A safe landing for this E-190 after a scary loss of control issue

[dagger]

 

https://twitter.com/AirportWebcams/status/1061637213593722880

Reports are still sketchy, but you can see by the path it flew that the plane was in a serious state. Other charts show erratic changes in altitude and air speed.

https://twitter.com/jonostrower/status/1061639318089850880

https://twitter.com/WandrMe/status/1061638447931289600

 

 

[conehead]

Subject aircraft had spent the previous 6 weeks undergoing maintenance, this was a test flight.

[Guest]

https://prnt.sc/lgzybt 

evidently landed safely

[dagger]

4 hours ago, conehead said:

Subject aircraft had spent the previous 6 weeks undergoing maintenance, this was a test flight.

Declared an emergency and was escorted to the airport by F-16s. Quite the test flight.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, dagger said:

Declared an emergency and was escorted to the airport by F-16s. Quite the test flight.

And in particular for the Pilots.  They tested out  100%

[conehead]

That’s why we have “test flights”.

[Vsplat]

The E190 has a pretty simple flight control system.  Something must have really gone wrong with that maintenance exercise.  I hope we get to read the report.

Glad they made it.  Test flight or no, no one should experience a ride like that.

Vs

[dagger]

I mentioned speed and altitude graphs

 

This link includes a combination speed/altitude timeline

https://www.aviation24.be/airlines/air-astana/embraer-erj-190lr-from-lisbon-airport-declared-a-mayday-with-loss-of-instruments/

[Kip Powick]

Hmmmmm the video of the approach and landing looks pretty normal.......

Maybe they turned off the ":magic " and went to manual flying ....

I too hope they do put out a report...should make for interesting reading.

[J.O.]

There are several seriously tight turns on that track plot. That report will make for some very interesting reading. 

[conehead]

Lifted this from Pprune:

"It Was going back home after a C-check in Alverca.
Swapped aileron controls (so when a right input, the a/c would turn left and vice-versa). Only elevators, rudder and thrust available to control the aircraft. As far as I've heard from someone who talked to the crew when things were settled down on ground, no issues when the autopilot was connected, but as soon as they would disconnect it, the controls were lost everytime. One of the four tonneaux ended at around 4000ft on a 90º nose down attitude. Adding to these awkward conditions, the wheather here in Lisbon area have been awfull the whole day with pouring rain, heavy clouds and low ceiling, so they had no visual geographic references, plus they were unfamiliar with the terrain and there's where the F-16s came in, to guide the E190 to a safer place. After "learning" to control the plane, all calmed down a little bit, but they needed an airport with better weather/visual conditions and Beja was the best(first option was sunny Algarve's Faro), which is also in a sparsely populated (thus the lowest FR24 coverage, adding to the fact that the a/c doesn't have ADS-B and only shows up in MLAT) area so in case of a crash, the possibility of having victims on the ground was much lower.
On the first landing attempt, the aircraft wasn't well aligned to the runway so a go around was performed. On the second attempt they were a bit too high and went around again, before finally successfully landing on the third attempt. Of the 6 pob, two were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries and a third person, someone from the administration of Air Astana was reporting some heart issued ans was also taken to the hospital, which all three left by the beginning of the evening."

Ailerons on the Embraer 190 are not fly-by-wire, but rather cable controlled.

[Kip Powick]

19 minutes ago, conehead said:

Lifted this from Pprune:

"It Was going back home after a C-check in Alverca.
Swapped aileron controls (so when a right input, the a/c would turn left and vice-versa). Only elevators, rudder and thrust available to control the aircraft. As far as I've heard from someone who talked to the crew when things were settled down on ground, no issues when the autopilot was connected, but as soon as they would disconnect it, the controls were lost everytime. One of the four tonneaux ended at around 4000ft on a 90º nose down attitude. Adding to these awkward conditions, the wheather here in Lisbon area have been awfull the whole day with pouring rain, heavy clouds and low ceiling, so they had no visual geographic references, plus they were unfamiliar with the terrain and there's where the F-16s came in, to guide the E190 to a safer place. After "learning" to control the plane, all calmed down a little bit, but they needed an airport with better weather/visual conditions and Beja was the best(first option was sunny Algarve's Faro), which is also in a sparsely populated (thus the lowest FR24 coverage, adding to the fact that the a/c doesn't have ADS-B and only shows up in MLAT) area so in case of a crash, the possibility of having victims on the ground was much lower.
On the first landing attempt, the aircraft wasn't well aligned to the runway so a go around was performed. On the second attempt they were a bit too high and went around again, before finally successfully landing on the third attempt. Of the 6 pob, two were taken to a local hospital with minor injuries and a third person, someone from the administration of Air Astana was reporting some heart issued ans was also taken to the hospital, which all three left by the beginning of the evening."

Ailerons on the Embraer 190 are not fly-by-wire, but rather cable controlled.

Which begs the question....did they not do a control check on taxi out. ( full right (CC /Joystick) right aileron up etc ....) ?? Must have been heart stopping to get in the air and have all hell break loose.

[conehead]

Control check?  Apparently not. And it’s not the first time. I recall an incident a few years back, I believe it may have been at United, Maintenance had rewired the rack in which the ELAC computer lives in a A320.  Captain’s aileron control was reversed, it wasn’t noticed until after takeoff at which time the FO was able to take control.  Of course, Maintenance should have picked this up during a functional check of their work, same in this present case.

Complacency kills.

[Guest]

https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/413517-elac-2-no-dispatch-a320.html

[conehead]

1 hour ago, Malcolm said:

https://www.pprune.org/tech-log/413517-elac-2-no-dispatch-a320.html

Thanks Malcolm, but that thread doesn’t refer to the case I was thinking of.  There was no failure of the ELAC, they just wired it so that left and right stick inputs were crossed.  Imagine the pilots surprise!

[boestar]

My first thought after seeing the flight path was exactly that...crossed control cables.  Seen it in small aircraft which usually does not have a good outcome.

The pilots did a pretty good job of "re-Learning" how to fly all things considered.

[J.O.]

On 11/12/2018 at 4:30 PM, conehead said:

Control check?  Apparently not. And it’s not the first time. I recall an incident a few years back, I believe it may have been at United, Maintenance had rewired the rack in which the ELAC computer lives in a A320.  Captain’s aileron control was reversed, it wasn’t noticed until after takeoff at which time the FO was able to take control.  Of course, Maintenance should have picked this up during a functional check of their work, same in this present case.

Complacency kills.

Actually it was Lufthansa. The control deflection indications on the screen matched the captain’s reversed inputs but the FO missed the reversed deflection. After liftoff the captain quickly recognized the problem and tried transferring control to the FO, who’s controls worked normally and the result was a safe landing. 

To be fair to the FO, not much thought had been given to talking about the importance of the “direction of the deflection” during the captain’s control checks. Also, the control checks were being done so quickly, the centralized monitoring system didn’t have time to measure the fault and trigger a control disagree message. 

[Guest]

 

[conehead]

3 hours ago, J.O. said:

The control deflection indications on the screen matched the captain’s inputs but the FO missed the reversed deflection. 

Hmmm... I would think that the ECAM indicates actual control surface deflection, as detected by a position transducer at the aileron, not the LVDT fed from the sidestick controller.  But I could be wrong... it’s been a while since I worked on a ‘bus.

[J.O.]

7 hours ago, conehead said:

Hmmm... I would think that the ECAM indicates actual control surface deflection, as detected by a position transducer at the aileron, not the LVDT fed from the sidestick controller.  But I could be wrong... it’s been a while since I worked on a ‘bus.

Oops, I mis-stated that. They matched the fact that the ailerons were reversed. I fixed it. 

[moeman]

On 11/13/2018 at 11:38 AM, Malcolm said:

 

Part 2: