BREAKING: FAA: UPS jet crashes in Birmingham, Ala.

CBS 12 News ^ | August 14, 2013 | Michele Wright

[Yosemitest]

Okay "ye who knows very little", here's your reference to Center's altimeter setting usage from the AIM 3/7/13:

Paragraph 7-2-2. Procedures The cruising altitude or flight level of aircraft must be maintained by reference to an altimeter which must be set, when operating:
...

b. At or above 18,000 feet MSL. To 29.92 inches of mercury (standard setting).
The lowest usable flight level is determined by the atmospheric pressure in the area of operation as shown in TBL 7-2-1.

[Yosemitest]

What do you think happed in this crash?
Why do you think United Parcel Service Flight 1354 crash?

[Yosemitest]

Also on Altimeter setting above FL180 (that's Center's Airspace), check 7110.65U Paragraph 5-2-17 d. and this whole paragraph (see subparagraph a. and d-2),
it covers when mode C altitude differs by mored than 300 feet, to be invalid and to

"STOP ALTITUDE SQUAWK. ALTITUDE DIFFERS BY (number of feet) FEET."

[SgtBob]

on my way out of the door....have no time for FSX...will respond this eve

[radec]

WHERE do you think that line of weather moved to during that fifteen minutes?

Since storms track to the east in this region, they would have been even farther west and not a factor.

Look....

"Tony Cook is a Captain for Delta airlines with 43 years of experience under his belt. "

"The conditions under which these guys were landing in Birmingham the other day were just run of the mill, mundane," he said. "It wasn't difficult for them to land at all. That's given that everything was working and there was nothing else going on in the airplane and that I don't know. I don't want to hazard a guess."

http://www.waff.com/story/23152061/valley-pilot-weighs-in-on-ups-plane-black-box-discovery

[radec]

When you catch a severe downdraft during a rapid descent, because you’re NOT HAULING PASSENGERS, BUT CARGO, what do you expect?

There were no severe downdrafts in the area. Weather wasn't a factor. That was reported earlier.

[Yosemitest]

WRONG!

[Yosemitest]

They were tracking from west-northwest to east-southeast.

[Yosemitest]

I reviewed your source, but Capt.Tony Cook of Delta was wrong about the weather that morning.
I keep a fairly close eye on the weather and watch the satellite-radar loop often.
That line of weather was moving from west-northwest to east-southeast, towards Birmingham and was severe in several places.

Go to http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/ and in the upper left corner, type in BHM and enter.
Then click on the "minus" until you're looking at about a 20 mile radius.
At the upper right side, uncheck the "Weather Stations, and click on the Satellite box so you're looking at the radar and satellite data.
At the bottom left click on the "Adjust Time" and set the date to the 14th.
Then click on the "Less Than Arrow" of the Hour Adjustment until you see gray block over the "05:00" hour.
Then click the "Greater Than Arrow" once on the Hour Adjustment so the gray block advances to the "06:00" Hour.
That is the weather advancing from west-northwest to east-southeast, moving towards Birmingham Airport and OVER Birmingham Airport, during the time of the crash.

[Yosemitest]

Source:

The profile is off a little to the west and to the south, because the approach was to Runwy 18 and not the VOR Navaid.

[radec]

I think you're wrong... about a lot of things.

1. According to flight aware the crash occurred around 5:50 EDT. The wunderground map is EST. That's an hour time difference. So you're an hour off.

2. There were no storms around that area at any time to create the type of downdrafts you keep referring to.

3. Saying a Delta Airlines captain (with 43 years experience) is wrong about the weather that morning is just ignorant of you.

[Boundless]

> One report had the UPS plane on fire before it crashed.

It could be, but know that explosion-before-crash and on-fire-before crash are commonly reported in error by eyewitnesses. Unless the eyewitness is aviation-savvy, such reports must be treated with caution.

I'm not getting an impression of foul play so far, but if there is any, I'd rank the odds of booby-trapped parcel above missile.

[Yosemitest]

Birmingham is in CENTRAL Time, not Eastern Time.
So that wipes out your hour difference.

[Yosemitest]

No, I saying the Delta pilot HAS NO CLUE as to WHAT THE WEATHER WAS during the time of the crash!

[Yosemitest]

When you type in BHM it resets the wunderground map time data to Birmingham.

[Yosemitest]

When you go to the wunderground map, before you do anything, look at the time and look at your computer's current time.
It's the same.
Daylight Savings Time and "Standard Time" has nothing to do with it.

[radec]

Birmingham is in CENTRAL Time, not Eastern Time. So that wipes out your hour difference.

No. You're misunderstanding me. At 4:50 CDT (5:50 EDT the time of the crash) there is not a severe storm to be seen in the Birmingham area.

See for yourself. On your weather map, click radar only run the loop the the entire morning of the 14th.

When you back away, what you will see, from a lot of radar reporting stations in that area, is temperature inversion. That is because a cold front pushed through the Birmingham area the day before.

What is a temperature inversion?

A temperature inversion is a thin layer of the atmosphere where the normal decrease in temperature with height switches to the temperature increasing with height. An inversion acts like a lid, keeping normal convective overturning of the atmosphere from penetrating through the inversion.

This can cause several weather-related effects. One is the trapping of pollutants below the inversion, allowing them to build up. If the sky is very hazy, or is sunsets are very red, there is likely an inversion somewhere in the lower atmosphere. This happens more frequently in high pressure zones, where the gradual sinking of air in the high pressure dome typically causes an inversion to form at the base of a sinking layer of air.

Another effect that an inversion has is to make clouds just below the inversion to spread out and take on a flattened appearance.

Still another effect is to prevent thunderstorms from forming. Even in an air mass that is hot and humid in the lowest layers, thunderstorms will be prevented if an inversion in the lower atmosphere is keeping this air from rising. The conceptual opposite of a temperature inversion is an unstable air layer.

So.... severe weather had nothing to do with this crash. I'm sorry, but you're just wrong if you think so.

I'll stick with the airline captain with 43 years of experience who obviously looked at the weather at the time of the crash (before opening his mouth and putting his reputation on the line).

This will be my last post on the subject for now.

The black boxes should tell us more.

Good discussion.

Peace Out.

[radec]

No, I saying the Delta pilot HAS NO CLUE as to WHAT THE WEATHER WAS during the time of the crash!

One more thing.... how do you know this?

[Yosemitest]

Do you think after 30 years of air traffic control experience, watching D-Brites and regular Radar scopes, that I'm not familiar with temperature inversion?
What you're referring to is standard ground clutter, from having the radar beam turned up too high.
Temperature inversions can happen in the morning but usually happen after sunrise, and are rarely seen at night, unless over water or over a large city.
More often they're seen in the afternoon, at or just after sunset, and almost always when an approaching cold front is pushing out warmer air masses.
But that usually brings rain storms, and thunderstorms.
But weather radar is tuned slightly different that air traffic control radar, and I'm more familiar with ATC Radar.
However, we had to continuously watch the weather out the windows in the Tower,and you learn through years of experience of seeing out the window, compared to the computer weather loops that you monitor, and compared to the ATC Radar on the D-Brite or ATC RAdar scope when in the IFR room, what those returns on the scopes are.
I learned how to tell the difference between early morning bugs risings with the sunrise, birds migrating through the area, wind gust shear lines out in front of the main storms approaching, and your average temperature inversion.
It's visual and it requires motion to get a good feel for what your seeing.

You're grasping at video game "straws" and you're trying to compare all your years of playing with Flight Simulators to the real world.
There IS a difference!

Here'sa another question:

Is the BHM Airport a manned weather station, or is it an automated weather station that is remotely controlled from a central station in Atlanta Center?