They have found a new sandbox.
 

Just looking at this thread makes one realize AF447 one is closed.

Flew that a few days ago in the real world. Saw the lights 20 feet above minimum, disconnected and landed without a hitch. Could have let the automatics do it as well, but without protected areas in marginal weather that is not a bright idea. Flying the 737 with back trim in is a non-event for any halfway competent pilot. Keep a bit of forward pressure in while you trim off the back trim and land or go around. Yes, in a go around there is additional pitch up because of the pretty strong pitch power couple in the 737, but then again that is nothing new or challenging.

Letting the plane fly itself without autopilot is a bad idea, and was a bad idea even in that very first puddlejumper we all flew at some point.

Some facts about Russian air transport related to safety:

- there exists ca 100 carriers (there was ca 400 formerly!)
- there is ca 15% increase of air traffic in Russia per year
- first 5 carriers provides 2/3 of transport (Aeroflot, Transaero, UTAir, S7, Rossia)
- first 15 carriers provides ca 90% of trafiic
- Tatarstan had 18th place with little more than 700.000 pax per year

????????? ?????????? | ??????????

Specialists in Russia advice to decrease strongly the number of carriers, because it is very difficult to get a profit and provide all safety measures for little carriers operating at only domestic flights. Pilots of those carriers can be subsequently released to the job market and can start to work for bigger companies with lack of pilot, that are able to give them real full-time work and better productivity. They believe that lack of pilot in Russia is only due to bad structure of the air industry.

Reuters: Russian regulator to ground regional airline following deadly crash
 

Russian news agency Interfax got ahold of a letter from the head of Rosaviatsiya to the Minister of Transportation, in which Rosaviatsiya officially recommends banning the importation of commercial aircraft older than 15 years.

?????????? ?????????? ????????? ????????? ???? ????????? ?????? 15 ??? | Forbes.ru

There's also a second bombshell in the letter. It proposes to require domestic airlines to register all their aircraft in Russia. (The requirement would apply immediately to all newly acquired aircraft. Existing aircraft are grandfathered till 2018.)

To anyone.
 

hamster3null wrote:

Now, I admit to sometimes being a bit thick so please forgive me for the following question:

What good would THAT decision do? Really? Isn't this a question of lack of experienced pilots rather than old aircraft? I'm bewildered. Please someone help me out of my fog...?

Don't worry, little of this will actually be done.

There is a saying in Russia: "the one thing worse than an idiot is an enterprising and motivated idiot". It appears that there's no lack of these in the government.

AOC Revoked last night, according some aviation sources....an expected action like in the RedWings accident some days later. Those Guys at MAK&Rosaviatsia are tough!

Air Transport World reports that Yamal Airlines has grounded its 737-400/-500 fleet, citing a "risk of spontaneous errors pertaining to the deviation or deflection of the elevator" and "after reviewing the flight information transcript of a Tatarstan Airlines Boeing 737-500 that crashed at Kazan airport in November".

Russia's Yamal Airlines temporarily grounds Boeing 737 fleet | Safety content from ATWOnline

One question...last night there was a FPL filled as TAK543/4, Kazan/IST/Kazan, and according Eurocontrol FPL database it operated with real ETA's and block times...could this be some sort of a data bug/ReptFPL, or the flight really existed with some exemption from the authorities?
It was announced that all ops were suspended since 31st January.

All Tatarstan Airlines activity (incl. planes) is transfered to AkBars Aero.

My Russian is very limited... would someone please provide me a link to the investigation homepage?

I would like to read about their findings.

Boeing 737-500 VQ-BBN (use Google translate on that URL)

I doubt anything further will be published until the investigation has been completed.

Again thankyou very much DaveReid. I will bookmark this.

So the MAK report is out at long last. It blames the pilots whose flying skills were poor- one a former navigator and the other an ex flight engineer, one apparently never took his basic training on a light airplane even though his papers said he did.

Trying to perform a go around, apparently assumed they were still on auto pilot which was no longer the case, got into a nose-up situation, overcorrected, got confused and flew the thing into the ground.

Crash: Tatarstan B735 at Kazan on Nov 17th 2013, crashed on go-around

- unqualified flight crew
- captain did not have any primary flight training
- systemic breach of work and rest regulations
- systemic lack of training
- lack of english proficiency (essential in flying a Boeing)
- lack of flight ops organisation at the airline
- lack of active assistance from ATC
- lack of.....

If you need to sober up after all those copious christmas dinners, click on the link provided.

The captain had just 275 hours total before his type rating on the 737. The F/O had even less with 150 hours TT. Not much real experience to fall back on especially as the F/O type rating training was very limited by normal standards.
The report mentioned the pilot (captain?) inadvertently disengaged the autopilot and continued flying manually on flight director. The 737 was well displaced from the centreline of the ILS and a large heading correction was made close in and while well above the glide slope. The flight director needles would have been all over the place like the proverbial dog's breakfast. Hurried and extreme elevator movements would cause an incompetent pilot to `chase` the FD needles which were probably at their extreme stops by now.

Flight Directors are an aid to instrument flying. They are not the be all and end all to instrument flying. That said, experience has shown many crews are FD addicted and become apprehensive without them as a crutch. The inevitable result sooner or later is a close call or a crash.

Experience before type rating is not an issue, many airlines have been doing this for decades. The problem is that airlines with shady training departments (if you don't crash on V1-cut, you are captain material) put people with such low overall experience in a left seat of a 60 ton jet.

I doubt 2500 hours of multi-pilot flying (assuming he got command shortly before the accident, which may not be true) is enough to be captain on an aircraft of this size and complexity.

Centaurus;
Agree completely - (for the Airbus...the DC9/DC8 "directors" weren't sophisticated), I always thought that the most important use of FDs was, ironically, letting the PF know what the automation is actually "thinking", and I treated them as such...just a guide. FD's are best "looked through" to the other actual data on the PFD, for verification of what these things are commanding one to do.

In my opinion, other than conveying what the automation is wanting to do, FDs are for best for small corrections when hand-flying, and one ought to be able to hand-fly (with autothrust off), a raw-data ILS, otherwise one is unskilled at flying a transport aircraft.

Of course one needs to be sufficiently experienced to know how and when to "look through" these things and not to slavishly follow dumb commands from a high-speed idiot, (computer); otherwise they're just a crutch that weakens S.A. and thought.