Loading horror stories
 

I've been asked to help prepare a presentation to aeronautical students on aircraft loading and C of G.

Many thanks for the photos you've provided which very visually demonstrate the effect of mistakes before they got airbourne.

Has anyone any horror stories we can use to amplify the nightmare of getting into the air with the weight/C of G out of limits ?

If anyone can help, please reply here or at ;
[email protected]

Many thanks. If we can prevent just one cock-up, the effort will be worthwhile.

G'day Alan
I suspect one of the most recent (and most obvious) examples was the F27?? doing the night newspaper run to the Channel Islands. Load improperly secured and slipped during the approach putting it MEGA tail heavy. Can't remember all the details but there will be a CAA write up and there was a fair sized thread on Pprune. Anyone else got more details??
Additionally, the Fedex?? freighter out of a Miami area airport which had a load slip on rotation and crashed.
Going back a bit, we were staging out of Khartoum at midday on a Beverley. Never going to have a LOT of spare performance, but this day it didn't want to climb at all. Had a VERY close view of the palm trees with a R.o.C. in the tens of fpm. The Bev was going back to UK for a heavy overhaul after some time operating in Aden. We later heard that on the strip-down they found a large quantity of sand in the space between the freight-bay floor and the skin - about 4000 lbs!! :eek: Thank you, Mr Bristol, for the Centaurus!
Back a bit further - APCSS (later 84 Sqdn) operating Valettas returning to Aden from Nairobi. Food in Aden was diabolical, thus the Nairobi run used to be inundated by orders for the Nairobi Cold Store for meat, milk etc. Accommodating 'Siggie' took and filled a very large order which was duly delivered direct to the aircraft just before engine start. "Put it in the chain stowage" suggests recipient. This was done but the chain stowage was right at the back of the fuselage. Result? Extended attempted take-off due to an inability to raise the tail!! ... plus VERY hot brakes.
It's happened before, and, like most aviation mishaps, will happen again. Best maxim?? ... NEVER assume - CHECK!!

Actually, the Miami was not FedEx. It was a Fine Air DC-8.

Also, an Emery DC-8 in California has a load shift a couple years ago.

Both crashes fatal to the crews.

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/v...rline=Fine+Air

is about the one DC8 incident.

Try the same site for more info on other incidents.

Jack mentioned the Channel Express accident at Guernsey. Full report atAAIB site.

a few years ago, a 734 barely got airborne, because late passengers just took the empty seats in the cabin, which resulted in the aircraft be out of trim.

wasn't there a Korean Air 747 in Sydney earlier this year parked on it's tail?

Sure I saw pic on http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

One further incident comes to mind which may be in the 'urban myth' category.
An internal flight to Las Vegas some years back reported a huge unexplained performance decrease - extended take-off run, low climb rate etc. All the load sheets checked out OK and the subsequent flight test was fine. A little further investigation revealed that the pax were all members of a numismatists club attending a conference in LV. Sooo ... ?? Numismatists, not surprisingly, like to carry their (very valuable) collections with them in their cabin bags. Each one had a sizeable collection of gold coins, in combination amounting to some ridiculous amount of unweighed load. Moral - money definitely CAN be the root of SOME evil. :D

>a few years ago, a 734 barely got airborne, because late passengers just took the empty seats in the cabin, which resulted in the aircraft be out of trim.<

Happens everyday, need details please?

A few years ago wdl-aviation used to fly the Bild-Zeitung ( German sun) form Essen-Mülheim (EDLE) to other Airports in Germany. for this they used a Beech Baron or a Piper Senneca.
Well they had this pilot who got strapped in an then they started loding. (They being highly qualified people who diden't bother to fasten the cargo...:eek: )
Well during take off the whole load slipped backwards, resulting with the plan impacting with the ground to the left hand of the runway. Luckily the pilot was not injured...
But round about 3 mounths later same guy, same senario, but this time he was airborne for round about 5-10min bevor crashing on a schoolyard, killing himself! The radio masseges which were recorded were sopposingly not very nice...
Well I do not know how much is true about this but this a story which I was told in my W&B lessons...
Other people, at the club have told a similar story so there must be some truth in it...
If anybody has some more info. would be nice if you could forward it

Micky

Late 1980'ies a F27 crashed during app to Hannover due loading aft of cg limit.

the korean is australia was an md11 freighter and not a 747.

Will try to get the details of the 734, but might a while as i have to dig up some old files

The Emery DC-8 report is here:

http://www.airdisaster.com/cgi_bin/view_details.cgi?date=02162000&airline=Emery+Worldwide


Final report evidently is not yet available. Aircraft developed serious control problems after rotation. Crew managed most of a low-altitude visual pattern for return to the field, but lost it on the 'base' leg as they were trying to transition to a landing configuration.

734 being out of trim
happened in 1994/no details about carrier or station
proportional seating conditions were assumed in stead of actual seating conditions. Cpt report shows : on the take-off run at Vr (about 150mph-240km/h) the control column was fully back giving max up elevator. the 737-400's nose wheel remained firmly on the ground.
As the end of the runway was getting closer, the cpt increased the stabilizer setting from that given on the loadsheet of 3.5 to 6.5, a line which is so far forward of the forward trim limit that it is not even shown on the balance chart. The a/c finally took off at a speed in excess of 200mph (325km/h)

Here is a case of live cargo being jettisoned due to bad behavior.
 

Here is a story not of cargo shifting but cargo misbehaving. The story is being told a bit backwards.

A Russian transport made a cargo run to an island off the coast of Japan. The crew had not been paid in months nor, had they been fed properly for a lot longer than that. While walking around the airbase they spotted a cow. After several minutes of conversation they decided to take the cow back to their base in Russia. After take off the cow began to get unruly and was difficult to contain so sooner than damaging the aircraft they dumped the cow overboard at about 10,000 feet.

By pure chance the cow hit the stern of a Japanese fishing boat causing serious damage. So serious, the boat began to sink. A call was put out to the Japanese Coast Guard and by the time they arrived the boat was nearly submerged. A maritime court was convened to assign fault to determine if the insurance would cover the cost of a new vessel. When asked what happened the Skipper told the court that a cow hit his boat. With that the collective eyebrows of the court raised and the Skipper was accused of lying and could face jail time.

The story made many of the newspapers around the Pacific Rim and eventually got to Russia where it was read by some of the crew of the transport. They got the Skipper off the hook by telling the story that appears above.


:D

Thanks everyone............there's nothing like a true story to make people sit up and pay attention.
Lu, I'm not totally convinced your story is ABSOLUTELY true - I think I'll put it in the same category as the guy in the scuba diving kit found in the forest 20miles from the nearest water !!!

Got a little yarn about a Kuwaiti A300 out of trim in flight.
Used to be a dispatcher(one of the proper ones that did load planning/loadsheets etc)for AF and we used to handle them at LHR.
Anyway a fellow dispatcher,who happens to be a very good friend of mine and who will KILL me if he reads this(sorry mate!!)made a boo-boo at the load planning stage.When entering cargo details,he entered a pallet number as a cargo weight.....so what you might think?
Well,problem was that the pallet number was something like 1214 (i.e. he entered 1214kgs) and the pallet actually weighed something in excess of 5000kgs.
Somewhere in flight,the trim alarms went off on the flightdeck and the crew ended up having to move 20-30 pax from the last couple of rows of cattle class into 1st class to get the thing back into trim.Not good!

I remember a cargo flight (4 prop job) landing in SNN many years ago that ended up facing the wrong way, at the intended touch down end of runway 24 (just outside the perimeter fence) ....... never got to hear the full story but perhaps the sad thing about it was that the Skippers car was in the back!!!! ......

cheers .....

Many years ago at MAN a Dispatcher did a manual loadsheet for a Northwest 747 freighter and being used to working with metric figures finalised the loadsheet in kilos instead of pounds.
The crew apparently had their feet on the dashboard pulling back on the stick on rotation !

Poorly loaded Piper Lance
 

Around 2000 a Piper Lance departed King Island in Bass Strait with 6 female 0pob. The a/c was observed to take a long take off run and assume a marked nose high attitude on rotation. The a/c continued nose high to about 200' stalled and impacted the overrun area of the runway. All on board were killed. The investigation is not posted on the ATSB BASI website for some reason. It was found that the a/c rear luggage compartment was overloaded and trim control was neutral.:(