This incident is very, very strange.
I’m sure you’ve all seen the video showing the high speed, poor configuration, gear up landing.
Why are the media focusing so much on the final impact with the LOC which, to my mind, is something of an academic point given everything else that was wrong with the landing.
Of course, we must wait until the recorded data is analysed to hopefully find out the details but the focus on the final impact seems to me to be something of a deliberate distraction.
It hit a solid concrete wall, not the LOC antennae (which are flimsy and would break right off if even a light plane hit them). What idiot put that wall so soon after the runway end? The wall stopped it from a roughly 70kt to zero, in zero distance. The whole hull just got torn apart, fuel spilt and ignited.
The plane touched down with 1400m left.
But I don’t get it either. A bird strike into one engine → gear cannot be lowered.
from a roughly 70kt
Long, long, long discussion on a well-known dried-fruit forum. Estimates there are that it hit the berm at more like 150. Nobody there has more than wild guesses about what went on. They probably lost an engine on final, and tried to go around – why? Then they tried an “impossible turn” back to the departure end – why? And didn’t lower gear or flaps – why? The idea that a bird-strike could somehow interfere with the gear has been widely debunked including by a good few 737 pilots. Then they landed way long and fast, and for good measure seem to have had the one good engine running until the impact.
Until the FDR is decoded, it’s impossible to do more than guess. My guess is that after the bird strike, the crew became completely overwhelmed. You don’t find Sully or the Qantas guys on EVERY flight.
ATÉs vidéo (French aviator) just released but he doesn’t give better clues. The ILS placement is legal and the concrete rise is because the area where it is placed is a fange and can be submersed.
Nothing give any indication of why they did land this way, touched roughly at mid runway without any drag out at 180kn. 7 minutes between May Day and crash, it is very short. A lot of similarities with PIA crash.
They may not have slept well..
I think we’ll just have to wait for more details to come out. Something is very wrong here. The known facts don’t match with the crew’s actions.
Either the crew acted in sheer panic for something that didn’t require any urgency (very unusual for a commercial crew to do) or there is some failure / impending failure / issue that hasn’t come out yet.
Stickandrudderman wrote:
incident
English is not my mother tongue, but I learned enough to differentiate between an incident, and what is evidently an accident…
The simplified Wiki explanation is
An aviation accident is an event during aircraft operation that causes serious injury, death, or destruction.
An aviation incident is any operating event that compromises safety but does not progress to an aviation accident.
Peter wrote:
It hit a solid concrete wall, not the LOC antennae (which are flimsy and would break right off if even a light plane hit them). What idiot put that wall so soon after the runway end?
They could have run off is another airplane, in buildings adjacent to the field, in cars, busses, trucks, etc, etc. The runway is of ample length for this type of operation and fulfils all the required criteria.
It is certainly more appropriate to ask oneself about the cause of this tragedy.
Stickandrudderman wrote:
Why are the media focusing so much on the final impact with the LOC which, to my mind, is something of an academic point given everything else that was wrong with the landing.
Because that’s something laymen (such as journalists) can understand.
This accident is really more than bizarre. On the video the airplane appears to be in a completely clean configuration. No gear, no flaps, nothing. According to one of our club members who used to fly the 737 there are three independent ways to get the gear down, the last one being free falling which only needs gravity, of which there’s no shortage. Wonder what happened there. Panic? They weren’t newbies either, captain had 6000+ hours, although I don’t know how many on type.