ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?

Posted by Ikes Blog at 2/17/2009 1:04 PM
Categories: AVIATION
  I'm a NASCAR fan.  I just watched the Daytona 500.  One thing that impresssed me was that Jeff Gordon told his pit crew,  "I've got a vibration.  I think my right front tire is going away and I'm coming in."  He felt the vibration in his wheel and knew what was going wrong.  His race car was talking to him and he was smart enough to listen to it before he ended up in the wall. Why am I starting this article about a race car when the thrust of this is about an airplane?  Because there is a common denominator here.  Had the pilot of Continental #  3407 been hand flying his aircraft during the approach into Buffalo (the jury is still out on this because of the AFM recommendations for flying into ice with the auto-pilot controlling the aircraft isn't clear on the amount of ice that will dictate the proper procedure), HE would have felt the nibble of the stick shaker (HIS AIRPLANE TALKING TO HIM) telling him something was wrong and he could have gotten ahead of the problem.  Instead, nothing was done until the auto-pilot couldn't handle things and turned itself off at the same time the "stick pusher" tried to shove the nose down.  But, the nose didn't go down.  Instead it abruptly shot up  and instantly stalled the aircraft.  Why?  Most likely, (yet to be established by more FDR details from the NTS the auto-pilot ran out of authority and couldn't handle the situation.  The pilot got a handful of airplane out of trim and in a stalled conditiion.  He couldn't handle it.  Things went too far.  The aircraft suddendly pitched up thirty degrees, stalled, rolled 46 degrees to the left then 105 degrees to the right and dropped its nose totally out of control (losing 800 feet in five seconds).  The odds are from the ground impact evidence the aircraft was in a flat spin as it plumetted toward the ground and ended up pointing in the opposite direction it was originally heading because when it hit, it was spinning like a top.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, it only destroyed a single house instead of an entire block.
  Is this fact or simply speculation?  It's speculation based on my years of experience flying in icing conditions and knowing what can, and does, happen to aircraft when ice buildup affects the aerodynamics.  Not only does ice buildup on the wings cause loss of lift, but ice buildup on the horizontal stabilizer can cause problems with ability to control the pitch (nose up or down). 
  I' m not jumping to any conclusion.  Let's leave that to the experts making up the NTSB.  But, I do have an opinion based on over 41,000 hours of flying and years of doing accident investigatiion.  I think that the probable cause of this disaster will point to "crew error."   We won't go into the many possibilities where judgment and actiions played a roll.  I only hope that we learn from this so that it won't happen again.  Good luck NTSB.
 

What did you think of this article?




Trackbacks
Trackback specific URL for this post
Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

Leave a comment

 Enter the above security code (required)

 Name

 Email (will not be published)

 Website

Your comment is 0 characters limited to 3000 characters.