"Swiss" makes emergency landing in Germany
 

According to the German news "tagesschau" a Swiss Prop plane made an emergency landing @ Werneuchen. No injuries or fatalities are being reported. The plane was enroute from Basel to Hamburg, and it is thought that the plane was running low on fuel. On landing the plane overran the runway and damage to the landing gear is being reported.

Can anyone confirm?

more info about the field

runway 08/26
1499 meters / 80 metes wide
hard surfaced
limited to 5,7 tons
EDBW

Sounds like ex Crossair is out flying..

Will they ever learn..

Before you little boys overspeculate :

Airport was Neubrandenburg. aircraft did not overrun but there was some debris from the storm on the runway.

Normal Hamburg alternates ( Bremen, Hannover, Berllin) apperently all closed due to weather.

Negative it was Werneuchen just northeast of Berlin. Former soviet MiG-25 base but almost unused and limited to light a/c today. Wonder why they picked it over Finow and many other available former military bases.

Indeed it was Werneuchen.

Hi guys,

I am quite concerned about the planning that was going on. There are TAF's and even METAR's available for the destination, and they should know about the active cold front that passed by then. The flight from Basel (BSL) to Hamburg (HAM) usually takes 1h45min, which means even the METAR's are still valid. In any case you may expect a handfull of problems, delays and probable diversions on such a stormy evening. So why are you already short of fuel on approach to your *first* planned alternate? (How was that about fuel planning guidelines?) And why do you plan an alternate east of the destination, sitting within the cold front storm system, and don't divert to a westerly alternate where the winds already calmed?

The Saab 2000 is a 50 seater according to http://www.swiss.com/index/sw-oc-fl-saab-2000.htm, and it had just 16 PAX on board, so there's no problem to take some extra fuel due to the stormy circumstances. I am no Saab 2000 rider, but I suspect the endurance of the plane to be somewhere around 3,5 hours (range is about 1'265NM @ CRZ speed of 370KTS). I suppose it must be possible to divert safely, or you don't go flying... And Basle wasn't so stormy at all, so a safe return to the homebase would have been possible!

How was that old saying: "Learning to fly takes about 45 hours. Learning when to fly can take a lifetime..."

Hope you don't take me wrong about my critical thoughts, but as a Swiss I am rather concerned about happenings like this. The Swiss people have paid lots of money to get back a national airline, and the press department is quite busy telling us how ravishing the new airline is. But if you have a critical eye on some happenings at the shorthaul fleet, it's quite concerning. Swissair (the former Swiss national medium and longhaul airline) had ADAS on every single aircraft (data system recording aircraft parameters during the flight), and a safety department which investigated these data after the flight, checked every single movement out of tolerance, every bank angle more than 35°, every "not so smooth" landing, searched for the reasons which led to such incidents, and published the findings into a regular safety brochure which was handed out to the flight staff to improve awareness and safety. I am aware that you will never get a 100% safety record, but you may come close, and Swissair at least tried to get there. I learned some weeks ago that Crossair didn't have any ADAS systems on their planes, and (on political pressure from the Crossair Cockpit Personal) even tore the ADAS out of the MD-80's they got from Swissair in the mid 1990's. I guess they know why... At least it is reassuring that Swiss now plans to setup ADAS systems in the shorthaul fleet and to get the former Crossair planes under the same supervision as Swissair did (the same people are now in charge of the safety department that have been at Swissair).

We are very critically watching the ongoing things... flight safety and training status at the former crossair shorthaul fleet, top management decisions which often remind us that many of the now top chiefs of Swiss International Air Lines formerly led a regional carrier and have no experience in leading a major longhaul carrier, and many more... I hope they realize that talking about being "world class" and being up there might be a difference...


Just my two pence...

Kind regards,
Webwings

Well, but it looks bigger from the air:
2 pics at: http://www.werneuchen.de/geschichte/flugplatz2.htm

Berlin reported the cold front passing exactly at this moment, when the Saab was trying to get on ground (2050 LT). They had a temperature drop of 11° C (from 29° C to 18° C), with winds about 25 knots gusting up to 50 knots, accompanied with heavy thunderstorms with rain throughout the Berlin region.

(http://deutsch.wunderground.com/hist...lyHistory.html)

In contrary, Bremen reported less than 10 Knots of wind, Frankfurt reported less than 10 knots earlier, and Dusseldorf was dry already in the afternoon, reporting less than 10 knots wind.

Why did they choose an alternate inside the "cold front laundry machine"?

And the bottomline: All the others did their job well! No LH, no Condor, no Air Berlin incident reported this night, as far as I know.

Cheers,
Webwings

Webwings, just be carefull spreading your eager arrogance around. You have obviously problems with having a neutral critical reply on this matter.

Please spread your comments out of wisdom and not out complete stupidity.

To quote you : You really don't get it.

Cheerio.

Update:



4:58PM 2002.07.11 (GMT+1)
Further details of the landing of a SWISS aircraft at Werneuchen, Germany

" A SWISS aircraft was forced to land at the former German military airfield of Werneuchen yesterday, July 10, at around 20:50, owing to exceptionally adverse weather conditions in the region. The aircraft suffered severe damage on landing as a result of an obstacle on the runway. The 16 passengers and four crew members were uninjured. The aircraft, a Saab 2000, was operating flight LX 850 from Basel to Hamburg. The crew had been unable to land at either the destination airport or the intended diversion airports because of the exceptionally stormy conditions.


In planning the flight before departure from Basel, the crew allowed for both the destination airport of Hamburg and the alternate airports of Bremen and Hanover in their fuel calculations, in full compliance with standard operating procedures.

The crew also elected to carry an additional fuel reserve permitting up to 45 minutes of flight in a holding pattern. All planning was performed in full accordance with the requirements of the European Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA). The flight departed from Basel at 17:55 – ten minutes later than its scheduled departure – for air traffic control reasons.

The flight – LX 850 – was unable to land in Hamburg owing to storm front conditions. Subsequent attempts to land at Bremen, Hanover and Berlin also had to be aborted in view of the adverse weather in the area.

With the fuel remaining approaching the minimum reserve, the crew asked air traffic control to urgently provide it with an open alternate airport. They were then directed to the former military airfield of Werneuchen, which has a runway of around 1500 metres length. Despite information provided by ATC, the crew were unable to detect any obstacles on the runway. And, in view of the minimal fuel reserves available and the still-adverse weather, they were forced to take the decision to land.

During the rollout after touching down, however, the aircraft was severely damaged by a metre-high ridge of earth extending across the runway. Upon coming to a halt, the Captain ordered the evacuation of the aircraft, in accordance with standard procedures for such situations.

The aircraft – a Saab 2000 with the registration HB-IZY – was carrying 16 passengers and four crew members. There were no injuries.

The Captain, who is 33 years old, has been a SWISS pilot (and formerly a Crossair pilot) since 1996. The 28-year-old First Officer has been flying for the company since 1999. The two cabin attendants have been flying for the company since 1992 and 1998.

Most of the passengers and crew spent the night in Berlin, where they were cared for by SWISS personnel. The accident will be investigated by the German investigation authorities.

SWISS deeply regrets this incident and the inconvenience caused to its customers. It is relieved to know that none of the passengers or crew were injured. The company has despatched personnel from its Flight Safety and Technical Services units to Germany to assist the investigating authorities.

Note to editors: This is a summary of the facts known to us by 16:00 today, Thursday, July 11. Further information will follow as soon as it is available."

SWISS Corporate Communications
P.O. Box, CH-4002 Basel
Phone: +41 848 773 773, +41 1 564 2120 or +41 1 564 0000
Fax: +41 61 582 3554
E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.swiss.com


http://www.huginonline.com/try/plsql...=866485&p_la=5

What a good job this didn't happen to BA - the replies would have been a bit different...

Sorry, but...

TS+ Says :Before you little boys overspeculate..... (and then proceeds to quote totally the wrong airfield !



Then TS+ Says : Webwings, just be carefull spreading your eager arrogance around......


You got a mirror ?

This incident (or should it be called an accident) seems to touch a raw spot in a few SWISS people, it seems......
A look at the respective profiles explains a lot. Emotions run high in Switzerland at the moment.

Maybe diverting to the East of a cold front was not such a good idea ?

But that's speculating and with the benefit of hindsight we all are a lot cleverer than before. It's up to the two guys up front at the time to know.

+TS: watch your language !!

A good photo:
http://www.strangecosmos.com/view.asp?PicID=5511

"elected to carry a 45 minute reserve"

would that mean 45 minutes on top of the minimum or just the normal 45 minutes holding which you can't really "elect" not to take.

A metre-high mound of earth on the runway doesn't sound like storm debris either........

Maybe ATC wasn't up to date on the status of the aerodrome. I have some feeling that ATC doesn't know too much about secondary airports anyway (I've seen a US controller position where the controllers could call up all info including approach plates for airports in their sector on a screen next to his (antiquated) radar screen). Any (german) ATCer to comment on this.

We wouldn't even have carried approach plates for anything but designated destinations and alternates............

Regarding the decision to take an alternate closer to the action than the destination itself: the met briefings we're routinely issued don't really give a graphic view of ground conditions. The standard met briefing consists of a FL100-450 significant weather chart, wind charts from FL50-FL390 and a text printout of METARs and TAFs. You never get a surface to FL100 chart (if such a thing even exists) and compared to the US a lot of information doesn't seem to exist or at least isn't distributed to pilots on a regular basis (weather briefers have long been eliminated as a cost factor). So you're on your own to identify any trends in ground weather reports. Might have been a factor here (even though the stuff happening on that day would have reflected on the >FL100 chart as well).

I completely agree with Alpine Flyer: If they really talk about the Final Reserve according JAR, it's a shame to consider this to be an amount of fuel "elected [by the crew] to ... permitting up to 45 minutes of flight in a holding pattern".

Flying is about weather since Orville made its first hop. Everything else has been made much easier during the past 100 years: We have planes with indifferent and labile behaviour made guidable by supercomputers on board. We fly at Mach 2+. We fly longest-haul routes. We have automated collision avoidance systems.

But the weather problems still exist, and regarding thunderstorm activities with the imminent danger of microbursts and severe windshears, I believe that this is one of the most challenging topics for a pilot, to decide if the weather is flyable or not.

Assessing meteo is considered to be a very important issue to every pilot, and I hope that in everybody's own interest an in the interest of the paying souls we are hauling every day, we should be able to interprete the weather accurately. And I would be wondering if these cold front thunderstorms and gusts haven't been on the TAF's (and at least on the VOLMET's during the doomed flight). If anyone is unsure of interpreting the met stuff, this should be considered as a topic for the next ground instruction...

A far as I know, Swissair had a perfect met service (by MeteoSchweiz, the Swiss Meteo Agency) until her last days, giving great briefings to their crews, and therefore enabling them to be aware of weather at destination and alternate. I don't know how it is today (as Swiss has taken over the controls and has initially phased out nearly every thing that reminded of Swissair, as this was considered to be too expensive). I hope for them that the old met office is still running, providing them the same valuable met info prior to the flight as they had it before.
But decisions still lay in the hands of the pilots...

I agree, it's harder to decide when being at the controls (every one "gets dumber behind the controls" because of the workload, to quote a pilot pal of mine).

Must have been a bad situation for them pals up there, but my bad feeling about the incident still exists...

Comment
 

As an ex-Crossair Saab 2000 captain I feel qualified to comment on this incident.

Short of having the information from the FDAU's, CVR's, radar and radio tape; an accurate analysis of this occurence cannot be made. Clearly however, the incidental history of Crossair over the past three years speaks volumes! It is way past the time for the FOCA to take action. Unfortunately, they sit by as a willing accomplice to this unending downward spiral.

The level of experience of some Crossair captains is incredibly low. The level of "hands-and-feet" expertise, even lower. Right now, more than 30 highly experienced Crossair captains, are being told that they will have to leave the company by July next year, due to them being foriegn nationals working on B-Permits. The experience level will once again be diluted, and I unfortunately have to say it again: there will be another Crossair accident soon.

Go ahead and shoot me down. Once your done doing that, read back in my past posts here on PPRuNe; you'll find I've said it a few times before....

45 min extra fuel
 

If the flight departed at 17:55 and landed at 20:50 the time in the air was nearly 3h. If the LX Information is correct that the crew asked for an available alternate before using the fuel of the final reserve and considering the time on route for a SAAB 2000 between Basel and Berlin those 45min seem to be real extra fuel to me (non including final reserve fuel).