Madrid Air Crash

[lesrae]

This is very bad, various estimates say at least 100 of the ~180 passengers and crew on the MD82 are dead - possibly many more.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7572643.stm

http://dailyspain.com/top_story_spanish_news_today.php

My sympathies go out to the families.

[Jimbuna]

Latest reports are putting the figurews at 150 :hmm:

Bloody tragic

[RAM]

Emergency services reported pulling around 27 people alive out of the crash site. Some of them in critical conditions, meaning a number of them won't make it.

The plane carried a total of 175 people, 9 of them crewmen. Meaning that 148 of them are to be already taken as victims.


The plane, a MD82, should've departed almost 75 minutes earlier, but the pilot reported problems in one of the engines (I don't know which one at the moment) which could not deliver 100% power, so the plane was retired from the runway and the engine revised...in one hour.

On take off, as it's been said by people who saw the crash 1st hand, the port engine bursted into flames very near of, or just past, V1 point (no-return point, the plane must go aloft once that point is past no matter what). The plane took off but it seems the right wing stalled, putting the plane into a steep starboard bank. Wing collided against the ground, plane disintegrated into two halves, and bursted out in flames.


If the engine reported with problems before T/O was the port one...well you catch my drift. If that's the case, someone just killed 150 people today.

And another matter worth a thought. Normatives says a twin engined commercial plane should be able, once past V1, to get aloft, do a turnaround, and a safe emergency landing on just one engine. This was not the case. Barring a posible human mistake from the pilot, there's something really strange in there.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by RAM

And another matter worth a thought. Normatives says a twin engined commercial plane should be able, once past V1, to get aloft, do a turnaround, and a safe emergency landing on just one engine. This was not the case. Barring a posible human mistake from the pilot, there's something really strange in there.

If, indeed, there was a fire in the port engine, there could have been control system damage also which might explain the starboard wing stall. I believe the theory of a twin engine plane taking off with a single functional engine and making a successful turn around and emergency landing would require that the rest of the planes systems were functioning correctly (inlcuding the pilot).

Whatever the cause, it is indeed a tragedy.

[Enigma]

Emergency services reported pulling around 27 people alive out of the crash site. Some of them in critical conditions, meaning a number of them won't make it.

The plane carried a total of 175 people, 9 of them crewmen. Meaning that 148 of them are to be already taken as victims.


The plane, a MD82, should've departed almost 75 minutes earlier, but the pilot reported problems in one of the engines (I don't know which one at the moment) which could not deliver 100% power, so the plane was retired from the runway and the engine revised...in one hour.

On take off, as it's been said by people who saw the crash 1st hand, the port engine bursted into flames very near of, or just past, V1 point (no-return point, the plane must go aloft once that point is past no matter what). The plane took off but it seems the right wing stalled, putting the plane into a steep starboard bank. Wing collided against the ground, plane disintegrated into two halves, and bursted out in flames.


If the engine reported with problems before T/O was the port one...well you catch my drift. If that's the case, someone just killed 150 people today.

And another matter worth a thought. Normatives says a twin engined commercial plane should be able, once past V1, to get aloft, do a turnaround, and a safe emergency landing on just one engine. This was not the case. Barring a posible human mistake from the pilot, there's something really strange in there.

As a pilot, I'm used to it, but that's a whole lot of speculation. Not to say it doesn't sound like a good possibility, but nothing drives an aviator nuts as much as the mass speculation (usually wrong) that goes on all over after an air crash from forums to major news networks. (The latter being the biggest offenders....)

None the less, a tragedy. Breaks your heart.

[August]

Originally Posted by Enigma

None the less, a tragedy. Breaks your heart.

Very true.

[Dowly]

Spain's been having quite abit of misfortune lately. Wasnt there 2-3 bombs in Malaga this week?

[RAM]

Enigma

As a close friend of some pilots (some of iberia, one from Air europa), I know what you mean an I don't want to speculate.

The facts known right now are:

1-Pilot informed of temperature and power problems in one of the engines (which one, I still don't know).

2-revision of the engine took just one hour, plane receives the OK to fly.

3-75 minutes after the aborted take off, plane takes off for real.

4-on taking off and past V1, port engine is seen to burst in fire. Plane goes aloft but once it has gained a few meters, the plane enters a steep starboard bank, starboard wingtip impacts against a tree line present there, and the plane disintegrates and explodes. That's all confirmed by presential witnesses.

5-Normatives say a twin engined commercial plane should be able to take off, do a turn around and a safe emergency landing in case of one engine shutting off.

6-current news say only 27 people were taken from the crash site alive. From a total count of 175 people in the plane that means 148 deaths, and probably more because 8 of the survivors are in critic condition.

Those are the facts. I didn't speculate or didn't try to. I did, indeed say, that if the port engine was the one revised, there will be some very harsh consequences for whoever revised it and gave the OK to the engine and plane. That's no speculation, I think.

I also said that barring a pilot mistake something weird has gone on after the take off because the plane should've been able to fly off, and do a safe emergency landing. At least is what the normatives say it should've done. By something weird I don't mean something wrong or faulty. Maybe the engine fire caused some other problem aboard, as it's been said. What is strange is the steep bank towards starboard, as the engine which failed was the left one. MD-82s don't have too much problem with assymetric thrust because of the engines being very near the center line...but if the port engine fails, then the plane should've banked port, not starboard. That's why I said something weird happened there. And a pilot mistake is down low in the list of possible causes.
In my personal experience and knowledge I know the intensive training you guys go through in simulators that reproduce just this kind of incidents (engine failure during take off) so I don't take the human mistake explanation for granted (like many others who usually do it each time a plane crash happens).

[STEED]

These things happen..................

[Linton]

Originally Posted by STEED

These things happen..................

Swiss cheese!!


The Swiss Cheese model of accident causation is a model used in the risk analysis and risk management of human systems. It likens human systems to multiple slices of Swiss cheese, stacked together, side by side. It was originally propounded by British psychologist James T. Reason in 1990, and has since gained widespread acceptance and use in healthcare, in the aviation safety industry, and in emergency service organizations. It is sometimes called the cumulative act effect.
Reason hypothesizes that most accidents can be traced to one or more of four levels of failure: Organizational influences, unsafe supervision, preconditions for unsafe acts, and the unsafe acts themselves. In the Swiss Cheese model, an organization's defences against failure are modelled as a series of barriers, represented as slices of Swiss cheese. The holes in the cheese slices represent individual weaknesses in individual parts of the system, and are continually varying in size and position in all slices. The system as a whole produces failures when all of the holes in each of the slices momentarily align, permitting (in Reason's words) "a trajectory of accident opportunity", so that a hazard passes through all of the holes in all of the defenses, leading to a failure.

[RAM]

Originally Posted by STEED

These things happen..................

An engine fire on take off?.
Yeah, it's unquestionable- they happen. It has happened just today.

But they should -NOT- happen. Much less if the engine going poof has just passed a revision because the pilot reported problems with it. I don't care about why the plane crashed after the engine bursted in flames, it may have been a pilot error or not, but that engine should've worked fine, or the plane not flown at all.

So, someone blewed up bigtime today. And it was not the pilot. Death count is 151 right now, and likely to increase in next hours...

In my own view of the world, that means someone should pay a serious price for his mistake. "these things happen" it's not an excuse, not even an explanation. As I said, this kind of things should -NEVER- happen. And if they do, whoever made it possible should pay for it.

[Digital_Trucker]

Originally Posted by RAM

As I said, this kind of things should -NEVER- happen. And if they do, whoever made it possible should pay for it.

If a human being is involved, these things wil ALWAYS happen. Perhaps the mechanic found what he thought was the problem and all the tests suggested that the problem was corrected and something that had absolutely nothing to do with the original problem caused the catastrophe? And what if it were you who was the mechanic and you did everything in your power to solve the problem, believed that you had and later found that you had, as humans do, missed something? What price would be appropriate then?

[Enigma]

I gotcha, RAM, and frankly if pushed I'd have to agree with your summary. I just always feel the need to throw out caution of speculation when anyone starts talking air crash. You sir, do a better job than CNN any day of the week.


And....Digital Trucker makes a great point.

[HunterICX]

Originally Posted by Dowly

Spain's been having quite abit of misfortune lately. Wasnt there 2-3 bombs in Malaga this week?

Yep, ETA at it again .

the Fair is here and they plant 3 bombs, to get their TV prime time as usual.

HunterICX