An Emirates B777 has crashed during a go-around manoeuvre at Dubai airport, contacting the runway with the landing gear retracted and catching fire. All passengers and crew evacuated safely.
There is a lot of conflicting information regarding why it went around, whether the gear was down or up prior to the go-around, and whether it was ops normal during the approach. My minimally informed speculation is that the statement by ATC about checking gear is a standard procedure in that part of the world, and that the gear was down for the approach but selected up prematurely during the go-around.
Windshear had been reported and if a go-around is performed because of windshear no configuration changes are to be made until out of the windshear conditions, so gear and flap remain extended until climbing away normally.
A normal go-around involves pitching up, retracting the flaps to the go-around position, waiting for a positive rate of climb, then retracting the gear.
Either way it seems the gear may have been selected up prematurely assuming the approach was normal.
Awful lot of Boeing 777 incidents in the past few years - British Airways at Heathrow, MH370, Egyptair fire, MH17, British Airways at Las Vegas, now Emirates.
There are over 1400 Boeing 777 in service since 1995. There have been 8 significant incidents, with 4 involving loss of life and only one known to be a “normal” crash incident.
[ul]
[li]Continental 61 - Pilot died in flight, no other fatalities[/li][li]Asiana Airlines - Came in short of runway, 3 killed[/li][li]MH370 - Aircraft lost under unknown circumstances[/li][li]MH17 - shot down over Ukraine[/li][/ul]
Yes, and? There’s a lot of them in service. The 777 has been in service for 22 years and is by all accounts a very well thought-out and safe aircraft. You mentioned these incidents:
[ul]
[li]British Airways at Heathrow - (Speedbird 38) Attributed to weather conditions and ice crystals in the fuel. Rolls Royce redesigned their Trent 800 engine to prevent future occurrences.[/li][li]MH370 - Suspected to be intentional act by pilot.[/li][li]Egyptair fire (667) - Fire in cockpit while on the ground, believed to be result of improper maintenance. Missing cable and hose clamps allowed rubbing and chafing of oxygen lines and wiring in co-pilot oxygen mask.[/li][li]MH17 - Shot out of the sky by missile.[/li][li]British Airways at Las Vegas - (Speedbird 2276) Uncontained failure (eg: flying parts escape the outer casing) of General Electric engine.[/li][/ul]
You can’t blame Boeing for the two hostile acts and bad maintenance practices in the field. Nor can you blame them for the pilot error that caused Asiana 214 to land short of the runway at SFO and hit the seawall.
The good news for today’s Emirates incident is that all souls escaped via the slides with only a few sustaining any injuries. Unfortunately, a firefighter was killed.
And if you ignore the one that was the result of a missile strike (MH17) and probable deliberate action by the pilot (MH370), there have been only 3 passenger fatalities in the Boeing 777, ever (and even those were also due to pilot error).
Given that it is basically the mainstay of long-distance, trans-oceanic international routes, it is an astonishingly safe airplane.
Will be interesting to find out what really happened in/on that approach, who said what when and what conditions the plane was in moment to moment and if it was asked to do something that it was not designed to do.
High & Hot on a day that is high & hot already along with maybe forgetting about mass and how it wants to do what it has been doing can crowed you so far into the corner of the box that things don’t work so good anymore. Bad day in Muddville for sure.
I saw a video of the inside taken by a passenger as they were trying to exit the plane. Could you believe that some people were trying to get their carry-ons out of the overhead compartments, all this while the plane is starting to fill with smoke!
If I were there and someone ahead of me tried that, I would deck him.
Idiots!
( Short answer: The airplane flew like it was a lot higher and that = more poorly and allowances need to be made. That is why I want more info because from the little there is so far, it appears that did not happen quite as it should.)
Due to temperature, humidity & atmospheric pressure the airport was much higher as far as the aircraft was concerned and since in this case we know that the performance degrades the farther from standard you go in that direction, that it will not perform as well.
Add in funky winds, maybe from behind a little and the ground speed is way faster than normal plus you have landed farther down the runway than is good and things get messy quick.
It’s been a while, but I know about density altitude. My point was just that “hot and high” wasn’t literally true in this case. The temperature, pressure, and humidity in Dubai all could have degraded the plane’s performance, but at least the altitude wasn’t working against them as well. Things would have been even worse if the airport was in the mountains rather than close to sea level.
Yeah Dubai is low but on the other hand it is super hot, 49°C/120°F on the day of the accident. That said, like take-off performance, landing performance is based on being able to climb away safely with a failed engine in the ambient conditions at the time. A two engine go-around should be a non event as far as performance goes. Windshear can throw all the sums out the window though.
LOL.
Since I don’t have any more info I don’t know for sure that the aircraft was hot & high either, I just had that feeling from where he ended up and some comment in all that.
Now, I have become an old pilot because one of the things I learned is that the airplane does not care, know, or react to the physical altitude it is at. It reacts to the air mass it is trying to fly in.
Sea level, hot, humid, low barometric pressure & any wind from the rear makes them unhappy.
Couple of takeoffs in places like Denver on a cold, dry, high pressure, with a head wind right down the runway can make many airplanes actually fly better than the one at sea level. Makes them happy airplanes.
I always try to keep airplanes I am herding around the sky happy. So far, so good.
There were more injuries testing the 777 evacuation process than passenger hurt. I was working on the 777 program when the evacuation testing was performed. Took 3 tries, a few folks were hauled off in ambulances, the worst was a broken leg. Also got to watch engineers break the wings and other parts during some of the static testing.
I think it helped that the undercarriage was up so there was less distance to fall/slide. I also think they mainly used the over wings as the slides were being blown around.
I found a Facebook post discussing the accident and a possible cause.
If that link doesn’t work, the short version is that the plane bounced on the runway and then the pilots decided to do a go-around. One pilot hit the take-off/go-around (TOGA) switch which should command the auto-throttles to apply power, the other checked their altitude for a positive rate of climb and then retracted the landing gear. However, because the gear sensors had detected when the wheels touched the runway, the flight management computer thought the plane was landing and overrode the TOGA command to the throttles.
I don’t know how much stock to put in that explanation. The author does seem to have a fair bit of experience (if the bio at the end is anything to go by), and cites a colleague who witnessed the event. But it’s the internet, so who really knows. Some of the comments seem to dispute the account.
I don’t think this is the first time the computers got confused with conflicting inputs and programming. Believe I saw somewhere that if the nose gear touches, the computers think that equals “landed” so the systems kick over from flight mode to ground mode. By the time the pilots realize anything’s amiss, it’s too late as autothrust is taking the engines to idle and the ground is rising up.
A “three-point” touchdown or bouncing hard enough to derotate and make the nose gear touch could do this. Doesn’t seem to be much difference in Boeing’s design philosophies vs Airbus’ but I’d expect an Airbus to kick over to Direct Law and say “Think you’re so smart? OK, YOU fly!”
I’m not a B777 pilot, however I think all that happens is that once you touch down and get weight on wheels, the TOGA buttons are inhibited, these are the buttons you push to get take-off/go-around thrust, but there is nothing at all stopping you from pushing the thrust levers up to get the thrust. This is a feature, not a bug, and is designed to prevent you from accidentally selecting TOGA when you are moving the thrust levers to reverse after landing. There is no weird computer confusion or anything going on.
The Airbus wouldn’t do anything unusual. I believe to get go-around thrust in an Airbus you must move the thrust levers forward so you will get the thrust, laws all stay normal.
