Freighter crash, Houston

[Pontius Navigator]

BOAC, as there was no CVR exchange between pilots that could support your suggestion that the Captain was not in his seat.

Neither pilot communicated anything about the change with the other

The captain was distracted with other duties preparing for the approach.

What evidence led them to this conclusion?

[Boac]

OK - found the transcript. Very confusing - it took about 12 seconds from initiation of g/a for the Captain to ask what was going on!! Nothing from him on the CVR until that apart from a 'routine R/T transmission. What on earth could he have been doing that 'distracted' him from watching the shop? It appears to be the jump seater who calls 'pull up' as well. Lots of noises on the CAM as well and little from HOT-1.

[Pontius Navigator]

At least my original assumption of a powered descent was correct.

[Boac]

I don't follow - the throttles were retarded to idle.

[barkingmad]

DEI = DIE in this case?

Just out on Fox News a disturbing angle on airline recruitment;



Not a good advert for the wokeness afflicting all industries just as we recover from the self-inflicted wounds acquired during the battle with the “plague”...

But that’s another story in another thread...

[Boac]

Mentor has produced a good run-down on the crash. Captain was, it appears, in his seat but not in the same aircraft......

[reddo]

This event we covered during our Masters. I'll watch the Mentour YouTube clip soon.
The NTSB analysis was very interesting.

[Ex-Ascot]

Thank you Boac. What a couple of bozos. What ever happened to believe your instruments. Also all this swapping over of control. You can be PF and still give a briefing. And, messing about with programming the FMS at the last minute. Just fly the bloody thing. Note the colour of the F/O in the simulation.

Thank goodness it wasn't a pax flight. A few gnomes may have been killed which will upset G-Man.

Never used airbrakes. My opinion is if you have to use them you have screwed up. Puts waves on the champagne on the flight deck. Never used them on landing either. You have paid for the whole runway so use it. Always calculated my red carpet time by using the whole of the tarmac.

[reddo]

Peder has done a good analysis on that event. He's stuck pretty closely to the NTSB findings which is reasonable.
This event shows why using non aviation specialists to do initial screening of applicants is flawed. They did not pick up on the note "blogs has returned to the line as an FO". The Atlas Air chief pilot commented that if he'd have seen that, he would not employed Blogs.
Blogs did use the race card a few times. Sadly, instead of accepting his flaws and considering another career, he killed himself and 2 others as well as destroying an aircraft.
While the captain was not "ace of the base", given the scenario, I doubt he could have performed much better.
The FO was appalling. In one sim scenario, the trainer commented that instead of trying to work through the problem, he just turned and looked at the trainer. Not exactly the right response.
I suspect he thought he was stalling from the somatogravic illusion and probably confusing the barber pole as the low speed cue

There had been a few incidents where the watch accidently triggered TOGA. No one else had crashed... Ironically, if no flap had been selected, TOGA would not have triggered.

Swapping of controls during a brief is recommended with us if the brief is expected to be longer than usual or containing abnormal/special elements.
If I don't use the speed brake, the CL350 will overspeed. We need to use it. The wing is too slippery otherwise.

[Boac]

given the scenario, I doubt he could have performed much better.

I strongly disagree - I would like to think that even in my mentally degraded current retired state I would notice if someone went to TOGA during an arrival/descent! My eyes might well have been attentive to what was happening from then on, and loads of brown on the AI would have probably have caused me some upset (of the non-jet type). Also, what was the j/seater doing? Just recently it appears that occupants of cockpits are not paying much attention.

[Rossian]

Hearing the full history of the FO in the video above reminded me of an accident (fatal) in a Canberra PR9 in Sicily a long time ago,(late 60s). It was a time when RAF flight safety started to look in a bit more depth at incidents/accidents looking for what they described as "root causes". In this case it turned out that the pilot had "squeaked through" at every stage of his flying training yet no-one had picked up on it and joined the dots OR said anything about it!! End result, he was let loose in a PR9, which a mate of mine described as an "alloominum pursuit ship", at low level in the mountains of Sicily.Which turned out to be beyond his capacity.

The Ancient Mariner

[reddo]

BOAC, I disagree. I read the full NTSB report and prepared an essay on Information Processing deficits for my masters on this event.
The FO was calling out weird stuff "ooh woah" etc which is not particularly conducive to analysing what's going on. The captain was "heads down" when the TOGA was activated - not planned to - therefore, there's no expectation the TOGA would be active. He was distracted by the FO and so didn't get a chance to consciously process what was going on. There's no audio announcement so no attention getting action if you're not looking at it. Humans are not good at seeing change unless they have witnessed the change occuring in front of them. Card sharks play on this weakness.

Subconsciously he did process something. Hence the pull back input. Where he failed was to consciously announce he was doing that. Probably because of the somatogravic inputs, not expecting to be in TOGA and probably exacerbated by the head movements from the FMS to the instruments.
Sure, his performance wasn't optimal but we've seen the same thing with the Air France 447 event when the captain had to figure out what on earth was going on without the full story of the sequence of events leading to the stall.

From TOGA to impact was 31 seconds. That is not a long time to shift a mental model from a nice steady descent around some weather to muppet next to me has completely spannered this and has stoofed the nose down.

The jumpseater was not part of the airline's crew. He was deadheading home before starting a new job.

I suggest you read the NTSB report. The video merely touched on the FO's history. He should never have had a CPL, let alone an ATP(L).

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

But what is the industry doing about pilots like this FO and the Air France crew, who clearly can't fly an aircraft when anything unexpected happens?
Especially since the entire point of having humans in the cockpit today is to deal with the unexpected, since the automatics can handle the normal business of flying A to B.
It's not just the aviation industry - one look at recent Navy accidents shows that too, and I could name a bunch of others, such as education.
Automation can handle a lot, but not the unexpected or the failure of the automatics.
Business wants cheap and compliant personnel. The demands of the job are for experience, practice, and decisive judgment. These are opposites.

[Boac]

reddo wrote:
I suggest you read the NTSB report

Been there and got that T-Shirt. NB I have not commented on the F/O, just the Captain. As did the NTSB. "The Board also cited the Atlas captain for failing to closely supervise the FO and also his failure to assume command of the aircraft when things began heading south."
What WAS the Captain doing? Patently not in command.

Re the j/seater - of course he was not 'part of the crew', but he was there. If it had been me, I would have been selecting a hard heavy object with which to incapacitate a clearly Barking Mad F/O.

[Ex-Ascot]

Your comments noted Reddo. Speed brakes for your type OK. But, you shouldn't shake champagne. If I am in the RHS here or even just behind the driver I pay a lot of attention. I have very reluctantly reported a couple of pilots. Had one local who acted as if he was a taxi driver with one hand casually on the stick. Up and down 250' and plus or minus 10 degs on heading. He just didn't give a stuff about accuracy. Standards here have really dropped since foreigners are not allowed to work here. It is only a matter of time that we have another major accident. Just hope it is not us on board. One has to say that there are some very good local pilots. Flown with a chubby little girlie a few times who is outstanding. I think that it was her we had to go around at the last minute because of an animal on the strip.

Fox as you know pilots today are trained as system operators not as pilots. At Monarch we were encouraged to hand fly. Many airlines today insist on auto land.

[Pinky the pilot]

as you know pilots today are trained as system operators not as pilots.

Aint it the truth! Such as most, if not all, the sausages coming through the 'Academy' at an Airfield near Adelaide. it seems that they are permitted to use the autopilot on all Nav training flights. Shows up on FR24 where their tracks are dead straight!!

I wonder just what would happen if, when doing their CPL Flight test, the examiner would say to them prior to T/O the same thing that was said to me by the Testing Officer (Tony F; ex RAAF) on my CPL test, flying a Seneca 1.

"For the purpose of this flight you will assume that the autopilot and all Navaids are unserviceable"

[barkingmad]

Boac sez:- - - -“Re the j/seater - of course he was not 'part of the crew', but he was there. If it had been me, I would have been selecting a hard heavy object with which to incapacitate a clearly Barking Mad F/O“.

Why did you take my name in vain in connection with this accident?

I won’t afford a lawyer to do you for slander/libel or from wotever is I have suffered a micro-aggression but perhaps you might have chosen a less ambiguous term.

Re: “mentally degraded current retired state” after too many years away from the ‘seat’, you may consult the training captains who witnessed my performance in the B73NG simulator after 8 years away from the flight deck and they’ll testify as to my competency in test manoeuvres which actually pleasantly surprised me as well !

[Boac]

Why did you take my name in vain in connection with this accident?

Not guilty - I see your name is barkingmad, not Barking Mad?

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

"For the purpose of this flight you will assume that the autopilot and all Navaids are unserviceable"

Try my Bulldog Boss's instruction to me on my Final Handling Test :

"Fly the aircraft to a landing assuming the control column has jammed."

We were at 3,000 feet at the time.

I suppose that might be quite OK for the current lot, seeing as how they aren't allowed move the stick about