Posted on 06/13/2005 8:45:15 AM PDT by TheOtherOne
Joking Pilots in Commuter Jet Crash Wanted to 'have a Little Fun' by Climbing to 41,000 Feet
Published: Jun 13, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - Two pilots, in a jovial mood as they flew an empty commuter jet, wanted to "have a little fun" by taking the plane to an unusually high altitude last October, only to realize as the engines failed that they were not going to make it, according to transcripts released Monday.
The plane, which the two were ferrying from Little Rock, Ark. to Minneapolis, crashed and both Capt. Jesse Rhodes and First Officer Peter Cesarz perished.
The cockpit voice recording, released by the National Transportation Safety Board at the start of a three-day hearing into the Oct. 14, 2004 accident, revealed how the pilots cracked jokes and decided to "have a little fun" and fly to 41,000 feet - the maximum altitude for their 50-seat plane. Most commuter jets fly at lower altitudes.
"Man, we can do it, 41-it," said Cesarz at 9:48 p.m. A minute later, Rhodes said, "40 thousand, baby."
Two minutes later, "There's 41-0, my man," Cesarz said. "Made it, man."
At 9:52 p.m., one of the pilots popped a can of Pepsi and they joked about drinking beer. A minute later, Cesarz said, "This is the greatest thing, no way."
But at 10:03 p.m., the pilots reported their engine had failed. Five minutes later, they said both engines had failed and they wanted a direct route to any airport.
The transcript recounts their increasingly desperate efforts to restart the engines and regain altitude. They tried to land at the Jefferson City, Mo., airport but by 10:14 p.m., it was obvious they wouldn't reach it.
"We're not going to make it, man. We're not going to make it," Cesarz said. The plane crashed in a residential neighborhood of Jefferson City. No one was injured on the ground.
Accident investigators are examining how well the pilots were trained - a key safety question as the number of regional jets keeps growing.
The crash involved a Bombardier regional jet plane operated by Pinnacle Airlines, an affiliate of Northwest Airlines. Like many regional carriers, Pinnacle is growing rapidly as it teams up with a traditional network airline looking to offer more seats to more places.
Memphis, Tenn.-based Pinnacle grew by 700 percent in the past five years, according to Phil Reed, its marketing vice president. During that time, it switched its fleet from propeller-driven planes to small turbojets, known as regional jets, or RJs.
The number of regional jets rose to 1,630 last year from 570 in 2000, the Federal Aviation Administration says. The question of whether government safety inspectors can keep up with such rapid changes in the airline industry was raised last week in a Transportation Department inspector general's report.
Jet engines work differently at higher altitudes, and it's unclear whether the relatively inexperienced Pinnacle pilots were aware that they had to be more careful in the thin air at 41,000 feet, the maximum altitude for their plane.
According to FAA transcripts of air-to-ground conversations, an air traffic controller in Kansas City told the two pilots it was rare to see the plane flying that high.
"Yeah, we're actually ... we don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come up here," one of the pilots said. The transcripts don't identify whether Jesse Rhodes or Cesarz made the statement.
First one, then the other engine shut down. The last contact that controllers had with the crew was at 9,000 feet, when the pilot reported an airport beacon in sight.
At the hearing, NTSB investigators plan to delve into the plane's flight limits and the proper recovery techniques when engines fail. They also want to know if the pilots knew those procedures and to learn the engine's performance characteristics at high altitudes.
On June 2, the FAA issued a special bulletin clarifying what steps pilots need to take to restart an engine when there's a dual engine failure, agency spokeswoman Laura Brown said.
David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said the issue may be reckless pilots rather than inadequate training or improper recovery procedures.
"This is more a story of pilots having time on their hands and playing with things in the cockpit that they shouldn't," he said.
Flying, he said, is as boring as truck driving most of the time.
"This was boredom and experimentation, these guys experimenting with things they had no business doing," Stempler said.
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On the Net:
National Transportation Safety Board: http://www.ntsb.gov
AP-ES-06-13-05 1117EDT
Hold ma beer n watch dis!
Pingable?
Darwin award on the way??
Hold muh beer alert.
Darwin Award Winners?
Hold muh Pepsi and watch this......CRASH! Alert.
Double Darwin.
Geez, glad no one on the ground got hurt by the actions of these two.
bump
Well, now we know the published maximum ceiling for that aircraft is only good for 2 minutes. The manufacturer better put out a warning notice.
Take the Pepsi Challenge
New standard equipment in all modern jet aircraft is a big dog. The pilot's job is to feed the dog. The dog's job is to bite the pilot if he tries to touch anything.
I don't understand why they could not airstart the engines once they were at a lower altitude. Something is wrong here.
yes...
I'm not a pilot, but maybe (Maybe?) something burned out at that high altitude, or else the altitude caused some sort of other permanent damage?
Good thing they didn't kill anyone else.
The article makes much of the pilots' "see if we can do it" attitude, but they were still within the altitude envelope approved by the FAA.
From AV Web in October regarding original incident:
http://www.avweb.com/newswire/10_43a/leadnews/188357-1.html
They almost made it. Pilots of a Pinnacle Airlines CRJ2 apparently glided their powerless regional jet for 20 minutes and almost 100 miles before it crashed two miles short of the Jefferson City, Mo., airport late Thursday.
Now, the NTSB is trying to figure out why both engines apparently stopped, possibly while the plane was at cruise. The plane was on a repositioning flight from Little Rock, Ark., to Minneapolis. Only the pilots, Captain Jesse Rhodes, of Palm Harbor, Fla., and First Officer Peter Cesarz, of Helotes, Texas, were on board when the regional jet went down in a residential area of the city, narrowly missing several houses.
Both pilots were killed but no one on the ground was hurt. NTSB spokeswoman Carol Carmody said flight data recorder information showed the plane was at 41,000 feet, about 100 miles south of Jefferson City, at 9:51 p.m. Four minutes later, both engines quit. Other reports suggest one engine quit at cruise and the other during the emergency descent. The plane crashed at 10:15 p.m.
Carmody said 41,000 feet is the maximum altitude for the CRJ2 and told reporters that exceeding that altitude could cause engine failure.
She also said there was no clear indication of the cause of engine stoppage and investigators don't know why the plane was flying so high. "That's the most interesting thing," she said.
Carmody said the plane had been pulled from a scheduled flight earlier Thursday when an indicator light went on for its bleed air system. Unspecified maintenance was performed before the plane took off later that evening.
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