747 Crash At Brussels

[G-STAW]

from the pictures above it looks like the nose gear was stowed when it crashed?

G-STAW

[Tediek]

What would you take off and land the plane on a runway where you will never make it.?? That is asking for a lot of trouble. Similar discussion have been there, would you stop after V1....

[Admiral346]

I was in BRU today. We landed 25R and also took off 25R, without any delays.
Arrival was at 1220Z, and departure at 1300Z.
The FO was flying, so that gave me a good look at the RWY during the initial left turn towards HUL.

The 747 has overrun by what I estimated to be 300-400m. There were the tiretracks, clearly visible in the grass south of threshold 02. The plane was lying there, fuselage broken behind the wings.

That's all I could see.

Nic

[Butor]

Reversers?

Am surprised that they apparently did not use the thrust reversers, normally they would have remained in reverse position after this sort of accident I would have thought.

Mike

[roljoe]

We just took of about 25 min after the Kalita "incident"..I can tell you that it was quite impressive...we got the 25R instead of the 20..weather was nice...and during all the initial phase of the sid (ap engaged..) we were looking at the scene...what a mess... the nose gear probably collapse when the ac reach end of rwy 20 inbond the fence..and rail road...

Now whatever, the Khalita mission and cargo..., hoppefully no dead, civilian or crew...but probably a lot of bla bla..in the the politics belgian sphere in the coming days..

[Earl]

Quote:Butor

Reversers?
Am surprised that they apparently did not use the thrust reversers, normally they would have remained in reverse position after this sort of accident I would have thought.

Earl:
I was surprised at this also, from the pics it would seem that they are still stowed.
Would have helped them quite a bit.
Thrust reverse is not computed in the V1 speeds, maybe something prevented them from working.

[nich-av]

There's speculation of a double engine failure as the first officer told airport staff that there were 2 loud bangs one after the other and loss of thrust on 1 or more engines. It might have been a birdstrike...

Still, why choose the shorter runway when you got a longer one available?Though the loads were not heavy, 3000m on a balanced runway for a B742 that needs 3200 at MTOW... it's challenging.


Safety is a dish best served warm.

[opale4]

Maybe, but that is just my speculation, they did the takeoff calculations based on the (logical) assumption that they would take of on the 25 but were told to use 20.

So, they just assumed that they'd be allright taking off on 20?

That is such a stupid theory, it hardly warrants a response.

[742]

...From my point of view if you do the takeoff calculations correctly (with the correct figures) and you perform the takeoff correctly you should not run short of runway wether or not you do an abort, so obviously at some point something went wrong. If this is not true then why bother doing these calculations in the first place.

There are many, many factors not considered in the dry engineering world of certification. Crosswinds, worn brakes (on older airplanes), failed tires, rubber on the runway….and the list goes on.

IMO one of the most dangerous mindsets in aviation is the idea that performance is “guaranteed”.

[flyboy18]

More news (dutch):
http://www.flightlevel.be/080525_kal...n-brussel.html
More pictures:
http://www.flightlevel.be/engines/sh...um=Kalitta+Air

[Skywards747]

There have been countless occasions where the flight crew had planned the take-off data for a particular runway, weight, weather condition or a flap setting and when the conditions changed subsequently failed to do the required corrections.

So whatever the actual cause(s) of this accident, anyone who says that a theory such as above happening here is stupid (#81), has absolutely no idea of the flight deck realities.

[45989]

Ben There.Post #41

Very True!

Just because it says it can do it on the tin, often looks VERY wrong in reality.
Many times(at or near mtow) looked closely at the church steeple near
the end of 25R in BRU many moons ago.
tgdxb... please note runway length is not the sole criteria
Though I do have sympathy with your dilemma.
Cheers

[VAFFPAX]

bArt2 is correct. If you think British politics is complicated with devolution and the like, you have not seen Belgian politics yet, especially where it concerns Bruxelles... It's insanity. But that's another matter altogether.

25R had to be used because it was the only rway left (25L/07R is too close to the incident to allow flights, although 07R would be more ideal because of the noise patterns).

Oh well. No doubt we'll soon hear what the deal is. BBC still reports that they don't know what's on the plane (r-i-i-i-i-i-i-g-h-t!)

S.

[SMOC]

Doesn't look like any evidence of reverse nor spoilers from the pics (even with a complete loss of hydraulic pressure some/most spoilers would have still remained up or near up).

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6255649

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6255648

http://www.jetphotos.net/viewphoto.php?id=6255644

However with such impact damage especially near where all the cable runs go anything could have happened.

[Ayla]

We operate to Nett Performance standards which are significantly factored for safety from flight testing performance and Gross performance. If they had calulated correctly, stopping at or below V1 should not have ended up with a 400m over run. There is also a factor of safety of 2 seconds built in for recognising an Engine failure at V1 to abandoning the Take Off.

[dkaarma]

So what came the first, the chicken or the egg?

Did she break up because of the RTO, or did they RTO because of the break-up?

[tgdxb]

Out of curiosity, given the airlines' known care for security/safety, could flying crews help me understanding on what basis--weather conditions permitting--, they would accept taking off from 02/20 while knowing that 25R gives them more rwy length? I have to admit that this is a mystery to me.

[Interflug]

So what came the first, the chicken or the egg?

Did she break up because of the RTO, or did they RTO because of the break-up?

We don"t know yet.
But one can speculate reasonably, that had they RTO because of the break up, that the aircraft would not sit there broken in three pieces but all three pieces pretty much in line. So I would guess, the break up happened after the overrun.

Belgian news reports quote the pilots "hearing two loud bangs and after that a loss of power".

[hyperactive]

hyperactive

rto?no spoilers no thrust reversers gear apears stowed or at least partialy .port side photos show walking beam with wing gear hanging if gear was down at time .would expect threw top of wing ,as to tail damage its a clean break due on transport joint ,as to main fuse break clean along overwing logeron then up 1241 splice. nothing realy adds up does it? .stop speculating wait for the report .

[742]

We operate to Nett Performance standards which are significantly factored for safety from flight testing performance and Gross performance. If they had calulated correctly, stopping at or below V1 should not have ended up with a 400m over run. There is also a factor of safety of 2 seconds built in for recognising an Engine failure at V1 to abandoning the Take Off.

Under FARs and, I believe, JARs the reduction of gross to net performance only applies to climb. Runway data is not factored, other than the all engine takeoff distance.

Too many ground school instructors leave too many students grossly overconfident in takeoff performance data. If one is heavy for the runway available (or your company performance system “optimizes” data to get the lowest possible engine thrust setting), a few minutes of serious thought is warranted before takeoff. And there may not be comforting answers to some of the questions.

It is possible that the crew in this accident did everything right, just as the NW crew that overran 32 in ANC had done everything right.