Thanks. I appreciate the extra effort.
To my untrained eye, that looked like a perfectly normal touchdown until the starboard wingtip touched ground… something that’s clearly not supposed to happen. So maybe the starboard main gear failed unexpectedly?
Maybe the same downdrafty gust that pushed the nose down (a tad sooner than is normal) also pushed down the right wing, strong enough to collapse the gear and/or shove the wingtip into the ground.
Not technically a “microburst” (AFAIK, that happens in different, usually warmer and wetter conditions than this), but with similar effect.
I could be imagining it but the plane looked like it was banked slightly to the right. You can see a building white plume that is probably the wing digging into snow. That’s all it would take to tear off the wing and rotate the plane… It wasn’t a straight crosswind but it may have created variable levels of lift with gusting.
Too many things happening at the same time? If this had been an under-wing engine configuration the engine may have kept the wing from digging in.
Eighteen people were injured but things obviously could have been worse. It wasn’t a Boeing….
It is the lucky break to end all lucky breaks no one died.
This would be my guess as well. Seat belts save lives.
When I first read “child injured critically” I did wonder about the possibility of a thrown lap child. Doubt we’ll ever actually know.
Minnesota Public Radio has an ongoing story. I found this man’s quote interesting:
Yes, the bank to the right and the extremely hard landing probably collapsed the right landing gear. The right wing dug into the ground and sheared off, the lift from the remaining wing flipped the plane over.
In both the literal and figurative senses of the phrase.
To steal the idea from someone else, the footage of that landing looked like C-130 carrier operations.
I was confused by the descriptions of the plane “flipping”. A flip is rotating with an axis parallel to the wings, while a roll is rotating with an axis parallel to the length of its body. I would say this plane rolled over.
I’m not sure if the right wing touched the ground first or the right landing gear collapsed. It looks like one of the hardest landings I remember seeing, from excessive vertical speed and the roll momentum caused by the cross-wind, and also probably some resistance from accumulated (light) snow.
Probably the result of news articles being written by journalists who are not aviation experts, for a non-aviation-expert audience, all of whom wouldn’t understand (or see importance in) the distinction.
In colloquial terms, the plane “flipped” onto its back; whether it did that along its long (pitch) axis, or short (roll) axis, isn’t relevant to them.
Of course we will.
Canada is an ICAO signatory and as such will conduct an investigation in accordance with Annex 13. Such investigations are for the purpose of safety (cause, effects, survivability) and not liability and they are public information.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada will be the investigating agency, as the accident occurred in this country. Transport Canada and the type certificate holder (was Bombardier, now Mitsubishi Canada) will provide technical assistance as requested as the State of Manufacture of the aircraft, and as the manufacturer. The National Transportation Safety Board of the USA, and representatives from the airline itself will also be participants as the States of Registry and the operator respectively.
There will be preliminary information and an eventual complete accident report made public. One section of this report, and one of great interest, will examine the types of passengers, their egress, injuries and identify factors that contributed or may hinder survivability.
The TSBC will be able to make recommendations to improve safety to the regulatory bodies, Transport Canada and the FAA. Those changes may or may not occur; depends on a bunch of stuff.
The safety risk to lap children has been on the NTSB most-wanted changes for years. It’s on of my soap boxes; I’m literally an occupant safety specialist and would never in a million years travel with my child as a lap child. If the injured child was one of these, it damn sure will be discussed in the report.
That’s what I thought after watching that video! Amazingly lucky. A violent landing with a lot of flames.
I remember back in the 70’s my father (having spent enough rounds as an emergency room physician) used to harp about the horrors of mothers holding their infants on their laps in cars. I guess the battle stil continues.
There were lots of activities I was not allowed to do as a kid because Dad had seen too much. He also investigated air crashes when he was in the RCAF.
Last I remember reading about it, the idea (called the “Diversionary Theory”) is that if the FAA banned lap children, some percentage of families would choose to drive rather than fly. Which means the children would be exposed to a statistically higher risk of harm given that airline flight is much safer than driving. So by making the planes safer for infants by requiring car seats / extra airline seats, more kids might actually die.
But tell that to the flight attendants in the United 232 crash who were forced to tell people to put babies on the cabin floor. One of them has understandably spent the rest of her life lobbying against lap children being permitted on airliners.
I advocate for the use of car seats for infants during taxi take off and landing and believe airlines should be obligated by law (because morally, they haven’t done it on their own) to offer the CARES harness to any toddler that fits (22-44lbs, capable of sitting unassisted).
To address common complaints;
It’s not an extra seat, it’s a safe seat for your child. Yes air travel is expensive, yes that sucks, but physics don’t care; you won’t be able to hold onto your child in an abrupt loading event like a hard landing or turbulence. You are not that strong. Yes baby will cry; they cry in your car too. They may cry in your arms anyways.
Really, it’s a rule I hate.
One commercial pilot analyzed the video and speculates the wing touched the ground, broke, and flipped the plane.
Seems plausible but lets wait for the official investigation.
I’m relieved everyone survived. The crew did a great job evacuating the plane.
