questions
 

First of all My condolences to all those effected from this tragedy .
Would like to know what type of approach she was making ? fuel scenario . . . I read somewhere they had 10 tons on T/O , making a calculated guess then I don't think they were short of fuel , however correct me if im wrong on this ....
I believe this was the second attempt to land after initating a go around , what was the cause of this ?
all the press sites are claiming wx was the reason for the crash , was there shear and or microburst activity in the area ?
Anyone :confused:
:(

Weather most 'certainly' the cause? Sounds like a bad Hollywood script...

Must be a new trend in the media. In the older days, the first gues for the cause after severe aircraft accidents were "lightning strikes", then bombs (the infamous farmer, who heard always "two explosions") and after that, "cell phones".

With regards,

Stubenfliege

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/storie...05/04/001.html

FROM THE MOSCOW TIMES.

Is there much chance the aircraft stalled?

Not with the hard envelope protection of the A320, no. It won't stall no matter what you do to it. It would just fail to gain height, not stall. That's a part of the fly-by-wire system as basic on the A320.

As SLF I am wary of making a contribution in R&N. However, I have been to Adler and the place (please understand that I am speaking as a scientist, not an aviator) did strike me as being more challenging then average with regard to the weather. Behind the airport, which is almost at sea level, is the western edge of the Caucasus Mountains, rising quickly to in excess of 1000m.

To give some background, at the moment I am working on a paper looking at some unusual characteristics of storms in Black Sea area. Specifically, I am looking at the Rostov Region area, where the topography does not complicate the issue. One factor I note is the very localised intense downdraughts that are not necessarily coincident with an active cell. It is reasonable to hypothesize that this characteristic will equally apply in Krasnador Region, and that the mountains may even exacerbate this characteristic.

As a non-aviator I can offer no opinion on cause of this tragedy, and note the previous comments about how easy it is to quickly use weather as a thoughtless and 'media friendly' cause. However, if this information is helpful in any way I trust you will forgive my visit to R&N!

Suffice to say, I feel great sadness at this accident and also wish to add my condolences.

The Pitch-Up Illusion
 

OTOLITH ORGANS
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The Otolith Organs work like a caterpillar oriented from the front to the back of the head. When you move your head the multiple legs of the caterpillar (hairs) are stimulated by gravitational forces enabling you to have positional awareness. Due to inertia, linear acceleration cannot be distinguished from the force of gravity. If an adequate horizon is not visible, forward acceleration will result in backward displacement of the caterpillar, giving the forceful illusion of a pitchup in attitude. An adequate horizon may not be available outside of the aircraft when you are looking into the sun such as might exist at dawn or dusk.
Despite being in level flight or shallow climb, upon acceleration in such a situation a pilot might strongly perceive that the aircraft is pitching up and respond by pushing the nose down steeply.

Overtalk, not certain if you are qualified, but for I think all of us with IR training our instructors dinned into us from day 1 to work on instruments, not bodily awareness.

My own guy had a good basic technique. On the first IR lesson he just got me to put head down and close eyes, and comment on what I felt was the attitude of the aircraft while he had control. When I was saying "straight and level" he would say "look up" and I would find he had gently put us in a spiral dive (which I then had to get us out of). Did it a couple of times. Never forgot it.

7000hrs multi and jet instruction and ME Inst Rating Examiner [14.5K hrs total].
.
Pitch-up Illusion was the cause of GulfAir 072 in Bahrein. It can be a very overpowering illusion. It's lost many USN airplanes.
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Somatogravic Illusion and the GF072 accident - LINK

Do we have anything on the history of the crew? Bearing in mind the location of the incident, are Unctuous and Overtalk also intimating that the difference between Soviet-style and Western (for want of better descriptions) artificial horizon displays might come into play here?

Cheers,

Rich.

I am NOT suggesting that it had anything to do with the accident, but my newspaper quoted one young lady waiting at the destination airport as saying "Mum rang me and said she had got a signal on her mobile so they would be landing soon"

The last exchanges are a good reason why a ‘professionals only forum' might help in this type of discussion. Both comments are valid. Certainly we have ‘believe your instruments' drummed into us at an early stage...and certainly accidents have happened as a result of human physiology making us not do so–if only for a moment.

Perhaps if the posters had been clearly labeled with their qualifications, more thought would have gone into why they had introduced their post.

Anyway, this kind of discussion gives reminders, and interesting new details, that may be vital to us one dark and stormy night. I wish I had such a forum in the bad old days of ‘shut the hanger door!' outside duty hours.

From The Times, today;

:uhoh:

How dumb can you get?

According to the Novosti, the "crew commander (-> Captain?) was one of the most experienced pilots and had flown Airbus airliners for years". Name of the crew commander sounds armenian for me. -> Quoted from airline press release.

Hi,

interesting to hear from someone involved with the weather there. I was and am a tad confused by the METAR's coming out of there, going something like BKN006 OVC027CB. Any OVC -- CB condition is something that will catch attention, but a broken layer below that, and the overcast is a bit on the unusual side for this central european met observer.

Can you give a bit more information on this? How would you rate the met conditions as they were reported there with what your experience shows?

And miss stuff like this? Your loss, but I prefer hearing from people who seem to go pretty deep into the met side, even if they are "only" SLF.

Best regards
AN2 Driver

Cellphones, peut-etre?
 

Mobile phones should be confiscated from pax before flight, nicely of course, then tagged, receipted, and returned after flight. Possession and use during flight should then become 2 levels of criminal offence. Worldwide. Action ICAO. And IATA. Now.

This is not to implicate mobile messages directly with this sad accident

BUT I have experienced circumstantial evidence of FCU inputs bringing erratic outcomes in terms of the a/c obeying inputs, commensurate with mobile ringtones received in out headphones. Requires swift intervention.

[QUOTE=RoyHudd]Mobile phones should be confiscated from pax before flight,

So, what do you propose to do? Name tag all 150 or so phones on a short flight or all 400+ on a jumbo. I can just see the departure procedure.

You'll find that most pilots have left their mobiles on in their flight bag. I don't think it matters a monkeys, no one has been able to prove under controlled conditions that they interfere.

On my flight a couple of days ago I (once again) forgot to switch my mobile off. So realising this I switched it off and simultaneously the autopilot disconnected. Not fiction but fact from a 20+year airline captain.
And this was on a clasic B737. So beware, there's always something waiting to surprise you.:eek:

This is a story of a sorry Armenian flight and not mobile phones. We've had threads up the hilt about cell/mobile phones and this thred should not start to wander toward that.