Crew of fatal UPS cargo flight tried to control aircraft before crash, NTSB says

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DreadedCrocoStempy@reddit

Ground observers reported the aircraft had been delayed for about two hours for work on the left hand engine (engine #1), the engine #1 separated during the takeoff run, the center engine emitted streaks of flames, the aircraft impacted a UPS warehouse and ploughed through other facilities before coming to rest in a large plume of fire and smoke.

FAA slaps UPS with $4 million penalty | Reuters https://share.google/Bj7oHKuPyq4xny7hu

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TackleMySpackle@reddit

I have been extremely anxious that the fire alarm did not go off on time. The video in which the plane is seen from behind, rolling down the runway, starts at about V1, which means the person filming had to have seen or heard something and had enough time to get their phone out, open the camera app, swipe to video, and start recording. It concerns me heavily that the pylon/engine was likely on fire well before V1 and they received no alarm until 37 seconds into the rollout. There are delays, up to 15 seconds, intentionally built into the system for fault detection and fire detection.

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GeneralMasterpiece86@reddit

Double tap the power button brings up the camera on a locked or unlocked android phone immediately. But your point stands.

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Snoo-964@reddit

Wow never knew this, thanks

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TackleMySpackle@reddit

Fair enough.

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aeroplane1979@reddit

You'll be interested in this Blancolirio vid from last night. He's able to illustrate how the crew received the engine fire alarm bell just after V1 and just how little runway would've been left after that alarm. Basically, as you were saying, the crew had no time to do anything other than what they did by the time they knew there was a problem.

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TackleMySpackle@reddit

I saw that video last night and it seemed tragically unfair to the crew to receive the alarm when they did. It concerns me greatly that the fire was not detected until that point - presuming it was there prior to the callout.

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pyrofiend4@reddit

That video you're referencing starts only 9 seconds before the crash. The NTSB said the alarms started going off 25 seconds before the crash. Not saying the alarms weren't delayed, but the video is inconclusive as the plane was already in the air when the recording started.

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TackleMySpackle@reddit

Maybe it’s one of those cases of a false memory but I am almost certain that the original video is a little longer and that his nose wheel isn’t off the ground yet when the video begins.

Also, the 25 seconds is probably until the end of the recording but it’s probably closer to 20 seconds until the crash. I think once power is cut to the recorders it’ll still be on for about 5 seconds due to various capacitance factors inside the unit’s power circuit. I’m ballparking that number. I don’t have a precise number.

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TabsAZ@reddit

NTSB said the fire alarm started 37 seconds into the takeoff roll. Blancolirio timed this last night against a cockpit video of an MD-11 takeoff at max weight and it started right in between V1 and Vr at least on that video.

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BrewCityChaserV2@reddit

Yeah, you can see a long trail of smoke in the video recorded by the tug driver. That engine was having problems well before the crew had any alarm indication that something was terribly wrong.

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TackleMySpackle@reddit

Agreed. I have been concerned about this from the second I saw that video.

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aeroplane1979@reddit

Weird choice of headline. As opposed to, maybe "Entire flight crew simply gave up at the first sign of trouble"? Of course they tried. Even if they could've known the full extent of the situation in those precious few seconds, they still would've tried.

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Comfortable-Yak-2555@reddit

“Crew decided to make coffee”

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No-Hovercraft-455@reddit

Right my thoughts! I was thinking no shit.

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F0rbiddenD0nut@reddit

Yeah, real groundbreaking stuff here. I was assuming the pilots just threw their hands up in the air and said "whelp, were fucked"

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YOURE_GONNA_HATE_ME@reddit

Just saw this headline on facebook and it just rubs me the wrong way. Of course they tried to control it, their lives were on the line.

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notalk82@reddit

I overheard some random person this morning talking about how dumb the pilots were for trying to take off while having the engine problems, like as if he thought it was possible to just "slam on the brakes" at the end of the runway and just magically come to a full stop without any damage or loss of life or anything.

I'm not even remotely close to being a pilot but even my dumbass knows how incredibly ignorant that self assured jackass was being by saying something like that.

Sorry about the rant but your comment about being rubbed the wrong way reminded me of that jackass statement i thought I had suppressed/forgotten and I got annoyed again and wanted to vent.

It's really incredible just how confidentiality incorrect some people can be.

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BigJellyfish1906@reddit

Facebook idiot aside, maybe the entire industry needs to rethink how we view V1. There are absolutely scenario‘s where I would rather roll off the end of the runway at 30 kts than go flying.

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GGCRX@reddit

The trouble is you have maybe a second or two to figure out whether you're in one of those situations before you either take off or roll off the runway a hell of a lot faster than 30kts.

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BigJellyfish1906@reddit

I wasn’t imagining arbitrarily expanding abort decisions above V1. I’m talking about actually changing how V1 is calculated to potentially allow a low speed exit off the end of the runway. I’d rather roll through the EMAS than go flying with something like a failed engine, cabin&cargo smoke. Think like compound stuff.

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GGCRX@reddit

And the problem there is that the for the vast majority of post-V1 emergencies, it's fine to take off, work the problem in the air, then land resulting in no damage to the plane other than whatever caused the emergency in the first place.

If you change the calculation, then many of the above situations will result in a runway overrun which will cause extra, sometimes significant, damage to the plane, potentially hurt people on board or even on the ground (picture a post-V1 runway overrun at TNCM on 28 and how many tourists you'd kill).

Plus you might cause very expensive damage to the airport if the runway has EMAS for problems that would have been fine to just circle and land with.

It may or may not have saved the 3 pilots on this UPS flight, but it almost definitely would cause a lot more injuries, financial losses, and potentially even deaths overall.

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BigJellyfish1906@reddit

V1 isn’t like some flawed concept. So it’s not like this would be necessary for the vast majority of scenarios. But there are scenarios you can come up with where I would rather actually not get airborne if I can avoid it.

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GGCRX@reddit

Definitely. But how do you determine you're in one of those scenarios in the split-seconds between V1 and V(scenario)1?

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Fragrant_Alternative@reddit

Isn't the issue though that in those rare scenarios where that's preferable, it's not really possible for the pilots to obtain the information necessary to know that they're in one of those rare scenarios? Especially not in the 10 seconds they'd have to make that call?

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BigJellyfish1906@reddit

Facebook idiot aside, maybe the entire industry needs to rethink how we view V1. There are absolutely scenario‘s where I would rather roll off the end of the runway at 30 kts than go flying.

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TogaPower@reddit

Journalists are some of the most unintelligent people out there. Did you expect a reasonable headline from one?

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Ordinary_Kyle@reddit

I'd argue that journalists are writing for an audience that eats this shit up, you think clickbait started because of the writer and not the moronic viewer?

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TogaPower@reddit

Eh, both are for sure to blame. While it’s true that many viewers are moronic, the typical journalist is hardly any better. This is evident when you actually read what they produce beyond the headline and find how often it is riddled with inaccuracies and downright falsehoods despite their only job being to get it correct.

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GGCRX@reddit

Full disclosure, I used to be a journalist.

I also get annoyed when journalists get aviation stuff wrong. I didn't, but then I've been an airplane nerd since I was a little kid, unlike most people, and that gave me an advantage.

But journalists have a difficult job in that, for many, they're covering a different subject every day.

Today I might be covering the plane crash. Tomorrow I'm doing a political debate, the next day I'm talking to a hog farmer about a new law regulating his manure lagoon and what it's going to do to his animals and his bottom line, the day after that it's a new technique for lung cancer surgery, and then for day 5 I'm squishing my way through a wetland covering a species diversification study.

That's aviation, physics, political science, agriculture, environmentalism, medicine, wildlife biology, and ecology, plus whatever subjects they argued about in the debate, and I'm supposed to have expert-level knowledge in all of them in just one week. It's not possible, and then next week I have 5 more topics to learn (and actually more than 5 - most days I did 3 stories on 3 totally different subjects - one in-depth and two short ones).

There's no way anyone can become an expert on literally everything, but news outlet owners are, with fairly rare exceptions, unwilling to pay for the staffing levels required to have every subject matter beat covered by an expert so journalists are expected to try. And all for wages that are often less than an assistant department manager at Home Depot makes.

They're not dumb, they're given an impossible task and are mostly trying to do the best they can at it.

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NapsInNaples@reddit

Journalists are some of the most unintelligent people out there

You are doing the thing you're accusing journalists of. You're coming into a new topic (journalism) taking a few facts you've just learned (they make mistakes sometimes), and trying to draw a conclusion (journalists are stupid).

Of course...you also got it wrong. So...if journalists are dumb, so are you buddy.

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AccomplishedHold4645@reddit

That's one of the rawest takes of circa-2015 Facebook, but it's trite.

They know the public expects some update from the briefing, and they're reporting the very little they can.

The alternative is clickbait speculation and "people are saying" non-information.

It is, in fact, relevant that the crew was trying to the last second despite possibly realizing the situation's severity. That may be obvious to you, but plenty of members of the public could imagine the crew just feeling defeated or panicking. This headline, if anything, bolsters the image of the pilots.

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Safe-Informal@reddit

I think about United 93 on September 11th. The media made them out to be heroes, saving lives by preventing the plane from crashing into a building. The passengers knew the intentions of the terrorists and tried to regain control so they could live. It was self-preservation.

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F0rbiddenD0nut@reddit

I mean, it's a pretty different situation. The passengers of Flight 93 are considered heroes because they fought back against the terrorists, which wasn't the case on the other 3 planes.

Maybe the other flights' passengers would have done the same if they knew it was a suicide mission, we'll never know. But I think writing off the actions of those folks as pure self preservation and not seeing it as an act of serious courage is pretty reductive.

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BigJellyfish1906@reddit

What are garbage headline. Clearly click bait, and a strained attempt to create something out of nothing.

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Mobile-Ice-7261@reddit

As opposed to what exactly? Get up from their seats and do the conga?

Stupidest headline Ive ever read.

"Dude driving car when it crashed was operating the vehicle when it crashed, new information at 11"

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UpbeatAssumption5817@reddit

I would hope so.

It's unfortunate the air traffic control is to garbled to hear what was said. There was clearly some type of engine separation. I'm curious how much they were able to communicate before the crash happened

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udonkittypro@reddit

That seems to be misunderstanding. The ATC audio from LiveATC, which is the publicly recorded channel, was unusable. But the ATC audio from the actual control facility recordings, and the audio from the CVR, which contains the ATC audio from inside the airplane, would be readable and normal.

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babyp6969@reddit

We saw different videos.. it was level for a while but eventually rolled and the cockpit impact was upside down.

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G-III-@reddit

I can’t help but think of American flight 191

Air crashes that you know are 100% doomed always have a sense of added tragedy in the hopelessness of any efforts made. Heroics that are guaranteed to fail. The clearest reminder you can take every possible correct action and fail, through no fault of your own.

Blue skies and tailwinds to the pilots

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Evilbred@reddit

They're by no means doomed. As long as the wings are still on the plane, airliners have very good glide ratios, and can often can set down in an open space

(this is not good for the aircraft).

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Federal-Property1461@reddit

Not if you are like 191. On that accident the separation retracted the slats on the affected wing

That caused the left wing to essentially half its lift. And you arent recovering from that, the ailerons at max deflection cant counter that much of a rolling motion

Just because the wings are on the aircraft, doesnt mean the control surfaces can keep the aircraft level. Nor does it mean that the aircraft is in control.

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Charlie3PO@reddit

AA191 was still controllable until the aircraft slowed towards V2 and the left wing stalled. Theoretically, if the aircraft had warned the crew that they no longer had slats deployed on the left wing and the crew had maintained a speed above V2, then it was readily flyable. Slats mostly just delay the stall, if you're above the stall speed for a slatless wing then they don't really change lift much. So initially the aircraft was controllable, the lift on both wings was essentially equal. But as they slows, the lack of slats meant the left wing stalled at a much higher speed than it otherwise would have, causing sudden reduction in lift and roll.

The sad part is that the crew had no way of knowing that the slats had retracted, so they followed their training and slowed to V2. There was no way for them to know that doing the correct thing on that day would doom them. If they had stayed fast, they probably would've landed safely.

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Evilbred@reddit

Ok, but I mean if you have control authority, even if you don't have thrust

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Connect-Fan4715@reddit

AAL191 still had full thrust out of the #2 (tail-mount) and #3 (right underwing-mount), but the loss of the #1 and left wing slats meant they had pretty much no control authority once the left wing stalled. Hindsight is 20/20, but the crew on AAL191 did everything right - pitched for V2 with maximum remaining thrust. They had no way of knowing the severity of the failure given the loss of power to the slat disagreement sensor and stick shaker.

AAL191 had plenty of thrust, just no control authority. UPS2976 seems to unfortunately be the other way around - the crew did a heroic job in keeping the wings level, but didn't have enough power to climb their heavily-loaded aircraft.

Yes, airliners have very good glide ratios (compared to the space shuttle I suppose, not compared to gliders), but when you have little to no altitude, your range is very limited - UPS2976 likely got as far as was physically possible given their condition. The same can be said for cases like AWE1549 - glide ratio only gets you so far when you have no altitude or speed to exchange.

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CoastRegular@reddit

Yup. One of the three most useless things in aviation is, as the old adage goes, the air above you.

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G-III-@reddit

When I say doomed, it’s with the benefit of hindsight, not referring to any situation with a crippled aircraft.

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failureat111N31st@reddit

Also makes me think of the Challenger space shuttle. I've read when they recovered what was left of the crew capsule, switches were found in different positions than they would have been for launch. They tried to fly it all the way down.

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railker@reddit

Was the same for Columbia too, comms were lost <1m before actual breakup/separation, but in that time data recorder and switches indicated they were trying to start the Auxiliary Power Unit and do what they were trained to do to, work the problem with what they had.

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Imaginary_ation@reddit

Umm, of course they did lol

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upbeatelk2622@reddit

This news item doesn't say anything. Most crew will fight using the only method they know - they need to have a base level of trust that the controls still work. Very few are like the guy from the Western Airlines 2605 crew, screaming in horror towards his death.

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“About 37 seconds after the crew called for takeoff thrust, a repeating bell was heard on the CVR (cockpit voice recorder), which persisted until the end of the recording 25 seconds later. During this time, the crew engaged in efforts to attempt to control the aircraft before the crash,”

They're saying that the crew was focused on flying the airplane during an emergency. It's darkly amusing how something so factual can be strangely so obvious.

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Evilbred@reddit

Smart. Uncontrolled aircraft are quite dangerous.