Turkish Aircrash

[ventura_kelley]

Interestingly the captain of the Turkish Airlines flight was a very experienced former Turkish Air Force flight instructor with more than 1000 hours on the T-33, and about 4000 hours on the F-4E Phantom; two of the three types you mentioned in your post. The other pilot was a 29-year old who probably would never have been given the chance to fly for a national carrier in the US.

I'd love to read that article.

Can you source it please?

How much time in the incident type?

[TaiidanTomcat]

The F-16 rear ended the 130 knocking most of the horizontal stab off the 130 and damaging the nose of the F-16, which is where the Flight control computer of the 16 is. So after impact, the only control they had left was the throttle. They firewalled the throttle to try to keep the jet from impacting the flightline/hangers and punched out, landing near the ops building IIRC. The nose of the 16 was out by the fence. The "debris" the 16 shedded on that road by the flightline was the canopy. Almost everything else was 130 tail debris.

Read Tallidan.

Source?

Wait a minute.

HTH did you read this:

And get this:

Either you're the one having trouble reading or you're trying to set up a straw man fallacy, which is a dishonest rhetorical strategy where you lie about what I said and then argue against your own lie.

You specifically whined about FBW aircraft, then used an article to try and "prove" your point. but at no time did the Article actually mention fly-by-wire as one of the causes of the crash, nor did it say that a non FBW aircraft would have made any difference.

And the name is Taiidan. not Tallidan --so yes Kelley READ.

Also wouldn't an airman fresh out of training be used to flying LOW TECH machines? like T-6s, tweets, T-38s etc?

Since when is an F-4 considered "low tech"? Old Yes, low tech and simple? hardly.

Kelley you and I are in agreement I don't think there should be an over reliance on technology, but taking a random mid air collision and twisting it to make your point (a point that Pig, a pilot) even says is a moot point.

Why do you even mention Fly by wire and demonstrate an incident that had nothing to do with computers messing up at all? It was all human error.

Wouldnt a better example be the B-2 that crashed in Guam a few years back? Rather than a mid air collision?

Edited May 18, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat

[TaiidanTomcat]

How does that matter?

Isn't that a little closed minded?

Just seems a little arrogant.

Like say generalizing an entire generation of pilots as incompetent should a system fail?

Any other massive generalizations would like to throw out there based on flimsy evidence? Tall people are good at basketball? Women can't drive? etc?

Edited May 18, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat

[KursadA]

I'd love to read that article.

Can you source it please?

How much time in the incident type?

Here's the article, but I'm afraid you won't be able to read it unless you can read Turkish. (The Turkish translation feature of Google Translate simply results in barely readable gibberish that could be Kafkaesque at times.)

http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/11095896.asp

Basically, the captain had 13.5 hours in the T-34 Mentor, 112 hours on the T-37 Tweet, and 101 hours on the F-100. (This sequence is typical for a Turkish Air Force pilot beginning his career in the early 1980s, the F-100 was essentially a fighter/bomber trainer between 1980-1988.) He then flew 1079 hours in the T-33 and 3848 hours in the F-4E. The article says he had a total of 12,000 hours of flight experience including his B737-400 and B737-800 time.

Edited May 18, 2010 by KursadA

[Pete "Pig" Fleischmann]

How does that matter?

I tell you about a trend that I'm noticing through a long term exposure to pilots related to their mistaken belief in the infallibility of their equipment and over reliance on that belief, which is a change in attitude that I've seen, and that's somehow invalid because I don't carry a card?

Isn't that a little closed minded?

If anybody is the most qualified to comment on the fallibility of the tech and mistaken beliefs about that, why wouldn't it would be the people that fixed it more so than the people that use it.

Commercial pilots crack open their black boxes to fix defects? Chase down chafed wires much? Stuff like that?

Just seems a little arrogant.

It matters tremendously. It gives me a point of reference that speaks to your experience.

Go back and read Alf's response to my post. Here is another highly experienced professional aviator, who held my assertions up against the litmus test of his experience and agreed with me.

I tried to add the insight of a professional pilot to the discussion-to add truisms not based on empty assumptions. gross generalizations, and mis-informed opinion, but those things we know to be true from real-world experience as pilots.

I'm pitching but you are not catching. That's OK..no big deal.

Regards,

Pig

[TaiidanTomcat]

I tried to add the insight of a professional pilot to the discussion-to add truisms not based on empty assumptions. gross generalizations, and mis-informed opinion, but those things we know to be true from real-world experience as pilots.

What about hearsay and conjecture? Don't those count for anything anymore Pig?

[Pete "Pig" Fleischmann]

What about hearsay and conjecture? Don't those count for anything anymore Pig?

Those are good too-

[Murph]

That is a perfect example of why I don't trust automatic landing systems on airplanes. There needs to be a human in control at that critical phase of operations.

Darwin

It's like anything else, there is no perfect system. I can remember going into Maastricht doing an autoland and everything worked perfectly tilll the flare, when the throttles didn't retard to idle, and we floated down a rather wet runway in ground effect. The captain (it was his leg) kicked off the autopilot and put on a rather impressive demonstration of the brakes on a 747. I mention that, because it stands out as the only time the autoland screwed up. I've seen them operate flawlessly more often than not, and I've seen them screw up (once). The same is true of human pilots too. If you don't want a plane to crash then never fly one.

Regards,

Murph

[Waco]

If anybody is the most qualified to comment on the fallibility of the tech and mistaken beliefs about that, why wouldn't it would be the people that fixed it more so than the people that use it.

Absolutely not. I've learned repeatedly that the folks who "fix" stuff often have no idea how the component they repair/work on relates to the operation of the system as a whole. More importantly, while they may know how that particular piece of equipment works extremely well, in my experience, they often have no idea how it is actually used in an operational sense. Understanding how it is used is far more important than how it works.

And no offense ventrua, but you aren't exactly helping yourself out for credibility with this excessive hyperbole. The story about IR MAVs sounds like utter bull hockey for so many reasons, not least of which being the fact that IR systems do not work particularly well among clouds/visible water vapor....IE, fog. Secondly, no pilot I'm aware of relies exclusively on an INS to get home in bad weather, nor on a GPS. That's particularly true of folks who flew T-37s, T-38s, and A-10s. TACAN, VOR, ILS....all those are valid ways to shoot an instrument approach, all found in some combination on the platforms that would've been typical in your story.

Now I MIGHT be more inclined to believe your story if you'd said that the old guys pushed the minimums to the utmost limit, and were thus able to land in conditions where a younger pilot either elected to divert, or was forced to divert. For YOUR knowledge base, the less experienced you are as a pilot, the higher your weather category is, meaning the better the weather conditions have to be before you can legally shoot an instrument approach. It has very little to do with technology, and a lot to do with regulations, instruction, and experience. If you are an inexperienced pilot (defined by a certain number of hours), then you are going to have to divert in weather that is legally "landable" for a more experienced pilot.

Either that or you break the rules and try to land anyway...if you screw it up, it's only your wings...

[GreyGhost]

Sad event ...

Interesting discussion here guys ...

Gregg

[ALF18]

Absolutely not. I've learned repeatedly that the folks who "fix" stuff often have no idea how the component they repair/work on relates to the operation of the system as a whole. More importantly, while they may know how that particular piece of equipment works extremely well, in my experience, they often have no idea how it is actually used in an operational sense. Understanding how it is used is far more important than how it works.

Another valid comment. Aviation is a complex world. There are many experts on individual systems, but very few that know what the whole does, and the implications of failures. Through many years, I have learned to show patience and pretend not to be offended when I hear the phrase "dumb pilot, doesn't know (fill in appropriate trivia here)". Engine techs know engines inside and out. They roll their eyes when I don't remember which one is the T5 sensor, but they couldn't tell you what to do with the engine and aircaft if it fails, or how to recognize that failure when flying. Weather forecasters can interpret tea leaves and barometers better than anyone else; they also wonder why I don't know that the interval between isobars is so many millibars on a given chart... Avionics techs know precisely why the circuit breaker keeps popping, whereas all I know how to do is work around the loss of that system, or to react to the subsequent smoke in the cockpit or fire.

Pilots? All they can do is operate the stuff. And therein lies the key. When it comes to total system knowledge, they are the only ones who understand enough to stay alive. Training and experience are critical also.

Yes, I flew gliders. I understand how the Gimli Air Canada dead-stick landing could happen - the pilot had an above-average judgement of glidepath, plus he had local knowledge from his military flying around Gimli years before. The part that we are leaving out, though, is how he also understood all of the systems on his aircraft to the point that he could use them in degraded mode to land safely. That's called total system knowledge, and coupled with airmanship, it led to a happy ending.

I work with young pilots flying high-tech fly-by-wire aircraft every day in our simulators. There are some who lack experience, but most are working very hard to learn more, and to devise ways to operate their aircraft in any circumstance. The calculator example is a good one. My teen-aged kids use them all the time. They didn't like it at first when I told them to use mental math and approximations to validate the answers, but now they do so and catch basic errors quickly and easily. Same principle applies to flying automated aircraft. Airmanship is all about understanding the big picture, and knowing what is going on (also known as situation awareness). Good pilots have it. Mediocre or poor pilots don't, and they are a disproportionate percentage of the ones that end up in trouble or in tragedies.

This thread has degraded a bit, unfortunately, for the usual reasons. I know that the vast majority of people reading are finding it interesting to gain an insight into how these automated systems can help, and how pilots must be competent to safely monitor and operate them. It is just too bad that some people are not willing to listen to the real pros that actually have walked the walk, and not just observe from a distance without knowing everything about how it is done.

ALF

[ross blackford]

,Whether we're a professional pilot or no, whether we like computers or no we have to admit whether we like it or no that they're here to stay regardless of our field of employment, aeroplanes, cars, trucks or manufacturing machinery. My take on this sort of thing is I might s well get used to the technological changes in the world. They're unstoppable and here forever.

,

Ross.

[Andre]

Interestingly the captain of the Turkish Airlines flight was a very experienced former Turkish Air Force flight instructor with more than 1000 hours on the T-33, and about 4000 hours on the F-4E Phantom; two of the three types you mentioned in your post. The other pilot was a 29-year old who probably would never have been given the chance to fly for a national carrier in the US.

According to the accident rapport, the 29-year old copilot began to push the throttles forward as soon as the stick shakers kicked in, which is the standard procedure in case of an impending stall and could possibly have prevented the crash, but was ordered not to by the former 'very experienced former Turkish Air Force flight instructor'.

This lead to a delay of 9 seconds before full throttle was applied.

So, in this case the inexperienced but outranked pilot had it right.

Cheers,

Andre

[11bee]

According to the accident rapport, the 29-year old copilot began to push the throttles forward as soon as the stick shakers kicked in, which is the standard procedure in case of an impending stall and could possibly have prevented the crash, but was ordered not to by the former 'very experienced former Turkish Air Force flight instructor'.

This lead to a delay of 9 seconds before full throttle was applied.

So, in this case the inexperienced but outranked pilot had it right.

Cheers,

Andre

That's been a contributing cause in a good number of crashes. Used to more so back in "the day" when the Captain had absolute authority and the 1st and 2nd officers were pretty much to only speak when spoken to. In last the few decades, Crew Resource Management has been pushed hard. The basics behind that is the philosophy that each crew member has the full authority to take necessary actions to prevent an accident and it stresses two-way communication as a critical component. It still isn't perfect as this crash represents. Also look up the crash of a C-5 at Dover AFB. A junior crew member saw the plane starting to loose speed on a one engine out landing approach and commented on it but not in a particularly forceful way. The end result was that the pilots ignored the comment and the plane went down.

Crash investigations can be fascinating (albeit somewhat morbid) things to read up on. There are usually multiple small errors that cumulatively lead to the accident.

Regards,

John

[johnny_7713]

According to the accident rapport, the 29-year old copilot began to push the throttles forward as soon as the stick shakers kicked in, which is the standard procedure in case of an impending stall and could possibly have prevented the crash, but was ordered not to by the former 'very experienced former Turkish Air Force flight instructor'.

This lead to a delay of 9 seconds before full throttle was applied.

So, in this case the inexperienced but outranked pilot had it right.

Cheers,

Andre

Hmm, that's not quite how I read the report. What happened as I understand it:

1. Co-pilot (who is the one in control) notices stick shaker, reacts by pushing nose down and pushes throttles forward.

2. Captain takes over control, interrupting the Co-pilot's thrust selection (that is the co-pilot 'lets go' of the stick and throttle, the captain did not order throttle returned to idle)

3. Auto-throttle returns thrust-levers to idle

4. Nine seconds later the captain notices the thrust is set to idle and selects full thrust, unfortunately too late

Reading the report the impression I had was not so much that the crew trusted their technology too much but rather that they were distracted by going through the landing check-list and so not paying as much attention to what the aircraft was doing as they should have. This was caused / exacerbated by the controller vectoring them in such a way that they intercepted the glide-slope from above (so that idle thrust was expected as part of the normal sequence of events for the first part of the approach).

Interesting fact regarding experience: The co-pilot had last practised stall recovery about a year or two before the crash, the captain had last practised it 13 years before the crash, in both cases during their type rating. Turkish Airlines (and I assume other airlines as well) has since added stall recovery to the recurrent training program.

As with most modern aircraft accidents there are several factors of which you can say, 'if this had not happened the plane wouldn't have crashed'.

Anyway for anyone who would like to draw their own conclusions here is the full report by the Dutch Safety Board: DSB report. Page 5-14 contain most of the relevant information, the rest is deeper analysis, reaction of various involved parties to draft report, transcripts, etc.

Regarding the F-16 crash, F-16s are reliant on computers because it is physically impossible for an unaided human to control them. F-16 pilots are indeed reliant upon technology, but that is because they have no other choice. Also as was already pointed out, non-fly-by-wire systems can fail just as catastrophically. In the words of one of my professors: 'Everything can break'

[ALF18]

Regarding the F-16 crash, F-16s are reliant on computers because it is physically impossible for an unaided human to control them. F-16 pilots are indeed reliant upon technology, but that is because they have no other choice. Also as was already pointed out, non-fly-by-wire systems can fail just as catastrophically. In the words of one of my professors: 'Everything can break'

Very good point. I personally know of three pilots who would be dead today if it were not for CF-18 fly by wire.

My father flew the CF-104. He once described to me in detail a crash in which the pilot survived due to lucky timing, and another in which the guy died, both due to mechanical failures in the leading edge flaps. In one instance, the flap broke off; in the other there was a split flap condition. Being mechanical, the controls didn't compensate, and both aircraft went into rapid rolling that could not be controlled by ailerons. One guy ejected and luckily the seat banged out of the aircraft at the right point in the rapid roll, and he went up instead of down or sideways. As it was, he only had a few seconds to swing in the parachute before smashing into the ground and sustaining leg injuries. The other pilot was unable to eject and died as it corkscrewed its way quickly into the ground.

On the Hornet, the fly by wire system is designed to automatically null out any pitch, roll, or yaw moments that are not 'commanded' by the pilot (i.e. by him moving the controls). I've seen a CF-18 that lost a leading edge flap (it disintegrated) while in a 5 G turn at 100 feet above the ground and 500 kts, and the pilot didn't even notice it was gone except for getting a Flight Control caution. He rolled out of the turn, slowed down and climbed, and checked his flight control page on a DDI. Seeing that the fly by wire system had printed Xs over top of the numbers showing the control surface angle, he pumped the stick to see if the flaps would respond. They remained frozen (according to the page), so he looked back at the wing to see if it was moving, and maybe the computer was lying to him. To his surprise, all he saw was a missing flap! During the return to base, he conducted a controllability check with gear and flaps down at approach and landing speeds, high enough to allow recovery from any loss of control. It flew very nicely, and was able to fly hands-off with no rolling or yawing tendencies at speeds just above normal approach. He landed without incident.

Other CF-18s have had trailing edge flaps come off and get wedged between the vertical tails, and other catastrophic failures of components. In every case, the pilot was able to land safely.

Fly by wire is a life-saver. If the system is damaged so severely by an in-flight collision that the fly by wire logic cannot allow the aircraft to be safely flown to landing, that's why they still install ejection seats.

ALF

[TaiidanTomcat]

Very good point. I personally know of three pilots who would be dead today if it were not for CF-18 fly by wire.

My father flew the CF-104. He once described to me in detail a crash in which the pilot survived due to lucky timing, and another in which the guy died, both due to mechanical failures in the leading edge flaps. In one instance, the flap broke off; in the other there was a split flap condition. Being mechanical, the controls didn't compensate, and both aircraft went into rapid rolling that could not be controlled by ailerons. One guy ejected and luckily the seat banged out of the aircraft at the right point in the rapid roll, and he went up instead of down or sideways. As it was, he only had a few seconds to swing in the parachute before smashing into the ground and sustaining leg injuries. The other pilot was unable to eject and died as it corkscrewed its way quickly into the ground.

On the Hornet, the fly by wire system is designed to automatically null out any pitch, roll, or yaw moments that are not 'commanded' by the pilot (i.e. by him moving the controls). I've seen a CF-18 that lost a leading edge flap (it disintegrated) while in a 5 G turn at 100 feet above the ground and 500 kts, and the pilot didn't even notice it was gone except for getting a Flight Control caution. He rolled out of the turn, slowed down and climbed, and checked his flight control page on a DDI. Seeing that the fly by wire system had printed Xs over top of the numbers showing the control surface angle, he pumped the stick to see if the flaps would respond. They remained frozen (according to the page), so he looked back at the wing to see if it was moving, and maybe the computer was lying to him. To his surprise, all he saw was a missing flap! During the return to base, he conducted a controllability check with gear and flaps down at approach and landing speeds, high enough to allow recovery from any loss of control. It flew very nicely, and was able to fly hands-off with no rolling or yawing tendencies at speeds just above normal approach. He landed without incident.

Other CF-18s have had trailing edge flaps come off and get wedged between the vertical tails, and other catastrophic failures of components. In every case, the pilot was able to land safely.

Fly by wire is a life-saver. If the system is damaged so severely by an in-flight collision that the fly by wire logic cannot allow the aircraft to be safely flown to landing, that's why they still install ejection seats.

ALF

First off that is an excellent story. But it contradicts the narrative that others are promoting. Please don't confuse people with facts when their minds are made up, it just angers them.

Secondly, thank you for agreeing that the fly by wire "failing" after a mid air collision and "forcing an ejection" probably had more to do with the whole hitting a freaking C-130 in mid air thing rather than the computer just not working and forcing an ejection. I hope you don't get accused of creating a "straw man" argument by someone who doesn't even understand the meaning of the phrase. Best of luck in that!

Lastly I must mention that there are several aircraft that do not have FBW systems, but their manuals still advocate ejecting if certain things go wrong. its not just a FBW thing.

Edited May 21, 2010 by TaiidanTomcat