Afriqiyah Airbus 330 Crash

[Walder]

Dear all.

Most of you will probably ignore this comment….
I am very ”pleased” to see so many ”qualified” investigators in this forum.
Please only share facts – not guesses! Facts are what you have seen or heard on first hand!
When starting guessing, you may start an avalanche and might very well ending up with the wrong conclusions.
Please let the real investigators tell us what really happened.

Bare in mind, you were not there! You did not see what they saw! (I do not say it was not a pilot error. I was not there, I did not see anything and I have not heard the tapes: I do not know!)

But let me remind us all: (To prevent accidents caused by human errors)
Human errors occurs – normally started by a single event that makes you take some action or decision, and if you took a incorrect action or decision but believe you did right, you will continue on that path until you realise you were wrong – if you ever will find out. That is typically how to start a chain and it could well be combined with technical problems too.
It is rear that both pilots go in same the wrong direction with the feeling they did right. When it happens, it can be very dangers!
So if you ever fell something is not right – even it is a minor thing – share it – as soon as possible!
If you believe you do the right thing and someone asks questions about your decisions then listen carefully!
That is the most important in aviation!

And here we can have the benefit if the Flight Safety System is used correct:
When ever we make errors, remember to share it through the Air Safety Report (ASR). If we all do so, the Flight Safety Officer has a tool to find trends at a very early stage that can be announced as an eye-opener for all of us – or bring some of the events to the next SIM-pass.
(If you have a Flight Safety Culture there only blames you when you admit your errors, then you have no Flight Safety Culture, but an I’ll Blame You Culture!)

Walder – a human being.

[ATC Watcher]

RadAlt2010 :

Instead of spending $2M on an ILS facility, now the insurance has to pay out $500M in total. talk about false economies.

Right on the spot.
Same in many other places, Problem is that you do not increase poplularity with the ppopulace and the princes in power with an ILS, but building a new terminal or a new access road to the airport does.

Someone mentioned ICAO, remember ICAO is made of States, not individual supranational policemen...

[HundredPercentPlease]

Images from C-SAR:

Last pole standing:



First pole down:



Second pole down:



Close up:



Third pole down:



Close up:



Fourth pole down:



Close up:



Reverse view:



Impact:



Close up:



More to follow (mangled by email).

[PENKO]

Forgive me if this is stated or resolved already, but in an Airbus like the 320/330 you don't usually follow the actual VOR signal, but you follow a preprogrammed route from the database. This is base on GPS. So why focus on dodgy VOR's?

[nugpot]

I have been away for a few days so just caught up. We must be careful of the PPRuNe/Media spiral. The newspaper hacks read uninformed speculation here and publish it because it is attention-grabbing. Another poster quotes the newspaper and the next moment the idiotic fringe's ideas become facts, feeding the descent into chaos.

.............no other airframe has had such a run of bad " luck" in such short succession..........

paweas, not true old chap. Take forty lashes and go and do some homework.....

Some of you still don't get it pure and simple!!!!!

NOT a go around prang - but CFIT trying to find the runway........ Believe it or not but I would never have ever let my family or myself fly on an Afriqiyah or Libyan Arab Airlines aeroplane ever Even before this

White Knight, CFIT descending, CFIT descending during go-around is still CFIT. Your clairvoyance is noted though. Other than that, there is not much accident history to base your anti-Libyan sentiments on. Pinnacle Airlines in the states have done worse over the past two years..........

I said an ILS in THIS case would have saved the day. You cant argue with that no matter how hard you try. Few airline pilots these days fly manual approaches and an ILS on all runways should be made mandatory in all major international airports.

RadAlt2010, whether an ILS would have saved the day would surely depend on the final cause of the accident. If the cause is CFIT/pilot error, then a different crew would also have saved the day...

Non-precision approaches are only dangerous if you do not adhere to the procedure and related minima. Mandatory ILS's mean mandatory calibration, etc. How long would you trust ILS's in some places?

Many pilots fly manual approaches every day. If you don't, you are probably degrading the one skill that could save you and your pax one day.....

Asking for mandatory ILS's at every airport is just further evidence of legislating for mediocrity. A good captain would know when to abandon an NPA and when to go to the alternate. A/c prang off ILS's as well...........

An auto approach is always more comfortable for passengers

Uhm, why? I thought we could all fly at least as well and smoothly as the autopilot....

[aterpster]

PENKO:

Forgive me if this is stated or resolved already, but in an Airbus like the 320/330 you don't usually follow the actual VOR signal, but you follow a preprogrammed route from the database. This is base on GPS. So why focus on dodgy VOR's?

Libya is not a WGS84-compliant country, so the GPS is not supposed to be used as primary navigation on an instrument approach procedure. I can't speak to Airbus, but in a U.S. OEM vendor supplied database the approach mode should not activate in Libya.

WGS-84 Updates - Jeppesen

[C-SAR]

Thanking HundredPercentPlease

HPP, thanks for helping me overcome the internet access limitations I am experiencing here...
Once I get back home to Sunny Scotland I should be able to post more staff.

C-SAR

[C-SAR]

Havana said:

Quote:
The power line was hit before the impact point.
just checking but the photo on a previous page (15) seems to show a snapped telegraph pole near the tail cone (with wires attached) and aircraft debris either side of the snapped pole. Seems to indicate something happened before hitting this post.

Havana, you are correct. If you look at my pictures just posted ny HundredPercentPlease, the aircraft started to drag poles out of the ground before impact. The power line went to the house close to the mosque, therefore all the other poles after the impact point were entangled in the crash, hence the picture in page 15.
I could not enter the debris area, so my last standing was in front of the impact point... with some nice local guys all wearing the same dress around me asking polite questions...

[C-SAR]

jcjeant said in #523:

Hi,

IF the tail scenario (tail separated first) is confirmed (and will be confirmed by the following) .. it will be lack of infos about the last second(s) of the crash as not recorded by the black boxes

Until impact the aircraft appears to have been intact, so FDR/CVR should have been recording at least until then. The tail section might have separated as part of the sequence of destruction after first impact.

C-SAR

[ZEEBEE]

Walder

Please only share facts – not guesses! Facts are what you have seen or heard on first hand!

Most have not seen anything, therefore the facts are almost non existent.

Perhaps you should look at the name of this forum again to re-acquaint yourself with its purpose.

Educated guesses by qualified individuals are of value and may help to shed some light to those of us who haven't peddled one of the big machines but still are interested in what might have led to the tragic outcome.

There is a place for this and the pious exhortations by some will do nothing to stop it.

[Jetjock330]

You can forget to tune the NDB feq and still do the approach in the Airbus. You can delete the NDB freq from RAD NAV and still do the approach on the FM. In fact, even if the ground sation is not working, you can still do the approach (not according to the reg's I know).

The aircraft will follow the green line from FM in a managed lateral navigation and will follow the vertical profile if indeed fully managed.

If this approach was done fully selected in both laterally and vertically, then the NDB would have to be tuned and the needle followed in Track/Flight path.
This is indeed very seldomly done, very seldomly!

Airbus has many ways to skin the cat and sometimes this cat bites back as Tiger if you screw up. This looks like one of those cases where procedures were not followed and systems not understood. Autopilot will disconnect at MDA minus 50ft, and then Airbus says you're on your own for what ever happens next.

[JetThePilot]

Location Photos

C-SAR:

I do not see the tracks left in the sand by the landing gear as shown in video taken from a jet posted in an earlier thread. Did you see evidence of landing gear making contact with ground? Where?
-------------------------
I happen to know a colleague of the deceased pilot (Capt. Yousif Saadi) and spoke to him on the phone yesterday. Pilot is experience, UK trained in 1970s, flew Boeing 727 for 2 decades then worked outside Libya for 6 years in 1990s. Joined Afriqiyah and converted to A330 with Air France. His colleague says he is a good pilot with excellent record (40 years flying), but the Tripoli-Johanesburg trip is a killer. Pilot gets less than 12 hours net resting time during daylight between two 9 hour flights (10 in the cockpit) - not enough to refresh. Having two FOs is no help because they are equally not fresh. He says that he himself begged to be removed from similar flights because on occasions he knew he was too fatigued to take quick important decisions if an emergency or bad visibility is encountered. He recalled an FO recently trying to persuade him to go low to identify runway in poor visibility in Benghazi. Under such circumstances ILS or an accurate system is a must. He said the late Capt Yousif knew the problems with Tripoli VOR system but can only explain what happened in two ways: either fatigue got the better of him and he did not check his decent soon enough to keep plane above minima or there was something wrong with the instruments that made him realise he was too close to the ground too late in poor visibility. Given VOR's performance for Tripoli 09, visual identification is needed for safe landing. In poor visibility, which is now confirmed for the time of the accident, pilots either abort early and request somewhere else (fuel considerations?) or push the limits towards a possible and predictable lethal outcome.

Commercial considerations and pressures would make the airways lethal without ILS and quality information and directions. Pilots are always pushed to the limit of their human capacity and can only survive by relying on automation, which is not always helpful in emergency. Recall the Hudson river pilot's testimony before congress? He spoke about the conditions pilots increasingly face.

By the way, in Libya, although the authority do not equip airports well at all, they apparently would bring a pilot before a committee if (minima) rules are breached or even if diversion is requested to expalin their decision. Effect on pax connections, fuel cost, etc. will all be discussed by such committee. Sounds familiar, anyone?

[HundredPercentPlease]

C-SAR's photos are quite large. The "impact" photo has lots of detail in, that may be of interest.

Here is a crop of the interesting stuff in that photo, with no reduction. Be sure to zoom in and see the sliced trees on the right, the direction of the debris compared to the impact and the impaled trees on the left.

Link to photo.

[snowfalcon2]

C-SAR, looking at the impact mark it looks fairly shallow. So the question is, was the first impact from the fuselage underside (where it starts to taper towards the tail) or from the actual tailcone?

I ask because if the first impact was from the fuselage underside, it suggests a lower angle of attack i.e. only a couple of degrees more than the tail strike angle of 15.5 degrees I referred to earlier. It also raises the possibility that the main landing gear hit the power line together with the fuselage.

Speculating further, a high angle of attack at impact may be one of the contributing factors to the high degree of destruction. If the AoA had been lower, the landing gear would have hit first and absorbed a lot of the energy that now caused the tail to break off and the airplane to do its final pitch down.

[C-SAR]

JetThePilot said:

C-Star:

I do not see the tracks left in the sand by the landing gear as shown in video taken from a jet posted in an earlier thread. Did you see evidence of landing gear making contact with ground?

The marks are past the impact point/cactus line... the one I could not cross. So, for information on what was beyond, for the moment we need to relay only on the video clip. I might try another visit... but I can't garantee...

C-SAR

[Nightrider]

Looking at the pics above it appears that pole #2 has almost half it's length white colour stains and pole #3 the upper 25% white colour on the side. Zooming into the poles reveals also that there are scratch marks immediately below the stains.

The impact zone photo shows a prominent impression, judging by the size I assume most probably from the fuselage.

C-SAR, beside the excellent job you did here, just a clarification please, from your photo position, is the road behind you or between first impact and the mosque? I ask as there are no landing gear markings to see and the elevation before the mosque may actually show the higher level of the road where the landing gear impacted and broke. In this case, there was a very high AoA during the first impact.

[C-SAR]

snowfalcon2 said:

C-SAR, looking at the impact mark it looks fairly shallow. So the question is, was the first impact from the fuselage underside (where it starts to taper towards the tail) or from the actual tailcone?

I base my speculation on the presence of power line wrapped around the end cone. Also, look at the cut in the cactus to the right. They most probably were cut by the right stabilizer. Calculating the hight of the cut we might establish the fuselage position at time of cut

C-SAR

[C-SAR]

Nightrider said:

C-SAR, - omissis - , just a clarification please, from your photo position, is the road behind you or between first impact and the mosque?

In relation to my position looking at the impact point, the road that runs west to east south of the mosque is to my right.
The road perpendicular to the approach path that goes north south is in front of me 200 metres further forward, well inside the debris area

C-SAR

[RadAlt2010]

Walder:
I agree with you entirely. The amateur sleuths and the hypocrites are ready with their damning speculation long before the professional investigators have spoken. I say to them, stop for a minute and think: if this had happened to you, how would you feel about being tried in a kangaroo court?
4PW:
I never attempted to absolve or accuse the pilot of blame. I merely suggested ONE scenario in what could have happened without prejudice. Wait for the findings then blame or otherwise show us how what a clever pilot you are however much you like. I don’t care if you can competently land on a short , wet runway built on a swamp every single time. The fact remains, it is still a SAFETY RISK to your passengers and other pilots less able than you. Remember what your first instructor told you: “There are old pilots and there are bold pilots but there are no…” etc etc. You may find that out the hard way.
Nugpot:
I don’t think I am wrong or naive in saying that ICAO should have more clout in standardising dangerous, ill equipped, badly run airports, nor that it cannot be effective. If an international body can impose sanctions in the name of politics, it can also impose sanctions in the name of safety. About the only thing for certain in this accident is that poorly equipped and maintained airports raise the stakes enormously.

[takata]

Hi,

Originally Posted by JetThePilot

I do not see the tracks left in the sand by the landing gear as shown in video taken from a jet posted in an earlier thread. Did you see evidence of landing gear making contact with ground?

Because they were possibly not landing gear tracks but rear under belly related (tail). Landing gear is more than 2 times wider than this track left (also it can not be related to engine's thrust as it would be larger than landing gear). It is a sandy area and from the initial impact, it is showing a fairly deep trench which, see from above, may look like parallel tracks while in fact it is sand edges.
S~
Olivier