Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

[Sidebar]

Does anyone know which country has responsibility for investigating the crash? NZ, US, Canada?

Antarctica is not a sovereign state. As the state of manufacture, operator, and registration, Canada has jurisdiction to investigate. As pointed out a couple of posts above, the TSB has already begun collecting information. I just watched CBC national news which had an audio clip of a TSB spokeswoman stating that they are still assessing what their response wil be.

[gopher_killer]

I assume there are no IFR services in Antarctica, so if they were flying VFR, did they get trapped in IMC conditions or were they still in VMC?

Excuse my lack of experience as I am a new pilot, but if I am VFR and I start loosing visibility and ground reference, I get out of there. Does this logic make flying down south almost impossible as it's almost never clear? ( I had to do that today on my cross country)

I won't speak for the Antarctic, but you can be uncontrolled IFR. In fact that is quite common in remote areas in Canada. These guys would be IFR cretified (by TC) and know the rules. What's more, I expect these guys would have a great deal of respect for mountain wave, temp changes, etc. From what I know, none were better than Bob.

If you are a PPL and encounter cloud, get the hell out. TC has a great article entitled 178 Seconds to Live. Google it and take it to heart as it could save you life and your friends.

Fly safe!

GK

[Mr. North]

It's not really the time or place for me to speculate on what happened here but I found this information interesting and thought I would share..


Snapshot of their flight path.

Larger version of this image is found here...
http://www.ctvnews.ca/world/plane-that- ... -1.1130533

At 4480m, Mt. Elizabeth is the tallest obstacle in the area by a fair margin. Had they delayed their final left turn it appears they would have been in the clear.

Map of Mt. Elizabeth for reference:
http://maps.pgc.umn.edu/antarctica/usgs ... zabeth.jpg

[GRK]

If you are asking about the similarities between this accident and the ANZ Mt Erebus, the only commonality so far is an impact on a mountainside. The ANZ accident was a sight seeing flight that went wrong because ANZ management changed an IRS waypoint in a database, and told no one about it. The crew of that DC10 flew the flight plan without knowing there was a wrong lat/long which doomed them from the start. Read Countdown To Erebus and then rethink how this sad event matched that sad event. Not much in common in my opinion. Sad news, we were hoping for a happier ending, and our sincere condolences go out to the families and to the employees of KBA.
GRK and family.

[sky's the limit]

It is certainly starting to sound more like a navigation mishap than a mtn wave encounter. Have a few bits of information pointing that way, we'll see what comes out over the next few days.

[Doc]

I'm not even going to get in on this one, It was too close to home. I'll just sit on the sidelines and "monitor" the thread. I will take "blueoval56" at his word and assume he's on the level. That being said, let the guys with the 20/20 hindsight at it. Try and stay safe everybody. Do what you were trained to do. Be familiar with your environment. STL's on the better track. Situational awareness is one of the most important aspects of what we do.

[xsever]

If you are a PPL and encounter cloud, get the hell out. TC has a great article entitled 178 Seconds to Live. Google it and take it to heart as it could save you life and your friends.
Fly safe!
GK

Watched it several times and understood it even better yesterday during my encounter.

How hard is it to develop an equipment that would give you a 360 proximity sense? Just like a radio altimeter but not only perpendicular to the ground.

This should prove very effective and life-saving for planes that must operate in similar locations where very few dare flying. IF they made a turn too soon, this equipment would have reported an obstacle 1000 ft ahead for example.

I trying to discuss solutions rather than speculate on what happened as we do not know anything of solid value yet.

[Lost in Saigon]

If you are a PPL and encounter cloud, get the hell out. TC has a great article entitled 178 Seconds to Live. Google it and take it to heart as it could save you life and your friends.
Fly safe!
GK

Watched it several times and understood it even better yesterday during my encounter.

How hard is it to develop an equipment that would give you a 360 proximity sense? Just like a radio altimeter but not only perpendicular to the ground.

This should prove very effective and life-saving for planes that must operate in similar locations where very few dare flying. IF they made a turn too soon, this equipment would have reported an obstacle 1000 ft ahead for example.

I trying to discuss solutions rather than speculate on what happened as we do not know anything of solid value yet.

They already have such a system. It's called EGPWS Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_pro ... ing_system

The older GPWS almost saved American Airlines down in Cali, Columbia, but they forgot that they still had the speedbrakes extended. I am sure it has saved countless lives since then. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_A ... Flight_965

In the late 1990s improvements were made and the system was renamed "Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System" (EGPWS/TAWS). The system was now combined with a worldwide digital terrain database and relies on Global Positioning System (GPS) technology. On-board computers compared its current location with a database of the Earth's terrain. The Terrain Display now gave pilots a visual orientation to high and low points nearby the aircraft.

EGPWS software improvements were focused on solving two common problems; no warning at all, and late or improper response.

[shamrock104]

I sat down and was going to give a opinion on what I thought or believed could have been possible causes. I thought about it for a while and when the time came I just couldnt bring myself to even express those opinions. As we are all well aware it could be one of many reasons and I am not even remotely qualified to speculate on the probable causes so to spare the grief and further pain of the families involved I chose not to. Instead I would rather wait for the experts and until the investigation is complete which hopefully will improve safety even further so this can be prevented from happening again.

[co-joe]

TAWS is the answer. No it wasn't required but maybe one day it will be. Isn't TAWS or EGPWS required in Alaska? Standard GPWS is almost useless in mountains as it relies solely on the rad alt which is pointing straight down and can't detect a mountain with steep rising terrain right in front of you.

[CpnCrunch]

As I understand it (correct me if I'm wrong), there is currently no high-res DEM data for Antarctica, so you won't get any terrain awareness. According to wikipedia "In 2014, acquisitions from radar satellites TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X will be available in the form of a uniform global coverage with a resolution of 12 meters".

Still, it seems odd that they didn't at least have some kind of moving map GPS given that we have highly detailed charts of the area.

One thing that seems odd is that the ELT coords are a few miles off from where they actually crashed. Any idea why that is? Did the ELT not have a GPS?

PS I'm not the same person as captcrunch2013.

[Dagwood]

I assume they would be navigating solely by GPS down there.

I wonder if there was some form of GPS disturbance. That might explain why they "turned too soon" as well as the wrong ELT location.

[Doc]

Your two friends in this business are runway in front of you, and lots of air under your ass. I'm done.

[ragbagflyer]

Bear in mind that many (if not most) 406 MHz elt's don't have built in GPS receivers. They usually need to be linked to the on-board gps to get that information but it's not required. However, the 406 MHz signal alone can be located to within approx 1 to 3 nm for an initial search area of 25 sq nm. This can account for a discrepancy between an assumed and actual ELT position. I have no knowledge of what equipment the KBA machine had on board. I do know though that people frequently assume all 406 MHz beacons provide gps level accuracy.

[CamAero]

Were they SPOT / Spidertrax equipped?

[maDDtraPPer]

I sat down and was going to give a opinion on what I thought or believed could have been possible causes. I thought about it for a while and when the time came I just couldnt bring myself to even express those opinions. As we are all well aware it could be one of many reasons and I am not even remotely qualified to speculate on the probable causes so to spare the grief and further pain of the families involved I chose not to. Instead I would rather wait for the experts and until the investigation is complete which hopefully will improve safety even further so this can be prevented from happening again.

I said the same thing in a very not politically correct way and my post was deleted in minutes. This thread is in bad taste while our friends are scattered on the side of a mountain peak.

[Changes in Latitudes]

I sat down and was going to give a opinion on what I thought or believed could have been possible causes. I thought about it for a while and when the time came I just couldnt bring myself to even express those opinions. As we are all well aware it could be one of many reasons and I am not even remotely qualified to speculate on the probable causes so to spare the grief and further pain of the families involved I chose not to. Instead I would rather wait for the experts and until the investigation is complete which hopefully will improve safety even further so this can be prevented from happening again.

I said the same thing in a very not politically correct way and my post was deleted in minutes. This thread is in bad taste while our friends are scattered on the side of a mountain peak.

I have to agree on this one, I've rarely seen anything intelligent come out of the accident speculation threads on this website. The extreme minority of aviators that have ever even set foot in this part of the world only strengthens that notion. We as professionals have a duty to learn from every accident and mis-hap in our industry, but speculation with zero evidence or facts isn't going to help much at the moment.

Perhaps many of us are a little over-sensitive right now, but I think that's reasonable as well.

[crazy horse]

I said the same thing in a very not politically correct way and my post was deleted in minutes. This thread is in bad taste while our friends are scattered on the side of a mountain peak.

The thread isn't in bad taste if the content is respectful. You can't stop people from talking about it and if some valid questions arise and some knowledge is exchanged there is no harm. Your avatar could be construed as in bad taste to some.

[ragbagflyer]

While I wouldn't go so far as to say it's in bad taste, - it's normal to want to know what went wrong - it does seem to me that there isn't enough publicly available information to even make educated guesses at this point. All that's really been said is that the aircraft contacted the terrain. There are so many possibilities that educated speculation is pretty much impossible. Hopefully the recovered CVR along with photos and information gathered from the accident scene can answer some questions. One thing that I keep thinking though is that if it can happen to a guy like Bob Heath, it can happen to anybody.

[lilfssister]

Bad taste or not it is going to happen on here as we all know from history. It had already started. So we created a thread to keep it out of the other one.