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B-738 Crash in Russia Rostov-on-Don

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B-738 Crash in Russia Rostov-on-Don

Old 21st Mar 2016, 00:06
  #301 (permalink)  
 
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Agree

Originally Posted by fantom
Rubbish. It is part of every low-vis check.
agree 100% GA procedures with all and one engine out, are always part of recurrent checks!
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 00:13
  #302 (permalink)  
 
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".but knackered crews make mistakes."

Not only knackered crews...
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 00:17
  #303 (permalink)  
 
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I'm not from either country (Greece/Spain) and I think for anyone not from either country it would be difficult to distinguish between the accents especially from a low quality recording.
Also capt landing does not mean capt has to be PF for approach, could be monitored app.
All speculation and not really relevant.
I've spent years abroad and met lots of Spanish, Greek and many other (mainly European) people - speaking English. Agreed, with some parts I also found the accent of the pilot speaking to ATC hard to judge. But his accent is crystal clear in other parts of the comms, which leaves me with absolutely no doubt. Like when he says "Eh-sta-blissed-eh on se loca-li-sa...". The guy talking is 100% Spanish - and definitely not Greek.
As there seems to have been quite a bit discussion on who's voices are heard on the atc recording, I listened to it and can say with almost certainty, the first part until about 2.20" is Aristos, the captain, and from that point onwards its a spanish accented person, ie the F/O. I am Cypriot and I know a cypriot voice 100%, and I met Aristos years ago, may he rest in peace. Also, I heard this was one of his last flights with Flydubai as he was joining Ryanair, and based in Cyprus with his wife who was 7 months expecting. Another point, I thought the Russian woman atc officers' English was atrocious.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 00:34
  #304 (permalink)  
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A little more detail on the status of the two flight recorders from another TASS article:

MOSCOW, March 20. /TASS/. A flight recorder from the FlyDubai passenger jet that crashed on March 19 in Russia’s southern city of Rostov-on-Don killing 62 has been opened, with records found to be of good quality, Sergei Zaiko, the chief of the Interstate Aviation Committee, said on Sunday.

"The flight data recorder has been opened. The damaged cable has been mended, the memory module has been studies. The data have been copied. The quality of records is good. The flight recorder was on until the plane hit the ground," he told the FM radio station.

"So, we have the records of this flight. As for the voice recorder, it was also seriously damaged, its cable was destroyed, so, efforts are now being taken to restore it. The works will be resumed tomorrow morning," he said.
TASS: World - Flight recorder from crashed FlyDubai jet opened, records quality good - IAC

I flew the 737(200 through the BBJ) and the automation in the later models, I thought, was very good.

However, a few missed switch pushes, or settings could ruin your day.
Most folks seem to say that this CAT I coupled approach would likely be flown with a single autopilot which would disconnect on the go around.

If they had a lower altitude set in the window, e.g. the published miss of 2260 feet, as they climbed to FL80, would the autothrottles come alive and pull the power back to idle as they zoomed upward in manual flight past the window altitude? This is what happens in some of the so called EFIS Boeings.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 00:38
  #305 (permalink)  
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framer:

These duties that have people doing in excess of 8 hrs airborne with two sectors are asking for trouble if they are rostered several in a row month in month out, year on year.
If you are 28, no kids, a girlfriend lives down the road, have the option of getting into bed and dozing off when you finish work without all the hustle and bustle of a normal family household, then it is tiring but safely achievable. If on the other hand you are 42, have two kids under five, a wife that has to work around your alarm clock settings and random absence during public holidays and weekends etc etc, then it is a case of family v's health v's work and something has to give. There is no free lunch with this type of rostering.
So well stated!
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 01:15
  #306 (permalink)  
 
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Just read an interesting comment on a Canadian site. The poster said: "It appears that the first missed approach was because he didn't get full lock confirmation on one of the landing gear, NOT weather. The circling was trying to get a confirmed gear down lock".
I know that is not official, but wonder if it is accurate.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 01:37
  #307 (permalink)  
 
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Just completed a similar scenario in the Sim as part of my last PC. It takes maybe 20min (& I did it on a Classic, where we had to elicit the response of the Sim Instructor acting as Cabin Crew to check the viewers , not applicable on the NG) to do. Certainly not the 2+hr in the holding quoted.

Seems weather was well above minima, bit windy, but didn't sound anything too special. . . I am at a loss to understand this 2+hr holding . . . & what they were waiting for ? ? certainly not RVR/cloudbase . . . so what ?

As to the actual accident, well, if what we know is from Flightradar24 is moderately accurate , if they really climbed in the go around to 2500+ ? flight controls ? /trim? /icing (less so but not impossible) /instruments or disorientation ? . . . . . strange one.


Oh, and the 800 has 6 greens, and a procedure to determine how many you need to be good to go, so, even stranger.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 01:52
  #308 (permalink)  
 
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Airbubba

It's been awhile...I think your scenario would be correct.

If they had 2260 set, and turned the "automation" back on, the throttles would go to idle. The nose should drop, but it may have been too late.

Roll Tide.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 02:35
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I subscribe to the belief that, making the approach, they realized they couldnt be stabilized at company criteria stabilization minimums, then went missed. Probably due severe turbulence etc

Held for 2hrs with hopes the SVR TURB would pass. They had the fuel. It was their first sector. They probably haven't even reached their MDF (min div fuel) so was holding until MDF. For all we know, this could have been their last try before going to their alternate to land and step down pending FTL/FDPs etc.

Something may have happened during that G/A that stopped their plans short. Only time and the investigators will tell what that was.

Nothing weird about "holding for so long" etc. In my humble opinion of course-- granted that they had a plan.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 04:11
  #310 (permalink)  
 
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The ILS approach for runway 22 is 2.67 degrees.

The threshold and first segment of runway 22 slopes away from landing aircraft at 1.3%. The next segment is 0.3%, then 0.5% and continues to slope away to the threshold of 04.

The LIDO charts for both 22 and 04 come with boxed warnings to expect turbulence and windshere on short finals.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 05:39
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Local media (incl. BBC Russia) tells of varied behaviour of other planes that night at Rostov airport. One, from Moscow, attempted landings three times, stubbornly, and went away, as didn't succeed. That took place within these 2 hours while the plane cruised around the airport - plus 1 hour. Within 3 hours, in total.
Another one, from St. Petersburg, just, like, gave up at once, and landed in Krasnodar, instead.
The third one, from Yekaterinburg - landed from the first attempt (to annoy metropolitan ones :o, no doubt) moreover, took passengers and took off again, all within an hour, on schedule. So, weather was a factor and of concern to other pilots - simultaneoulsy there - above Rostov airport. Locals on the ground (in plain words) described it as ? say"drizzle" (annoying but not heavy rain) plus ? "intermitting gusts of wind" . (one guy said he re-parked his car away , from under a high tree, afraid the tree would fall). So, quite some wind gusts. Additionally, there seems to be something else. which only black boxes will tell about. ;o( as other planes managed somehow.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 06:25
  #312 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by DH_call
aeromech3:


Obviously had nothing to do with this tragedy but a good read nonetheless. Thanks. http://flightsafety.org/ap/ap_dec02.pdf
Would you kindly explain what makes you so sure that the two cases are absolutely unrelated? I've read the full document and I can figure out a lot of similarities in the onset of the situation, if not in the final outcome (especially the plane's attitude during the last moments is obviously very different in this case)
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 07:52
  #313 (permalink)  
 
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Fully agree with those pointing to "man-machine" interaction problems and too much relying on automation.
Since they were at about 1500 ft (450 m) altitude, why not to manually transit to horizontal flight (no problem to lose some 50 m more) and then slowly change to the desired (or prescribed) altitude. Again, slowly and without reaching high (and stressing) pitch angles. It was not, say, Heathrow, neither Schiphol with heavy traffic, hardly a couple of other planes in the airport airspace. Also, no mountains around to climb as fast as possible.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 08:13
  #314 (permalink)  
 
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Better to stick to a standard manoeuvre that has been taught to you and trained in the sim and your first officer expects and can participate in.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 08:40
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From the information available so far it would appear that neither approach continued to the minima. Both missed approaches would appear to be commenced from about 1000' above the aerodrome which would hint more at not meeting stabilised approach criteria, possibly due gusty winds. Given the casual sounding radio calls when the missed approach commenced it would appear that the control issues started after and not before commencing the missed approach.

As others have mentioned a lot of training is done on missed approaches from the minima, often on one engine. A missed approach from higher, earlier, and at light weight can be completely different. All it takes is a bit of finger trouble (easy to do when tired) and all of a sudden you're in a completely unfamiliar situation with different modes, attitude, and performance from what you were expecting. When was the last time any of us practiced unusual attitudes at 2,500' instead of 30,000' as part of our cyclics?

The ATR72-600 that crashed in Laos a few years back is a good example of how quickly a missed approach gone wrong ends up with wild changes in pitch and roll trying to recover and then running out of sky.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 09:29
  #316 (permalink)  
 
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alainthailande:
Would you kindly explain what makes you so sure that the two cases are absolutely unrelated? I've read the full document and I can figure out a lot of similarities in the onset of the situation, if not in the final outcome (especially the plane's attitude during the last moments is obviously very different in this case)
One tragedy happened a few days ago while the other happened over 15 years ago. Was that a kind enough explanation for you?

Do you by any chance have the final report on this current tragedy to be able to compare the two?
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 10:02
  #317 (permalink)  
 
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Rostov is quite a tricky airport on bad weather, all the area is. On 2 ocassions I couldnīt land there and GA to Anapa and Krasnodar which is quite close for pax. Also runway is sleepery due to tyre residues on touchdown and rwy 22 is upslope giving you false approach sensations

But if locals donīt land there neither do I, even if you have enormous amounts of fuel on board. This pushing crews to the limit is getting nosense.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 10:30
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Tripoli 2010?

The thread-search function didn't turn up anything but in many ways it looks similar to Afriqiyah Airways Flight 771 at Tripoli in 2010. That was an A330-200, and it was in daylight (albeit in IMC), but the speed and altitude curves are quite similar up until shortly before impact. In Tripoli the crew tried to pull up again, whereas in Rostov we don't really know yet if any late recovery was attempted since we do not yet have any control-input information or any pitch information execpt some low-quality CCTV footage.

Here's the final report.

Bernd
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 10:34
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A missed approach from higher, earlier, and at light weight can be completely different. All it takes is a bit of finger trouble (easy to do when tired) and all of a sudden you're in a completely unfamiliar situation with different modes, attitude, and performance from what you were expecting.
Your point is taken. But if a pilot is current and competent it should not be an unfamiliar situation. The GA procedure is comprehensively covered in the FCTM. The FCTM states at typical landing weights, actual thrust required for a normal go-around is usually considerably less than maximum go-around thrust.

Observations in the simulator often reveal that with an all engines go-around, the tendency is for pilots on a manual throttle GA to instinctively shove the throttles to the stops because they don't have the time to take their eyes from the PFD, to fiddle with N1 readings when everything is happening at once. . With an automatic GA that doesn't happen because the autothrottle initially command thrust levels sufficient for 1,000 to 2000 fpm climb rate.

I found out in the simulators that I was teaching that may be 80 % of the airline pilots have they raw data flying skill so deteriorated that they cannot fly a go around where pitch and bank is involved close to the ground. It usually took a 45 minutes of hard manual flying before they would get the skill back at least within private pilot limits
Why am I not surprised at that statement? Pilot instrument flying competency both manual and auto flight, particularly in a low altitude go-around situation at night or in IMC, is vital. As we have seen from accident reports this is not always a given.


So far no one has mentioned the possibility that harsh pitch control movements (over-controlling) during a go-around often leads to the flight director pitch bar oscillating up and down, exacerbated by the pilot chasing the pitch bar. At low altitude, chasing a flight director pitch bar which momentarily is demanding a nose down input by the pilot because of over-controlling, can easily turn into a steep dive caused by the pilot over-reacting to pitch bar movement.

Last edited by A37575; 21st Mar 2016 at 10:54.
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Old 21st Mar 2016, 10:38
  #320 (permalink)  
 
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I subscribe to the belief that, making the approach, they realized they couldnt be stabilized at company criteria stabilization minimums, then went missed. Probably due severe turbulence etc
Most companies seem to have a caveat that states something along the lines of "Transient deviations from the stability criteria due to atmospheric conditions are acceptable if corrected promptly."

Does FlyDubai?
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