2014 in aviation

[Timsup2nothin]

Other than obviously 9/11, three passenger planes have gone down in a week before. What kind of criteria do you want for this? 50+ casualties? Well then this week doesn't meet that threshold because the Taiwan crash didn't kill over 50 (the last I read anyways) but there was other times in history where three planes with 50+ casualties went down in a single week. Most recently, it was 1997 when three planes went down from Dec 15-19th and death tolls from 70 to 104 from each. All three crashes together doesn't match the death toll from just MH17.

As for years 1977 was pretty bad with the two large passenger planes crashing into each other among other incidents. Generally as time goes on, fewer crashes but more deadly when they do happen as more planes carry more and more passengers at one time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...incidents_resulting_in_at_least_50_fatalities

Oh. That was the runway crash. I remember that. I think even with MH17 this week is still short of just that one incident on fatalities. That was over 500 by itself.

 

[classical_hero]

In all seriousness, it probably is just random chance.
Before 2014, what was the last major airline disaster? I think it was the AirFrance plane that went down in the Atlantic but I'm not sure.

I think the latest scare before the MA370 flight was a QANTAS flight from Singapore where one of the engines blew out, but thankfully the crew were able to land safely, but the potential for that incident to being the worst air crash disaster was a real possibility.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think the latest scare before the MA370 flight was a QANTAS flight from Singapore where one of the engines blew out, but thankfully the crew were able to land safely, but the potential for that incident to being the worst air crash disaster was a real possibility.

I think the great 'simultaneous birdstrikes to both engines, should we land in the Hudson or just auger it into time square?' had a lot of potential.

 

[Bamspeedy]

I think the latest scare before the MA370 flight was a QANTAS flight from Singapore where one of the engines blew out, but thankfully the crew were able to land safely, but the potential for that incident to being the worst air crash disaster was a real possibility.

I think the great 'simultaneous birdstrikes to both engines, should we land in the Hudson or just auger it into time square?' had a lot of potential.

How about another two planes colliding?


https://medium.com/@kevinstownsend/...n-the-deadliest-plane-crash-ever-c2f8d68a917c

 

[Bootstoots]

In all seriousness, it probably is just random chance.
Before 2014, what was the last major airline disaster? I think it was the AirFrance plane that went down in the Atlantic but I'm not sure.

Air France Flight 447 has to be my favorite air crash involving 200 or more fatalities ever! I must talk about it at length for anyone who doesn't know the whole story, and especially for anyone with a fear of flying. I’m too lazy to look it up so I’ll recite the story from memory, based on the source material I read a few months ago. One or two details could be off.

The aircraft's wreckage was discovered, and the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder were both recovered intact, more than two years after the plane bellyflopped into the Atlantic killing all 228 aboard. The cause was revealed to be hilariously egregious pilot error and poor training, combined with a very minor hardware malfunction. The data recorder only revealed that the plane, which was supposed to be cruising at 35,000 feet, had for some reason climbed to 38,000 feet and then fallen steadily, crashing less than 5 minutes after reaching its maximum height. The voice recorder, however, told the whole story.

Spoiler a comedy of errors, and a tragedy in one act :

There were three pilots, taking 4 hour shifts in a rotation between flying the plane, being the copilot, and resting for the 12-hour flight. The cast of characters in the cockpit was as follows. I changed the names because I can’t remember them offhand and it’s funnier this way:

Captain Sleepyhead (CS) – The captain, who was 50-something and had tens of thousands hours of experience.
Unobservant First Officer (UFO) – The first officer, who was like 39 and had ~8000 hours of experience.
Idiot – Pronounced without the t, because he was French. The other first officer, about 32, with much less experience than the other two.

The first four hours of the flight made up CS’s shift at the controls. Idiot was copiloting, and UFO was napping. This four hours was uneventful and brought them from Rio de Janiero to the mid-Atlantic near the equator.

Then the shift rotation happened. CS handed the controls over to Idiot, UFO was awoken to be the copilot, and CS was heard remarking that the one hour of sleep he’d gotten the night before was “not enough” before turning in for a nap. At the time, they were flying into the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ICTZ), which is full of mild to moderate thunderstorms most of the time. There was no way to avoid the thunderstorms, so they were going to have to fly through them, which should have been no problem for the Airbus A330 they were flying.

In preparation, Idiot did the only thing he would do correctly during his final quarter-hour: he turned on the Fasten Seatbelt sign. About 10 minutes after he took the controls, they entered the storm. Idiot was already panicky and was freaked out by the blue electrical discharge he saw as he entered the thundercloud; UFO told him not to worry, as it was St. Elmo’s Fire, which is freaky-looking but harmless. Then, ice formed in the aircraft’s pitot tubes (the tubes that stick out of the aircraft and measure airspeed among other things), causing their airspeed indicator to display an error message and the plane to disengage the autopilot with a loud “Bong!!” This was a known problem in the A330 and pilots were informed about it; the tube deices within a minute or so and airspeed information returns. But it scared Idiot even more, and for some reason he reflexively pulled back on his side stick and held it back. Side sticks are joysticks located on the sides of the cockpit, one for each pilot. Airbus A330s have these instead of traditional control wheels.

Now, as everyone who’s ever played a computer flight simulator game knows, if you pull back on the stick and just hold it back, you climb for a while and then stall. The angle of attack (roughly the angle between the airfoil and horizontal; lift increases up to come critical angle of generally around 15 degrees and then falls off rapidly after that) climbs too high and the airspeed falls too low, causing a simple stall. Unsurprisingly, the plane climbed for a little while and then stalled. The stall warning, in this plane, was a voice saying “stall, stall, stall” over and over again. Idiot freaked out even more; UFO was confused (he didn’t look at Idiot’s side stick, and apparently never did until 40 seconds before impact). UFO noted that the plane was above its cruising altitude and asked Idiot why he was flying so high. Idiot briefly pushed the stick forward again, causing the plane to stop stalling. Seconds later, he freaked out again for some reason and pulled back on the stick yet again. The plane stalled again.

By this point, both Idiot and UFO were baffled; they didn’t even know if they could trust the stall warning because of the faulty airspeed indicator. Remember that UFO still doesn’t realize that Idiot has the stick back; he falsely assumes that Idiot isn’t making the sort of mistake an 8-year-old with a WWII flight game would make. Eventually, the plane’s angle of attack was so steep (something like 40 degrees) that the A330’s computer interpreted the incoming flight data as nonsense and blanked out many of the instruments, replacing them with error messages. The stall warnings ceased, however. At one point, Idiot’s senses briefly return and he tries pushing the stick forward again. Most of the instruments start displaying something again, but now that the computer has data to work with again, the stall warnings come back. Idiot panics again and pulls back on the stick, and pushes the throttle to 100%. Now they’re both panicking.

CS was woken up and came running into the cockpit demanding to know what the hell was going on. UFO and Idiot both said they didn’t know and that they’ve lost control of the aircraft. CS looked over and saw a number of instruments offline. By this point the pitot tubes have deiced and would have displayed the correct airspeed. But from what he can see, they are at something like 30000 feet and are descending at about 9000 feet per minute, with half their instruments offline and the rest suspect. He also doesn’t notice that Idiot has the stick back, possibly because he slept a grand total of 1 hour the night before and at most 10 minutes just before the debacle. He and UFO try to figure out what is going on from the instrument data they do have, but to no avail.

About 40 seconds before impact, at 8000 feet and descending at over 11000 feet per minute, CS tells Idiot to try climbing to see if that helps. Idiot replies, “But I’ve had the stick back the whole time!”

CS and UFO then finally figure out what’s been going on the whole time. CS tells Idiot to descend, and UFO tells Idiot that he’s taking over the controls. But by then it’s too late, and they can’t recover in time. A few seconds before impact, the “approaching object” alarm went off to warn them of the ocean they were about to hit. Their last words were something like this:

UFO: We’re going to crash! I can’t believe this!
Idiot: But I still don’t know what’s going on!
CS: Nose still up at ten degrees…

And then they all died, along with 225 others. The whole thing was a mystery to the outside world: the plane seemed to just disappear with no distress signal. Some floating wreckage and a few bodies were discovered within the first few days, but it took over two years of submarine searches to find the wreckage at the bottom of the ocean and the cockpit voice recorder.

Idiot’s behavior was baffling: for most pilots, recovering from high-altitude stalls is one of the first things they practice while training, and they do it several times until they get good at it. But the Airbus A330 was so totally computerized that it was supposed to be impossible to stall. Had the autopilot been engaged, Idiot’s input would have been ignored if he had tried to pull the stick back for long enough that stalling would become imminent, and the computer would pitch the aircraft forward enough to prevent a stall. New pilots being trained on the A330 were taught very little about handling the aircraft in mid-air; they only needed to know how to take off and land and handle low-altitude maneuvering manually, and the plane would more or less handle the middle of the flight by itself.

Idiot wouldn’t have crashed the plane even with his completely nonsensical stick input if the autopilot hadn’t disengaged, as it did when the pitot tubes briefly iced up. Idiot may well have done this a number of times before this flight, without ever stalling the aircraft, because the autopilot would have prevented him from stalling. He was trained only to handle low-altitude flight, and he even made a comment during the fatal descent in which he said he was doing a maneuver intended to pull the plane up rapidly to abort a landing. The other two pilots ignored this remark (probably thinking Idiot was just babbling panicked nonsense); but the truth was that he was doing exactly that: nose up and full throttle.

High technology has made flying a lot safer on average, but you know what they say about idiot-proofing: every time somebody tries to idiot-proof something, they invent a better idiot.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I suppose it could be companies are cutting corners or the airframes are getting old.

I am fairly certain the airframes have nothing to do with the recent crashes. Ineptitude on the part of pilots and the airliners, yes, but airframes, no.

 

[Kozmos]

I am fairly certain the airframes have nothing to do with the recent crashes. Ineptitude on the part of pilots and the airliners, yes, but airframes, no.

Can you stress-test for age and wear and tear? Computer simulations and the like? I remember seeing a cockpit glass in a similar plane held together by duct tape. Didn't really put my confidence into the odds of me surviving that flight.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes, you can test for it and it is done. More than just computer simulation (which is also done) mind you, they actually beat the living hell out of airliners before they are certified.


Link to video.
(you'll have to excuse the GLORY BE TO BOEING tone of the video, it's still instructive)

(check out the sick bend on the wings in the background)
Article on above picture

In addition to testing, we do a ton of work to ensure that airframes don't wear out until well after their expiration date. Not just engineering work, which is tremendous and costly, but also go through a crapload of rigorous and highly-regulated paperwork to ensure processes are followed and data is taken so that if something breaks, the problem can be spotted, blame apportioned and corrective action taken. I could tell you about if you wanted.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

Is it the aerospace companies that do the maintenance work for the airline companies?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

No, I believe that most maintenance is performed by airliners and maintenance companies hired by the airliners. If there is some sort of recall, a Boeing or Airbus might get involved or they might sell upgrades and retrofits and definitely spare parts. But day to day maintenance is not done by the aero companies AFAIK.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

You mention "day to day". Is there something like yearly check-ups on the airframes?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yes, done by the airliners and the FAA. Oftentimes, companies like Boeing will draft procedures on how to do these inspections, but they do not perform them generally.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Yes, done by the airliners and the FAA. Oftentimes, companies like Boeing will draft procedures on how to do these inspections, but they do not perform them generally.

I would think 'always' instead of 'often'...even toasters come with maintenance requirements and procedures, I would certainly think aircraft do.





Just a nitpick intended to be funny. Carry on.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I just try and avoid absolutes as a matter of good posting practice.

I was also hedging my statement because I'm not entirely sure where the break up in responsibilities is between the FAA and the manufacturers when it comes to inspection procedures. I suspect that manufacturers draft, the FAA advises/ammends and then approves the procedures. But it could also be the case that the FAA just lays down what procedures have to be there, which would influence how the craft is designed in the first place, which is a different situation.

 

[bhsup]

Keeping in mind, of course, that aircraft get a hell of a more thorough maintenance check after every flight than a toaster does after each toasting.

 

[Cutlass]

I think there have been very few airliner accidents which can be traced to a failure of the airframe. A few more have been traced to the failure of some piece of equipment on the aircraft. Crew error is the dominant cause of air crashes.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Well, things tend to get dicey whenever the British get cheeky and build square windows into their airframes, to be fair..

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Keeping in mind, of course, that aircraft get a hell of a more thorough maintenance check after every flight than a toaster does after each toasting.

You've never met my g/f. She is absolutely sure the toaster is going to burn the house down. It gets a thorough inspection after each toasting and before the next one.

 

[Cutlass]

Bad metals didn't seem to work out too well either. But that hasn't been a problem since the 50s.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I don't follow the reference.