Posted on 10/02/2006 11:03:48 PM PDT by bellevuesbest
The Brazilian air force (FAB) has released photographs of the Embraer Legacy 600 business jet that collided with a Gol Linhas Aereas Boeing 737-800 on Friday killing 151 passengers and crew on board. The air force has begun its investigation into the case of the crash and has retained the Embraer aircraft.
The aircraft (N600XL, pictured below) was on its delivery flight to the new owner, Excelaire, and was scheduled to land at Embraer's facility in Manaus to refuel. Following the collision, the Legacy 600 landed at the Cachimbo air force base. The FAB says the aircraft, which has a damaged wing from the impact, is under enquiry at Cachimbo and that the crew will undergo a debrief. The images show that the left winglet on the aircraft has been sheared off.
(Excerpt) Read more at flightglobal.com ...
Ping
My first ping...not sure how this works.
If you want on or off my aerospace ping list, please contact me by Freep mail.
Sure just go ahead and rip apart my first attempt at a ping....just a lowly rookie trying to help, but no it's not to be. Monday Night Football wasn't much better.
Reports are that the rescue services say they may never find all of the passengers.
I thought the 737 went in nose first?
That's almost minor damage to the smaller aircraft. Something vital, like control cables, must have been damaged on the 73.
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/287311_crash03.html
Passenger fatalities are first for new 737s
Latest planes have good safety records
Tuesday, October 3, 2006
By JAMES WALLACE
P-I AEROSPACE REPORTERBrazilian investigators said Monday that a newly delivered Boeing 737-800 that crashed into the Amazon jungle killing all 155 people onboard collided with a corporate jet in midair.
This was the first crash of one of the next generation Boeing 737 jets in which passengers died.
Four other Boeing and Airbus planes that entered airline service in the 1990s -- the 777, 717, A330 and A340 -- have never had fatal accidents.
That absence of fatalities in the past decade underscores the advances that have been made in the most recent large commercial jetliners developed by The Boeing Co. and Airbus, aviation safety experts said.
The first of Boeing's next generation 737 family of jets entered airline service in 1997. Rather than an all-new design, these next generation planes are based on the older 737s, but with extensive improvements and new systems. More than 2,000 next generation 737s are in operation with airlines around the world. The 737-800 entered airline service in the spring of 1998.
Boeing's 777, the company's last all-new jetliner, entered service in 1995. Nearly 600 have been delivered to airlines around the world. The A340 and the A330 have been flying passengers since 1993. More than 700 are in operation.
"There is a reliability in these planes and systems -- all that we have learned over time," said John Nance, aviation author and ABC News aviation safety consultant. He is a former 737 captain.
The 737-800 that crashed Friday in the heart of the Amazon jungle was delivered to the Brazilian airline GOL last month. GOL, a discount airline that has modeled itself after Southwest Airlines in the United States, is one of the fastest-growing airlines in Latin America. Like Southwest, it operates 737s.
The 737-800 apparently collided at cruise altitude with a Legacy business jet that was headed to the United States. The executive jet, which is manufactured by Embraer, was carrying seven passengers and crew, including Joe Sharkey, a journalist for The New York Times. The plane managed to land despite damage to one of its wings.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending investigators to Brazil to assist in the investigation.
Boeing said it is sending two experts.
Until this crash, the only fatal accident involving a next-generation 737 occurred in December when a Southwest 737-700 was unable to stop after landing in a snowstorm at Chicago's Midway Airport.
The plane went through a fence at the end of the runway and hit at least two cars, killing a 6-year-old boy in one.
The next generation 737s, which are assembled at Boeing's Renton factory, are delivered to airlines with the latest cockpit safety systems, including one that alerts the pilots if other planes are getting too close.
"Obviously this is something investigators will be looking closely at," John Purvis, a former Boeing accident investigator, said when asked why the traffic alert and collision avoidance system would not have alerted the 737 pilots that they were about to collide with the business jet.
Purvis, who now has an aviation consulting business, said there are several reasons why the newest planes developed by Boeing and Airbus have nearly unblemished safety records.
They have newer and better systems on them, he said. But they also go to customers in the West who can afford them and have the money for better maintenance and crew training, he said.
"This does not mean that older planes are unsafe," Purvis said, noting that until the recent crash of a commuter jet in Kentucky, there had not been a fatal commercial jetliner crash in the United States in five years.
That crash last month killed two of the three crew members on board and all 47 passengers. The plane took off from the wrong runway, which was too short.
"That five-year dry spell proves that older planes do well," Purvis said. "It was a phenomenal record."
Nance, the former 737 pilot, said older commercial jets are retrofitted with the newest safety features, such as a system that warns pilots if they are getting too close to the ground.
But one of the most important factors for the improved aviation safety record, he said, is better communication between pilots in the cockpit.
"The pilot culture has changed," Nance said. Co-pilots are now taught to speak up if they believe there might be a problem.
Hey you did good, just 22 seconds slow.
Wish I was consistently 18 over.
They will be eaten by all those animals in the rain forest.
As a fellow pilot, been there, done that...lived to tell about it.
Crossed my mind.
" why the traffic alert and collision avoidance system would not have alerted the 737 pilots that they were about to collide with the business jet."
I'm not sure, but I believe the collision avoidance system uses derived information and not direct data such as radar. Anyone here familiar with the system in use?
Another post somewhere had the same altitude assigned to the two planes by two none-communicating traffic controllers.
"Something vital, like control cables, must have been damaged on the 73."
Could be lots of easy things, or stuff we haven't yet imagined. What is for sure, is that no aircraft ever built, was designed to deal with an impact resulting from a ~1,000 mph closure rate. Assuming the FDR survived, they should have a few gazillion datapoints to work from. The -800 series has a formidable set of datasources feeding the box.
TCAS works like a charm as long as both aircraft have the system on and operating. The aircraft exchange info on altitude and course and will command an evasive maneuver if a collision appears imminent.
The required input by the pilot is to disconnect the autopilot and follow the TCAS directed climb or descent profile. The TCAS systems decide between them which aircraft will climb and which will descend. The escape maneuver isn't violent since the climb or descend command is given in plenty of time.
I would imagine these aircraft would both have been equipped with latter variants of TCAS that would "command" the pilots of the aircraft to deviate in altitude to avoid the collision.
Factors that would complicate the problem would be if one or both aircraft were changing altitude, which challenges the system to figure out the altitude trend to compute the possible conflict. Another issue would be if a target aircraft was showing the wrong altitude from its Mode C.
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