30 replies to this topic

[Robert]

http://ca.news.yahoo..._us_india_crash

[Moon The Loon]

Sounds similar to an Air Sahara "accident" in Mumbai a few years ago. The Check Pilot, a fraudulently-credentialed contractor had zero time in the airplane.

Bullsh!t baffles brains and the Indian CAA.

Wondering if this is a factor here...

[Miles]

Just trying to understand what little they're saying... was this a landing accident or on takeoff? This article hints at a landing accident, but other articles I read on the accident weren't clear at all.

[Moon The Loon]

Ashok Sharma

New Delhi — The Associated Press
Published on Friday, May. 21, 2010 10:23PM EDT

Last updated on Saturday, May. 22, 2010 8:31AM EDT


An Air India Express plane trying to land in the rain at a tricky hilltop airport in southern India overshot the runway, crashed and burst into flames at dawn Saturday, killing nearly 160 people, officials said. There were seven survivors.

http://www.theglobea...article1578113/

"Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the plane's pilot, a British citizen, had more than 10,000 hours of flying experience, including 26 landings at Mangalore. The Indian co-pilot had more than 3,750 hours of experience and 66 landings at Mangalore, he said."

[mo32a]

According to the news tonight they touched down around the 2000' mark. OH OH.

[Don Hudson]

mo32a, on 23 May 2010 - 07:30 PM, said:

According to the news tonight they touched down around the 2000' mark. OH OH.

Two thousand feet from the threshold?

I know an airline where no one seems to blink an eye at 3000ft+ long landings. Doesn't seem to be an issue, especially if the runway is long.

We all know as well, that, even given our climate, there are no grooved runways in Canada. Every runway I used in the US however, was grooved.

There has to be more to this. Two-thousand feet is still within the "TDZ" of an 8000' runway. Does anyone know the altitude of the airport, for the TAS, or the wind, (for groundspeed)? Hopefully the data will tell us what the speed across the fence was as well.

[Kip Powick]

Don Hudson, on 23 May 2010 - 09:44 PM, said:

Two thousand feet from the threshold?

I know an airline where no one seems to blink an eye at 3000ft+ long landings. Doesn't seem to be an issue, especially if the runway is long.

We all know as well, that, even given our climate, there are no grooved runways in Canada. Every runway I used in the US however, was grooved.

There has to be more to this. Two-thousand feet is still within the "TDZ" of an 8000' runway. Does anyone know the altitude of the airport, for the TAS, or the wind, (for groundspeed)? Hopefully the data will tell us what the speed across the fence was as well.

I think field elevation is less than 400 feet. Here is a good link ..

http://en.wikipedia....ational_Airport

As well, I looked at the airport on Google Earth and  I think the aircraft went over the over-run area in the bottom LH corner of the Google Earth setup and then down the steep grade.
[attachment=1677:india01.jpg]

Edited by Kip Powick, 24 May 2010 - 04:54 PM.

[J.O.]

From what I've read on other forums, Mangalore is a "table top" airport with a steep drop of over 100 feet or more on both ends. They meet the ICAO requirement of 90 metres overrun area on both ends but nothing "extra" beyond that.

[Moon The Loon]

http://www.world-air...bajpe-4441.html

Airport Code : IXE
Airport Name : Bajpe
Runway Length : 5800 ft.
Runway Elevation : 336 ft.

City : Mangalore
Country : India
Country Abbrev. : IN
Airport Guide : Unavailable
Longitude : 74° 53’ 24” E
Latitude : 12° 57’ 41” N
World Area Code : 733

[Don Hudson]

Kip, Moon, thank you for the links.

I've learned a bit more about the airport from these sources.

The runway in use by the accident aircraft was 24, an ILS runway. The runway length is just over 8000', (2450m LDA). A survey chart for this runway has a warning about the deep gulley right at the end of 24. The runway is not grooved. We do not have a METAR or runway report as of yet.

Table-top airports are accidents waiting to occur. Congonhas, Brazil, (TAM A320 overrun) is the same type of airport; so was Toronto before the cliff and gulley at the end of 24L was 'smoothed' after the 1978 overrun accident.

So far, it has not been a good year for commercial aviation. I'm reading some disturbing comments regarding the Tripoli A330 accident, partly to do with the crew (history), partly regarding training and understanding of the airplane, partly to do with visual illusions in morning sun and the road paralleling the approach runway in use. Also reading some disturbing comments regarding people in the cockpit of the Polish Tu154 accident aircraft and that the crew was a throw-together, with not much time between them all.

[GDR]

Don Hudson, on 24 May 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

So far, it has not been a good year for commercial aviation. I'm reading some disturbing comments regarding the Tripoli A330 accident, partly to do with the crew (history), partly regarding training and understanding of the airplane, partly to do with visual illusions in morning sun and the road paralleling the approach runway in use. Also reading some disturbing comments regarding people in the cockpit of the Polish Tu154 accident aircraft and that the crew was a throw-together, with not much time between them all.

Hi Don

I know I'm preaching to the choir but people might just as well get used to it. The piloting profession is not going to attract candidates the way it used to. The aviation industry no longer has the excitement and mystique that made it attractive. The training costs are higher than ever while the remuneration is far less.

There always was the risk that the timing would be bad and you might not ever latch on to even that first low paying job. That risk will continue to diminish at least because there are fewer and fewer candidates for them. However, as a result we get people with the skills of the pilots in the Buffalo crash, being forced into jobs that they aren't properly trained for and being paid an amount that might well be less than what they would make waiting tables in the corner pub.

For the lucky group that do get to the top the pay out can still can be reasonable, (although still well less than you or I were able to make), but financially one would still be far ahead if they had gone into plumbing after high school. (Plumbers get to be home with the family on weekends, Christmas etc as well.)

The same of course is true for the AME's and maybe even more so.

The aviation industry in spite of its protests is driven by the bottom line ahead of safety. There always was a balance to be struck between safety and costs but there is no doubt about which way the pendulum has swung. It's a shame but that's just the way it is. People book their tickets on line and pick the cheapest fare so I would agree that it puts the companies between a rock and a hard place. As much as I hate to admit it, I don't see any way out but increased government regulation which would have to apply to any airline that operates into the country. JMHO

Cheers

Greg

Edited by GDR, 24 May 2010 - 03:52 PM.

[Don Hudson]

Greg;

You are indeed preaching to the choir; I have been saying this since the late 90's; treat highly-skilled professionals badly and people will choose other professions.

A slight diversion to make a point: While this notion may appear to be wholly unrelated, despite what so-called "free marketers" claim and want, precisely because the free market has proven once again that it is not 'rational' as is claimed and therefore is unpredictable and therefore cannot govern itself without serious accidents we are on the verge of a Keynesian revolution in economic thinking. I am not drawing too long a bow here, when I say that, in my view, there is a direct relationship between the wholesale Reagan/Thatcher deregulatory behaviours and priorities which first began in the 70's (later known as neoliberalism) and the way the piloting profession has been treated at the hands of industry "leaders". Profit is everything; profit shoves out all other priorities, concerns and principles including flight safety principles. Profit and the quarterly reports rule as nothing else does; I have seen it first hand and can demonstrate it with data.

As has been observed by many, the most famous being Captain Sullenberger before Congress, the "best and the brightest" are not coming into the profession and the profession's standards and expectations and even 'code of ethics' have plummeted to accomodate these changes. We are seeing the results of de-regulated growth in current headlines.

None of this is a surprise to anyone who has sat in the pointy end for the last three decades but these dramatic changes are invisible to those now joining the profession; First Officer Roberta Shaw had no concept of the nature of the profession she joined and Colgan was in no position to mentor her. The profession is seen as home to just so many expensive chaufeurs, (a comment I first heard on television not so long ago from a British person who was clearly puffed up to the bursting point with a financier's haughty superiority talking about airline pilots and what they do).

This may seem a long way from your (correct and accurate) point, but if we are to envision change, we must first comprehend cause and then set goals for returning the profession to the professionals.

It is partly the profession itself which, since the early 70's, unfortunately not only has handed over its ethics and standards to financial people who know nothing about aviation, but in the face of dying jobs, tremendous pressures to perform economically for the ownerers and huge, unanticipated swings in the economy which played havoc with all professions and not just ours, has had to negotiate downwards to keep what has been so hard-fought and won through the fifties and sixties.

These are big themes and of course they are not limited to our own profession. But the signs of a very bad decision to de-regulate the economy and rely on the rationality of the free-market, are everywhere, including aviation. Unless we begin examining these forces, we will just see and experience, more of the same.

[GDR]

Don Hudson, on 24 May 2010 - 01:26 PM, said:

Greg;
These are big themes and of course they are not limited to our own profession. But the signs of a very bad decision to de-regulate the economy and rely on the rationality of the free-market, are everywhere, including aviation. Unless we begin examining these forces, we will just see and experience, more of the same.

I don't disagree at all. It is finding the balance which is never easy. In the end it is my view that the forces you are talking about are the age only personal lusts for wealth and power. No matter what our ideology we are going to be subject to the integrity of those in authority whether it be in business or government.

There aren't any easy answers but right now the aviation industry is on a steep down hill slide and in my humble opinion it is going to take a number of situations such as what we saw in Bufalo before there will be enough public reaction to bring about any positiove change.

[Rich Pulman]

Moon The Loon, on 22 May 2010 - 05:00 AM, said:

"Indian Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the plane's pilot, a British citizen, had more than 10,000 hours of flying experience, including 26 landings at Mangalore. The Indian co-pilot had more than 3,750 hours of experience and 66 landings at Mangalore, he said."

From personal experience, the level of "experience" of Indian F/Os does not correspond to the number of hours in their logbook. There are many restrictions on when they can do the takeoff and/or landing (I.E. not with crosswind > 10 knots, not during 'monsoon', not with < 300 hours on type unless with a TRI/TRE, etc...) and it isn't unusual for Indian Captains to NOT let Indian F/Os do takeoffs or landings, even during line-indoctrination. I once had an Indian F/O on his 13th sector of line-training on the A330 and he had only done one takeoff & landing; and that's only because he was lucky enough to have flown with an ex-pat. So "3,750 hours of experience and 66 landings at Mangalore" doesn't mean very much.

Don Hudson, on 24 May 2010 - 11:23 AM, said:

So far, it has not been a good year for commercial aviation. I'm reading some disturbing comments regarding the Tripoli A330 accident, partly to do with the crew (history), partly regarding training and understanding of the airplane, partly to do with visual illusions in morning sun and the road paralleling the approach runway in use.

From my former 9W colleague who now works at Afriqiyah Airways... "Its the culture here to bust the minimas .." and "Well we knew it will happen and 24 hours before i warned them..They never listen.. so is life"

FWIW.  

[Moon The Loon]

Further to Rich's post, the Indian CAA is not too thorough in its inspection of contractor pilot credentials. Of the 15 hired by Air Sahara and accepted by the CAA, 7 were fired before delivery of the first airplane as their credentials were discovered to be bogus by some of the rest of us. And of those "some of the rest of us", after a few months of operation got under way, a good half of them showed nowhere near the experience they claimed. I saw some unbelievable behaviour.

Hence my curiosity at the beginning of this thread about contractor pilot(s) at the helm.

[Don Hudson]

The DGCA Report on the Air India Express B737-800 over-run accident at Mangalore was released today. It can be downloaded from, https://skydrive.liv...B258D61C947!110 , or, http://www.dgca.nic....orts/VT-AXV.pdf

[Miles]

Thanks Don, took me a while to realize it's a 2 year old thread!

[Don Hudson]

Hi Miles, yeah I wondered about starting a new thread but this closes the loop. The report is quite well written.

This is just another example of a non-stabilized approach, a long landing, (these two events aren't automatically related), a First Officer's strong input to go-around, (but he didn't take over) where a go-around would have saved everyone, so why do such approaches continue? It reminds one of the Garuda B737 accident in 2007 at Yogyakarta, (http://www.dephub.go...C%20Release.pdf) .

While the report mentions a steep cockpit gradient I'm not convinced that we could view this just as a "cultural" accident. Non-stabilized approaches which don't end in a go-around and continue well past stabilized approach criteria "because the runway is long", "pride" or other reasons which made sense 30 seconds before touchdown, aren't limited to areas of the world which we sometimes might view as "third world countries".

Here's one that takes your breath away even though it ends in passengers joking and laughing ha ha...

The runway was around 7500ft long...



Cheers,

Don

Edited by Don Hudson, 17 February 2012 - 09:03 AM.

[DEFCON]

I don't know anything of the local topography and I haven't looked it up, but isn't that flap setting a little shy of 'normal' landing flap?

[Don Hudson]

It's likely Config 3, normal landing flap for non-critical runways. Actual degrees of flap for Config 3 are A319/A320, 20deg, A321 = 21deg. Config Full is A319/A320 35/45deg, A321 25deg.

The approach PA from the cockpit is really late...further signs of a rushed approach.

My point in the earlier post, (beside the obvious one...Go-arounds) is that long landings well outside the TDZ of either 1/3 of the runway or 3000ft, are not unusual at all. The best "data" is where the rubber marks are -  touchdown points are between 2000ft and 3000ft, many from perfectly stable approaches, and there are t/d's up to 5200ft past the threshold.