I’m not familiar with the CRJ200 but looking at a Power Plant systems description from smartcockpit.com I don’t see any mention of a FADEC system. It seems fairly basic.
It’s in the accident report.
Pinnacle Airlines Ground School Instructor’s Guide, Performance section, page 35, dated November 2004, stated the following: “when a 300 FPM rate of climb cannot be achieved at the minimum climb speed, the aircraft will be leveled off and a new altitude coordinated with ATC.”
What they’re saying is that if you don’t have the performance to climb at 300 fpm minimum at the minimum climb speed, you shouldn’t try to keep climbing, you should level off and negotiate an achievable cruise altitude with ATC.
Well that would make sense. the article I quoted had it backwards.
Again, I can almost understand trying to hit flight level 410 but it appears both pilots were watching the altitude gauge and nothing else. That could have been a teaching moment for the FO. The Captain should have watched it fall apart and ensured the FO recognized it long before it got out of hand.
The article has it correct though the wording is awkward.
The captain didn’t have the capacity to understand what was happening himself let alone use it as a teaching moment for the FO. Neither of them had the knowledge, experience, or training to be able to operate at the edge of the flight envelope the way they were trying to.
That scene from Firefly doesn’t seem as funny anymore.
that’s really sad. It’s not normal for an engine to be running unless it’s in a cool down mode and the ramp crew supervisor should have engaged the crew to stay away from it. If it’s an engine cool-down situation then maybe the FAA should mandate that be done on a taxiway and never at a gate.
Ugh ugh ugh.
It would have been real quick. Here’s a video of a sailor surviving it.
Unfortunately, a modern hi-bypass engine has a giant set of blades in the very front of the engine. There’s really nothing that can be done.
Sometimes we have to start before pushback. Sometimes we need to leave an engine running for a couple of minutes after parking. I had engines running in the gate just yesterday. Even after the normal pushback then start out on the ramp area, crewmen are sorta-near engines starting or already started. The exposure is always there.
There are procedures for us to communicate that danger to the ground team via our red flashing lights:
On = Stay the hell away. It is, or is about to become, lethally dangerous.
Off = Safe to approach.
Mistakes happen. Both on the ground and in the cockpit. My employer alone does this right 20K times per week; 40K times if you consider each departure and arrival a separate risk event. Add in the rest of the industry and it’s a big, big number of chances to hurt somebody.
Ingestion is just one of many ways to injure ground crew. Like any job involving industrial-scale machinery, that stamping press or dump truck or dough mixer is much bigger, stronger, and harder than your small mushy body. Commercial aircraft, even small ones, are big industrial machines.
We do this right for decades. Then somebody goofs, isn’t thinking, isn’t looking, gets distracted, whatever, and gets too close. Then quick as a wink it’s over.
The cited article offered no details on who was doing what when it happened. Does anyone have better info?
Damn. Hate to see it, but statistically speaking it’s bound to happen here and there now and again.
One report I saw said the APU wasn’t working so the engine was running prior to ground power. Gotta go search. Would this be a standard procedure if the APU was out of service?
Details vary by aircraft but as a general rule: yes.
On the General Aviation (helicopter) side, it’s standard practice to turn on your navigation lights and strobes (and then yelling ‘Clear!’) before starting the engine.
Also, pilots and personnel should know, and passengers should be warned, never to approach the rear of a helicopter at any time, and always walk straight toward or away (i.e., do not approach the rear, and don’t go toward the nose) when it’s running.
???. APU’s shouldn’t be scarce at a passenger terminal.
Isn’t an APU a part of the vehicle by definition? Ground power is something else. smithsb mentioned that the engine was running prior to ground power. Gotta keep the lights on while the truck pulls up (or the jetway is connected).
Yes but you can have an APU mechanical (air power unit) that is broken but can be deferred and keep the flight going. It would require an external unit to start the plane or a GPU to (ground power unit) to keep the electricity running. Both should be available at an airport.
It pretty standard to connect a plane up to a GPU rather than run the onboard unit. An APU would then need to be connected for an engine start.
All kinds of confusion, or at best in-house terminology. Welcome to Aviation Acronyms for the win: AAFTW 
By (AFAIK universal) definition, an “APU” is a permanent component of the aircraft. And nothing else is (properly) called an APU; certainly not a piece of ground equipment. Or at least that’s not a term a pilot would expect for a ground cart of some sort.
But granting it’s a big world, somebody (or some company) someplace may call an aircraft start cart an APU. But that’s a recipe for confusion unless clarified when speaking to a general audience. To forestall confusion here, I’ll preface APU with “on-board” to clarify which I’m talking about.
On-board APUs when working properly provide both electricity and pressurized air. The air can be used for engine start or to operate the aircraft’s air conditioning system.
In military and US commercial parlance, AGE is the generic term for Aerospace Ground Equipment, and refers to the tugs, trucks, trailers, cargo loaders, etc., used to support aircraft ops. Some of which are for providing electricity and/or air.
A “GPU” is a type of AGE, usually in the form of a trailer. Most GPUs provide only electricity, whereas some provide pressurized air too.
There are ASCs / ASU = Air Start Carts / Air Start Units providing pressurized air only. Some ASC/ASUs pump out air that’s clean enough and voluminous enough to run the aircraft air conditioning system from, whereas others’ outputs are too dirty, or too low-volume, or too short of duty cycle for that, and are used only to start engines.
Finally, there are PCA Pre-Conditioned Air carts which provide fully cooled/heated air at low pressure and large volume to plug into the aircraft’s distribution ducting downstream of the aircraft’s internal HVAC system.
In modern practice at big airports we go one better. Each jetbridge is equipped with “shore power” and with a conventional industrial HVAC system providing PCA. So no need of trailered AGE burning expensive fuel to keep the airplane electrically powered on & cool while parked & shut down. Once the big extension cord and the big hose are plugged into the jet. Running the jetbridge support stuff off land-side grid power is 90-95% cheaper than using the AGE or the airplane’s APU for the same task.
With all that background:
Depending on the specifics of the malfunction, a defective on-board APU may be unable to provide one of electricity or air, but still provide the other just fine. Or might be completely inop.
On-board APUs are broken a lot more than one might expect. They’re intricate and expensive to repair, and not strictly necessary as long as AGE & crew is available on the entire itinerary to support the jet w the dead APU. Since airlines large or small mostly hit the same places over and over, the gear is always there just in case. Unless it’s broke too. So the bean-counters watching the maintenance spend consider them “nice to have”, not “need to have.”
I’ll stop now.
Yah, we always just called them “huffers”. And boy howdy you do not stand next to the connecting points when starting an engine with them. If a connection comes loose it’s like an explosion.
A much better explanation than mine.
We had this just recently. We were departing on the same aircraft we’d arrived on but had a couple of hours on the ground in between times. Getting back in the flight deck we started the APU and turned the APU bleed on. DING! we get a master caution and see that the APU bleed air valve hasn’t opened. We try it a couple of times with no luck, call engineering, they try a few things that we’re not allowed to do (resetting circuit breakers for example), but the end result is that we have an APU but no air supply from the APU. Operationally this is fairly simple but there are risks, mostly because it’s out of the ordinary.
We started the number 1 (left/port) engine on the gate with a ground start unit. Then after pushback to the tug disconnect point we can start the second engine using bleed air from the running engine, a “cross bleed start”.
When I was flying BAe146s there was a procedure for doing a turn-around with no APU that I used a couple of times. The number 4 (outboard right hand) engine is left running and the passengers disembark (left door). Then the number 1 engine (outboard left hand) is started using power from the running engine number 4. nEngine 4 is shutdown and bags/cargo are unloaded then new bags loaded. Number 4 engine is then started, number 1 is shutdown and the new passengers board. Then engines 3, 2, and 1 can be started and we can depart.