“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...