TransAsia Airways plane carrying more than 50 people crashes

[cgzro]

dumb question, are those contra rotating engines or is one engine more critical?

[Liquid Charlie]

Looking at the video from behind the taxi -- to me it appears that the aircraft had stalled even before it comes into clear view in the video -- will be interesting to see crew experience levels -- with a short flight he should be well under max gross unless they were tankering fuel. Interesting also that they were able xmit a mayday -- why would they take time to do that -- means to me someone was not doing their job or had given up long before he should have --------

[PositiveRate27]

dumb question, are those contra rotating engines or is one engine more critical?

Not a dumb question at all, and will be interesting to see

[PositiveRate27]

Looking at the video from behind the taxi -- to me it appears that the aircraft had stalled even before it comes into clear view in the video -- will be interesting to see crew experience levels -- with a short flight he should be well under max gross unless they were tankering fuel. Interesting also that they were able xmit a mayday -- why would they take time to do that -- means to me someone was not doing their job or had given up long before he should have --------

Or perhaps they had the situation under control until something else occurred. I believe I read somewhere that the Captain had over 4k hours.

[Napoleon So Low]

The pilot flying had accumulated 4,914 flight hours and his co-pilot, 6,922 flight hours, says Lin. There was also a third pilot in the jump seat with over 16,000 flight hours of experience.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... 72-408669/

[Napoleon So Low]

Use these coordinates with Google Street View and you will be at the scene: 25.0625568931, 121.617702246

[PositiveRate27]

The pilot flying had accumulated 4,914 flight hours and his co-pilot, 6,922 flight hours, says Lin. There was also a third pilot in the jump seat with over 16,000 flight hours of experience.

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articl ... 72-408669/

Sounds like an upgrade or a line check doesn't it? Either way, that was a very experienced crew

[ehbuddy]

Our ATR 42 SOP's had us turn the autofeather off at top of the second segment and this aircraft actually made it a little bit from the airport when the issue happened. So just thinking out loud here...........it appears the #1 is feathered but maybe the #1 was not the engine that failed. It may have been the #2 that failed and it did not autofeather and the crew feathered the good engine. CRV/FDR should answer this pretty quick.

However........it does appear that the #2 is still rotating. Lets wait for the report I guess.

[Napoleon So Low]

Media reports (National Post) now praising the crew as heroes.

They were aiming for the river to save lives on the ground. So says a Taiwanese aviation expert.

[Canoehead]

Media reports (National Post) now praising the crew as heroes.

They were aiming for the river to save lives on the ground. So says a Taiwanese aviation expert.

I predict the crew was busy trying to keep the blue side up and get the altimeter going up. I don't think they had much control about where they were going, or how they 'knife-edged' through the lamp-standards on their way into to the river...

But I'm no Taiwanese Aviation Expert.

[ourkid2000]

So I'm no pilot, just an Ame....... When you look at the extended video, that bad boy was pancaking pretty good for quite a while before the crash. The sick shakers would be going mad and the stick pusher would also be coming into action.... Would they not? I'm only assuming here.

At the altitude and speed depicted in the video, would it even be possible to come out of that? I guess it is possible that in order to recover, they would have had to fly through high rise buildings.

[SnotRocket]

Looks like it stalled at the top of the second segment climb and held it there. Radar data shows a speed decay down to about 75knots GS correlating with the initial decent. Looks like they held it there up until impact. The stall speed clean on this thing is 105 knots and the Vso is 88 knots at MTOW. Pure speculation however.

[Meatservo]

So I'm no pilot, just an Ame....... When you look at the extended video, that bad boy was pancaking pretty good for quite a while before the crash. The sick shakers would be going mad and the stick pusher would also be coming into action.... Would they not? I'm only assuming here.

At the altitude and speed depicted in the video, would it even be possible to come out of that? I guess it is possible that in order to recover, they would have had to fly through high rise buildings.

Sounds to me like your assumption is pretty much correct.

[CpnCrunch]

I guess it is possible that in order to recover, they would have had to fly through high rise buildings.

If you look at the track, it looks as if they flew a fair distance back and forth over the river on one engine at the edge of the stall. So they could have pushed the nose down and flown low over the river, which would have probably given them enough speed, or failing that they could have put it down in the river.

My guess is that they let the speed decay too much and then their instinct was to hold the thing in the air, and by the time they got to those buildings they were out of options.

Anyway, that's just my armchair speculation.

[Canoehead]

So I'm no pilot, just an Ame....... When you look at the extended video, that bad boy was pancaking pretty good for quite a while before the crash. The sick shakers would be going mad and the stick pusher would also be coming into action.... Would they not? I'm only assuming here.

At the altitude and speed depicted in the video, would it even be possible to come out of that? I guess it is possible that in order to recover, they would have had to fly through high rise buildings.

Shakers for sure. Not sure if it's equipped with a pusher-system (usually dependant on the stall characteristics during design/flight test), but if it has one, it's likely inhibited below an altitude off the radalt, say maybe 400'. Pusher systems are complex systems with regards to when they push. They have a myriad of inputs and processing that determines when to activate. Just because it's stalled, doesn't mean a push will occur.

[Shiny Side Up]

I guess it is possible that in order to recover, they would have had to fly through high rise buildings.

My guess is that they let the speed decay too much and then their instinct was to hold the thing in the air, and by the time they got to those buildings they were out of options.

Its unfortunate that someone would get that far in the flying world that this would be their instinct still. One has to remember that if you stall, you're going to end up going down anyways, so you'd better stay unstalled and fly as close to something a you need. I can't think of any circumstances where it would be better to be stalled rather than flying. Especially if you had only one engine.

Going to be politically incorrect here, but the video looks like a lot of other videos where guys don't control it when they got only one engine. We'll probably see more of this stuff than less of it as time goes on.

[xsbank]

Very sad event and very dramatic video.

One of those engines should be feathered and it seems that is not the case. Interesting to see the result of the recorders. That a/c should be able to fly on one and if the proper pre-flight brief was given, the emergency drill should have just been recited so it was fresh.

I wonder how good their training is?

If this was a check ride, could this be one of those situations where the guy in the middle is in charge?

[Canoehead]

That a/c should be able to fly on one and if the proper pre-flight brief was given, the emergency drill should have just been recited so it was fresh

Not to scare you, but don't get on a Jazz flight if you expect your crew's briefing to include reciting drills. We don't do it on the DH8/Q400 fleet (anymore).

[boeingboy]

One of the videos is a little longer and you can see the plane nose high and slow as they are over the buildings. Looked like he was trying to stretch the glide (even though they weren't gliding) or limit his decent rate till they crossed the buildings - it then simply stalled just as they cleared the buildings. They may be heros for avoiding the buildings - but they were just along for the ride when it banked over.

Finding out what happened to one engine will be interesting - but why they couldn't maintain alt on one engine will be the million dollar question.

[xsbank]

So Canoe, you're telling me that nobody 'does' the engine fail drill until you get back in the sim in 6 months? That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. No wonder they fall out of the air.

[North Shore]

over on Pprune, they're thinking that the wrong engine was shut down after a failure...

http://www.pprune.org/rumours-news/5558 ... er-13.html

[Jet Jockey]

Bad news for the crew...

Initial CVR and DFDR point towards the crew (3 pilots) shutting down the wrong engine... Very sad situation.

[North Shore]

But *3* people?
Or is it a case of one guy screaming "jump" and the other two reacting without thinking?

Sad, indeed...

[Liquid Charlie]

So Canoe, you're telling me that nobody 'does' the engine fail drill until you get back in the sim in 6 months? That makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. No wonder they fall out of the air.

I have mixed feelings how much this helps it's the same with scripted crew briefings -- people tend to spew them out from memory at such a high rate that no one pays attention anyway -- as far as drills -- you have to know them and if you are depending on crew briefings to keep them in your memory -- come on -- it's too late - it's fuked already -- why would anyone feather the wrong engine -- by being in a hurry and not waiting for confirmation -- I always fall back on the old phrase -- "fly the fuking aircraft" first and work efficiently through your drills and check lists -- this might shock a few here but from my point of view the guy in the left seat was low time (in the real world around 4000 hrs is low time) -- as pointed out he could be upgrading -- sadly if he had done nothing else except fly the aircraft and not touched anything this accident likely would not of happened --

From an old grey haired gentleman who has several engine failures and many shut downs -- slow down -- confirm everything and work like a team and fall back on what you learned in the sim -- a food for thought -- by far most of my failures and shut downs have been turbine and jet engines -- pay attention single engine drivers -- stay sharp

[North Shore]

Slow down, indeed. I sometimes think that the first thing on any emergency checklist should be:

1.) Take a deep breath and count to three..