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
Oh yeah - hydrazine - allegedly, if you smelled it, you were already overdosed. I don't remember a codeword specifically for a hydrazine spill. We called fuel spills of any sort an "applecart" over the radio.
"They were idiots."
They were pilots. All pilots I've met seem to be the type to push the limits in both the Officer's Club and in the sky. It is the Jimmy Doolittle, Billy Mitchell, Yuri Gagaren, Chuck Yeagar spirit. They are wild and they die but they also live.
Nasty stuff.
There are bold pilots, and old pilots- but there are no old,bold pilots.
We had a couple come back during the first Gulf War that holes blown through the wings a foot or two across. I wouldn't want to be on the ground and shoot at one and not kill it - because then, it's pissed off and wounded.
Given the typical level of competence in the FAA, they will mandate that the warning notice be stuck over the face of the altimiter.
If 41K ft is the maximum for the craft, why did the engines shut down? Are there factors not allowed for in the specification that will ar times reduce it? Surely the builder would rate the maximum with a certain factor of safety, at least for whatever parameters were included in the rating.
Pilots that push limits are stupid pilots. A good pilot is trained to go up to the limit (military) or to not go near them (civilian) unless under specific circumstances. The men that you mentioned were classic professionals, not cowboys. But the fact that many if not most pilots drink like fishes has led to this reputation.
There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots; but there are no old bold pilots;)
Something like that. Min airspeed for an airstart in the F/A-18 is 180kts.
Maybe the compressors failed, flooding the engines. They could have burned out trying to move so much thin air to keep up with demand. They were probably at or close to full throttle.
They probably had the misfortune to have engines from Generous Electric! I know an ex-employee that won't even buy their light bulbs (not a personal grudge, he just figures anything not made by GE's got to be better than the corresponding GE product).
Just talked to my 27 year-old son , who is a Pinnacle captain (He's been an airline pilot since he was 21). Told me there are two ways to restart the engines and that the major focus of the hearings should be why the pilots did not get them restarted.
Most of all, this is a case of pilot stupidity.
Yeah we approached it in SCBA........I remember the Titan III missle was also fueled in such a manner with hydrogentetroxide (sp?) and Hydrazine if my memory serves me correct. Saw that stuff rust a S&W revolver left on the floor of the 2 floor of the 3 story launch control complex to a stain in less than a 48hr period at a site in Rock Kansas where a leak had occured.
Nasty stuff indeed......ya'll stay safe !
Whenever we talk about a pilot who has been killed in a flying accident, we should all keep one thing in mind. He called upon the sum of all his knowledge and made a judgment. He believed in it so strongly that he knowingly bet his life on it. That his judgment was faulty is a tragedy, not stupidity. Every instructor, supervisor, and contemporary who ever spoke to him had an opportunity to influence his judgment, so a little bit of all of us goes with every pilot we lose.
— author unknown
Don't know. The article says that the plane was supposed to be able to fly at 41k. It was the edge of the flight envelope, but it was within it.
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