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Posted on 02/15/2009 11:17:40 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
A federal aviation official says the plane that crashed into a house near Buffalo, killing 50 people, was on autopilot when it went down, a violation of airline policy.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Ping. And the NTSB is going to have a press conference at 4pm today. Fox News Channel will carry it live.
Well it was on autopilot when it hit the ground. The crew could have hit it during the final seconds by accident or hoping it would recover the plane.
That’s a thought - hitting the ground put it on “autopilot.”
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Outcome based education. Unlike Sully.
I don’t think the investigator would have brought this up in the way he did if there was any doubt. I’m sure the data recorder must have shown it was on earlier and left on.
Were they at the decision height? If not, disconnecting the autopilot and configuring the aircraft for landing or missed approach would require some action on the part of the crew.
If the decision is a missed approach, they had to add power, configure the aircraft for the climb and then re-engage the autopilot.
According to transcripts the whole sequence of events happened too fast and they were too low to recover.
IMHO
Sounds like pilot error; but then I don’t believe anything that I hear anymore. If it was a terrorist do you think they are going to tell us that?
No I meant the plane was on autopilot when it hit the ground, not the impact caused it. Doesn’t mean auto-pilot caused the accident.
If the de-icing on propeller planes is inadequate to the task, how can flying the plane manually change the final outcome?
Just asking.
The last coversation between the pilot and tower was the towerinstructing the pilot to go to lower altitude and it seemed as though the pilot acknowledged. Could the pilot do this with the plane in autopilot?
As a very frequent business flyer, there were some flights I tried to avoid. Flying on the last flight of the day in a turbo prop in winter was the first on the list.
Everything is against you..first, it is likely to be late and may be canceled because the crew has run out of flying time that day, second, the crew will likely be tired. third, the flight crews of the turbo props are inexperienced and underpaid. Four the planes themselves are subject to overloading and CG misloading.
5. bad weather causes accidents.
I suspect that this accident will be put down to pilot error and the pilots will be low hour people who were at the end of a long frustrating day of bad weather.
“Outcome based education.”
What makes you say that? Do you have any special knowledge of the pilots education?
Maybe the plane was on autopilot and the pilot just didn't get the chance to change it before it crashed.
“Maybe the plane was on autopilot and the pilot just didn’t get the chance to change it before it crashed.”
That was my thought too. So not much of a story if it was found to be on autopilot.
If it was a terrorist do you think they are going to tell us that?
Yes, terrorists want publicity. It would defeat their purpose to have it thought the crash was an accident if the terrorists were in fact responsible.
I agree with all of your reasons but I believe this particular pilot was very experienced. the co-pilot perhaps wasn’t though.
First, Clarence is not in upstate New York, it’s in Western NY. Those darn reporters think there’s only New York City and Upstate N.Y. Everything stops outside of N.Y. City.
Second, the pilot was told to lower to 11,000 feet when he reported ice on the wings, and he did, so he couldn’t have been on auto pilot at that point.
He hit ONE house, which was remarkable. One report is that he might have purposely nose dived rather than hit several houses.
I don’t consider 3 years and 3000 miles a lot of experience...Because the pilot would rarely run into these weather conditions.
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It can only be attributable to human error.