Posted on 05/02/2013 8:45:09 AM PDT by Seizethecarp
The horrific crash of a 747-400 at Bagram (here) has yet to be fully investigated and claims are already being made that it was a stall caused by a loose cargo that caused tail of the aircraft to drop and the nose to rise depriving the wings of lift.
Maybe.
The Bagram 747 crash has many similarities to the even more horrific crash of AWACS flight Yukla-27, (here) which was caused by the aircraft striking at least two Canada Geese in the Runway Kill Zone (RKZ) as discussed on an earlier post on this blog (here).
Terrorists familiar with the vulnerability of large jet airliners in the RKZ could produce a nearly identical or very similar crash profile to the Bagram event. They could do this by mining the Bagram runway with autonomous GPS-guided multi-copters placed exactly where they would collide with each jet turbine as the 747-400 passed through the RKZ of the Bagram runway.
Sooo, what you're saying is, the looselimbs fired a kestrel? I think Jeff Foxworthy built a comedy routine around that one...
I happened to be on the ramp when a dogged-out 727 was being flown to desert storage. The crew decided they would do a VMC climb-out to send the old girl off in style (the number of ways this is a stupid idea in a 727 could not be listed in a lifetime).
Sure enough, it goes up like a rocket and the center engine starts barking (when doesn’t it?). The flight engineer knows whats going on and ignores it, but the co-pilot freaks out and goes for the throttles. As luck would have it, the captain had decided enough stupidity and was already starting to push the wheel forward.
After what looked like a half-a$$ed attempted wing over, the aircraft rotated and dove nose first. It disappeared behind a series of hills, but I guess the elevator input had already started to take effect and somehow it made it. I am sure the crew spent the rest of the flight looking for suitable cleaning materials.
Unless there is some overwhelming reason otherwise, an airplane’s path should always involve a lot more forward than up.
Please name a few as I thought the 727 was thought of as kind of a hotrod and got a few pilots in trouble. Also, what does VMC mean?
Sure enough, it goes up like a rocket and the center engine starts barking (when doesn’t it?). The flight engineer knows whats going on and ignores it, but the co-pilot freaks out and goes for the throttles. As luck would have it, the captain had decided enough stupidity and was already starting to push the wheel forward.
Does the 'barking' sound mean compressor stall? Or?
After what looked like a half-a$$ed attempted wing over, the aircraft rotated and dove nose first. It disappeared behind a series of hills, but I guess the elevator input had already started to take effect and somehow it made it. I am sure the crew spent the rest of the flight looking for suitable cleaning materials.
Sometimes God protects drunks and crazy pilots.
Properly flown the 727 is one of the safest aircraft ever. It’s fine going slow as long as you are at or above the published numbers. It will also bite you hard if you take a stall past stick pusher (which you are specifically prohibited from doing in the flight manual.)
VMC is the minimum control speed you can control the aircraft in the case of engine loss. No one is ever gets close to it willingly. The center engine was notorious for compressor stall. When the aircraft was first certified, Boeing hand selected engines for the center engine installation. Some engines just wouldn’t play there at all.
The black box will have the engine telemetry so this can be proved or disproved easily
And the voice recorder will record what the crew thought was happening.
ping...
“Loose lips sink ships.”
This is a serious charge, and one that I considered long and hard before going public with the exposure of the “V1-VR Runway Kill Zone.”
I kept it to myself for nearly six years after stumbling onto the concept in 2006, sharing it with the chief research officer of the Air Force and being told that I was the first one to bring it to their attention and did not object to me going public with it.
I asked myself how I would feel if terrorists destroyed a fully loaded passenger plane because the Runway Kill Zone vulnerability had not been defended against and the public had not been educated to be vigilant regarding drone activities near airports or near the POTUS.
After 9-11, how did the people who warned that unlocked cockpit doors would enable terrorists to turn airliners into flying suicide bombs capable of decapitating the US government? Would they have been called tinfoil, nutcase chicken-littles needlessly alarming themselves and the flying public? Absolutely. Now we should know better, OMO.
On 9-11, the passengers of only one of four jets counter-attacked the terrorists. They were “educated” by hearing over cellphones what could be in store for them and the nation. Better that they had been “educated” before 9-11 because passengers of ALL FOUR of the jets might have rebelled or better yet, locks would have been placed on cockpit doors.
I have concluded that it is patriotic to sound the alarm when a national security vulnerability is identified and to do whatever I can to educate the public and officials on how to identify a potential threat and to advocate for reasonable defensive measures.
Terrorists are not stupid, they are way ahead of the US government and the public in their use of creative opportunistic inexpensive asymmetric attacks...exactly like the opportunity presented every time a jetliner takes off.
If a fair-minded person spends a lot of time, as I have, on US government and defense-oriented public websites, every day new attack vectors that terrorists could exploit are discussed and war-gamed as to defenses. I believe it is obvious that discussion of the Runway Kill Zone is totally appropriate and does not violate “Loose lips sinks ships.”
Check out the former NTSB aviation security expert on the CBS NY affiliate immediately declaring the JFK drone event could be a terrorist attack and speculating that a drone could be directed into a jet engine achieving the same result as happened with Captain Sully (with video of the crash provided to the public) exactly as described on the Runway Kill Zone blog:
“FBI Investigating Report Of Possible Drone Spotted Near JFK”
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2013/03/05/fbi-investigating-report-of-possible-drone-spotted-near-jfk/
Sean Hennessey is the CBS2 News reporter who covered the JFK story.
Al Yurman, former NTSB investigator:
“You take an object that weighs 20-25 pounds and it can do a lot of damage to a plane trying to land.
“If the object gets in the wrong place, like the engine or it happens to hit the windshield, depending on the weight, it could cause the plane to make an emergency landing.”
“Look no further than the 2009 ‘Miracle on the Hudson’ when a flock of geese got into the engines crippling an Airbus A320 forcing the pilot to make an amazing landing in the Hudson River.
“Something that small probably won’t show up.” (on the airport radar)
Lloyd Bennett Field (model aircraft field near JFK)
“You really think you’re the first person to think of this, really?
“Do you think it’s appropriate to use Freerepublic to pimp your blog?”
Please take note of my comment copied to JR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014940/posts?page=68#68
Yes, that is what weight does. Your post said aerodynamic forces could not compensate for MOMENTUM.... that is a whole different beast.
First rule of flying after Vr/V2 — achieve & maintain stable flight; all else is secondary. After achieving a ground speed of 80 knots up to Vr, the only reason for rejecting the takeoff is a condition that affects flight safety, ie, engine out, fire, etc.
Based on published reports that the load shift was communicated to the flight deck soon after rotation, the Captain/PIC would take command of the a/c and become the PF. The PF’s job would be to stabilize the flight, which is incredibly difficult to do when the aircraft is rotating beyond the ability of your flight control surface (elevator aka horizontal stabilizer aka hstab aka stab) to counter.
The gear position, master caution, EGPWS alarms, etc. are all irrelevant until controlled flight has been reestablished. Simply put, if the aircraft isn’t flying, then you’re likely dead, no matter what alarms are ringing or what the gear or flap settings are.
Best guess at what happened in the cockpit is that the PF pushed the yoke forward when the aircraft rotated past the point where he commanded it to stop. When that failed to arrest the pitch up rotation, he likely hit the TO/GA button to get max thrust (assuming a de-rated takeoff) and pushed the yoke into the firewall.
In any case, airspeed bled off pretty quickly, then the left wing stalled. He managed to level the aircraft, but then the right wing stalled and the ship yawed to the right. At this point, the aircraft was doomed. They were below flying speed — it was simply falling with a bit of forward momentum. The nose drops a bit during the yaw, followed by wings level, but this isn’t an indication that the aircraft is flying — just that enough air was moving over the wings during the short descent that the ailerons were able to function.
As another poster stated; they had neither the speed, altitude or thrust (collectively, the energy state) to recover from the stall before impact.
Thanks for your expert pilot analysis! This does seem to be the most evident scenario, especially as there was no visible sign of engine malfunction (flames, sound of compressor stall, shedding engine and cowling parts).
The sequence of pilot responses matches very closely the pilot’s response during the 1995 AWACS Yukla 27 bird-strike event:
http://flightsafety.org/ap/ap_nov96.pdf
Please allow me to make a personal request. Would you be so kind as to read and assess for technical accuracy my theory on my blog that the zone between V1 and VR, however long that may last on the runway, is a potential terrorist runway kill zone? I am a retired CPA, not a pilot.
It is my theory that the V1-VR zone needs to be proactively protected from attacks by GPS guided UAV/drones targeting individual turbines. The linear path down the runway and distance from the airframe centerline of each engine (and thus the distance from the runway centerline) can be reliably predicted using GPS coordinates.
All this is explained in detail at this blog post:
As I mentioned, the chief research officer of the Air Force thanked my for making him and presumably the Air Force aware of this vulnerability back in 2006, and he went out of his way to make sure that the Air Force One commander was aware as well.
Recently, it appears that terrorists may be trying to exploit a Landing Approach Kill Zone as discussed on my blog:
In case you missed it, here is the FR thread that I started do discuss drone at JFK which has some interesting discussion.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3014942/posts?q=1&;page=1#1
ping...
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