Bad Airmanship
 

Report: Air Nostrum CRJ2 at Barcelona on Jan 24th 2007, belly landing

:=

I wonder if the EGPWS had spoken Spanish would it have changed the outcome. As a native English speaker I cannot think that I would not have looked at the gear at least once if it was saying too low gear 15 times.

Amazed that a gear warning alert was ignored 15 times by two pilots!

Bad Airmanship is an understatement!!!

and

The report seems to indicate that they had already assumed the landing might be without flaps.

Wonder what happened in the last few moments...

Couldn't think for all of the noise. Seem to remember that happening to a Mirage driver landing at Tullamarine many years ago.

Don't be surprised at how anyone can be overloaded in the right circumstances.

As wiser men once said:

Something to think about...
 

I don't know what went through the minds of the Flightcrew. Being a Boeing pilot, I'm going out on a limb here assuming the GPWS system has similar callouts. I think that mabye the crew, knowing that they would be getting a "TOO LOW FLAPS" warning, disregarded the "TOO LOW GEAR" warning as it's substitute. You know, in this situation your "expecting that damm warning to go off", and being human, heard what they wanted to hear.
How many of us are guilty of that.

But for the Grace of God go I......
Fly safe

Que?? Si ! What??? :ok:

There's an (in)famous clip on Youtube showing a couple of guys doing a forced landing practice in a C172 or 182 RG. The camera guy is in the rear seat.

During the whole exercise you can hear the gear warning horn sounding right down to the point where they flare and touch the ground. :eek:

I have very nearly done it myself in similar circumstances. Concentrating very hard on the task in hand and the gear horn becomes just another noise in the background. :uhoh:

I think the crew got distracted by the flap problem so forgot the normal landing checklist. I admit I once through distraction found my self finding out at 200 ft where I always do visual gear, flaps, speedbrakes that the speedbrakes were not armed and noticed none of the before landing check had been done. Thank God I am a speed reader because in the flare everything was done.

They weren't as lucky to have a last chance personal visual scan in their landing to notice the problem. Warning horns when you know something is non standard can be ignored quite easily because you expect it may happen. They probably both thought it was a flap warning and didn't heed the gear warning. We all know it will never happen again. Remember "those that have and those that will"? Gear up landings for the new guys.

Limited experience
 

Report: Air Nostrum CRJ2 at Barcelona on Jan 24th 2007, belly landing
http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/4...onbelly.th.jpg

A reply to a forum attached to the above report suggests the captain had only 202hrs as captain while FO had only 200.

Sobering image

Yes, the brain can be a dangerous thing when it starts filling in the blanks for us or associates an observation with the wrong thing.

Was unfortunate enough to witness a tragic example some years back at a railway crossing with boom gates.
Police car came up to boom gates obviously in a hurry to get somewhere.
Driver looked at the stationary train at the platform still loading passengers, figured he'd get across comfortably and drove around the end of the boom gates to get across.

Express from the other direction cleaned him up.

I'm not familiar with this type, but with the 737NG right now.

Is it the case that, following the realization that a flapless landing will be necessary, that the crew cannot disable the "TO LOW FLAP" GPWS aural warning?

This is 'normally' done during the non-normal checklist as a result of the malfunction, is it not?

I would bet that, had the "TO LOW FLAP" GPWS warning been inhibited, the gear warning "TO LOW GEAR" would have been the trigger to do something!

Simply because, having inhibited the flap warning within the checklist, they would not have expected any warnings, and that warning aural may have woken them up to the oversight!

....or get a flight engineer!

Cheers...FD...:\

IIRC, it was the Capt of an Aerolineas Argentinas 747 on approach to EMAD more than 20 years ago who got the "whoop, whoop, Pull Up!"

Calla Te, Gringo! was his response just before they crashed short of the runway. (Shut up, Gringo!)

GB

Edit: OK, IRII, I recalled it incorrectly. It was Avianca. Thanks for the corrections following.

GrayBeard,

I have a feeling you are maligning Aerolineas Argentina incorrectly.

Was it not a different South American carrier whose commander immortalised that infamous remark?

BSD

(just another gringo!)

Be aware
 

An old saying was that there are those who have landed with the wheels up and those who are going to land with the wheels up.

What helped me in my career was that the gear down action was always carried out prior to intercepting final and glide slope.

Tmb

The RAT
 

The picture shows the RAT has deployed. The landing deceleration was 1.16G. Not enough to shake the RAT loose. How come it's deployed?

Well, I guess the WOW switches were never activated ;)

(Not familiar with the CRJ, but on other types the RAT will deploy in case all AC buses fail with the aircraft being airborne)

Maybe a WOB switch would be helpful (weight on belly) :ugh:

Airmanship seems to have become a dirty word these days being replaced by SOPs.

I don't know the CRJ at all, but does the flapless landing QRH checklist include an item for 'gear down' expect EGPWS warnings somewhere?

202 hours as a captain and prepared to take off for a high probability flapless landing? What sort of command training did he/she have?
What worries me is the attitude!