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Top aviation expert reveals likely cause of 'death spiral' that brought down Brazil plane (video)
Daily Mail ^ | 8/10/24 | James Reynolds, Ellyn Lapointe

Posted on 08/10/2024 4:42:22 AM PDT by Libloather

Witnesses have described their horror at watching a plane 'fall out of the sky and explode' in Brazil on Friday - as experts scramble to make sense of what happened.

Dramatic video showed the moment a Voepass Airlines plane came spiralling down over populated areas before crashing behind a cluster of trees, near homes.

'I almost believe the pilot tried to avoid a nearby neighbourhood, which is densely populated,' Daniel de Lima, a resident of Vinhedo near the crash site, told Reuters.

All 61 people on board have been reported dead, though relatives are still waiting for confirmation of the fate of their loved ones.

Voepass has since revealed that all those on board - including 57 passengers and four crew - were carrying Brazilian-issued documents.

Some of the passengers were doctors from Parana heading to a seminar, Governor Ratinho Junior told reporters.

'These were people who were used to saving lives, and now they've lost theirs in such tragic circumstances,' he said.

Daniel de Lima said he heard a loud noise on Friday before looking outside his condo and seeing the plane in a horizontal spiral.

'It was rotating, but it wasn't moving forward,' he told Reuters. 'Soon after it fell out of the sky and exploded.'

'When I heard the sound of the plane falling, I looked out my window at home and saw the moment it crashed,' witness Felipe Magalhaes told Reuters.

'Terrified and not knowing what to do, I jumped over the wall,' he said.

The plane was on its way from Cascavel to Guarulhos cruising at 17,000 feet when it began the sudden descent.

Brazil's Civil Defense says the plane struck several houses within the residential area, CNN Brasil reported.

(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; History; Outdoors; Travel
KEYWORDS: atr; aviation; brazil; crash; plane; spiral; voepass
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To: Bonemaker
"Whatever the pilot tried or wanted to do mattered not....

It mattered to the people he didn't kill.

Sometimes it happens that way. Francis Gary Powers died in a helicopter crash after running out of fuel. He was autorotating toward a spot where he expected to find a suitable landing site, until he noticed the spot was a baseball diamond with kids playing in it. He took an evasive maneuver that saved the kids but killed him.

41 posted on 08/10/2024 7:51:15 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: rellic
"I read somewhere that ATR’s don’t have anti icing capabilities for wings...."

You can see the de-icing boots in the photo (the black strip on the leading edges of the wings).

You won't get an aircraft certified for commercial service without anti-icing on the engines, propellers (if any) and wing leading edges.

Furthermore, all aircraft lacking de-icing provisions are prohibited from flying into know or forecast icing conditions.

42 posted on 08/10/2024 7:56:45 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: faucetman
"Most likely ICE. Had deicing, but not good enough if they didn’t realize it soon enough, probably because they were on autopilot."

Spent a lot of time in a cockpit in icing conditions, have you?

43 posted on 08/10/2024 7:57:38 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: VTenigma
"...Twin engine turboprop stalls are very hard to recover from...."

No, they're not. Lower the nose, problem solved.

44 posted on 08/10/2024 7:59:39 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: fso301
One top aviation expert told MailOnline that the plane could have experience engine failure, flight control malfunction, or a critical part of the aircraft falling off.

If this guy is an expert with that analysis we all are.

45 posted on 08/10/2024 8:11:57 AM PDT by pfflier
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To: pfflier

Or smacked a bird.....pilot fell aspeep.......tail fell off......motor ran out of oil/gas......see, experts all.


46 posted on 08/10/2024 8:14:28 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma deuce)
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To: Paal Gulli

It did crash in residential neighborhood. Article alluded to pilot trying not to. The point is whatever the pilot’s intentions and valiant efforts, they were utterly ineffectual due to the uncontrollable and unrecoverable flat spin.


47 posted on 08/10/2024 8:21:20 AM PDT by Bonemaker (invictus maneo)
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To: Paal Gulli

Not on a heavily laden commercial craft with a ton of moment. There is not enough control authority to overcome the centripetal force. Yes chopping the throttles and lowering the nose is the way out in turboprops with a shorter moment arm than that particular ATR.


48 posted on 08/10/2024 8:22:24 AM PDT by VTenigma (Conspiracy theory is the new "spoiler alert")
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To: Bartholomew Roberts

Typically, it’s 5.5 degrees F per 1000 feet of elevation. So that means that at 17,000, it’s 93.5 degrees F cooler than it was at sea level. So if it was a hot day below, it was still 0F above.


49 posted on 08/10/2024 8:24:21 AM PDT by FrankRizzo890
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To: Pollard

The wings look a bit undersized for the fuselage.

Agree appears to be the early stage of DEI work.


50 posted on 08/10/2024 8:29:38 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: going hot
Or smacked a bird.....pilot fell aspeep.......tail fell off......motor ran out of oil/gas......see, experts all.

You forgot hitting a flying UAP tic-tac....

51 posted on 08/10/2024 8:29:54 AM PDT by pfflier
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To: going hot
Or smacked a bird.....pilot fell aspeep.......tail fell off......motor ran out of oil/gas......see, experts all.

You forgot hitting a flying UAP tic-tac....

52 posted on 08/10/2024 8:29:54 AM PDT by pfflier
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To: pfflier

Well, I never said -—>I<-— was an expert!


53 posted on 08/10/2024 8:32:42 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma deuce)
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To: Libloather
There is no spin without a stall. ALL spins begin with a stall, usually accompanied by failing to keep the wings level as the nose drops.

Contrary to what the idiot who wrote this article stated, a stall IS NOT "...when the airflow over the wings is too slow to provide enough lift...." A stall occurs when the resultant relative airflow over a wing exceeds that airfoil's critical angle of attack. There's no end of stupid crap in this article, but that's probably the most ignorant of all.

Commercial aircraft have a stall prevention system called stick shaker/stick pusher. If a stall is imminent, the system induces a noticeable vibration ("shaking") into the steering yoke, not unlike the Botts dots they put on the shoulder of highways to waken sleepy motorists drifting out of their lane. If the pilot ignores the shaker's warning and enters a light stall, motors on the steering yoke physically push the stick forward with a force of (IIRC) 75 pounds in an effort to lower the nose, thereby reducing the angle of attack and restoring laminar airflow over the wing and ending the stall.

Once the stick pusher is activated, it takes a deliberate act by the flying pilot to continue or worsen the stall.

So if you spin a commercial aircraft, there's a very good chance that it was the result of encountering a circumstance that was never covered in any class you ever took.

Until the get the flight data recorder analyzed, I doubt anybody but the two pilots in that cockpit will have a clue what caused the crash.

From the Wikipedia page:

.../Meteorological reports at the time of the accident indicated that areas of turbulence, thunderstorms and icing were present in areas surrounding the accident. The Brazilian Air Force said in a statement that Flight 2283 did not declare an emergency.

According to Flightradar24, the aircraft was cruising at 17,000 feet (5,200 m) when, at 13:21 local time, the aircraft experienced a brief loss of altitude followed by the aircraft briefly gaining in altitude. Shortly thereafter the aircraft entered into a steep and terminal descent, with the last data transmission occurring at 1:22 pm, before crashing. ADS-B data indicated that the aircraft reached a maximum vertical descent rate of 24,000 feet (7,300 m) per minute....

That is not a typical day in the office.

54 posted on 08/10/2024 8:33:07 AM PDT by Paal Gulli
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To: Omnivore-Dan
Didn’t see the jet’s manufacturer. Boeing?

If it was a Boeing it would have been prominently mentioned. More likely a commuter aircraft.

55 posted on 08/10/2024 8:39:25 AM PDT by AlaskaErik (There are three kinds of rats: Rats, Damned Rats, and DemocRats.)
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To: Paal Gulli
Them thunderclouds can get nasty with flying machines.

Suck them up and then spit them back out at a different altitude and attitude.

56 posted on 08/10/2024 8:46:16 AM PDT by going hot (Happiness is a Momma deuce)
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To: Pollard
It's an ATR 600 turbo prop. That's just a poor photo, the wings are longer than they look

https://www.atr-aircraft.com/aircraft-services/aircraft-family/

57 posted on 08/10/2024 8:48:38 AM PDT by Hot Tabasco
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To: bigbob

Unless your control surfaces are iced up.


58 posted on 08/10/2024 8:50:14 AM PDT by GMThrust
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To: PilotDave

If the de-ice boots are the inflatable and not heated, then it is very easy to ice up the wings.
I hated flying the King Air anywhere near ice. It had the inflatable boots-way too easy to create an extended leading edge if you left the boots inflated (the ice just formed over the inflated boot-therefore giving you no way to break off the ice). That is why they taught you to wait until some ice builds up ~ 1 inch, then hit the de-ice and turn off once the ice breaks away. The first step was to obviously try to avoid, then get out of it.


59 posted on 08/10/2024 8:57:15 AM PDT by GMThrust
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To: Paal Gulli

This plane crashed straight down on a house, otherwise many would have been killed on the ground. Thankfully no one was home and no one on the ground was injured.


60 posted on 08/10/2024 9:04:06 AM PDT by bgill
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