Mechanical & Training
Boeing 777 Autothrottle
San Jose’s NBC affiliate is reporting that a “trap” in the Flight Level Change mode (FLCH) of the plane’s autothrottle system may have contributed to the July 6 crash. According to the report, the “trap” exists if a pilot is using the Flight Level Change mode to decrease altitude during a final descent. At some programmed altitude point, the engines go into an “idle” mode. Then, in a last minute emergency, if the plane is in FLCH mode and the pilot tries to quickly use the autothrottle to add power, it won’t add any power to the idle engine.
SF firefighter helmet cam video shows covering the body of Ye Meng Yuan (SFFD)
中国语文 Chinese Version In an unfortunate apparent reaction to the tragic accidental killing of Asiana flight 214 16-year-old passenger Ye Meng Yuan, San Francisco Fire Department Chief Joanne Hayes-White has banned helmet video cameras from emergency scenes. It was footage from Fire Battalion Chief Mark Johnson’s helmet camera that confirmed that fire trucks had run over the injured passenger during the July 6 emergency response at San Francisco International Airport. Hayes-White said that she was concerned that filming the scene may have violated both firefighters’ and victims’ privacy. She added that Johnson had been interviewed regarding the filming possibly violating fire department policy.
UPS 1394 Short of Runway 18, Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport Photo: Butch Dill (AP)
“You have to realize that hill is there or you could come in too low.”
A flight safety spokesman told Reuters that landing at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport can be tricky “because it is nestled among hills and that is especially true of Runway 18.” Kevin Hiatt, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation told Reuters’ Birmingham-based journalist Verna Gates that a “full instrument” landing (autopilot) was not highly advisable at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth Airport.
The UPS Airbus A300 cargo plane with two crew members aboard reportedly clipped trees as it approached the runway before crashing into a hill just short of Runway 18.
Black Box Prototype, 1958
Trans Australia Airlines flight 538 and the first Black Box, 1960
The information recorders in a modern cockpit consist of 2 types of recorders. The Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) and the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). The first prototype of the the coupled FDR/CVR was developed in Australia during the 1950s. Although at first slow to recognize the importance of Australian scientist Dave Warren’s invention, after the 1960 crash of Trans Australia Airlines flight 538, the Australian government became the first country in the world to make cockpit-voice recording compulsory.
NTSB worker carries out the black box (NTSB)
As is becoming all too familiar, preliminary NTSB reports indicate that the UPS Airbus A300 flight that crashed in Birmingham, Alabama on Wednesday killing the 2 person crew made no distress call before the crash. Likewise, Asiana 214 which crash landed at San Francisco International just 5 weeks earlier made no distress call before hitting the edge of the seawall and shearing off the landing gear and tail section of the plane while killing 3 and injuring over 100 passengers.
(AP)
According to a report on the ABC7-San Francisco website, a firefighter carried 16-year-old Ye Meng Yuan from the back of the Asiana flight 214 airplane and left her near the left wing, a hazardous place as the huge ARFF rigs jockeyed to fight the fire. San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White says a blanket of foam may have covered the girl, and Mobile 37, the truck firefighter Elyse Duckett was driving, did not have Forward Looking Infrared (FLIR) that can pick up a person’s heat.
(Aviation.TV)
A new wrinkle in the mystery surrounding the crash raises questions about not only how pilots are trained to fly new aircraft, but also the if the communication protocol in the cockpit differs based on culture. In a piece for National Geographic, Clark Howard asks if author Malcolm Gladwell’s Theory of Cockpit Culture could apply to Asiana Crash? In the 2008 best selling book Outliers, Gladwell wrote about the safety record of Korean Air. In the book, Gladwell said that Korean Air’s problem at the time was not old planes or poor crew training.
“What they were struggling with was a cultural legacy, that Korean culture is hierarchical.”
