They usually put on a good show but this was taken up a notch. It was a combination of ground based lasers, fire works, pyrotechnics, drones, and an airplane all coordinated music.
The video doesn’t do it justice. It started with a wall of fire that you feel the heat from and then powerful lasers. It was like an open air Pink Floyd laser show with drones and fire works. I lost count of the plane images but it was well done. An example was an F-14 tomcat showing the wings moving and it was done to the song Danger Zone.
They were built from 1985 to 2001. It’s been years since I last saw one, and if asked, I would have said the type is probably retired, or real close to it.
The Brasilia article says about 727 were built, and lists 105 still in use as of 8 years ago. At their age, and in the parts of the world where they’d be operating that late in life, 8 years is a long time. Doubtless far fewer are still in use today. The Sunrise article says they have 5.
This culture of failing to formally record discrepancies in the TLB prevented the
company’s technical and operational sectors from implementing mitigating measures, such
as MEL dispatch, aircraft substitution, route replanning, or even corrective maintenance to
rectify the malfunction, thereby contributing to aircraft PS-VPB operating in meteorological
conditions conducive to icing formation with the Airframe De-Icing system inoperative.
Not only did the pilots fail to record the broken system (across several flights), they also disregarded most of the proper procedure for a broken system during the flight. Both mistakes were attributed to pressure to keep all planes flying, all the time.
Furthermore, the pilots’ agreement with the proposed flight planning, without identifying
or questioning the incompatibility between the selected cruise level and the forecast
meteorological conditions along the route, also characterized a complacent attitude and
noncompliance with operational procedures, thereby contributing to the accident under
analysis.
(Sorry for the triple post.) Finally, the pilots executed the good ol’ Bonin maneuver:
Due to the pitch-down tendency on the pitch axis following the stall, with an attitude
close to -5° (nose-down attitude), simultaneous control column inputs by both pilots applying
nose-up forces were recorded. The pilots’ actions were contrary to the procedures
established both in the aircraft QRH and in UPRT training for a stall condition. Both
documents prescribed that the control column should be pushed forward.
The Commission concluded that the high frequency of the CRUISE SPEED LOW
advisory led the operator’s flight crews to normalize that condition, such that it was no longer
recognized as an initial indication of performance degradation due to ice accretion. Since
the advisory was classified as Level 0 (informational, displayed in blue), and the procedure
prescribed in the QRH merely instructed the crew to monitor airspeed and icing conditions,
those factors may also have contributed to the observed trivialization of the advisory.
This operational pattern of frequently conducting flights at altitudes above those at
which the aircraft had sufficient performance to maintain the speeds recommended by the
manufacturer contributed to the high recurrence of CRUISE SPEED LOW alerts.
Wow. Quite the shitshow of crappy employer pushing employees to be crappy or quit. Or they only hire crappy ones to start with.
There is (or was when I was there eons ago) a lot of that kind of stuff in the low end Part 135 air taxi biz in the USA. At base, that part of the industry is not economically viable if run in full and enthusiastic accordance with the regulations and with actual safe practices. So a variant of Gresham’s Law applies, and bad work drives out good.
Whether that same cavalier attitude is really necessary in Brazilian regional operations with ATR-sized airplanes is a very different question I’m unprepared to answer. But unless the Brazilian authorities pull their operating certificate, the answer seems to be that it’ll continue in Voepass’ case. And (probably) their competitors’ cases too.
How do you not know to push the nose down? Seriously. This isn’t a problem with connected yokes. You can tell in an instant if the other pilot is screwing up. Adrenalin will step in when that happens.
Adrenaline also causes people to panic and do stupid things. Even pilots.
When I teach CRM we look at a lot of accident reports and I think it’s important not to have the mindset of immediately excoriating the pilots. Their mistakes may not be excusable, but they may be understandable in context. And it’s crucial to understand that context because plenty of competent pilots have made fatal mistakes.
Thinking about Air France 447 I also wonder how they could have made such errors. But I don’t think I’ve ever felt that sort of confusion and panic, in or out of a cockpit. I can only imagine what that might have done to my airmanship.
That’s the purpose of training & sim time; to avoid panic when that weird situation happens because you’ve (hopefully) been thru it before & know what to do & how to handle it.
That’s what I teach these days. But you can’t simulate everything and in the end… it’s a simulation. There’s no guarantee a person will act appropriately when the real thing happens. Odds are for it, but not guaranteed.
I’ve heard of pilots who’ve passed all the checkrides and yet froze up in the face of a real emergency. We all think it won’t happen to us and usually it won’t. But you never know…
I totally get the brain-frying scenario. The Air France crash is the ultimate example of circumstances that would cause it. Just reading about it makes me anxious. I’m not sure how to train someone to revert to rule number one, FLY THE PLANE in the event of a fried-brain scenario.
It was the Farnborough Airshow here recently. I live under the flight path about 1 mile from the east end of the runway. I could see some of the display from home and watched a bit of the livestream. One of the manoeuvrers the Eurofighter did was to fly along the display line very slowly with a very high angle of attack and the gear up. I think the announcer called this a “slow pass”.
My question is does this have any practical purpose in combat, or is it just showing off the clever avionics?
You forgot the part that the A330 turned on the stall warning noises & messages when he pushed, and turned off the stall warning when he pulled. The airplane’s stall warning system was flummoxed and was given exactly backwards and totally misleading messages the whole way down to the ocean.
As to the ATR accidents, there are two possibilities.
One is just pure startle and OMG we’re pointed at the ground! Better more modern training will help, but can’t eliminate the reality that airliners & airliner pilots don’t spend much time very far from straight and level.
The other issue applicable to both ATR accidents was the significant airfoil & airframe ice. Which led to the airplane stalling at far too high a speed versus normal.
So there you are straight and level at what seems a normal cruise speed, or maybe you’ve slowed towards holding speed, but are still 20-40 KIAS above stall. Suddenly the nose just falls off a cliff and you’re 20 degrees nose down. No stall warning, just an uncontrolled nose-over. Did we hit wake turbulence? Have a midair? Did a big piece of the tail fall off? Runaway trim?
Because the various stall warnings are so loud and so dire, folks are very Pavlovian conditioned to react to them. They’re implicitly also conditioned that absence of stall warning → absence of stall. Which ain’t always true.
The seat of pants & wind noise in the cockpit cues you’re used to in Cessnas are largely absent in big airplanes; you’re far more isolated from that visceral sensation of flying. Heck, back in the open cockpit days many pilots refused to fly enclosed cockpit airplanes for fear they couldn’t tell what was going on and would inadvertently kill themselves.
