"Don't fly any other airline in Russia except for Aeroflot, Transaero and S7 and you will be fine."

That sounds like a good recommendation when it was Aeroflot was 100% responsible for the poor training and CRM of the Aeroflot flight SU821 accident in Perm, then the infamous video from last winter when they refused to sanction the pilot last winter for taking off with snow on the wings...then,-

S7 Flight 778 screw-up at Irkutsk....and of course Transaero's infamous record of flying on time. :rolleyes:

Just do you have any idea what you are talking about or what you are up against with ref to Russian aviation?

They're all in the snake pit together, and this crash is just the tip of a very large iceberg.

Trying suing AFL or S7 for any sort of poor behaviour...
(Eg. being 8hrs late ???!!)

We have tried, on 2 occasions.
AFL just LIED & LIED in court time after time, deny everything, hire crap lawyers and outgun every single "normal" legal procedure by every means "in the book" or "out of the book".

In Russia if anything goes pear shaped, the old soviet style education clicks in:-

1/ Deny everything.
2/ Exonerate the company/state
3/ Blame the customer/equipment/crew

It was exactly the same on the Sayano–Shushenskaya Dam accident.
It will always be the same in a country replete with an overt culture of lying, false law degrees, innate corruption & accountancy abberations.

S7 went into denial on our 2nd court case.
Everyone asked us "why do you bother to waste your time & money"?

You want to view the correspondence?
It's an eye opener! :ooh:

During the years, I've trained a fair few crews from both Transaero and S7. Most of them doing conversion training onto their first western built jet. In an ideal world they would have been given 30 or so sessions in the FFS to get a basic understanding of the philosophy of a "modern" western aircraft. Most of they guys came from a 4 or more crew flight deck. However, the training department of said airlines were, too say the least, unwilling to fork out that amount of money and custom built a training program that would focus solely on items covered on a skill test. These crews where then trained for 8 sessions doing nothing but single engine approaches and go arounds. After said 8 sessions they were competent enough to carry out this manoeuvre to pass a skill test.
There where of course exceptions, mainly crew members whom had previous experience on western built jets but they where few and far between.

I raised my concerns about this with head of training and was given the option to "get with the program or resign" I resigned.
The training organisation I was with is one of the largest and most well respected in the world today.

Needless to say, it will be long before I let my family or anyone else I care about for that matter travel with any of these airlines.

All I am saying is that at least Aeroflot is flying newer aircraft compared to these other operators. They are changing for the better.

As for being late. Those delays have nothing to do with this accident. Anyway why would you even bother to "sue" such big companies in RUSSIA?!? Ты че мужик? Нюх потерял?

The difference in attitude is alarming... From 25 degrees up to 75 degrees down is a pitch change of 100 degrees.. This would not have happened in the blink of an eye.

There is a lesser known equation that trades height for speed, and it is..
9 ft / kt / 100 kts.

ie at 100kts if you wish to gain or loose 10 knots you will need to trade 90ft.

So in this case if the pilot wished to increase speed by 25 knots he would have needed to just loose 280ft. From 2200ft this would easily be done by 1900ft... So why did he descend further? (And this totally ignores any positive effect that the engine thrust makes.)

"I am saying is that at least Aeroflot is flying newer aircraft compared to these other operators. They are changing for the better.

As for being late.... Anyway why would you even bother to "sue" such big companies in RUSSIA?!? Ты че мужик? Нюх потерял?"

It's funny how this comment illustrates yet again the yawning gap between your reality & those lying, twisting corporate entities.
The fact is, a company is a company.

This nonsense from Medvedev (as per usual) blaming old aircraft for the high accident rates, was as we all know complete total b..llox.

In reality the old TU154 variants, are/were known for an excellent safety record, and only replaced for lack of space and high fuel costs, while the vast majority of fatal accidents, Red WingsFlight 9268, S7-Irkutsk, AFL, Utair-Tyumen, Sukhoi SSJ-100-95 etc, were invariably down to brand new modern aircraft, pilot error, CRM, a culture of poor safety or mixtures of all at once.

As for the laws,- You should be entitled to AT LEAST the minimum of what (weak) Russian law says is your rights.

The mere fact someone turns to sue AFL, is the start of what actually made consumer protection law in the rest of the world what it is today.

Using your attitude as an example the EU commission would never have lobbied for changes in the law for mobile phone roaming or penalties for lengthy delays for airlines throughout the EU. (for example).

EU - Air passenger rights - Your Europe

I have a problem with people who just sit back, do nothing and remain aloof and complacent.
The fact is just ONE woman attacked AFL for the loss of her daughter on SU821.
She got awarded 7.7m roubles.

The others represented by your post would have just sat around saying..."oh well we just accept the 2m offered" (which is not even enough to buy an average flat), and that is that.
It was in fact the same in France over the terrible Mont St Odile ordeal, EADS and AF.

The fact is, if people stuck up for their rights in Russia (and the EU even), sued those abusive companies EN MASSE, the sheer quantity of litigation would make those companies lose so much money they would be forced to change.

QED.

Sorry, but you will find that it's nothing to do with old versus new aircraft, but a lot to do with the competence levels of the crews involved.

May I assume that you don't respect them (I assume from a cold place)?

As said above the 737 can be a bit of a handful on a g/a, esp a 2 engine g/a mainly due to the speed at which things happen and the pitch-couple.

In the last 3 companies I've flown the 737 for it has been recognised that the most commonly cocked up "normal" procedure is the 2 engine g/a, even among experienced, well trained Eu crews.

Why? We hardly practice them. We do loads of s/e g/a's, lots and lots, but two engine? Plenty few. We have increased the frequency in the sim but even so it is not a common manoeuvre, and one that tends to catch you unawares.

With (if true, 3 yr experienced flight engineers at the controls) it is even more likely to end in tears.

Pitch to 25 deg and speed loss to 120Kts before any recovery action was taken speaks of a very large helping of paralysys followed by a slo-mo "Oh Christ, Oh S***, Oh dear!", the aircraft rapidly getting away from the pilot - something you MUST not let a 737 do in a g/a, followed by a boched scramble to recover an aircraft on the brink of - or in an incipient stall with a pilot 1000ft behind the aircraft in the vertical profile. That is simply a recipe for disaster.

Sequence goes a bit like this...

G/a, TOGA, a/c pitches up strongly. Pilot fails to push hard enough (its very physical with 2 engines and if you're out of practice it can easily run away with you) Pitch is increasing. Other pilot taken by surprise. Eventually flap 15 is called and achieved but the delay hasn't helped the acceleration, if any. Eventually someone remembers the gear. The crew now completely out of their comfort zone as its already completely pear-shaped and over-maxed mentally. Airspeed already approaching 120 with 25' pitch, P/F pushing as hard as he can now, thumb on fwd trim too, fixated on pitch, trim wheel spinning hard. (We'll hear "Go down you bastard!" through gritted teeth on the CVR here) Sees airspeed reducing further (I bet 120 was nowhere near the minimum) so keeps pushing and trimming. Pitch finally reducing at 700m - 2200ft. About where you'd expect in this scenario. Power stays on and nose lowered below horizon - perhaps a bit too much in the panic - in incipient stall recovery, height reducing, speed increasing fast, pitch trim still running because he's still pushing real hard. Thrust levers slammed closed as speed rockets so a/c pitches forcefully down as pitch-couple is removed. With plenty of fwd trim by now and no thrust-pitch couple you'd then get straight from max effort push to max effort pull in a second or two resulting in exactly what we saw in the video.

I think 737 sim instructors will recognise this scenario.

Post 133
From 700 m (2310 ft) to zero in 20 secs, means 6930 ft/min???
It means 126 Km/h and 70 Kts

Post 85
It seems to be hitting the ground at 0.08 in the RT video, first appearing about 5 aircraft lengths back at 0.04, assuming that the fainter trailing light is the lit fin, and the ground position comes from the location of the flash on impact. That's only covering about 150m in 4s, so it's not hitting very fast: about 80 knots

I agree with this theory. Since in the movie the aircraft takes about 1 second to travel its length.

Post 103 and 126
http://www.aaib.gov.uk/cms_resources...9%20G-THOF.pdf
It takes time and patience, but worth reading
Pg 34:
It is recommended that Boeing clarify the wording of the Boeing 737 300-500 approach to stall recovery Quick Reference Handbook Non-normal Manoeuvres to ensure that pilots are aware that trimming forward may be required to enhance pitch control authority. (Safety Recommendation 2009-045)

A SPIN
Shown that the stabilizer was for sure, as per that phase of flight, toward the extreme ANU, when a GA was initiated, either due to the strong pitch up moment caused by the engines and the vertical upward component of traction or 'apparent lift', which decreases the stall speed, it was not easy, or even impossible, to stop the rapid attitude increase if not by trimming down or reducing engine thrust.
It’s very difficult to share the opinion that the pilot caused that shocking vertical dive by pushing the control column

From Post 133
The only maneuvers I can imagine for a plane to assume such an attitude are:
- A spin (to which would favor the low speed and the high rate of descent)

So with:
-High-pitch attitude
-Slow-speed, near or even below stall
It's just a little rotation (some rudder, some aileron, different thrust on the engines) on the yaw-axis to cause a spin.
Remember what's the difference between the spiral and the spin?
The airspeed is high and increasing in the first and very low in the other.

just a thought...trying to discuss it with people in the know.... Could it be a case of Vestibular/somatogravic illusions? Pilots were probably visual, then decide to go-around, climbed and attained 25 degrees angle, entered clouds with loss of external reference points, airspeed decays, pilots push stick forward and became victim to 'inversion illusion' (from Wiki : An abrupt change from climb to straight-and-level flight can stimulate the otolith organs enough to create the illusion of tumbling backwards, or inversion illusion. The disoriented pilot may push the aircraft abruptly into a nose-low attitude, possibly intensifying this illusion.) Anybody wants to comment?....

remember Russian Flight Directors are different to Western
 

I suspect that he followed the "flight Director" Russian style.....
so instead of 12 up he went 12 down...... and followed it down...and down...

Just thinking out loud....

Forgive me if this has been covered already, but I keep seeing people talking about 'Russian instruments' and possible problems caused thereby. I would be very surprised if any airline went to the trouble to re-instrument their Boeings, so surely the instrumentation is 'standard'?

Wasn't the Aeroflot Nord 733 crash blamed on loss of SA due to misinterpreting the instruments? That flight ended up vertically too.

BOAC:

The problem is the Russian instruments they were trained on before transitioning to western cockpits. See Prior thread

OMG:eek: Thanks, barit1.

BOAC : I think that what they said was that both crew are reported to come from Tu154 where, on old types the typical Russian AI is inverted .
Of course it is "normal" on a B737 ADI , hence the possible "reversal to old habbits" during stress. (happening before in former East Block countries when converting from Mig to F16...)

Not just inverted in terms of colour scheme - on old Russian instruments, it was the "bird" that was mobile and the "horizon" that held true - not vice-versa.

Psychologically there is a difference between training and conditioning. Under stress, a person often falls back on what they are conditioned to do and not what they have been trained to do. Do reading, for example, on the topic of learned helplessness.

Whether this truth is enough in a specific situation for a pilot to misread the instruments is difficult to forecast. It depends on the strength on the underlying conditioning, the strength of the training, the passage of time, the level of stress etc. It is not the type of data that shows up on the FDR and it is improbable that any hint of it shows up on the CVR.

So is this type of concern a theoretical possibility? Yes. Is it probable? I have no idea. My own initial opinion is that an illusion is more probable. Perhaps the CVR, if found intact, will shed more light on the topic.

If they were navigator and flight engineer on soviet aircrafts, they didn't need the AH, so they couldn't get used to it so much.

The CVR tape was found today.

9gmax

While 9g is much too much for me your comments on the somatogravic illusion are interesting. As you probably know the illusion is caused by a long sustained longitudinal acceleration that causes someone sitting down to think the force on their back means they are laying on their back and so very nose up.

To suffer from it (as well as needing the sustained accel) one needs to reject all other cues to one's attitude to say nothing of not look at or believe the (probably) three attitude indicators.

Many problems with ones pink body, which are of little consequence when sitting watching the TV, can be quite off-putting - even serious - when flying especially if they are asymmetric. Blocked or sticky sinuses and Eustachian tubes, hard wax scraping at an ear drum and of course any infection of the inner ear balance organs, can lead to a remarkable level of confusion if at the same time you can't see out. Normally the messages from one's eyes are so powerful that they kill stone dead confusion (manifesting perhaps as a touch of dizziness) from these other sources.

But when you can't see..............

It only means that average vertical speed was 70 kts, it says nothing about their final speed at the time of the crash.

Again, this assumes the video is shown to us in real-time speed, it doesn't have to be the case. Also, their final speed as registered by FDR was around 245 kts - so I would stick with this.

Excuse me guys, but which part of this:...you don't understand?

Aeroplane pitched up on her own to 25°, no pitch input on yokes was recorded. Only when speed dropped to 125 kts someone in the cockpit pushed the nose downward to 75° just before impact which occurred at speed above 450 km/h. There was no stall, oh-so-severe-pitch-up-with-underslung-engines was not just contained but killed and Soviet AH are different from usual ones in roll, not pitch.

From the limited info we're so far given, quite probably.

Just Transaero S7 and Aeroflot?
 

The problem comes when you book with Aeroflot for connecting flights, you may get Donavia or other companies without much information or little opportunity to change flights.

S7 scares me badly as they really dont appear to have much of a safety culture at all. I have flown with them a few times and have been a bit worried about taking off with snow on the wings, and some very uncomfortable landings. Far worse landings than I have had with any other airline, I can accept a go around when it is required, but seeing the wing tip get only a couple of meters from striking the ground in a crosswind landing is frightening.

As SLF I cant really critique your analysis, but judging by two factors, your very sensible, reasoned and logical previous posts, and obvious experience it sounds quite plausible.

I found the video clips really disturbing as I was shocked by the angle in which the aircraft hit the ground. I have studied transport accidents as part of my masters in risk management and investigation, so the combination of errors which led to Kegworth, Potter's Bar, Everglades, Ladbroke Grove disasters are very familiar. The Swiss cheese lined up in a certain way, but the errors were subtle and deceptive. What I struggle with is that an aircraft can impact at such an angle.

Ummm...
 

"The problem comes when you book with Aeroflot for connecting flights, you may get Donavia or other companies without much information or little opportunity to change flights."

One word. Colgan.

Mercury Dancer, the way we teach landings (in gliders) is to aim at the ground and then miss. If you fail to perform correctly the second part of this procedure, the aircraft will then stick in the ground like a dart. This more or less holds true for approach and safe landing in most types.

Jeez! Why do all the theories have to be to most complex and least probable?

Look at the simplest reason for loss of control and you'll "probably" have the "right" answer.

All this :mad: about somatogravic xyz or flap fail/fuel imbalance (certain balls) is all very well The most likely cause is quite simply overpitching due to a mishandled g/s and botched recovery, I'd be astonished if it were anything else.

if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck....

ab, with you all the way.

Am surprised nobody's started bleating about Boeing should change the autopilot logic etc etc:ugh:

... then it is someone who has not read MAK's information about FDR readout.

Yeah, but any such "duck" often has a fair amount of pilot's disorientation in it. "Botched" recovery at night with little outside reference is often directly related to inattention to instruments which often has root cause at some sensory illusion. I think this Pilatus' crash may be a highly relevant example regardless if you attach some fancy name to it like somatogravic.

So if we regard the somatogravic illusion as a potential "threat" how should this be managed?

This is what they teach during a typical IFR course: do not get yourself into unnecessarily drastic manoeuvres in an IFR environment, don't make too steep turns, control your pitch within limits, trust your instruments, etc. In this example a 25 deg pitch up was completely uncalled for and significantly outside what was required. It was enough for them to follow the FD guidance (assuming of course it was correctly configured).

9gmax

We did; in posts #96, 98 & 99.

I think you are correct in saying that the overpitching and botched recovery is the direct cause but it oversimplifies the wider cause that needs to be recognized. An aircraft should recover within the available altitude considering that a high power setting was already achieved. The stall would be broken quite quickly. The only reason to continue to pitch forward is because the pilot thought that he was still increasing his pitch. He did not believe his instruments. Look at the report linked in post #96. In the Annex is an excellent explanation of somatographic illusion. The rapid pitch up or the stall did not cause the illusion. It usually begins when an upward pitching motion is abruptly checked around 20-30 degrees nose up, so in this case it began when he tried to recover from the stall. This is what sends the semicircular canals spinning and causes the false pitch up sensation.

It is impossible to demonstrate this effect in a simulator during training due to the lack of 'g' effects. This pilot may not have even been aware of the phenomenon judging by the previous comments about how the training and qualifications are achieved.

Quote:
Could it be a case of Vestibular/somatogravic illusions? ...Anybody wants to comment?....
We did; in posts #96, 98 & 99.




....post 39...

But easily taught under the hood in a light aircraft.
Which is where, IMHO, all pilots should learn about recovery from unusual attitudes.

A few hours per year in an aerobatic trainer should be part of maintaining currency and is not expensive.

The somatogravic illusion (SI) cannot be taught in the air. The standard IF syllabus demonstrates the corilis effect and the somatogral illusuion, but the SI cannot be taught in either aircraft or simulators. To induce it, you need a sustained peripd of acceleration and experience shows that if you are expecting it, it's not going to happen to you. It can only be taught in the groundschool phase with advice on how to counter it. Mitigating strategies such as making sure you stay on instruments and don't descend on take off or during a go-around can be introduced in night and IF syllabi, but demonstrating it effectively has so far eluded the flying training systems.

I have been conducting some research into the SI and have come up with some interesting facts.

First, it's nearly impossible to adequately train for in practical terms. This, is mentioned above.

Second, it's been killing people for years and it continues to. I have details of about 200 crashes where the SI is a probable cause of a crash, but there are undoubtedly many more, as the SI is often not understood or identified by accident investigators, and for the sobering statistic that the fatality rate for SI accidents is about 85%. Pilots don't generally live to tell the tale!

Third, many pilots are aware of the illusion, but fail to recognise it when it happens to them. This is because it is a dim and distant memory from their Human Factors and Performance syllabus - if they did it! Don't forget, HPF was only really introduced as a mandatory subject in the early 1990s.


In my opinion, this crash is a classic SI case.

A light airplane doesn't have the thrust to weight, speed, and acceleration of a jet aircraft. So it's better than a simulator but the inability to generate the acceleration of an airliner on a G/A makes it a poor comparison.

Worst vertigo was a light weight, night, 757 ferry flight LGA-JFK. Max power for windshear in the area(SOP). LGA 13. Tremendous acceleration. Right turn to 175 immediately after liftoff. In the turn tower changes it to left to 060 and level off at 2000'. In the turn, leveling, power coming back, unloading from high rate of climb ... and we go into the clouds ... and moderate turbulence. Bam! Perfect storm. Vertigo. Big time. SOP is to call it out "I've got vertigo". FO - "I do too." :sad: Tough stuff when you're fighting it. Experience and training is key.

You don't need much acceleration to generate the somatogravic illusion. As it's pure geometry it can be calculated. An acceleration of 30kts over a period of 10 seconds is equivalent to 1.54m/s², which translates into a perceived pitch up of 9°. As many aircraft climb at a lesser angle than this, the aircraft can conceivably enter a descent if the illusion is not correctly countered.

This means that pilots of low powered GA aircraft are just as susceptable as jet pilots. And the staistice reflect this. Somatogravic illusion accidents either tend to occur during go-arounds for airliners, but GA aricraft it's usually on take off at night in VMC at airfields in spasrely populated areas where there are few visual clues.

Correct. Actually this sort of accidents are fairly common place in GA, rather rare among professional airline pilots. I don't think a type of aircraft has much to do with it, just pilot training and experience.

More about Illusions
 

There is a nice Article about piloting illusions. Good to read.

Sensory illusions in aviation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia