This crash has been driving me nuts for months, I watched a documentary about Swiss Air 111, which crashed off Nova Scotia in 1998, due to a fire in the cockpit which was because of faulty wiring of an inflight entertainment system, now before they were due to make an emergency landing at Halifax Airport, they requested to dump some fuel before landing and unfortunately, whilst doing this, the fire spread and disconnected the autopilot and shorted the glass cockpit controls. The plane crashed killing all 229 people on board.
There has been speculation that if they skipped the fuel dump and when they made the pan pan pan declaration, they could of landed at the airport, would that of been possible? I think so.
Look more closely at the timeline. At 22:20 the pilot announced he wanted more time to dump fuel. At that point the plane was 56 km from the airport. By 22:25 there was smoke in the cockpit and the autopilot had failed. Six minutes after that the plane crashed.
Even if the pilot had not chosen to dump fuel at that point, the plane had 11 minutes to cover the last 56 km/34 miles, descend from 21,000 feet, set up a proper approach and execute a landing. According to the checklist, that should have taken 20 minutes.
Plus, that was taking place while equipment was failing and smoke was filling the cockpit. Looks like the plane never had a chance.
I am not a happy person when I have to fly, and this particular plane crash had more significance. Jonathan Mann and his wife were on the plane, and I had met them briefly at AmFar (both he and his wife were big in AIDS research).
To make it even more grisly, I recall that there was a brief report somewhere that said the plane hit the sea bottom at such force that it actually measured on some Richter scale. True or not, it made me physically sick to hear it at the time.
In reading the report, it sounds like there were a few miscalculations, but nothing was particulalry heinous or not by the book.
There were probably a few things that might have changed the course of the history of that flight, but easier to say after the fact that during the actual short window of opportunity during the crisis.
The checklist be damned if the shit hits the fan and this was such a case. that doesn’t mean they can land in 2 minutes, it just means the PIC is authorized to do whatever is possible to save the lives of the passengers. At 20,000 feet there are more options than at 39,000 feet which is the upper end of the flight envelope. The PIC can pull the power on the engines and deploy whatever device won’t snap off at speed. He can also cross control the rudders and ailerons to accelerate the decent which was done by the Pilot of Air Canada flight 143 in 1983 when they ran out of fuel and were going to overshoot the runway (which was abandon at the time).
I wasn’t saying the only way to handle the plane was going strictly by the checklist, I was trying to say that the plane only had 11 minutes of flyability left for a process that should have taken 20 minutes, and half of that 11 minutes was with failing instruments.
To be clear, I don’t know how long it takes to drop an MD-11 from 21,000 feet and guide it 34 miles to a runway. What I DO know is that a fire on an airplane can get real damn bad real damn fast (ValuJet 592 crashed four minutesafter the first sign of fire and had only been in the air 10 minutes total.Air Canada 797managed to land without power assist, but the fire flashed over and fewer than half the passengers even made it out of the plane. South African Airways 295lasted maybe 15 minutes and also reported failing instruments.)
That’s why I don’t think Swissair 111 ever had a chance.
I think 10 minutes would have been possible if they had been able to track straight to the runway. An average rate of descent of 2000 fpm is quite normal and an average speed of 210 knots is also easily achievable. 10 minutes might not have been enough time though.
Edit: personally with anything involving smoke or fire I’d be landing overweight, burning or dumping fuel just isn’t that important.
I realize that a layman reading the transcript is easily misled, but the cockpit seems addled. SWR111 doesn’t even mention dumping fuel until he’s apparently reminded by
HZ 1:21:23.1 “Swissair one eleven when you have time could I have the number of souls on board and your fuel onboard please for emergency services.”
That’s the thing they were lined up for an approach to one of the runways which was a back-course approach. But could a crash landing of been possible? Maybe not everyone would of survived, but maybe some of them?
What gets me is that if you stretch the distance in doing fuel dumps, it could of easily covered the airport landing.
What confuses me is that they blame the air traffic controller for missing a crucial transmission, what was it? I can’t find it in the transcript.
I recall that report, too, that there were some nearby seismometers that registered the impact of the plane of the sea floor. But I was not under the impression that this meant the impact was particularly hard (for a plane crash) – just that the instruments were particularly sensitive and that the crash was quite close to shore.
IIRC, it had oxygen generator canisters improperly (and illegally) stowed in cargo. They burn like a highway flare. If those go off, you’re cooked. quickly.
It also broke thru the bedrock below the surface water, and punched thru to the water basin below.
ATC has no legal authority regarding the pilot’s decision. The Pilot in Command has carte-blanche authority to do anything necessary to land the plane. If communication was lost and the plane made a bee-line for the runway ATC would have no choice but to route other aircraft away.