In response to the above rumour.......How about CM1 takeover with sidestick button pushed during previous approach....FO sidestick locks out after 45 seconds......touch and go....rotate call....no response as stick locked out.......Capts stick should be fine though so trimming it airborne seems odd.

All speculation of course - going to be a really interesting report.

A4

How about deep landing, not enough room to stop and decision to go before they hit the lights?Looking at the photos they did hit the lights as one is embedded in the lower fuselage. There is very little coming out about this incident, so it may be a wait for the interim report before we know anything.

Both engines shutdown during landing according to the Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau.

Both engines stalled during right turn after touch and go. According to Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau after touch and go airplane did not react to pitch control. Therefore airplane lost altitude during t/o roll and imapcted to the end of runway. Engines suffered heavy damage but pilots got airspeed and altitude back until right turn, when both engines shutdown inflight. Instructor and cadet injured during landing.

I hope those are the words of a journalist and not what the Investigation Board actually said. Still, lots of questions.

The exact CAA statement (using Google translete with edits):

On February 28, 2018, at 12.02, Smartlynx Airlines Airbus A-320-214 took off from Tallinn Airport to conduct training flights. On board, there was a master instructor, a pilot, four students, and an Aviation Administration inspector. The training consisted of repeated touch and goes as part of the type certification training.

At 17.04, after a successful approach and landing on the runway, the aircraft could not gain altitude on a new take off. The aircraft did not respond to any control inputs, lost altitude and contacted the runway with the engines and the main gear doors were sheared [suggesting gear was already up or in transition].

After ground contact the aircraft started to gain altitude, and the pilots managed to stabilize the aircraft and completed a 180 turn to land on runway 26. After completing the turn both engines stopped producing power.

The pilot declared emergency [not clear exaclty when, but this explains the rapid arrival of the fire trucks]. The aircraft landed at 17.11, touching down about 150 meters before the runway, and ultimately stopped 15 meters to the south of the runway edge.

During the landing, all the tires deflated. The instructor and one of the students received minor injuries in the accident.

Thanks andrasz, that's a bit clearer.

Now over to the investigators to do theirs.

As I heard that after a "successful approach and landing" they were trying to continue this flight with ELAC 1, 2 FAIL message on ECAM. During this training TRI were trying to reset this fault several times. As I heard...
Airbus pilots will understand what does it mean. No pitch control available.

I am finding it quite remarkable that dual engine failure involving the current generation aircraft in EASA environment, followed by somewhat successful landing, has managed to generate only 3 pages so far... Poor dog who died in overhead bin has generated 6 pages in a shorter time span.

How come that Elac 1 and 2 fault leave you without pitch control? Are you sure?

Well, no people or dogs died and it's only a silly Eastern European company and country :rolleyes::ugh:

(sarcasm, if not clear enough)

It doesn’t.. reconfiguration logic is ELAC 2 then 1, followed by SEC 2 then 1. To lose elevator control you need to lose all 4 or else have a triple hydraulic failure

Also, how likely is it that the commander would have chosen to take to the air with the only pitch control being through stab trim? Unless you suspected/confirmed you had no brakes wouldn't the possibility of having no roll control be at the forefront?

What can be ruled out from the fact they made a controlled turn and got lined up again? Triple hydraulic failure must be ruled out, no?

The FR data for the last flight shows no altitude - can we make any assumptions from that? Speed is shown but FR will interpolate if no speed data is downlinked, do we know if the speed is reported speed or interpolated/GPS speed? Failure of ADS during takeoff would give reversion to...? Leading to 'we have no pitch' when actually control was in a reverted mode needing manual trim to t/o, especially if thrust was reduced by some other factor... Major object strike (multiple multiple birds) resulting in failure of air data system so takeoff in reverted mode and subsequent engine failure due to FOD? Does that make sense?

Yes, you are completely right: my post what somewhat ironic. As an airbi commander, i have experienced few sim scenario leading to the loss of both ELAC, in some cases also with 1 ENG shutdown; in the sim, given normal basic flying skills, the aircraft is controllable also in Direct Law, if the event happens with the gear down: it reverts to Alternate Law as soon as the gear is raised. That is, assuming no oher failures involved and normal reconfiguration logic is working.

Could we perhaps examine why training sectors with new-to-type pilots was being attempted in such poor weather conditions? It has become clear that the airline is very short of flight crew. Did commercial pressure to get crew on line override prudent decision-making?

seeing the video i don't quite get the problem with the weather.

anyhow the pilots on line are being asked to fly in much worse weather i presume?

“I don’t get the problem with the weather..”. Really? Did you even read the METAR? Expecting a trainee pilot to cope with such conditions on what for some of them would have been their first touch of the controls of a large aircraft is quite likely to end in a serious accident. Which it did.

EETN 281520Z 07012KT 9999 -SHSN DRSN FEW008 BKN013 FEW015CB M13/M15 Q1043 R08/490195 NOSIG=
EETN 281450Z 07013KT 9000 -SHSN DRSN FEW008 BKN013 FEW015CB M13/M15 Q1043 R08/810295 NOSIG=

What conditions ? Zero cross wind, good visibility, some light snow in patches, cleared runway (was in Tallinn that day, first hand info), absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Whatever happened here, I'm sure wx had nothing to do with it.

BKN at 1300 in snow is challenging conditions to be attempting to train visual circuits (recommend height of 1500’)but for first time in the front of an airliner doubly so. Why would one elect to conduct an initial training flight in such conditions? However I’m sure the investigation team will be grateful for your comments ruling out weather as a factor in this crash. This will save valuable time. Thank you.

9 km visibility in feeble snowshowers and 1300 ft broken clouds should not be challenging to fly with an experienced TRE. Even for a first timer. I do not see what the extra challenge here might be.

I don't know if you've ever been in the Baltics or Tallinn specifically, but waiting for perfect weather in winter to do only visual circuits would be quite tricky and a giant waste of time :rolleyes:. As far as I am aware, there is also not a requirement for base training to be visual circuits and they are often not possible due traffic. Vectors and instrument approaches are fairly likely to be flown as well.

Besides that, the METAR is really not that terrible, even for training. Take a look at the video on the first page to check the actual weather. And that was similar to the weather it was most of the day. No huge shower storms or terrible visibility, just a flake here and there and the isolated shower at some point. So yeah, discounting the weather as factor might be over the top, but IMHO, so is your interpretation of the METAR and it's impact on the safety of the flight.

“Vectors and instrument approaches are fairly likely to be flown...” Except the report clearly specified they were flying visual circuits. If they’d been at the airbus recommended circuit altitude that would put them mostly in cloud. The bottom line is we don’t know how this aircraft ended up hitting the ground so hard. It wasn’t just the weather But very inexperienced pilots in marginal visual conditions is a good start point. Did commercial pressure influence the call to train in these conditions?

Which report would that be? Not picking a fight or anything, but so far the only thing officially stated by the Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau (as far as I can see on their site) has been that is was a training flight performing touch and go practice related to the typerating training.

What is the Problem with the weather here?


Visibility was > 10km, few clouds at 800ft, broken 1300ft. That is more than enough for a pattern usually being flown at 1000ft.


Furthermore, on the video it was cleary visible that the conditions with regards to clouds and visibility where even better.


The accident happened on touch down - no problem with any cloud cover there at all.

However, should one want to remain VMC, an A320 whose circuit height is 1500' agl should remain 1000' clear of cloud.

We kinda do, it seems established from multiple reports that it hit the ground hard due to dual engine failure following a touch-and-go that came close to lacking the the 'go' due to reported pitch control issues.

Are you suggesting that the touch-and-go was also a hard landing that caused whatever followed?

Really? So you’re telling us that in the course of a routine touch and go some gear doors just fell off and both engines suddenly failed??

Well that's the question, isn't it?

We know the final landing was hard, but we're not sure yet about the touch-and-go. We know it happened due to FR24, and we know (assume) something was wrong after that point as no altitude data was recorded for that flight. We suspect therefore air data failure (do we?)

I suggested upthread it could have been due to a bird (flock) strike leading to air data failure leading to takeoff in alternate law (with slow pitch-up due to as yet un-indicated reduced engine thrust) followed by dual flameout.

If you're suggesting the touch-and-go was hard enough to cause the damage then that definitely makes sense (something had to cause it) but then I'd ask why the commander didn't abort the 'go'? And what's the suggested failure path from 'hard landing' to 'pitch control failure' through to 'dual engine failure'?

I didn’t suggest anything but a main landing gear door was recovered from a village 3 miles away which points to a hard impact prior to the final landing

Multiple bird strike would leave plenty of physical evidence. There has been no mention of this theory other than by yourself

Please take the effort to read some of the past posts. In the initial statement of the Estonian AIB it is clearly stated that after a normal approach, touch down and go-around the aircraft "failed to gain height and did not respond to control inputs" and subsequently touched the runway with both engines and the open gear doors (not mentioned but by inference the gears were already in transit) before being able to gain height. The pilots immediately did a 180 to return to land from the oposite direction, the engines failed after completing the turn but before touchdown.

Yes, it's my theory alone, and I don't even say it's particularly likely.

I was just really trying to get some ideas flowing... a bit of healthy speculation and debate. There's no bodycount and therefore no headline news but the hardware failures do seem intriguing, don't you think?

ShotOne have some problem with Smartlynx, it is quite clear from his other posts on this forum.

I don’t have a problem with Smartlynx but with account which just doesn’t add up. (Yes I did read it andrasz). We’re being asked to believe that in the course of a routine flight the aircraft suddenly failed to respond to any inputs and shortly afterwards both engines lost power. Just let’s think through how many separate but simultaneous systems failures it takes to achieve that.

I've had a thought which for some reason didn't occur to me before - during the touch and go there's the first touchdown (not reported as hard) then the 'pitch issues'.

Subsequent to that the aircraft becomes airborne then descends to strike the ground with the gear in transit, so the engine nacelles strike the ground.

With that in mind it is quite likely that the subsequent problems (dual engine failure) are caused by that engine ground strike, and that the primary problems (pitch authority) aren't associated with those later issues, by that I mean, not linked by any system relationship.

For some reason this escaped me on first reading.

This is what you wrote in T&E section - "Would they have chosen to fly with a small airline in a former-Soviet republic operating far from its regulator with a business model which hinges on high turnover of very low-paid pilots?". You have an agenda and trying to attach some silly arguments regarding the weather to it.

How about one: incorrect power setting on g/a... ?
An airline that must not be named managed to bend and soot a rather big lump of aluminium alloy not so long ago doing exactly that...

I’m still wondering where this statement about “the report clearly stating visual circuits” came from :P .

That’s where the whole weather story hinged on but is now quiet about it...

Besides that, yes... read the initial statement by the Estonian Safety Investigation Bureau. The info has been there for some time. I will speculate a bit and say that the main issue is to figure out what caused the pitch issue on the Go part of the touch and go.

Sequence:

- Successful landing
- Pitch/control issue and unable to gain altitude but did liftoff
- Impacted runway with engines and gear doors, so likely gear was already in transit up
- Managed liftoff again, climbout and turn initiated to land on 26
- After turn, double engine failure, quite probably due damage sustained from initial impact after the pitch issue

No birds or hard touch and go mentioned anywhere (yet). Weather, don’t rule it out as factor but also don’t be dramatic about what is essentially a pretty decent winter flying day. It’s not like they were out doing base training with RVR 550m and VV 200ft or something.

A cloud base of 1300ft on visual circuits, few at 800ft, light snow, low sun, take away the matcho pilot attitude of i can cope with anything, so they should have been able to as well, these are marginal conditions for brand new guys to type, granted I know at this time of year it's good weather up north.

Having watched AF447 loads in CRM classes and not being an Airbus pilot is there any chance the trainee could have pushed forward on the side stick this cancelling out the training Captains inputs (what the inexperienced trainee saw didn't match his mental model while overloaded)

It seems very strange after all these years of this never happening on an Airbus it happens on a training flight.

The trainer mentally wouldn't want to pull the side stick so far back close to the ground, (to cancel out the trainees input) the trainee wouldn't have the same feel for the control input ??

You are correct on how the inputs would combine, but the 'dual input' verbal alert would be sounding, and the priority indicator on the glareshield would be lit.

...and that should cause the TRE to push the red button and lock out the other stick.

The TRI (or TRE) would have pushed the "take over push button" at the same time he was saying "I have control" as per Airbus Standard Procedure...