SFO Airplane Crash/Fire

OK... But Why was he so short??? By my calculations he came up 300 yards short of the minimum touchdown zone.... Thats a long ways off to be a fcuking brain fart.

 

No Shit, almost 1/4 mile short? Very odd even if it's a power failure, those planes will power out on one motor without much excitement.

OK... But Why was he so short??? By my calculations he came up 300 yards short of the minimum touchdown zone.... Thats a long ways off to be a fcuking brain fart.

Agreed but the issue with these big ass engines is the spool time. If you happen to pull the throttle all the way to idle and then need power quickly to make up for a mistake it takes a considerable amount of time for the turbine to spin up enough to give you power (FAA regs define a time of 8 seconds from idle to go around thrust) which while landing is a long ass time. which is why most of the time when on an approach you never bring a turbine to idle. Infact you are usually trained to bring the plane in with about 30-40% power with alot of flaps and spoilers to avoid just such a situation. If that is indeed what happened here there would be a drastic sink rate that would have to be overcome. .

 

As for the audio Im not 100% sure but having heard a number of accidents over radio i have always been surprised at how calm and collected ATC is. From what I can gather from departure info and the time of crash what you are hearing is as the plane crashes but the only thing you hear is when the mic is keyed, So if some one press the talk button says their schpeel and then the freq is silent for 10-20 seconds you don't hear the "silent gap". so there may be a lot going on that you dont hear.

I was going to say, those things don't rev like a weed wacker but I thought the standard procedure was to be on the throttle until you knew things were going well. I guess we'll have to wait to see the telemetry data, and confirm if there was an oh Shit, gas it moment or not.

 

 

This should explain a bit about what happened, for those who haven't seen it yet.

 

From that it looks like he got a little high (between second and third line left to right) pulled the throttle back too make up for it but did too much and then proceeded to need power but didnt get it (for what ever reason). Plus the overall approach seems a lot steeper which we can infer would mean lower throttle setting.

 

edit: after more thought I almost wonder if that little level off was when the power was initially applied (aka realization that they where going to be short) and a slight pitch up. Then it leveled out as airspeed bled off and then the bottom drops out and they sink back down in the last segment to the ultimate crash.

It's been said that the 777 is so safe you have to almost TRY to crash the plane. In most other countries the co-pilot takes over if he sees the capt making a fatal error, not so with Korean flight crews ( out of respect).

Going to be interesting to see what the crew has to say to the NTSB.

 

In the not-so distant past, Korean Air's safety record was not one to be proud of and many of the disasters were caused by pilot error. The reasons behind this were to do with the process of favouring older, ex-military fighter pilots in the recruitment process and the culture of hierarchy in the cockpit itself while flying, in which the pilot of the plane would rarely listen to or respect his co-pilot's opinion, which caused fatal mistakes. A full explanation of the issue can be seen in this article in the Wall Street Journal. At one point of the article it tells of how Korean pilots would actually punch their co-pilots in the arm when they did something wrong or did not agree with what they were doing. During a training simulation in the US a Korean pilot did the same to his American co-pilot but instead of receiving fear and respect the American simply said, 'do that again and I will break your arm!' In my view, the correct response.

Can someone PM when we can start doing the casual racism Asian driver stereotypes jokes please.

Just curious, but what conditioning do you speak of?

 

Classically conditioned. People always get in and out of aircraft the same way. They put their bags in the over head bins or under the seats in front of them. There is no form of emergency egress practice that a passenger ever does, so when an emergency does occur the person, without conscious thought, does what their muscle memory commands.

 

Same concept as train how you fight, fight how you train:

 

"...for the same reason that police officers, under the old training regimen, put their spent brass into their pockets in the middle of real gunfights without conscious thought. ...that police officers fired two shots and then reholster in the middle of a gunfight when the deadly threat was still in front of them. These officers responded the way they had been trained on the firing range." Source: On Combat by Lt. Col Dave Grossma

Agreed but the issue with these big ass engines is the spool time. If you happen to pull the throttle all the way to idle and then need power quickly to make up for a mistake it takes a considerable amount of time for the turbine to spin up enough to give you power (FAA regs define a time of 8 seconds from idle to go around thrust) which while landing is a long ass time. which is why most of the time when on an approach you never bring a turbine to idle. Infact you are usually trained to bring the plane in with about 30-40% power with alot of flaps and spoilers to avoid just such a situation. If that is indeed what happened here there would be a drastic sink rate that would have to be overcome.

 

Modern turbo fan engines aren't that bad. At any point above decision height (the commit landing/go-around point on an ILS precision approach) there is always enough time to guarantee a go around. Hell, I've gone around at like 10 feet with a 200k+ lb jet, sure you may still touch down but that's normal.

 

Of interest, the ILS for both runways are NOTAM'd out (aka: they are INOP). Without looking at the actual NOTAM, they may have been doing a localizer approach, which would explain the higher altitudes in that profile picture posted earlier. That is normal, since it is less precise the aircraft stays higher.

 

Always possible, they could have been just doing a visual approach. This is most common on clear, VFR, days since that means ATC can keep aircraft closer together and increase efficiency.

 

What really needs to be concluded is if the aircraft had an emergency before the landing or because of the landing. Sure, it could easily be pilot error on the landing but that is rare. A stereotypical 777 flight crew is extremely experienced and has thousands of flight hours. And a flight from Seoul to SFO would probably require an augmented crew (I don't know the exact flight time but it's a safe assumption), so there was more than one crew on board because of the duration of the flight to prevent fatigue related accidents.

It's been said that the 777 is so safe you have to almost TRY to crash the plane. In most other countries the co-pilot takes over if he sees the capt making a fatal error, not so with Korean flight crews ( out of respect).

I've read this before, can't remember which book though. It's so stupid actually, what if you have to choice to correct your captain and save the plane or do nothing and crash with everyone in it. You just got to take over.

I've read this before, can't remember which book though. It's so stupid actually, what if you have to choice to correct your captain and save the plane or do nothing and crash with everyone in it. You just got to take over.

 

Not just on Korean/Japanese flight crews. Worst aviation disaster in history (Tenerife 747 vs 747) was caused by the KLM Chief Pilot taking off without clearance and the co-pilot not having the stones to stop him. Co even said, I don't think we have clearance...pilot still went...583 dead.

 

 

Wohooo degree paying off again. I just wrote a paper on that exact scenario about 3 months ago.

This should explain a bit about what happened, for those who haven't seen it yet.

 

 

 

Well... There it is... Got too high in the approach and tried to get down anyway.... Probably had to pee. Ended up too low/no thrust/ tried to flare out and stalled/tail smacked it.

 

It will be interesting to see what the attitude of the plane is superimposed over that line... Especially in that last 40 degree drop into the bay.

 

BTW... Theyre actually pretty lucky they didnt skid off into the bay... Im not sure how deep it is right there, but Im guessing deep enough to drown them all.

Well... There it is... Got too high in the approach and tried to get down anyway.... Probably had to pee. Ended up too low/no thrust/ tried to flare out and stalled/tail smacked it.

 

It will be interesting to see what the attitude of the plane is superimposed over that line... Especially in that last 40 degree drop into the bay.

 

BTW... Theyre actually pretty lucky they didnt skid off into the bay... Im not sure how deep it is right there, but Im guessing deep enough to drown them all.

 

That isn't necessarily the case. While I "think" it is pilot error due to a bad approach, if he was doing a localizer approach that is fairly normal. That is how the approach is built, lots of step downs to a solid altitude at the end where they level off and fly straight to the runway at that height. Remember, the ILS glideslope was out of service. So he was either visual (likely) or doing a localizer. Regardless, the runway should have some sort of visual glideslope indications (PAPI's or VASI's) and he obviously wasn't using them.

 

Also, where did that picture come from? There is NO WAY the FDR/CVR data has been recovered and made public yet (ditto with ATC transponder scope records). I don't believe for one second that picture is based on any sort of scientific data.

 

Wow...how inconvenienced you must be.

 

#fatbitch

Wow, what a stupid bitch. Love how she blames all of South Korea too.

Wow, what a stupid bitch. Love how she blames all of South Korea too.

 

Wait for it....

 

 

"The practice of allowing Koreans to land planes at U.S. Airports is a policy carried over from the previous administration."

Modern turbo fan engines aren't that bad. At any point above decision height (the commit landing/go-around point on an ILS precision approach) there is always enough time to guarantee a go around. Hell, I've gone around at like 10 feet with a 200k+ lb jet, sure you may still touch down but that's normal.

 

Of interest, the ILS for both runways are NOTAM'd out (aka: they are INOP). Without looking at the actual NOTAM, they may have been doing a localizer approach, which would explain the higher altitudes in that profile picture posted earlier. That is normal, since it is less precise the aircraft stays higher.

 

Always possible, they could have been just doing a visual approach. This is most common on clear, VFR, days since that means ATC can keep aircraft closer together and increase efficiency.

 

What really needs to be concluded is if the aircraft had an emergency before the landing or because of the landing. Sure, it could easily be pilot error on the landing but that is rare. A stereotypical 777 flight crew is extremely experienced and has thousands of flight hours. And a flight from Seoul to SFO would probably require an augmented crew (I don't know the exact flight time but it's a safe assumption), so there was more than one crew on board because of the duration of the flight to prevent fatigue related accidents.

You bring up some very good points here but one that I will bring up a counter point for is that I have trained numerous (well over 2 dozen) pilots for asian airlines (4 different airlines) and while yes the stereotypical crews for 777's in the US are very experienced its not as true for the asian airlines. While I can not speak for this airline I know of numerous younger than 30 and less than 5000hr 777 pilots working for other asian airlines. In fact I trained one guy and got him 400 hrs total from private pilot up to a kingair c90 and then he jumped right into right seat on a 777 so that aspect may (emphasis on the may) be different.

Another point that jpegs brought up has crossed my mind as well not just with the aspect of bringing up another persons error but having the ability to fess up to your own mistake. If they where coming in short ive seen it time and time again where people just wont do the right thing and go around, they see it as a hit on the pride/ego/honor, and as a result have horrible landings and potentially dire consequences.

 

Of course this could just be another occurrence like British airways flight 38 where they lost power on short final due to ice crystals in the fuel(was supposed to be fixed). We are all just speculating as we always do.

Also, where did that picture come from? There is NO WAY the FDR/CVR data has been recovered and made public yet (ditto with ATC transponder scope records). I don't believe for one second that picture is based on any sort of scientific data.

 

The picture was made with data from FlightAware. I'm sure it's not as accurate as what's in the FDR, but it certainly doesn't appear to be fabricated. If you go here: http://flightaware.com/live/flight/AAR214/...0730Z/RKSI/KSFO you can download the plane's path and load it in Google Earth.

 

You bring up some very good points here but one that I will bring up a counter point for is that I have trained numerous (well over 2 dozen) pilots for asian airlines (4 different airlines) and while yes the stereotypical crews for 777's in the US are very experienced its not as true for the asian airlines. While I can not speak for this airline I know of numerous younger than 30 and less than 5000hr 777 pilots working for other asian airlines. In fact I trained one guy and got him 400 hrs total from private pilot up to a kingair c90 and then he jumped right into right seat on a 777 so that aspect may (emphasis on the may) be different.

Another point that jpegs brought up has crossed my mind as well not just with the aspect of bringing up another persons error but having the ability to fess up to your own mistake. If they where coming in short ive seen it time and time again where people just wont do the right thing and go around, they see it as a hit on the pride/ego/honor, and as a result have horrible landings and potentially dire consequences.

 

Of course this could just be another occurrence like British airways flight 38 where they lost power on short final due to ice crystals in the fuel(was supposed to be fixed). We are all just speculating as we always do.

 

Eeek. Well train em well!

 

I don't think it will be connected to the British Airways flight. This 777 had completely different engines than the BA one:

 

 

The 777-200ER, one of 12 in the Asiana fleet, was powered by the Pratt & Whitney PW4090 engines.

The 777 that crashed at Heathrow was powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 895s.

(The 200ER GE engines are 90-94Bs, the 115Bs are on the 300LR)

Lots of knowledgeable guys in here. Slightly OT question: Which airlines do you guys feel are the best maintained, trained, and "safe?"

Lots of knowledgeable guys in here. Slightly OT question: Which airlines do you guys feel are the best maintained, trained, and "safe?"

 

No idea. But having the new plane smell never hurts. I'd say, stereo-typically, I trust US or European flight crews more than others. Arab flight crews scare me...I fly with them out here and...yea...not good. But that doesn't mean Qatari airlines or whatever is shit, because they hire tons of US and European pilots.

 

Overall, they are ALL reasonably safe. You are by a large factor severely more likely to die on your drive to the airport than when you actually get in the aircraft. I forget the exact statistic but it's A LOT.

 

Airplane accidents are very rare, so when they do happen it's big news. And as you can see with this case, contrary to popular belief, there is a good chance you will survive the accident as well.

Lots of knowledgeable guys in here. Slightly OT question: Which airlines do you guys feel are the best maintained, trained, and "safe?"

Anything not full of Cyrillic letters on the bodywork...

just found some interesting data

Air asiana flight path for the last 30 minutes of flight over the past few days (same flight number). It appears that on the 5th the aircraft had to execute a go around hence the lower altitude

 

And heres the same 30 minute window compared with other airlines

 

And then finally the last 5 minutes

 

for some reason it gets very low.

 

(all data using Flight aware so it wont be as accurate as a black box but interesting non the less)

Excuse my ignorance on this but are you saying the low approach is a company policy?

Excuse my ignorance on this but are you saying the low approach is a company policy?

not at all just that this one came in low for some reason at the 28 minute mark