JU52 HB-HOT down near Flims

I would assume Swiss glider, local or military pilots would know how they fly in the Alps, but I would not trust anyone of them and pay to fly my kids unless they stick to good margins (IFR MSA and nil winds)

There is a difference between,

1/ having fun shaving the top of ridges or trees solo or with your pilot friends in single or formation flying while having load fun (maybe killing yourself if you mess up but who cares)

2/ taking “paying pax” who don’t even know you, getting paid for that and failing to deliver what some would call “B737 CAT safety standards”

Mooney_Driver wrote:

However, the gist of the report goes far beyond that and puts straightforward blame on just about everyone in a fairly general way and puts the thrustworthyness of two major carriers as well as the FOCA into a general suspicion which I think shoots far beyond the goal of improving air safety.

I read the accident report very differently from you – perhaps because I’m not as close to the situation as you are.

In my opinion the report actually does a very good job in pointing out that the root cause of this accident has not been an unfortunate combination of events in that flight (in the sense of a Swiss cheese model) but it goes back to a long history and culture of taking unacceptable risks and not sanctioning them by the pilots themselves as well as by the operator. More than an unfortunate singular event, this has been an accident waiting to happen – and in this sense it is actually an important information that the same mindset and culture in this organization was applied when it comes to maintenance rules even if the bad maintenance itself did not contribute to the accident.

I think it is a strength of this accident report to point out that this accident was not (only) the result of unacceptable behavior of an individual but the combination of such individual with an organization/culture that let him do.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

Fact is, nobody knows the Alps better than the military pilots of Switzerland

I honestly doubt that!
First I know a lot of glider pilots with very significant experience flying close to terrain in the Alps. Not sure how much Swiss army pilots actually fly – but I guess not much more than these glider pilots.
Second – and more importantly – Army pilots might have experience but as in this accident irrelevant or even dangerously wrong one: A fighter jet pilot is used to the fact that he can “out-power” every problem. Getting stuck in a valley doesn’t exist in his domain of experience as he could just pull and almost vertically (depending on the type) climb out everywhere. Also downdrafts are not really a factor in their experience as they are always weak against the power of their engines. In a fighter jet such an accident as here would never happen.
Hasn’t there been another accident report recently where a pilot who also had high hours with most of them in jets crashed while trying to pass a ridge but it turned out that the climb performance of his SEP was just few 100 feet short of the ridge? Same pattern: Experience in Jets sometimes is in the way of good decision making in piston aircraft…

Indeed, 3D flying with F16 will get into terrain with 2D flying of a SEP

The JU52 is really “2D flying”, it will barely do +5% climb gradient or +3deg up, in its published data it will show +700fpm with 140kts at 9000ft, on a hot day just let’s call that +1deg or level flying, a glider in mountains have far more options when it comes to slow flying, sink rate and turn radius !

The JU52 is really “2D flying”, it will barely do +5% climb gradient or +3deg up, in its published data it will show +700fpm with 140kts at 9000ft, on a hot day just let’s call that +1deg or level flying

And that is with engines actually putting out rated power.

T28 wrote:

putting out rated power.

I don’t think the (relative vs theoretical performance) power of the engines was in question, despite some of the comments on engine maintenance.

Mooney_Driver wrote:

If you read the report throughout and the annexes, there is a clear tendency to demonize almost the whole Swiss civil and military aviation world..[…]
However, my feel is that it goes much beyond the actual task of an accident investigation report and reads more like what a state attorney would produce in order to formulate indictments. That on the other hand is not in the sense of Annex 13.

Just like the proverbial forbidden fruit (call it drugs, use of annex 13 reports to apportion blame or any other “forbidden” addictions) once you infringe and try it, it is difficult to go back and stop infringing.

For SUST, it all started with Überlingen.

I am afraid Switzerland , together with France (although for different reasons), is nowadays the advanced-world leader in this flight-safety-destroying practice.

No but it could have if the pilots had tried to use full power and crashed in the ridge for lack thereof.

This lack of performance was not unknown to both crew yet they actively chose to line up all possible holes in the cheese and rely on the airmass being absolutely stable.

It is also an indication of the company operating on romanticised wishful thinking data (1500 TBO) in spite of all hard data. A bit like saying “military pilots know the Alps best”.

Ibra wrote:

The JU52 is really “2D flying”, it will barely do +5% climb gradient

I noticed that in some online videos I watched a while back. From the cockpit there seems to be a lot of noise but no pitch angle at all, it just slowly, very slowly creeps upwards in the video I watched.

Still a cool old plane, and interesting that the Franco era CASA 352s stayed in production into the 1950s, and in Air Force service until the early 1970s.

Silvaire wrote:

Still a cool old plane, and interesting that the Franco era CASA 352s stayed in production into the 1950s, and in Air Force service until the early 1970s.

Our hometown is also home to the main air force paratrooping school in Spain (LERI) and I still vaguely remember the aircraft flying high over the city during my childhood well into the seventies, when they were replaced by CASA 212’s, still on the same role 45 years on.

An old 52 stands as gate guardian still today although the main “preservation” tasks at the time were a coat of silver paint and filling the fuel tanks with water to weigh it down so probably by now too damaged to ever fly again…