Air Crash Investigations

RPK

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Valujet Flight 592 - Crashed in Florida.

ValuJet Flight 592 was a flight that crashed on May 11, 1996 en route from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida, United States, to William B. Hartsfield Atlanta International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. The crash was a large factor in undermining the credibility of the low-cost carrier ValuJet Airlines, now known as AirTran Airways.

Accident
The 27-year-old DC-9 aircraft used on this route was previously owned by Delta Air Lines . Flight 592 took off after a delay of 1 hour and 4 minutes at 2:04 pm and began a normal climb. However, at 2:10 p.m. the flight crew noted an electrical problem. Seconds later, a flight attendant entered the cockpit and advised the flight crew of the fire. Passengers' shouts of "fire, fire, fire" were recorded on the plane's cockpit voice recorder when the cockpit door was opened. Though the ValuJet flight attendant manual stated that the cockpit door should not be opened when smoke or other harmful gases may be present in the cabin, the intercom was disabled, and there was no other way to inform the pilots of what was happening. By this time, the plane's interior was completely on fire.

The crew immediately asked air traffic control for a return to Miami due to smoke in the cockpit and cabin. Captain Candi Kubeck and First Officer Richard Hazen were given instructions for a return to the airport. One minute later, the First Officer requested the nearest available airport.

Flight 592 disappeared from radar at 2:14 p.m. It crashed in Browns Farm Wildlife Management area in the Everglades, a few miles west of Miami, at speeds in excess of 500 miles per hour (800 km/h). Kubeck, Hazen, the three flight attendants, and all 105 passengers aboard were killed. Recovery of the aircraft and victims was made extremely difficult due to the location of the crash. The nearest road of any kind was more than a quarter mile (400 m) away from the crash scene, and the location of the crash itself was a deep-water swamp with a bedrock base. The DC-9 shattered on impact with the bedrock, leaving very few large portions of the plane intact. Sawgrass, alligators, and risk of bacterial infection from cuts plagued searchers involved in the recovery effort.



http://www.4shared.com/account/file/194323171/fffbc92d/Valujet_Flight_592_Crash.html
 

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Air Alaska Flight 261 - Crashed into the Pacific.

Alaska Airlines Flight 261, a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft, experienced a fatal accident on January 31, 2000 in the Pacific Ocean about 2.7 miles (4.3 km) north of Anacapa Island, California. The two pilots, three cabin crewmembers, and 83 passengers on board were killed—the highest death toll of any aviation accident involving a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 ever, and the aircraft was destroyed. Alaska 261 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Lic. Gustavo Díaz Ordaz International Airport (PVR), Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA), with an intermediate stop planned at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The subsequent investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board determined that inadequate maintenance led to excessive wear and catastrophic failure of a critical flight control system during flight. The probable cause was stated to be "a loss of airplane pitch control resulting from the in-flight failure of the horizontal stabilizer trim system jackscrew assembly's acme nut threads. The thread failure was caused by excessive wear resulting from Alaska Airlines's insufficient lubrication of the jackscrew assembly."



Recovered jackscrew





http://www.4shared.com/file/186835811/8f89c23c/AirAlaskaFlight266.html
 

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Aloha Airlines Flight 243 - Explosive decompression.

Aloha Airlines Flight 243 was a scheduled Aloha Airlines flight between Hilo and Honolulu in Hawaii. On April 28, 1988, a Boeing 737-297 serving the flight suffered extensive damage after an explosive decompression in flight, but was able to land safely at Kahului Airport on Maui. The only fatality was flight attendant C.B. Lansing who was blown out of the airplane. Another 65 passengers and crew were injured. The safe landing of the aircraft with such a major loss of integrity was unprecedented and remains unsurpassed.


The aircraft, Queen Liliuokalani (registration number N73711), took off from Hilo International Airport at 1:25 HST on 28 April 1988, bound for Honolulu. There were 90 passengers and five crew members on board. No unusual occurrences were reported during the take-off and climb.

Around 1:48, as the aircraft reached its normal flight altitude of 24,000 feet (7,300 m) about 23 nautical miles (43 km) south-southeast of Kahului, a small section on the left side of the roof ruptured. The resulting explosive decompression tore off a large section of the roof, consisting of the entire top half of the aircraft skin extending from just behind the cockpit to the fore-wing area.

As part of the design of the 737, stress may be alleviated by controlled area breakaway zones. The intent was to provide controlled depressurization that would maintain the integrity of the fuselage structure. The age of the plane and the condition of the fuselage (that had corroded and was stressing the rivets beyond their designed capacity) appear to have conspired to render the design a part of the problem; when that first controlled area broke away, according to the small rupture theory, the rapid sequence of events resulted in the failure sequence. This has been referred to as a zipper effect.

First Officer Madeline "Mimi" Tompkins' head was jerked back during the decompression, and she saw cabin insulation flying around the cockpit. Captain Robert Schornstheimer looked back and saw blue sky where the first class cabin's roof had been. Tompkins immediately contacted Air Traffic Control on Maui to declare mayday.

At the time of the decompression, the chief flight attendant, Clarabelle "C.B." Lansing, was standing at seat row 5 collecting drink cups from passengers. According to passengers' accounts, Lansing was sucked through a hole in the side of the airplane.

Flight attendant Michelle Honda, who was standing near rows #15 and #16, was thrown violently to the floor during the decompression. Despite her injuries, she was able to crawl up and down the aisle to assist and calm the terrified passengers. Flight attendant Jane Sato-Tomita, who was at the front of the plane, was seriously injured by flying debris and was thrown to the floor. Passengers held onto her during the descent into Maui.

The explosive decompression severed the electrical wiring from the nose gear to the indicator light on the cockpit instrument panel. As a result, the light did not illuminate when the nose gear was lowered, and the pilots had no way of knowing if it had fully lowered.

Before landing, passengers were instructed to don their life jackets, in case the aircraft did not make it to Kahului.

The crew performed an emergency landing on Kahului Airport's runway 2 at 13:58. Upon landing, the crew deployed the aircraft's emergency evacuation slides and evacuated passengers from the aircraft quickly. First Officer Mimi Tompkins assisted passengers down the evacuation slide. In all, 65 people were reported injured, eight seriously. At the time, Maui had no plan for a disaster of this type. The injured were taken to the hospital by the tour vans from Akamai Tours (now defunct) driven by office personnel and mechanics, since the island only had a couple of ambulances. Air traffic control radioed Akamai and requested as many of their 15 passenger vans as they could spare to go to the airport (less than a mile away) to transport the injured. Two of the Akamai drivers were former medics and established a triage on the runway. The aircraft was a write-off.






http://www.4shared.com/file/186906588/b1065419/Aloha_243.html
 

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Air Transat Flight 236 - An A330 became a glider when ran out of fuel due to a leak.

Air Transat Flight 236 was an Air Transat route between Toronto, Canada and Lisbon, Portugal flown by Captain Robert Piché and First Officer Dirk DeJager. On August 24, 2001, the flight ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean with 306 people (293 passengers and 13 crew) aboard. The flight crew managed to successfully glide the plane, and safely landed in the Azores with no loss of life.Most of the passengers on the flight were Canadians visiting Europe and Portuguese immigrants returning to Portugal.


Incident
Unknown to the pilots, the aircraft had developed a fuel leak in a fuel line to its right engine. During the course of the flight, the pilots had noticed a fuel imbalance between the fuel tanks in the left and right wings of the aircraft and had attempted to remedy this by opening a cross-feed valve between the tanks. This caused fuel from the operational tank to be wasted through the leak in the engine on the other side.

Without fuel, an aircraft's engines cannot provide thrust or electrical power. On the Airbus A330, as with most large modern passenger aircraft, an emergency ram air turbine is deployed automatically to provide essential power for sensors and instruments to fly the aircraft.

When the engines suffered a flame out important systems became unavailable. Specifically, the aircraft lost its main hydraulic power which operates the flaps, brakes, and spoilers. Additionally, an aircraft without operating engines cannot use its thrust reversers to slow the plane after touchdown.

The pilots of the Airbus A330 were able to glide the aircraft to a landing at Lajes Air Base, Terceira Island in the Azores. The reported landing speed was about 200 knots indicated airspeed (IAS), which is higher than the normal speed of 130 to 145 knots IAS. There were no fatalities, but there were minor injuries. The favourable outcome was also due to the flight being rerouted on a more southerly route across the Atlantic to prevent congestion, bringing them closer to the Azores.

Sequence of events
Flight TS 236 took off from Toronto at 0:52 (UTC) on Friday August 24, 2001 (local time: 8:52 p.m. (EST) on Thursday August 23 2001). It made an emergency landing at 6:46 a.m. (UTC) on August 24 2001, at Lajes Airport, Terceira, Azores, Portugal.

There were 293 passengers and thirteen crew members on board. The aircraft was an Airbus A330 manufactured in 1999, configured with 362 seats and placed in service by Air Transat in April 1999. Leaving the gate in Toronto, the aircraft had 47.9 tonnes of fuel on board, 5.5 tonnes more than required by regulations.

At 04:38 UTC (estimated), a fuel leak started in the area of engine no. 2 (right engine).

At 05:16 UTC, a cockpit warning system chimed and told of low oil temperature and high oil pressure on engine no. 2. There is no obvious connection between an oil temperature or pressure problem and a fuel leak. At first, Captain Piché and co-pilot DeJager suspected these warnings were computer bugs and communicated with their Maintenance control center.

At 05:36 UTC, the pilots received a warning of fuel imbalance and diverted fuel from the port (left side) wing tanks to the starboard tanks, which were showing close to empty. Because the fuel leak in the starboard engine had still not been diagnosed, this diversion had the effect of sending fuel to the leak and causing further loss.

At 05:45 UTC, as it became clear that fuel was dangerously low, the crew decided to divert to Lajes Air Base in the Azores.

At 05:48 UTC, an emergency was declared with Santa Maria Oceanic air traffic control because of fuel shortage.

At 06:13 UTC, 28 minutes after the emergency declaration and 135 miles from Lajes[3], engine no. 2 on the right wing flamed out, exhausted of jet fuel. Captain Piché then ordered full thrust from engine no. 1 on the left wing, and the plane descended to 33,000 feet, unable to stay at its 39,000 feet (11,887 metres) cruising altitude with only one engine operating.

At 06:23 UTC, Mayday was declared with Santa Maria Oceanic air traffic control.

At 06:26 UTC, engine no. 1 flamed out at about 85 nm from Lajes Air Base[4].

Without engine power, control of the aircraft depended on the last backup, a ram air turbine, which supplied limited power to hydraulic and electrical systems. While Piché flew the plane, DeJager monitored its descent rate — around 2000 feet (600 metres) per minute — and calculated that the plane had about 15 to 20 minutes left before they had to ditch the plane in the water.

The crew flew the plane a few more minutes, until sighting the air base. Piché then had to execute a series of 360 degree turns to lose altitude. Although they successfully lined up with Runway 33, they faced a new danger. The plane was on a final descent, going faster than normal. Although they had unlocked the slats and deployed the landing gear, the airspeed was 200 knots, compared to the preferable 140-160 knots.

At 06:45 UTC, or 02:45 EST, after 19 minutes without engine power, the plane touched down hard 1,030 feet down Runway 33 with about 200 knots (370 km/h). The aircraft bounced back into the air but touched down again 2,800 feet from the approach end of the runway and came to a stop 7,600 feet from the approach end of the 10,000 foot runway. With the operation of the emergency brakes, several tires burst. Fourteen passengers and two crew members suffered minor injuries during the evacuation of the aircraft. Two passengers suffered serious, but not life-threatening injuries.




http://www.4shared.com/file/186887568/6c158696/AirTransat1Glider.html
 

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American Airlines Flight 587 - Crashed in New York.


Crash Site




American Airlines Flight 587, an Airbus A300, crashed into the Belle Harbor neighborhood of Queens; a borough of New York City in New York, United States, shortly after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport on November 12, 2001. This is the second deadliest U.S. aviation accident to date, after American Airlines Flight 191.

With 260 fatalities on board and 5 on the ground, this accident has the third highest death toll of any accident involving an Airbus A300. Both Iran Air Flight 655 and China Airlines Flight 140 had higher fatalities.

The accident took place two months after the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center in Manhattan. Several factors, such as the date, aircraft size, airline, and location in New York, raised concerns that the crash was caused by another terrorist attack. Al-Qaeda listed the attack among their successes, and a Canadian militant cooperating with authorities suggested that it had been brought down with a shoe bomb. Nonetheless, terrorism was officially ruled out as the cause by the National Transportation Safety Board, which instead attributed the disaster to the first officer's overuse of rudder controls.

Investigation

The A300-600, which took off minutes after a Japan Airlines Boeing 747 on the same runway, flew into the larger jet's wake, an area of turbulent air. The first officer attempted to keep the plane upright with aggressive rudder inputs. The strength of the air flowing against the moving rudder stressed the aircraft's vertical stabilizer and eventually snapped it off entirely, causing the aircraft to lose control and crash. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that the enormous stress on the rudder was due to the first officer's "unnecessary and excessive" rudder inputs, and not the wake turbulence caused by the 747. The NTSB further stated "if the first officer had stopped making additional inputs, the aircraft would have stabilized". Contributing to these rudder pedal inputs were characteristics of the Airbus A300-600 sensitive rudder system design and elements of the American Airlines Advanced Aircraft Maneuvering Training Program.

Investigators were concerned in regard to the manner in which the tail fin separated. The tail fin is connected to the fuselage with six attaching points. Each point has two sets of attachment lugs, one made of composite material, another of aluminum, all connected by a titanium bolt; damage analysis showed that the bolts and aluminum lugs were intact, but not the composite lugs. This, coupled with two events earlier in the life of the aircraft, namely delamination in part of the tail fin prior to its delivery from the manufacturer and an encounter with heavy turbulence in 1994, caused investigators to examine the use of composites. The possibility that the composite materials might not be as strong as previously supposed was a cause of concern because they are used in other areas of the plane, including the engine mounting and the wings. Tests carried out on the vertical stabilizers from the accident aircraft, and from another similar aircraft, found that the strength of the composite material had not been compromised, and the NTSB concluded that the material had failed because it had been stressed beyond its design limit.

The official NTSB report of October 26, 2004 stated that the cause of the crash was the overuse of the rudder to counter wake turbulence.

The crash was witnessed by hundreds of people, who gave conflicting accounts of what they saw. Some reported a fire or explosion before the plane hit the ground. Others stated that they saw a wing detach from the aircraft, whereas in fact it was the fin.

After the crash, Floyd Bennett Field's empty hangars were used as a makeshift morgue for the identification of crash victims.


http://www.4shared.com/file/186140263/81a0cdeb/AAL587_Full.html
 

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Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 - Hijacking.



Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 was hijacked on 23 November 1996 en route from Addis Ababa to Nairobi on a Bombay - Addis Ababa - Nairobi - Brazzaville - Lagos - Abidjan route, by three Ethiopians seeking political asylum. The plane crash-landed in the Indian Ocean near Comoros after running out of fuel, killing 125 of the 175 passengers and crew on board.

Hijack
When ET-AIZ, the Boeing 767-260ER (nicknamed "Zulu" by Ethiopian Airlines pilots),entered Kenyan airspace, three Ethiopian men charged the cockpit and hijacked the airplane. According to a special report by Airdisaster.com, "One of the men ran down the aisle toward the cockpit shouting statements that could not be understood, and his two accomplices followed soon after." The report described the men as "young (mid-twenties), inexperienced, psychologically fragile, and intoxicated." Ethiopian state-operated radio later identified the hijackers as two unemployed high school graduates and a nurse, named Alemayehu Bekeli Belayneh , Mathias Solomon Belay , and Sultan Ali Hussein (they did not say who had which description).

The men threatened to blow the plane out of the sky if the pilot, Leul Abate , and the co-pilot, Yonas Mekuria , did not follow their demands, announcing over the intercom that they were opponents of the Ethiopian government seeking political asylum, having recently been released from prison. The hijackers said that there were eleven of them when, in fact, there were only three. Authorities later determined that the bomb was actually a covered bottle of liquor.

The hijackers demanded the plane be flown to Australia: the in-flight magazine stated the 767 could make the trip on a full tank and the plane had been refuelled at its last stopover. Leul tried to explain they had only taken on the fuel needed for the scheduled flight and thus could not even make a quarter of the journey, but the hijackers did not believe him.

Instead of flying towards Australia, the captain followed the African coastline. The hijackers noticed that land was still visible and forced the pilot to steer east. Leul secretly headed for the Comoro Islands, which lie midway between Madagascar and the African mainland.

Crash landing
The plane was nearly out of fuel as it approached the island group, but the hijackers continued to ignore the captain's warnings. Out of options, Leul began to circle the area, hoping to land the plane at Comoros's main airport. When the plane ran out of fuel, both engines failed. The crew used a ram air turbine to preserve the aircraft's most essential functions, but in this mode some hydraulic systems—such as the flaps—were inoperative. This forced Leul to land at more than 175 knots (about 320 kilometers per hour or 200 miles per hour).

Leul tried to make an emergency landing on the airport at Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport, Grande Comore, but a fight with the hijackers at the last minute caused him to lose his visual point of reference, leaving him unable to locate the airport. While still fighting with the hijackers, he tried to ditch the aircraft in shallow waters 500 metres off Le Galawa Beach Hotel near Mitsamiouli at the northern end of Grand Comoro island. Leul tried to land parallel with the waves instead of against the waves in an effort to smooth the landing. ET-AIZ's left engine and wingtip struck the water first. The engine acted as a scoop and struck a coral reef, slowing that side of the aircraft quickly, causing the Boeing 767 to violently spin left and break apart. Island residents and tourists, including a group of scuba divers and some French doctors on vacation, came to the aid of crash survivors.

Flight 961 is an well-known example of why passengers must not inflate lifejackets until after exiting the plane. The pilot of Flight 961 had advised passengers to put on lifejackets but not inflate them. However, numerous nervous and panicking passengers did not heed the warning and inflated them while they were still in the fuselage. This meant that as the cabin flooded, they were pushed upward against the ceiling; making it impossible to dive and reach the exits, leaving them trapped inside the sinking fuselage.

A tourist recorded a video of ET-AIZ crashing; she said that she began taping because she initially believed that the 767 aircraft formed a part of an air show for tourists.

http://www.4shared.com/file/190751650/c872ff22/Ethipian_Hijack.html
 

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British Airways Flight 009 - Four engines failure.



British Airways Flight 9, sometimes referred to as the Jakarta incident, was a scheduled British Airways flight from London Heathrow to Auckland, with stops in Bombay, Madras, Kuala Lumpur, Perth, and Melbourne.

On 24 June 1982, the route was flown by City of Edinburgh, a 747-236B registered G-BDXH. The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash thrown up by the eruption of Mount Galunggung, resulting in the failure of all four engines, although the reason for the failure was not then apparent to the crew or ground control. The aircraft was diverted to Jakarta in the hope that enough engines could be restarted to allow it to land there. The aircraft was able to glide far enough to exit the ash cloud, and all engines were restarted (although one failed again soon after), allowing the aircraft to land safely.

The crew members of the accident segment boarded the aircraft in Kuala Lumpur, while many of the passengers had been aboard since the flight began in London.


Incident
Shortly after 13:40 UTC (20:40 Jakarta time) above the Indian Ocean, south of Java, the flight crew (consisting of Senior First Officer Roger Greaves and Senior Engineer Officer Barry Townley-Freeman while Captain Eric Moody was in the lavatory) first noted an effect on the windscreen similar to St. Elmo's fire. The phenomenon persisted after Captain Eric Moody returned from the lavatory. Despite the weather radar showing clear skies, the crew switched on engine anti-ice and the passenger seat belt signs as a precaution.

As the flight progressed, smoke began to gather throughout the passenger cabin of the aircraft and it was at first assumed to be cigarette smoke. However, it soon began to grow thicker and had an ominous odour of sulphur. Passengers who had a view out of the aircraft windows noted that the engines were unusually bright with the light shining forward through the fan blades and producing a stroboscopic effect.

At approximately 13:42 UTC (20:42 Jakarta time), engine number four began surging and soon flamed out. The flight crew immediately performed the engine shutdown drill, quickly cutting off fuel supply and arming the fire extinguishers. Less than a minute later, at 13:43 UTC (20:43 Jakarta time), engine two surged and flamed out. Within seconds, and almost simultaneously, engines one and three flamed out prompting the flight engineer to exclaim, "I don't believe it – all four engines have failed!"

Without engine thrust, a 747-200 has a glide ratio of approximately 15:1 meaning it can glide forward 15 kilometres for every kilometre it drops. The flight crew quickly determined that the aircraft was capable of gliding for 23 minutes and covering 91 nautical miles (169 km) from its flight level of 11,000 metres (36,000 ft). At 13:44 UTC (20:44 Jakarta time), First Officer Roger Greaves declared an emergency to the local air traffic control authority, stating that all four engines had failed. However, Jakarta Area Control misunderstood the message; interpreting the call as meaning that only engine number four had shut down. It was only after a nearby Garuda Indonesia flight relayed the message to Air Traffic Control that it was understood. Despite the crew squawking the emergency Transponder setting of 7700, the aeroplane could not be located by Air Traffic Control on their radar screens.

Many passengers wrote notes to relatives. One such passenger was Charles Capewell who wrote "Ma. In trouble. Plane going down. Will do best for boys. We love you. Sorry. Pa XXX" scrawled on the cover of his ticket wallet.

Due to the high Indonesian mountains on the south coast of the island of Java, an altitude of at least 3,500 metres (11,000 ft) was required to cross the coast safely. The crew decided that if the aircraft was unable to maintain altitude by the time they reached 3,650 metres (12,000 ft) they would turn back out to sea and attempt to ditch into the Indian Ocean. The crew began the engine restart drills, despite being well above the recommended maximum engine in-flight start envelope altitude of 8,500 metres (28,000 ft) and all attempted were futile.

Despite the lack of time, Captain Eric Moody made an announcement to the passengers that has been described as "a masterpiece of understatement":

“ Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get it under control. I trust you are not in too much distress. ”

As pressure within the cabin fell, oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling - an automatic emergency measure to make up for the lack of air. On the flight deck however, First Officer Roger Greve’s mask was broken; the delivery tube had detached from the rest of the mask. Captain Moody swiftly decided to descend at 1800m per minute to an altitude where there was enough oxygen in the outside atmosphere to breathe almost normally.

At 4,100m, they were approaching the altitude at which they would have to turn over the ocean and attempt a risky ditching. Although there were guidelines for the procedure, no one had ever tried it in a Boeing 747 – nor have they since. As they performed the engine-restart procedure, engine number four started, and at 13:56 UTC (20:56 Jakarta time), Captain Moody used its power to reduce the rate of descent. Shortly thereafter, engine three restarted, allowing him to climb slowly. Shortly after that, engines one and two successfully restarted as well. The crew subsequently requested and expedited an increase in altitude to 4,500 metres (15,000 ft) in order to clear the high mountains of Indonesia.

As the aircraft approached its target altitude, the St. Elmo's fire effect on the windscreen returned. Captain Moody throttled back, however engine number two surged again and had to be shut down. The crew immediately descended and held 3,600 metres (12,000 ft).

As Flight 9 approached Jakarta, the crew found it difficult to see anything through the windscreen, and had to make the approach almost entirely on instruments, despite reports of good visibility. The crew decided to fly the ILS, Instrument Landing System, however, the glideslope was inoperative, so they flew the localizer as the first officer monitored their DME (Distance Measuring Equipment). He then called out how high they should be relative to their distance from the airport's VOR station, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. It was, in the words of Captain Moody, "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse". Although the runway lights could be made out through a small strip of the windscreen, the landing lights on the aircraft seemed to be inoperable. After landing, the flight crew found it impossible to taxi, due to glare from apron floodlights which made the already sandblasted windscreen opaque. Therefore, City of Edinburgh had to wait for an airport tug to tow her in.

Aftermath
It was found that City of Edinburgh's problems had been caused by flying through a cloud of volcanic ash from the eruption of Mount Galunggung. Because the ash cloud was dry, it did not show up on the weather radar, which is designed to detect the moisture in clouds. The cloud sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers and clogged the engines. As the aircraft flew through the ash, it melted in the combustion chamber of the engine and stuck to the inside of the power-plant. As the engine cooled from not running and as the aircraft descended out of the ash cloud, the molten ash solidified and enough broke off to allow air to flow smoothly through the engine allowing a successful restart. The engines had enough electrical power to restart because one generator and the onboard batteries were still operative; generator or battery power is required for ignition of the engines.

http://www.4shared.com/file/190250021/1cc8d317/British_Airways_009_Full.html
 

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Japan Airlines Flight 123


Japan Airlines Flight 123 was a Japan Airlines domestic flight from Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) to Osaka International Airport (Itami). The Boeing 747-SR46 that made this route, registered JA8119, suffered mechanical failures 12 minutes into flight and 32 minutes later crashed into two ridges of Mount Takamagahara in Ueno, Gunma Prefecture, 100 kilometers from Tokyo, on Monday 12 August 1985. The crash site was on Osutaka Ridge (御巣鷹の尾根, Osutaka-no-One?), near Mount Osutaka. All 15 crew members and 505 out of 509 passengers died, resulting in a total of 520 deaths and 4 survivors.

It remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in history.




Aircraft
The aircraft involved, registration number JA8119, was a Boeing 747SR-46. Its first flight was on January 28, 1974. Before it was destroyed it had 25,030 airframe hours and 18,835 cycles.


Sequence of events

The flight took off from Runway 15L at Tokyo International Airport (commonly referred to as Haneda Airport) in Ōta, Tokyo, Japan at 6:12 p.m., 12 minutes behind schedule. About 12 minutes after takeoff, as the aircraft reached cruising altitude over Sagami Bay, the rear pressure bulkhead failed. The resulting explosive decompression tore the vertical stabilizer from the aircraft and severed all four of the aircraft's hydraulic systems. A photograph taken from the ground some time later confirmed that the vertical stabilizer was missing. The loss of cabin pressure at high altitude had also caused a lack of oxygen throughout the cabin, and emergency oxygen masks for passengers soon began to fail. Flight attendants, including one who was off-duty and flying as a passenger, administered oxygen to various passengers using hand-held tanks.

The pilots, including Captain Masami Takahama (高浜 雅己, Takahama Masami?), first officer Yutaka Sasaki (佐々木 祐, Sasaki Yutaka?), and flight engineer Hiroshi Fukuda (福田 博, Fukuda Hiroshi?), set their transponder to broadcast a distress signal to Tokyo Area Control Center, which directed the aircraft to descend and gave it heading vectors for an emergency landing. Continued control problems required them to first request vectors back to Haneda, then to Yokota (a U.S. military air base), then back to Haneda again as the aircraft wandered uncontrollably.

By then all hydraulic fluid had drained away through the rupture. With total loss of hydraulic control and non-functional control surfaces, the aircraft began to oscillate up and down in a phugoid cycle. The pilots managed a measure of control by using engine thrust. They discovered that by giving full throttle they could cause the plane to rise out of a nose-dive, and by reducing power the plane would slow enough to lower the nose from uncontrolled ascent. Similarly, they found that giving more power to the left or right engines and reducing power to the opposite would cause the plane to turn somewhat. These improvisations proved helpful, but further measures to exert control, such as lowering the landing gear and flaps, interfered with control by throttle, and the plane's uncontrollability once again escalated.

After descending to 13,500 feet (4100 m), the pilots reported the aircraft's uncontrollability. The plane flew over the Izu Peninsula, headed for the Pacific Ocean, then turned back toward the shore and descended to below 7,000 feet (2100 m) before the pilots managed to return to a climb. The aircraft reached an altitude of 13,000 feet (4000 m) before entering an uncontrollable descent into the mountains and disappearing from radar at 6:56 p.m. and 6,800 feet (2100 m). The final moments of the plane occurred when it clipped one mountain ridge then hit a second one during another rapid plunge, then flipped and landed on its back. Ed Magnuson of TIME said that the area where the aircraft crashed was referred to as the "Tibet" of Gunma Prefecture.

Thirty-two minutes elapsed from the time of the bulkhead explosion to the time of the final crash, long enough for some passengers to write farewells to their families. Subsequent simulator re-enactments of the mechanical failures suffered by Flight 123 failed to produce a better solution or outcome, and in fact none of the four flight crews in the simulations were able to keep the plane aloft for as long as the 32 minutes achieved by the actual crew.

Delayed rescue operation
An American Air Force base in Japan situated near the flight path of Flight 123 had been monitoring the distressed aircraft's calls for help. They maintained contact throughout the ordeal with Japanese flight control officials and made their landing strip available to the airplane. After the crash in the mountains, a U.S. Air Force helicopter was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact. The USAF crew radioed Yokota Air Base to alert them, and had assembled rescue teams in preparation to lower Marines down for rescues by helicopter tow line. The offers by American forces of help to guide Japanese forces immediately to the crash site and of rescue assistance were rejected by Japanese officials. Instead, Japanese government representatives ordered the U.S. crew to keep away from the crash site and return to Yokota Air Base, stating the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were going to handle the entire rescue alone.

Although a JSDF helicopter eventually spotted the wreck during the night, poor visibility and the difficult mountainous terrain prevented it from landing at the site. The pilot of the JSDF helicopter reported from the air that there were no signs of survivors. Based on this report, JSDF ground personnel did not set out to the actual site the night of the crash. Instead, they were dispatched to spend the night at a makeshift village erecting tents, constructing helicopter landing ramps and in other preparations, all some 63 kilometers from the wreck. JSDF did not set out for the actual crash site until the following morning. Medical staff later found a number of passengers' bodies whose injuries indicated that they had survived the crash only to die from shock or exposure overnight in the mountains while awaiting rescue. One doctor said "If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors."

Yumi Ochiai, one of the four survivors out of 524 passengers and crew, recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, these sounds gradually died away during the night.

Cause
The official cause of the crash according to the report published by Japan's then Aircraft Accidents Investigation Commission is as follows:

The aircraft was involved in a tailstrike incident at Osaka International Airport on 2 June 1978, which damaged the aircraft's rear pressure bulkhead.
The subsequent repair of the bulkhead did not conform to Boeing's approved repair methods. Their procedure calls for one continuous doubler plate with three rows of rivets to reinforce the damaged bulkhead, but the Boeing technicians fixing the aircraft used two separate doubler plates, one with two rows of rivets and one with only one row. This reduced the part's resistance to metal fatigue by 70%. According to the FAA, the one "doubler plate" which was specified for the job (the FAA calls it a "splice plate" - essentially a patch) was cut into two pieces parallel to the stress crack it was intended to reinforce, "to make it fit". This negated the effectiveness of two of the rows of rivets. During the investigation Boeing calculated that this incorrect installation would fail after approximately 10,000 pressurizations; the aircraft accomplished 12,318 take-offs between the installation of the new plate and the final accident.
When the bulkhead gave way, the resulting explosive decompression ruptured the lines of all four hydraulic systems. With the aircraft's flight controls disabled, the aircraft became uncontrollable.
Aftermath
The Japanese public's confidence in Japan Airlines took a dramatic downturn in the wake of the disaster, with passenger numbers on domestic routes dropping by one-third. Rumors persisted that Boeing had admitted fault to cover up shortcomings in the airline's inspection procedures and thus protect the reputation of a major customer. In the months after the crash, domestic traffic decreased by as much as 25%. In 1986, for the first time in a decade, fewer passengers boarded JAL's overseas flights during New Years than the previous year. Some of them considered switching to All Nippon Airways as a safer alternative.

Without admitting liability, JAL paid 780 million yen (approximately $6300 per victim in 1985) (6.4 million Euros or ca. 12,600 Euros per victim) to the victims' relatives in the form of "condolence money". Its president, Yasumoto Takagi, resigned, while a maintenance manager working for the company at Haneda committed suicide to "apologize" for the accident.


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Korean Air Flight 801 - Crashed on August 6, 1997 on approach to Guam.


Korean Air Flight 801 (KE801, KAL801) crashed on August 6, 1997, on approach to Antonio B. Won Pat International Airport, Guam (a United States insular area).

Flight 801 was normally flown by an Airbus A300; since Korean Air had scheduled the August 5-6 flight to transport Guamanian athletes to the South Pacific Mini Games in American Samoa, the airline designated HL7468, a Boeing 747-300 delivered to Korean Air on December 12, 1984, to fly the route that night. The aircraft crashed on Nimitz Hill in Asan.





Disaster

Wreckage of HL7468 burns at the Sasa Valley crash site.Flight 801 departed from Seoul-Kimpo International Airport (now Gimpo Airport) at 8:53 pm (9:53 pm Guam time) on August 5 on its way to Guam. It carried 2 pilots, 1 flight engineer, 14 flight attendants, and 237 passengers , a total of 254 people. Of the passengers, 3 were children between the ages of 2 and 12 and 3 were 24 months old or younger . Six of the passengers were Korean Air flight attendants who were "deadheading" (traveling off-duty).

The flight, headed by 42-year old Captain Park Yong-chul (Hangul: 박용철, RR: Bak Yong-cheol, M-R: Pak Yongch'ŏl) 40-year old First Officer Song Kyung-ho (Hangul: 송경호, RR: Song Gyeong-ho, M-R: Song Kyŏngho) and 57-year old flight engineer Nam Suk-hoon (Hangul: 남석훈, RR: Nam Seok-hun, M-R: Nam Sŏkhun)[15], experienced some turbulence but was uneventful until shortly after 1:00am on August 6, as the jet was preparing to land. Park had originally been scheduled to fly to Dubai, United Arab Emirates; since he did not have enough rest for the Dubai trip, he was reassigned to Flight 801. Earlier Park won a flight safety award for negotiating a 747 engine failure.

There was heavy rain at Guam so visibility was significantly reduced and the crew was attempting an instrument landing. Air traffic control in Guam advised the crew that the glideslope Instrument Landing System (ILS) in runway 6L was out of service. Air traffic control cleared Flight 801 to land in runway 6L at around 1:40 am. The crew noticed that the plane was descending very steeply, and noted several times that the airport "is not in sight". At 1:42 am, the aircraft crashed into Nimitz Hill, about 3 miles (5 km) short of the runway, at an altitude of 660 feet (201 m).

36-year-old Hong Hyun Seong (also spelled Hong Hyun Sung), a survivor who occupied Seat 3B in first class, said that the crash occurred so quickly that the passengers "had no time to scream" and compared the crash to "a scene from a film".

The rescue effort was hampered by the weather, terrain, and other problems. Emergency vehicles could not approach due to a fuel pipeline destroyed by the crash and blocking the narrow road. There was confusion over the administration of the effort; the crash occurred on land owned by the United States Navy but civil authorities initially claimed authority. The hull had disintegrated, and jet fuel in the wing tanks had sparked a fire which was still burning eight hours after impact.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board investigation report stated that the Minimum Safe Altitude Warning (MSAW) system had been deliberately modified and would not detect the plane that close to the runway. The captain failed to brief his non-precision approach and prematurely descended to the minimum decent altitude. Contributing to the accident were the captain's fatigue, Korean Air's lack of flight crew training, as well as the intentional inhibition of the Guam ILS. The crew had been using an outdated flight map, which stated that the Minimum Safe Altitude for a landing plane was 1,770 feet (540 m) as opposed to 2,150 feet (656 m). Flight 801 had been maintaining 1,870 feet (570 m) when it was waiting to land.


After the crash

On August 13, 1997, 50 protesters staged at a sit-in at Guam Airport, saying that the recovery of the dead was taking too long; they sat on blankets and sheets of paper at the Korean Air counter.

On August 6, 2000, the third anniversary of the crash, a black marble obelisk was unveiled on the crash site as a memorial to the victims.

After the accident, Korean Air services to Guam were suspended for more than 4 years, leading to reduced tourist spending in Guam and reduced revenues for Korean Air. When Seoul-Guam services resumed in December 2001, the flight number was changed to 805.

This incident was documented on Mayday (Air Emergency or Air Crash Investigation), episode "Final Approach" (known in other areas as "Missed Approach" and "Blind Landing.")

In 2000, a lawsuit was settled in the amount of $70,000,000 United States dollars on behalf of 54 families.

New Zealander Barry Small, a helicopter pilot and a survivor of the accident, lobbied for safer storage of duty-free alcohol and redesigns of crossbars on airline seats; he says that the storage of duty-free alcohol on Flight 801 contributed to spreading of the fire and the crossbars injured passengers to the point where they could not escape from the aircraft.

The Government of Guam moved its website about the Korean Air crash after the Spamcop program alerted the government that advance fee fraud spam from Nigeria used the website link as a part of the scam. Scam e-mails used names of passengers, such as Sean Burke, as part of the fraud.

Malcolm Gladwell discusses the crash in the context of ethnocentric power structures in his book Outliers.


http://www.4shared.com/file/192504870/d5b37fca/Korean_Air_801.html
 

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2003 Baghdad DHL attempted shootdown incident





On 22 November 2003, shortly after takeoff from Baghdad, Iraq, an Airbus A300 cargo plane owned by European Air Transport ("DHL") was struck on the left wing tip by a surface-to-air missile. Severe wing damage resulted in a fire and complete loss of hydraulic flight control systems. Because outboard left wing fuel tank 1A was full at takeoff, there was no fuel-air vapour explosion. Liquid jet fuel dropped away as 1A disintegrated. Inboard fuel tank 1 was pierced and leaking.

Returning to Baghdad, the 3-person crew made an unprecedented injury-free landing of the crippled aircraft, using differential engine thrust as the only pilot input.

Paris Match Reporter Claudine Vernier-Palliez accompanied a Fedayeen commando unit on their strike mission against the DHL aircraft.

Sara Daniel, a French weekly newsmagazine journalist claimed receipt, from an unknown source, of a video that showed insurgents, faces concealed, firing a missile at the A300. Daniel was researching a feature about Iraqi resistance groups but she disclaimed any specific knowledge of the people who carried out the attack.

Moments following the strike
To reduce exposure to ground attack, the aircraft was executing a rapid climbout. At about 8,000 feet (2,450 metres), a 9K34 Strela-3 (SA-14 Gremlin) surface-to-air missile struck the left wing tip. The warhead damaged trailing edge surfaces and structure and caused a fire. All three hydraulic systems lost pressure and flight controls were disabled. The aircraft pitched rapidly up and down in a roller-coaster phugoid, oscillating between a nose-up and a nose-down position, trying to re-establish the angle of attack from which it was disturbed.

As in the case of the 1989 United Airlines Flight 232 disaster in the USA, Captain Gennotte could only use thrust to modify pitch, speed and altitude and vary throttles asymmetrically to control yaw and turn the aircraft. Flight engineer Mario Rofail executed a gravity drop to extend the landing gear, a procedure normally accomplished with hydraulic power. Early deployment of the gear was critical to a safe outcome because increased drag helped reduce speed and stabilize the Airbus.

In about 10 minutes of experimentation, the crew learned to manage turns, climbs and descents. After a meandering trajectory, they executed a right turn and initiated a descent path to Baghdad International Airport.







http://www.4shared.com/file/190484334/d654187b/DHL_Atack_Over_Baghdad.html
 

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American Airlines Flight 965

American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757 registered N651AA, was a scheduled flight from Miami International Airport in Miami, Florida to Alfonso Bonilla Aragón International Airport in Cali, Colombia, which crashed into a mountain in Buga, Colombia on December 20, 1995, killing 151 passengers and 8 crew members. The crash was the first U.S.-owned 757 accident and the highest death toll of any accident in Colombia. It is also the highest death toll of any accident involving a Boeing 757 at that time. It was surpassed by Birgenair Flight 301 which crashed in 1996 with 189 fatalities. Flight 965 was the deadliest air disaster involving a U.S. carrier since the downing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. Four passengers survived the crash, all of whom were seated in the same row.

The Colombian Special Administrative Unit of Civil Aeronautics investigated the accident and determined it was caused by navigational errors by the flight crew.

http://www.4shared.com/file/188263882/db6da058/AmericanArlines965.html
 

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Aeroflot Flight 593 - Kid In the cockpit.

Aeroflot Flight 593 was a Russian International Airlines[1] Airbus A310 passenger airliner operating on behalf of Aeroflot which crashed into a hillside in Kemerovo Oblast on 23 March 1994. All 75 passengers and crew were killed.

Voice and flight data recorders revealed that the pilot's 15 year-old son Eldar Kudrinsky had, while seated at the controls, unknowingly disabled the A310 autopilot's control of the aircraft's ailerons. The aircraft had then rolled into a steep bank and near-vertical dive from which the pilots were unable to regain control. Unlike Soviet planes with which the crew had been familiar, no audible alarm accompanied the autopilot's partial disconnection and because of this, they remained unaware of what was happening. As a result of the crash investigation, a number of design changes to the A310 autopilot system were recommended.

Incident

The jet was en route from Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport (SVO) to Hong Kong's former Hong Kong International Airport (Kai Tak Airport). Most of the passengers were businessmen from Hong Kong and Taiwan who were looking for economic opportunities in Russia.[2]

The relief pilot,[2] Yaroslav Kudrinsky (Russian: Ярослав Кудринский), was taking his two children on their first international flight and they were brought to the cockpit while he was on duty. Aeroflot allowed families of pilots to travel at a discounted rate once per year.[2] With the autopilot active, Kudrinsky, against regulations, offered to let them sit at the controls. First his daughter Yana took the pilot's left front seat. Kudrinsky adjusted the autopilot's heading to give her the impression that she was turning the plane, though she actually had no control of the aircraft. Next, his son Eldar Kudrinsky (Russian: Эльдар Кудринский) took the pilot's seat. Unlike his sister, Eldar applied enough force to the control column to contradict the autopilot for 30 seconds.

What nobody knew was that by doing this, he disconnected the aileron's autopilot: the flight computer switched the plane's ailerons to manual control while maintaining control over the other flight systems. The plane did not audibly signal a warning that this had occurred, although an indicator light did come on. It apparently went unnoticed by the pilots, who had previously flown Russian-designed planes which had audible warning signals. The first to notice a problem was Eldar, who observed that the plane was banking right. Shortly after, the flight path indicator changed to show the new flight path of the aircraft as it turned. Since the turn was continuous, the resulting predicted flight path drawn on screen was a 180 degree turn. This indication is similar to the indications shown when in a holding pattern, where a 180 degree turn is intentional to remain in one place. This confused the pilots for nine seconds.

Soon the plane banked past a 45-degree angle (steeper than it was designed for). This increased the g-force on the pilots and crew, making it impossible for the crew to regain control. After banking as much as 90 degrees, the remaining functions of the autopilot tried to correct the plane's altitude by putting the plane in an almost vertical ascent, nearly stalling the plane. The co-pilot and Eldar managed to get the plane into a nosedive, which reduced the G-force on the pilots and enabled the Captain to take the controls. Though he and his co-pilot did regain control, their altitude by then was too low to recover, and the plane crashed at high speed, killing all aboard. The wreckage was located on a remote hillside approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) from Mezhdurechensk in Kemerovo Oblast, southwest Siberia. Despite the struggles of both the pilots to save the aircraft, it was later concluded that if they had simply let go of the control column the plane would have automatically taken action to prevent it from stalling, thus saving the plane.

Families of western victims placed flowers on the crash site, while families of ethnic Chinese victims scattered pieces of paper with messages written on them around the crash site


http://www.4shared.com/file/186211356/2ded9a2b/Aeroflot_593.html
 

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