This looks terrifying. I wonder if anyone knows more about this. From the rough translation from Google I understand that they lost (all?) instruments and (some?) controls and that F16s intercepted them to assist with a landing at Beja airport. They were even considering ditching at some point?
From the maneuvering in the picture below I am amazed how they even regained control of the aircraft. The passengers must have experienced some serious Gs.
Mayday call at 3:57: http://archive-server.liveatc.net/lppt/LPPT-App-1191-2-Nov-11-2018-1330Z.mp3
I trimmed out the audio and used high-pass filter on parts with loud low frequency noises. It is clear now that they could not control the airplane. Cred to the pilots for not crashing after 2 minutes! Here is the audio:
Would they not normally take the Mayday to a discrete frequency?
Maybe they lost everything and could not change frequency? Or simply the ATC didn’t want to overload them.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
Would they not normally take the Mayday to a discrete frequency?
My understanding (from another forum) is that ATC switched everyone else to another frequency. In any case – this must have been some horror ride ! Amazing job by the pilots, glad they made it down safely.
Scary event. Glad they made it.
Claims on PPRuNe that the aileron controls were reversed.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Claims on PPRuNe that the aileron controls were reversed.
If that is the case, it could have been spotted with proper preflight checks. I always stop for a couple of seconds and think of which direction should my ailerons turn during the preflight checks. I started doing this after reading about a fatal GA accident due to this, cannot find reference right now.
I don’t think the pilots can see the control surfaces from the cockpit.
However, is this a FBW aircraft? If so, it would perhaps have some position feedback from the control surfaces. Or maybe it is totally open-loop? That would surprise me…
There are videos of reversed control surface crashes (on non-FBW aircraft) and they usually happen immediately after takeoff.
