SilkAir MI 185
 

Letter to Canberra Times

A pdf copy of Flight Safety magazine will be available next week at:
www.casa.gov.au
---------------------------------------------------------------
Ref: Air safety report

The Civil Aviation Safety Authority (Australia) has just published a report in its journal Flight Safety Australia which I would like to see picked up by the media, for the sake of Australians who have to forsake our very safe airlines and fly with foreign carriers. Without making a judgment, the report says "readers can draw their own conclusions".

In the light of the most recent fatal landing accident in Indonesia, I have
drawn mine.

The report of a crash in December 1997 seems to ine to show that the
aircraft, carrying 102 people, was destroyed by a deliberate act of the
captain, who, we are told, was in serious financial difficulties. It seems
he switched off the cockpit recorders and sent the loaded airliner into an
inverted dive at over the speed of sound, an action which required a
positive, deliberate, control input tip to the moment the aircraft began to break tip before impact.

The investigation was one of the most comprehensive possible, but "the Indonesian National Transport Safety Bureau ... produced
an evasive and worthless report", contradicting the careful findings of the
non-Indonesian investigative bodies.

A further report in Flight Safety suggests to me there is a deep-seated
official reluctance to admit it is possible "that anyone who would commit
suicide would also kill so many innocent people alongside him". The pilot involved had been reported and indeed demoted for landing too fast and trying to "reduce flight times".

Travellers would be well advised to study this excellent report and consider
its import.

Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) licensed copy
Canberra Times
Wednesday 13/2/2008
Page: 12
Section: Letters
Region: Canberra Circulation: 33,935
Type: Capital City Daily
Size: 77.13 sq.cms.
Published: MTWTFS

If this is an official report by an Authority, why has it not gone direct to the Press? Or have I as usual missed the point?

Another mishap by a foreign airline:

http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=312924

Draw your own conclusions.

The crash of MI 185 was caused by deliberate pilot input. The only way to match the trajectory as recorded on radar and remain within parameters of height lost Vs time elapsed Vs horizontal distance travelled is by rolling the aircraft to the right and diving inverted until impact. To maintain that inverted attitude requires considerable and prolonged pilot input.

Mac Job had access to all the factual evidence in this case and that evidence supports only one possibility - deliberate pilot input.

There is no jet upset that will cause a B737 go from FL350 to FL 195 in 32 seconds. It takes pilot input to achieve that.

As mentioned above, the investigators also had much more evidence that the trajectory to determine the actual cause.

For the life of me I can't understand why the report makes the findings it does in the face of such over whelming evidence. Surely the authority would have known that it would not be accepted by the worlds audience. What did they hope to achieve? Anybody?

BA,

Singapore is probably the biggest foreign investor in Indonesia. Singapore Inc got the report it wanted despite the 49 page document from the US NTSB disagreeing with another member state's official finding - a first, I might add.

The ATSB (BASI at the time) also realised the real cause of the crash.

At the time, Flight International magazine (02-08 January 2001) called it an "unsatisfactory report."

They don't call it Lyin' City for nothing.

Sorry, IGh, you are wrong in regard to the SilkAir case. Believe me, I know.

Twa 800
 

IGH,

You mentioned TWA 800. I just wanted to throw in a comment. I had an NTSB inspector on my jumpseat leaving DCA heading toward BOS the morning after TWA 800. He said, and I quote, " This is the only accident I've ever been to, where I was told the cause before I left the office"

You're right, P7G, TWA 800 is still a can of worms.

IGh - sorry, I believe on this one you may be barking up a tree. While the 737 has had its unexplained upsets could you explain how both the recorders mysteriously failed only minutes before the event. That alone is one BIG, BIG smoking gun. Or is that some sort of conspiracy also?

IGh,

That's all fine and beaut info. It is not, however, what occurred on MI 185. It was proved that the CVR and DFDR did not fail due to a power surge or an overheat. The CBs were pulled manually - those are facts.

There was no jet upset. The was, however, a manoeuvre that was achieved by deliberate and sustained pilot input. That is also a fact.

Air China 006
 

IgH - Air China 006 was not a real mystery in term of getting into the dive.
The crew let it happen by leaving the A/P engaged during the restart and ignoring the speed decay or was there something else involved?
Just Curious
20driver

56P,
How do one prove beyond doubt that the power loss to the FDR and CVR was due to CBs being pulled manually? The aircraft was totally destroyed into tiny bits.

I am not saying the CBs weren't pulled manually but how do one prove it? Are the state of the CBs being recorded?

So, perhaps you are right. Or perhaps IGh is right, there may be other explanations.

Would psychiatric evaluation work?
 

IGh
no recorded case of BOTH the CVR AND the FDR being rendered inoperative by a hi rate dive.(Egypt Airs recorders worked till impact)
In this case also they were working just fine till before the event started.(in the examples given by IGh,they were either not working to start with ,or had a similar signature to being intentionally erased.)
One would expected that even if there was a catastrophic failure of some kind,the recorders should have continued to work till the upset actually started,and not stop a little before.
This would require a scenrio where the catastrophic failure resulted in electrical power loss only to the recorders(the transponder was workng till impact) But allowed the A/c to have a normal trajectory for a few seconds/minutes then strat a dive which can only be simulated with deliberate human intervenion .
As in the case of Egypt Air,national concerns seem to have scutled a competent report(and national lobies can be as powerful as manufactuers lobies)
What needs to be adressed is, if a psychiatric evaluation a foolproof method of detecting/ preventing such events .

Sorry to all for posting here, since I ain't a flyboy.


But how would a psychological evaluation have made a difference? You could go to 4 different shrinks and they would come out with 4 different reports regarding your state of mind, it isn't an exact science and it all depends on whether the shrink is actually wanting to do his job or collect the bucks for seeing someone.

From what my, I guess uneducated, interpretation of the pdf posted here goes, it was deliberate. I've never driven anything like that bird but even I can see that what happened in that case was nothing remotely like an "accident" or a failure.

They ruled out the improbable, that only leaves one thing. Think of it like someone driving a car while you are a passenger and he/she wants to drive into a bridge, except you cannot grab the steering wheel to pull the car out of it....

Nat Geo has produced a new Aircrash Investigation episode on MI 185. It is about to go to air and it tells the TRUTH!

Any idea exactly when will it be aired? Air Crash Investigation is usually on at 2300 local time in Singapore (UTC+8) on Thursday evenings. Will it be aired this week?

We'll let the thread run a bit for the inevitable commentary on the doco. However, if it continues along the conspiracist line .. it might get closed downstream a little.