A400m Down

[the cool one]

Just read the news a few minutes ago.

This is a relatively new, long delayed development military purpose aircraft. I watched this aircraft perform at the Orly airport during the airshow. It was an unbelievably maneuverable/agile aircraft for a transport type category.

No news of anyone surviving the crash. Sad!

Condolences to the families of these test people.

The cool one

[boeingboy]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/airbus-a400 ... 1431177546

Crashed on its first flight in Spain. It was for the Turkish airforce, 6 Airbus people on board - 4 dead, 2 seriously injured.

[xchox]

Apparently the German Air Force has had a ton of problems with them... Apparently worse then you're run of the mill teething issues. Will be very interested in what happened here!

[all_ramped_up]

Coincidentally enough I just saw one of these up close at YHZ last week... that was AOG with a what I heard was a PCU issue on #1 engine.



I too am pretty curious now what the cause of this accident was.

[rigpiggy]

Rumor is that they lost 3 engines right after takeoff, 2survived local farmers went in to the wreckage to pull them out

[grimey]

Apparently they're looking at a possible issue with how the software for the engine was installed.

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSK ... 9?irpc=932

[DonutHole]

Calling CID

[timel]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSK ... 9?irpc=932

...
Without the vital data parameters, information from the engines is effectively meaningless to the computers controlling them. The automatic response is to hunker down and prevent what would usually be a single engine problem causing more damage.

This is what the computers apparently did on the doomed flight, just as they were designed to do.

"Nobody imagined a problem like this could happen to three engines," a person familiar with the 12-year-old project said.

...

Engines can shutdown on their own. Good to know.

[Heliian]

^ that is definitely not enough data to make any conclusions at all.

It sounds odd that torque cal. data would not be used or noticed upon powering it up or starting or takeoff, nor should the engines just shut off. Maybe with an actual full report and not hearsay could a synopsis be drawn. MOST modern engines are designed to go into a failsafe setting when the computer data is lost, not "hunker down" or whatever this guy is babbling about.

[Gilles Hudicourt]

In 2001, the Antonov 70, had a similar incident.

A report released by the investigation team in mid-March, according to the Ukrainian "Aviation and Time" magazine, provided further details into the cause. Thus, according to the report, immediately after take-off one of the engines was automatically shut off by its electronic safeguards after it exceeded the safe RPM limit. The front set of blades of the counter-rotating propeller assembly stopped but the counter-rotating part of the propeller assembly continued turning due to the damaged oil line that powered the blade actuators. This caused the negative air flow estimated at 5,000 kg of thrust.

At this point the flight crew increased power to the remaining three engines but a problem with the RPM sensors on one of them let to automatic engine shut-off. Thus the An-70 ended up flying at low speed with only two properly functioning engines, with the third engine generating 5 tonnes of negative thrust and disrupting airflow across the wing. The accident investigators found that the pilots acted with remarkable skill to turn the aircraft around and crash-land it on the field without lowering the landing gear.