U P S Plane Down In Alabama

[dagger]

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/14/us/alabama-cargo-plane-crash/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

[conehead]

From the pictures I saw, the front end of the aircraft looks intact...

[Guest]

Condolences to the family of the lost crew

[J.O.]

Intact yes, but it appears they struck the upslope of a berm north of the airport. I read elsewhere that the aircraft struck trees next to a home north of the airport, and that they were flying a non-precision approach to a runway without approach lights or visual glide path guidance.

[Seeker]

I read elsewhere that the aircraft struck trees next to a home north of the airport, and that they were flying a non-precision approach to a runway without approach lights or visual glide path guidance.

In an A300?

[J.O.]

It's early days and as we know the internet is full of misinformation at times like this but that's what's out there. The main runway was apparently NOTAMed closed.

[Moon The Loon]

Not a mention in Canadian media. Not enough blood, I guess...

[CD]

Not a mention in Canadian media. Not enough blood, I guess...

The story has actually been carried nationally in print, radio and TV. Here are a few links:

Two killed in fiery Alabama crash of UPS cargo jet - 14 Aug 2013 - Toronto Sun

UPS jet crashing short of Alabama runway kills both pilots - 14 Aug 2013 - Hamilton Spectator

L'écrasement d'un avion-cargo en Alabama fait deux morts - 14 août 2013 - La Presse

[boestar]

SAw it on the news when it happened on CTV I believe.

[dagger]

UPS pilots warned of low altitude 7 seconds before crashBy Verna Gates | Reuters – 1 hr 10 mins ago

By Verna Gates

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - U.S. government investigators looking into the crash of a UPS cargo plane said on Friday the pilots received a low altitude warning barely seven seconds before the sound of impact, according to data recovered from the cockpit voice recorder.

Investigators retrieved data from the cockpit and flight data recorders on Friday that could shed light on Wednesday's fiery crash in Alabama that killed the jet's pilot and co-pilot.

"I personally breathed a huge sigh of relief once I learned we had good data," said Robert Sumwalt, a senior official with the National Transportation Safety Board. "We'll know everything that was said in the cockpit."

Sumwalt said a preliminary review of the voice and data recorders showed the pilots received the first of two audible warnings before the sound of impact can be heard, indicating the United Parcel Service Inc cargo plane was descending at a hazardous rate.

A warning system in the air-traffic computers at Birminghan's airport showed no indications the plane was approaching too low, Sumwalt said.

The cockpit voice and flight recorders arrived at the NTSB's headquarters in Washington late on Thursday, hours after they were pulled from a heap of melted plastic and debris at the crash site.

Preliminary results from the agency's investigation, which is still in its early stages, have shown no evidence of engine fire, and the pilots did not issue a distress call.

The Airbus A300 jet was approaching the runway at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth airport before dawn when it clipped the trees in an adjacent residential area and crashed well short of the runway.

An air traffic controller on duty told NTSB investigators he saw a "bright spark flash" that looked like a powerline breaking, Sumwalt said. The controller saw the plane's landing lights "followed by a bright, orange flash ... and then a red glow."

The NTSB has sent investigators to Louisville, Kentucky, to study the A300's maintenance records, officials said.

UPS identified the crew members who died as 58-year-old Cerea Beal Jr., of Matthews, North Carolina, and Shanda Fanning, 37, of Lynchburg, Tennessee.

Beal, the captain, who was at the controls on Wednesday, had been with UPS since 1990, and before that he served more than six years in the U.S. Marine Corps as a helicopter operator.

The NTSB said he had about 8,600 hours total flying experience, including more than 3,200 hours in the Airbus A-300.

(Additional reporting by Jane Sutton and David Adams in Miami; Writing by Tom Brown and Kevin Gray; Editing by Toni Reinhold, Leslie Gevirtz and Ken Wills)

[YYCMatt]

Are cargo carriers required to have EGPWS/TAWS in the States?

[GDR]

Looks like another CFIT.

By MATTHEW L. WALD


WASHINGTON - Sixteen seconds before a U.P.S. cargo plane crashed on approach to the airport in Birmingham, Ala., on Wednesday morning, an automated system in the cockpit warned that the aircraft, an Airbus A300, was descending too fast, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board said Friday.

The warning was captured on the cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered from the wreckage on Thursday.

Three seconds after the warning - in the form of a mechanical voice saying, "Sink rate, sink rate" - one of the two pilots told the other that the runway was in sight, according to the safety board member, Robert Sumwalt, who was at the crash site. Then, nine seconds before the end of the recording, there are "sounds that are consistent with impact,'' Mr. Sumwalt said.

The plane came down outside the fence at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, hitting the trees and then the ground north of the airfield. Both pilots were killed.

Investigators have also recovered the flight data recorder, he said, but he did not discuss its contents.

Mr. Sumwalt's remarks were the investigators' first substantive comments on the crash.

The captain of the U.P.S. plane had worked for the company since 1990 and had extensive experience - 8,600 hours of flight time, including 3,200 hours in the A300, Mr. Sumwalt said. The first officer had worked for U.P.S. since 2006. She had 6,500 hours of experience, including 400 in the A300, he said.

The plane was on a flight from the U.P.S. hub in Louisville, Ky. The crew members had started their shift at 9:30 p.m. the day before, flying to Louisville from Rockford, Ill.

The Birmingham control tower is equipped with a minimum safe altitude warning system, but it did not go off, according to the controller in the tower. Investigators are looking into whether it should have.

The controller said he saw the plane on approach and saw a spark shortly before the crash. Investigators said the plane appeared to have taken down a power line before the crash.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/17/us/alabama-automatic-system-warned-pilots-before-ups-crash.html?_r=0

[boestar]

What is going on these days? These were seemingly experienced pilots on a routine flight and they landed short. Asiana Guys landed short, Southwest guys landed wrong altogether. This is a very strange rash if accidents indeed.

[blues deville]

What is going on these days? These were seemingly experienced pilots on a routine flight and they landed short. Asiana Guys landed short, Southwest guys landed wrong altogether. This is a very strange rash if accidents indeed.

After these flights are properly investigated, I wouldn't be surprised to see fatigue as a common element.

[GDR]

I'm not so sure about the fatigue issue being the common factor in these accidents.l I think that the common cause is lack of actual training, Airlines don't do circuits any more and there seems to be a problem that when all the aids aren't working, or if the aids are mismanaged, that some pilots no longer have the skills and situational awareness to even complete a normal visual approach or to realize that a go-around is the best course of action.

I think that it is high time that the regulatory agencies insist in having checkouts done not just in the simulator but in the aircraft to make sure that before someone gets checked out on an aircraft that they actually can hand fly a visual approach. The airlines won't like it but if they all have to do it there will be a level playing field.

[Seeker]

I regularly turn off the autopilot and autothrust descending through FL289 and hand fly the whole STAR and approach - I still got it. The important about this is that I'm not special in any way (in Canada) for being able to do this. The vast majority of guys from my vintage have thousands of hours of black-hole approaches or military time and hand-flown approaches are not an unknown concept. This background is not at all common in other countries. I'm proud to say that the company I work for now has a visual, hand-flown approach in almost every recurrent sim session. This is probably not enough to teach the skill but does help maintain it for those who aren't motivated to "click click, click click" as often as some of us.

[Guest rozar s'macco]

The Captain was 58 years old, had been a pilot for nearly 30 years, and logged only 8600 hours. On average, it doesn't seem to be a very onerous schedule.

Rich I've noticed the same thing. UPS6, OZ214, AF447 all list pilots with far less experience than you'd find in the flight deck at Air Canada in similar positions. Not sure if its related, but you're not the only one who's noticed that.

[thor]

Rich I've noticed the same thing. UPS6, OZ214, AF447 all list pilots with far less experience than you'd find in the flight deck at Air Canada in similar positions. Not sure if its related, but you're not the only one who's noticed that.

Management pilots not flying enough.

[J.O.]

I don't know how many years he served but the captain was in the military (where he flew helicopters) prior to his civilian career. It may be that they're only quoting his fixed wing time.

[Guest rozar s'macco]

Rich what does number of flying hours per year have to do with that pilot being fatigued on that day? If they started their day at 2000 and the accident occurred at 0600, that had been at work through the night for 10 hrs. Could be a factor. Obviously we can't "save up" our sleep in a bank to power us through a 36-hr day (unless you're a super human physician, heh).

I can't really link total time to accident probability, but was stating that I noticed how little experience relative to Canadian pilots a few of the recent accident crews have had.

[blues deville]

I don't think 8600 hours is too little experience to be an A300 Captain (It would be hypocritical for me to say otherwise since I had much less as an A330 skipper.), but it certainly seems low for someone with at least 30 years in the business. My (unclear) point was more to do with the issue of fatigue. It's hard to understand how a pilot could allow themselves to become fatigued when their flying rate was less than 300 hours per year.

Keep on mind that some UPS, FEDEX crews do fly short patterns depending on aircraft type. I recall talking to a UPS pilot in PIE who told me he flew 5 hours per night doing return trips to Louisville.

Years ago Canada 3000 was approached by one of the overnight package airlines, UPS, FedEx, can't remember which one, to operate a pair of 757 freighters across Canada. The aircraft were to be leased by C3 and fly about 5 hours per day. Considering the C3 passenger 757s were flying about 15 hours per day, Angus Kinnear has some issues with the proposal. He wanted access to the aircraft when not being used but was told 5 hours a night was all they needed to make a profit. The plan finally died with Kinnear not willing to risk being stuck with two 757 freighters if the contract ended before the lease.

My comment about fatigue was on the time period of these flights. The Asiana and UPS flights were both overnight trips with morning arrivals. I'm sure everyone's had at least one time where you could not get a proper sleep before a duty period. But that might have been the only unusual event and although you were tired, nothing else went wrong that day to challenge you.

[Don Hudson]

One wonders why the aircraft was so low, so early in the approach.

At 16" from the end of the CVR recording, (EoR) there was a GPWS "Sink rate" warning, (at 235fps, that's about 3700ft from the EoR/Impact point);

At 13" from EoR a comment is recorded on the CVR, "Runway in sight", about 3000' from EoR;

At 9" from EoR the initial sounds of impact are recorded, about 2000ft from EoR.

From the last point, the aircraft struck trees twice and may have struck power lines.

For all these things to occur, the aircraft had to be below the MDA just under two miles from the runway. If the runway was in sight, the PAPI would also have be visible and all lights would have changed to red even before the Sink Rate warning.

The IBXO (ILS) DME shows 1.3nm-to-go when at the runway threshold.

A couple of thoughts:

1. What altitude was the Altitude Select set to? The aircraft was on autopilot until immediately before the EoR and the impact damage to the engines indicated low rotational speeds. If the MCP Altitude setting was the MA altitude, (1500'), would the autothrust increase engine power providing the speed was higher than selected? In other words, is this similar to the Asiana accident in the sense that there was no altitude for the autoflight to capture? The NTSB indicated that the selected speed was "140".

2. Was the aircraft closer to the runway than the crew thought, (either mistaking IMTOY for BASKN or assuming the DME reading was to the threshold)?

[Don Hudson]

Thanks for this malcolm - I wondered when this was going to re-surface publicly - a lot of people are watching this one. I had done some work in Google-Earth which shows a possible flight path that is in accord with the available data at the time. The green line shows a 3.2deg PAPI, the blue line with grey fill is the MDA for the LOC(BC). We don't know if UPS was authorized for the VNAV DA as specified on the chart.

While there is a LOC(BC) approach to 18 but I believe this was a "GNSS" approach with specific requirements (under "RNP-AR" rules) - TC, FAA, ICAO, Boeing, etc

[Kip Powick]

Based on what I read in this thread, I would say it was visual cues that led the crew astray. Whomever called "Runway in sight' might have caused the PF to look up, see the RW and not realize just how low they were and that were still sinking from the time of the GPWS call.

The call of 'Visual' in the mind of the PF meant he could look up and pretty near disregard everything except flying a 'visual' approach to the runway...the subtle 'sink' that the PF might or might not have started to correct at the GPWS warning would be out of the PFs mind and the PF was probably fixated on the RW and then realized...too late.... that they had dropped dangerously low......

I think we have all seen, on the odd occasion where the PF has gone visual and dropped a bit low on the VASI but managed to correct and 'fly' to the runway and land safely.

The above is all speculation but based on my experience it is very easy to be mislead during an IFR approach to visual approach at night. One has to force themselves to fly the visual with an actual cross-check of the numbers. I was one of many subjects who was tested by a university group who wanted to ascertain if pilots could accurately determine their altitude and distance with respect to the final approach to a runway at night. Various situations with many different lighting configurations were put forth and believe me....it was not an easy thing to do if all the altitude, VSI readouts are taken away from you.

During a night visual approach if PAPI and VASI are removed, the vast majority of pilots will fly either too high to the runway, or too low.

To me, this accident is reminiscent of the C130 at CFB Alert.........everyone heads up, no one watching the dials.

[Don Hudson]

Kip, re, "it is very easy to be mislead during an IFR approach to visual approach at night."

That is so true.

The PAPI was functioning normally.

Google Earth can provide a graphic image of the time-of-day the approach was conducted:

Normal FAF crossing altitude at INTOY, (1380'), 2nm from the runway:

Normal view 1nm from the trheshold at 1226', (MDA):

View at 850ft, (350ft low) 1nm back. The hill just before the runway appears to be obscuring the runway and the PAPI:

Daytime view of the point on the approach where the CVR records the comment, "Runway in Sight", (13" from EOR - the "3020' " figure is the distance in feet from impact):