air Base and spend the night. We went from a 5-star hotel in Dubai to a large uninsulated plywood box at Bagram. The box contained six folding cots, each complete with its own army blanket (no sheets, no mattress, no pillow…just a blanket), a space heater, and a single 40-watt light bulb hanging from the ceiling. After dumping our gear in the box by our “beds,” we borrowed a military computer and contacted the Embassy in Kabul via email. We were instructed to be ready to depart in a small, armed convoy at 7 o’clock the next morning for the drive down to Kabul. We found the convoy, were issued flak jackets, and after an hour long, very speedy ride on a rough road, replete with bomb craters and tanks and trucks destroyed in previous conflicts, we rolled into the U.S. Embassy compound at Kabul.

Our Embassy contacts did not exaggerate the austerity of conditions there, although it immediately looked better than Bagram to us. The once-beautiful Embassy building was now surrounded by sandbags, festooned with radio antennas, and topped off by four machine gun nests. All available space around the building, once a park-like setting, we were told, now contained dozens of white 20-foot-long steel overseas shipping containers. These containers had been converted into comfortable but somewhat claustrophobic living quarters for the burgeoning Embassy staff, the large U.S. Marine security unit, and now us. The U.S. Ambassador, because of his high rank, lived in several containers hooked together, complete with potted plants by the door.

Our host and handler at the Embassy was a competent young political/economic officer, Robert, whose hobby during his Kabul tour was leading a pick-up rock band of sorts that performed in the mess hall every Friday, the one day off allowed by the Embassy’s heavy work schedule. He would change the name of the band every couple of weeks to make Embassy staffers think they would be hearing something new once in a while. The ruse only really worked once, he said. Upon our arrival, Robert smiled and handed us an Embassy procedural guide with this interesting item in it:

“Outside the [Embassy] compound, red rocks indicate uncleared mine areas while white rocks are considered mine-free areas. Be advised, however, there remains a 10% chance that unexploded mines remain in the mine-cleared areas. For this reason, during all travel in Kabul or out of the city, travelers should remain on hard-surface roads at all times.”

We never saw any painted rocks anywhere, and as one might imagine, staying on hard surface roads did not turn out to be a viable option during our visit.

Our next order of business was to meet our Afghan counterparts in the Ministry of Transport (MOT). This proved to be a sad introduction to the effects of the long period of armed strife in that part of the world. The MOT, and virtually the entire Afghan government, is in the process of reconstituting itself after 20 years of warfare and difficulty in Afghanistan associated with the Soviet occupation, an internal civil war, the times of the Taliban, and our military activity after 9/11. Much of this current governmental reconstitution has to be prioritized, and government agencies such as the Ministry of Defense, logically, are ahead of agencies such as the MOT in this regard. At the time of the accident, the MOD was being advised by many, many, U.S. military personnel and military contingents from other nations. The MOT, on the other hand, was receiving advice from one aviation expert assigned to the U.S. Embassy and perhaps a small handful of transportation advisors from other countries. There were no U.S. Federal Aviation Administration personnel in Afghanistan at the time of the accident. Now, one FAA advisor is stationed in Kabul for an extended amount of time. This is good.

At the time of the accident, there was no established intragovernmental agency plan in Afghanistan to deal with a major aircraft crash. Initially, it was proposed that the Ministry of Transportation be responsible for not only the investigation but also human remains identification and recovery and wreckage recovery. When the logic of this concept fell apart because of the small size of the MOT and its almost total lack of resources, these duties were divided among the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of
Health (human remains), the Ministry of the Interior (wreckage recovery), and the MOT (the actual accident investigation).

The MOT headquarters building, a two-block, daytime-only, flak-jacketed walk from the Embassy, was very poorly equipped—one or two old photocopiers, no e-mail capability for the staff, intermittent lighting, many manual typewriters in use, old Soviet maps with Cyrillic captions on the walls, and so on. The three gentlemen who served as Afghan investigators for this accident were extremely dedicated, and I admire them. But, they lacked any kind of formal investigative training. To their credit, they were quite familiar with ICAO Annex 13 and are using that document (as general as it is) as their basic investigation guide. Several of them have air traffic control backgrounds. They mentioned ATC training they received in the United States as young men in the late 1960s. Because of these difficulties, the Afghan investigators were extremely receptive to our suggestions on where to begin and how to proceed through the on scene phase of their investigation. We all then formulated a basic investigation plan, received word that the immediate impact area had been cleared of mines, and would fly to the site the next morning.

Getting to Kabul was a bit of an adventure, and getting to the accident site from Kabul proved to be equally interesting. Air operations around Kabul are the responsibility of a large NATO peacekeeping subgroup called the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). ISAF helicopters had discovered the wreckage earlier and had made two previous reconnaissance landings on the mountaintop. They would carry us up to the Chaperi Ghar crash site. This, of course, entailed yet other armed convoys to get us from the Embassy compound to the military side of Kabul International Airport. Once there, we would either board Turkish Army Blackhawks or Spanish Air Force Eurocopter Cougars. The helicopters always flew in two-ship cells, in case one of them became disabled enroute. They also always flew with both doors open and with heavy automatic weapons at the ready. In a sense, these precautions were comforting, but they were yet further indications that this was not a normal investigation.

The flight crews of both nations were very professional, as was the entire ISAF air staff. Full safety briefings led off every preflight, and all the pilots were extremely weather conscious. In that part of the world, at that time of year, flight visibility in the mountains can drop to an unsafe level in mere minutes. On two occasions, we launched, and although everyone knew how important getting to the wreckage was we turned back because of low visibility. Interestingly to me, many of the helicopter door gunners were very capable female soldiers. Besides serving their machine guns, they also made sure we did not fall out of the helicopters.

The landing zone was only big enough for one helicopter at a time. This meant that the helicopters could not shut down and stay with us. If one could not be restarted, for instance, there would be no rapid, practical way to get parts up the mountain to repair it. Our first trip up the mountain was on one of the Blackhawks. During the “landing” on the only flat spot available, about 200 meters from the main wreckage, the pilot had to maintain a near hover RPM with his main landing gear just touching the surface—otherwise the machine would sink into the snow and possibly strike a rotor blade on nearby rock outcroppings. This, of course, meant that we were immediately exposed to hurricane-force winds and blowing snow and landing zone debris the instant we flopped out the door. The downdraft from the rotor blades on this and subsequent Blackhawk landings bowled us over on a routine basis and we all lost stocking caps, sunglasses, and other equipment down the mountainside during these operations. This, in my mind, was possibly the most dangerous part of our time in Afghanistan. The Cougars, on the other hand, were equipped with skis and could bring rotor speed down to idle during debarkation and embarkation. This made helicopter loading and unloading much easier.

Scheduling of the helicopters soon fell into a routine. This was made simpler for me because the commander of the Turkish ISAF helicopter unit had attended the NTSB accident investigation school several years earlier. He claimed to actually have stayed awake during my lecture, but I believe he was just being polite. In the evening we would relay a list of investigators and volunteer snow diggers to the ISAF helicopter operations office via cell phone or e-mail and would then be told which nation’s helicopter ramp to report to the next morning. The most difficult part of this operation turned out to be the actual assembly of the team at the ramp. The U.S. personnel were housed either at the Embassy or in various military installations in the city. Those from other countries were widely scattered around Kabul, and communication among all contingents was extremely difficult. In addition, as mentioned, each group had to always be escorted to and from the airfield by armed military or civilian security personnel. Seemingly small problems like these took up an inordinate amount of time and energy.

Because of the remote and hostile location of the accident site, we had limited time on scene to document the wreckage. The team spent perhaps a total of about 30 hours on top of Chaperi Ghar, broken down into five visits. No investigators stayed overnight on the mountain because of the cold nighttime temperatures, the possibility of being weathered in, and the fact that the wreckage was attracting wild animals at night. Mountain wolves were mentioned and their tracks in the snow were noted in the mornings. The only people who actually remained on the mountain overnight were a squad of very hardy and, I imagine, wide-awake Afghan National Army troops.

The accident site itself was compact in a horizontal sense, but not so vertically. See Photograph 1 (page 9), looking east (along the flightpath), and photograph, looking west. The Kabul runway can be seen in the central right portion of Photograph 2. The aircraft struck a ridgeline on an easterly heading near the crest of the mountain about 50 feet down from the very top. The final flightpath probably had some amount of upward vector to it, because the fuselage forward of the wing box was propelled, in fragments, over the crest and fell over the cliff side into the valley below. The actual wreckage documentation during five site visits was difficult because most of the parts were either buried under several feet of snow and inaccessible, outside the mine-free cordon and inaccessible, or down the cliffside and, therefore, also inaccessible to all without mountain climbing training. Fortunately, the
Italian investigator brought two Italian Army officers with him with such training, and some photographic documentation of the cockpit area was done by these individuals. The most prominent and recognizable piece of wreckage present was the vertical stabilizer and a small portion of the rear fuselage. (See photograph 3.)

Most of the visible wreckage was located between two stacked stone, roofless structures that were observation posts used by Mujahadeen fighters to monitor Soviet troop movements in the Kabul valley during the 1980s. Within a 200-foot circle, after a lot of arduous snow removal, we identified portions of both engines, both wings, the left main landing gear assembly, many aft galley components, the horizontal stabilizer, human remains and personal effects, and much miscellaneous debris. Some material, such as an escape slide and some right engine components, were located outside the landmine-free area. These items were “documented” with binoculars and digital camera zoom features.

The flight data recorder was found almost immediately, although as of this writing, the cockpit voice recorder has not been located. We did locate the mounting bracket for the CVR. It was very frustrating to locate this item and not the CVR itself. We spent a good deal of time digging blind holes in the snow in the immediate vicinity of where this bracket was found, and also forward of that location, to no avail. (See Photograph 4.) Unfortunately also, the FDR eventually yielded no useful data. As near as could be determined, the external flight data acquisition unit had not been providing valid signals to this device for a long time.

Our physical well-being during the wreckage documentation was of concern to me. Except for the Afghans, I was the oldest person on the team and I used my age (55) and my lack of any formal physical exercise regimen as a benchmark of sorts for onsite strenuous activity. In other words, when I got tired, that would seem to be a conservative time to wind down activity on the mountain for the day. This canary-in-a-coal mine approach probably was not the best way to deal with this issue. To wit the Afghan investigators were all in their late 50s and early 60s, one of our Embassy volunteers was overweight, and even some of the U.S. military personnel who volunteered to assist us were not in the best physical condition. The 11,000-foot altitude, the strenuous debarkation from the helicopter, and the snow caused the Embassy employee to spend his single session with us on the mountain sitting down. One U.S. officer became quite winded during the early part of her site visit but acclimated quickly. Ironically, the Afghan investigators, my main worry, faired the best of all. They are very tough individuals. Fortunately, the information about severe weather on the mountaintop turned out to not be true. It was quite cold when the sun was not shining and the wind was blowing. However, on one occasion, during sunny weather, we were working in shirtsleeves.

I was less worried about landmines on Chaperi Ghar, but should have been more worried, in hindsight. We had been warned in a general way about the dangers of mines in Afghanistan, as noted earlier. In spite of this, we felt confident in our safety because we had been assured by one U.S. government source and two Afghan military officers that the area where the wreckage was located was clear of mines. We were still wary, though. On the second trip to the site, one of the Turkish investigators found what he thought was a mine, or at least something very suspicious with wires coming out of it, wedged between two of the flat stones that made up one of the old Mujahadeen observation posts. He called several of us over to take a look, and like fools, we did so. We at least had the presence of mind not to touch the object. A moment later an Afghan National Army sergeant arrived, and after several minutes of peering at the device and a short conversation with several other soldiers, he cleared the area of people and then gently removed it. The “mine” turned out to be an electrical connector assembly from Kam Air 904, jammed into the rocks by the force of the aircraft impact. Frowns turned to looks of relief and we went about our business.

An important point must be made here. Landmines, with all their varied colors, shapes, and sizes, often resemble aircraft parts. Unlike other places where mines may be found in war zones, crash sites force investigators and rescuers to stay in a mined area for a very long time. An investigator’s job is to examine everything at a site, turn over every piece of wreckage, look under every rock, and so on. This could be a recipe for disaster, as one might imagine. Mines and aircraft crash sites mix only too well. My advice on this subject would be to trust what your mine advisors tell you, but verify, verify, verify to the best of your ability. Sadly, a week after we returned to the United States, an Afghan National Army soldier helping with the human remains recovery operation at Chaperi Ghar stepped on a landmine at the site and was killed. Another soldier was seriously injured in the same explosion. The accident site had supposedly been cleared of mines, but the experts missed at least one.

Having said that, we had been told that the site was completely inaccessible via land routes in the winter because of the heavy snowfall, no roads, and, again, the ever-present landmines. However, on our third visit to the site, an ANA soldier with binoculars spotted a party of five individuals making their way slowly on foot up the western slope of the mountain. They arrived at the site about an hour-and-a-half later. Although everyone was initially suspicious of these people, it turned out that they were representatives from the nearest local village, located many miles away, and had climbed the mountain simply to see what was going on and to extend greetings. They heard about the accident on a transistor radio. After meeting them, we somehow did not feel quite so heroic. (See Photograph 5.)

As the investigation work progressed both on the mountain and down below in Kabul, it became apparent to all that there was room for improvement concerning certain aspects of civilian air operations in Afghanistan. Recommendations, of course, are the most important aspect of any aircraft accident investigation. The Afghan MOT had no formal mechanism for forwarding specific safety recommendations to entities within the country (both domestic and foreign), so our solution was to distribute a simple informal “white paper” of safety suggestions to several government ministries, the U.S. Embassy aviation advisor, the ISAF military air staff, and others—a shotgun approach, so to speak. We handed a copy of the white paper to anyone in authority who seemed even remotely interested.
These suggestions ranged from the acquisition of mobile radar for then-radarless Kabul International Airport to the importance of rebuilding a previously blown up ILS array to the consolidation and tightening up of visual flight rules operations in Kabul airspace. I believe the white paper, although unofficial and a bit unorthodox, proved effective and many of the suggestions are being acted upon at this time. In addition, the Afghan Investigator-in-Charge asked us to compose a letter for his internal use containing ideas about how the safety staff of the Ministry of Transportation itself could increase its effectiveness.

The U.S. members of the team traveled back to the United States in three groups. The FAA representative and our operations specialist went back after 1 week on a convoluted, difficult routing with the flight data recorder. Our systems and structure specialists left a week later via a United Nations contract flight to Dubai. I remained one further week to finalize our on-scene assistance to the Afghans.

The Afghan investigation into the tragic loss of Kam Air Flight 904 is still open, and may remain so for some time. The Investigator-in-Charge hopes to be able to recover the cockpit voice recorder in the near future, but in a nation with many other priorities, this may take a while, or, in fact, prove to be impossible. A final report following ICAO Annex 13 guidelines is the goal. I believe that the effort put forth so far on this investigation is an excellent example of cooperation between many groups—the government investigators from Afghanistan, Italy, Turkey, and Kyrgyzstan, the military flight crews and flight planners in ISAF, the NTSB, the U.S. Armed Forces, the U.S. State Department, and the Kam Air and Phoenix Aviation participants. From tragedy we draw knowledge to improve the safety of us all."

[trident3A]

A most interesting account, thanks for posting