Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => The O' Club => Topic started by: Nilsen on August 14, 2005, 05:59:17 AM
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"ATHENS, Greece (CNN) -- A Cypriot plane carrying 121 people has crashed north of Athens after losing contact with air traffic controllers, Greek officials said."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/08/14/greece.crash/index.html
:(
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terrible stuff... I'm bound to know some people on that flight -- it's a small island.
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oh my..
crossing my fingers and hoping for the best dinger :(
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The jet entered Greek air space about 10:30 a.m., but efforts by air traffic controllers to contact the pilots were futile. After some time, two Greek F-16s were scrambled, Greek Air Force spokesman Yiannis Papageorgiou told CNN. As the F-16s approached, their pilots saw "no sign of life" in the cockpit, and the plane apparently was on autopilot, Papageorgiou said. They escorted the craft until it struck the mountain. One of the F-16 pilots reported that the co-pilot appeared to be slumped in his seat and that he could not see the captain, a Greek Defense Ministry official told Reuters.
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holy crap!! :(
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Lots of commercially operated plane crashes lately :(
First A340 in Canada, then ATR near Italy, then a Sikorsky chopper over here and now the 737.
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It sounds like a pressurization failure but there are alarms to warn of that situation. There is also far more capacity to pressurize than actually needed. I hope they can recover the boxes and get some info on this crash.
for the crew and passengers.
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Some reports say the crew and passage just froze to death due to a malfunction in the cabin air system.
Daniel
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There was some speculation on another website that the pilots oxygen supply might have been inoperative(vents turned off?) and the captain might have been overcome while going for the portable oxygen supply.
If the passengers oxygen supply was working it might explain the text messages, if it wasn't a hoax.
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....
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I read in Russian news that they froze to death! It wasn’t oxygen problem, but heating(?). Now why didn’t pilot get below 14000 feet….when he noticed this problem?
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Originally posted by Russian
I read in Russian news that they froze to death! It wasn’t oxygen problem, but heating(?). Now why didn’t pilot get below 14000 feet….when he noticed this problem?
I call BS on this one. How do you expect a plane to freeze so abruptly that the pilots didn't have time to communicate and make an emergency descent?
If there was a loss of cabin pressure and the crew would have been incapacitated immediately before doing an emergency descent, there would have been around 10 minutes supply of oxygen to pax. After that they would have gotten hypoxia. No one freezes to death in 10 minutes
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man thats just wierd as hell. Where was the 2nd pilot? I wonder if he went back to check on something in the cabin and got locked out when the pilot went tits up and couldnt get back in thanks to increased door hardness as a result of yomamma atta and his 19 co-fools.....
My sympathies to all those hurt by this.
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Anyone know if this is an old 737 or a "next generation" 737?
Generally speaking both pilots should have had easy access to quick donning oxygen masks in the event of decompression.
There will be a lot more to this story.
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Apparently they were well below 14,000ft, because they managed to crash in a mountain.
Highest point in Greece is the Olympus mountain, at about 2,950 meters (= ~10,000ft).
It is said it crashed north of Athens, which could been lower.
I guess the pilots were able to set the plane to descent on auto to below 10,000ft, but the plane reached it too late.
Toad,
By the schedule it was -300
If it was NG instead (theres some speculation of it being NG) of the one in schedule, it would be the first NG to be written off due to crash.
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Some reports say that it might have flown for almost 2 hours without coms(coms lost shortly after take off at 10.30, crash at 12.20), so it might have been at cruising level and crashed after running out of fuel.
This looks alot like the Payne Stewart crash.
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The NG has a different Quick-don oxygen system for the pilots. That's why I asked.
On the old 737's the Q/D hang by the side of the pilot's head and are connected to a big O2 bottle that has a manual shutoff valve on the bottle. IIRC. Been a few years since I flew those.
The NG's have a stowed inflatable Q/D harness in a box by each pilot's outboard knee. It's possible to turn off the O2 at the box on those IIRC.
In either case the O2 has to be on or the Q/D's are useless.
These things are designed for use during rapid decompression, so that's going to be a big question early on in this investigation.
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Originally posted by Toad
On the old 737's the Q/D hang by the side of the pilot's head and are connected to a big O2 bottle that has a manual shutoff valve on the bottle. IIRC. Been a few years since I flew those.
According to ppl at pprune it's a common practise to turn the shutoff valve to off on the ground and this might have played a part. Pure speculation of course.
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And i think it's in the Co-pilot's preflight to make sure the valve is OPEN before engine start on the first flight of the day. Shouldn't be changed during the day unless maintenance is performed on the O2 system.
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Remember that golfer that dies in the US a few years back? Sounds similar. They say that when you lose cabin pressure its not like a slow process of choking to death, where there is still some oxygen in your system. Its very quick they say.
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I read some where you have 15 to 30 secs before you pass out, if it happens above 30,000 ft...
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From Reuters (http://olympics.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=uri:2005-08-14T153054Z_01_KWA433859_RTRIDST_0_INTERNATIONAL-CRASH-GREECE-DC.XML&pageNumber=0&summit=)
snips:
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"The pilot has turned blue," a passenger said in a mobile text message to his cousin, according to Greek television. "Cousin farewell, we're freezing."
"I saw many bodies scattered around, all of them wearing (oxygen) masks," one witness told Reuters.
Akrivos Tsolaki, head of the accident investigation committee, told reporters at the crash site the plane's two black boxes -- voice and data recorders -- had been located.
Greek Defense Ministry officials said 90 minutes elapsed between the alert first being raised at 10:30 a.m. and the plane crashing at 12:03 p.m.
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Relevant stuff, but the sum doesn't make sense to me.
culero
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That doesnt makes sence then....if AC is flying at 10....then there shouldn't be a problem with oxygen, nor cold.
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Er, aircraft was listed for FL 340. If the crew passes out, the A/P flies to the last waypoint, which would be the hold outside of Athens. It probably stooged around for 1.5 hours at 10k before it ran out of fuel. The descent may have happened after everybody froze (-40C is darn cold, especially if you're dressed for 40C and flying somewhere at 35C)
Anyway, word on the street was that this particular aircraft had a recurring problem with contamination (oil) in one of the packs, and that it flew on one pack.
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My God what a horrible way to die. :(
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Originally posted by Dinger
Er, aircraft was listed for FL 340. If the crew passes out, the A/P flies to the last waypoint, which would be the hold outside of Athens. It probably stooged around for 1.5 hours at 10k before it ran out of fuel. The descent may have happened after everybody froze (-40C is darn cold, especially if you're dressed for 40C and flying somewhere at 35C)
What happens when the aircraft reaches the last programmed waypoint, does the ap go into HDG and ALT hold, or does it try to chase the last waypoint?
It may actually have been the lack of oxygen rather than cold which made the people unconsious, because the supply of oxygen lasts only a limited time. The Greek AF reported that they received visual communications from plane at first but it later stopped. No mention about the altitude this took place.
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Very tragic.
:(
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Normally you can't see the pilots on a 737, so if the passengers saw a pilot with a blue face, it sounds like one of them came back to check, and probably passed out.
If the cockpit cabin door was secured the passengers were screwed, probably just sitting there freezing, on the O2 masks, waiting to die.
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Damn shame there wasn't a military pilot onboard. We're trained to watch out for this sort of thing. Very odd that the crew didn't realize what was happening in time, but hypoxia is extremely insidious. A slow pressurization failure *could* progress slowly enough that they wouldn't realize it until it was too late, but there are supposed to be safeguards against such things.
I suspect the bottom line will be that as usual in any aviation endeavor, no matter how routine, complacency kills.
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I agree Eagl, my brother who is an Engineer said he knew of an incident where the crew were unaware that they had not pressurised and were begining to become hypoxic. A flight attendant visited the cockpit three times complaining about the cold but wasn't taken seriously by the pilots due to the hypoxia. Being hypoxic can be like being drunk.
It was only on her third visit which coincided with the pax oxygen masks deploying automatically that they realised there was a problem. It's all guesswork but with a locked cockpit door the pilots could become incapaciitated without being aware there ever was a problem. Smokers would have passed out sooner than non smokers. Older pilots too would pass out sooner.
I suspect it's some kind of variation on this. The aircraft never pressurised and or the crew oxygen either failed or was never used.
If as someone says, that the aircraft was operating on one pack routinely then perhaps there was an issue with the other one. The brother pointed out that on the 737 the switches for the packs on the overhead operate opposite to the normal sense. ie down for off and up for on. He said it's not uncommon for pilots to switch off a pack when they mean to switch it on.
No doubt all will be revealed. If the text message was true and someone saw the pilot. Then the cockpit door was open. If so, how come no one gave him oxygen?
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Originally posted by cpxxx
Then the cockpit door was open. If so, how come no one gave him oxygen?
or attempted to land the plane? No one on board has any aviation experience? I thought even flight attendents knew the most basics of flight.
EDIT:
using AP and ILS could this plane have landed itself if somone "threw the right switches" so to speak?
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The cabin altitude warning horn will sound when the cabin altitude exceeds 10,000ft. It sounds like the take-off config warning horn and can be inhibited by pressing the ALT HORN CUTOUT button. The pax oxygen masks will not drop until 14,000ft cabin altitude.
In short, neither pilot should have been incapacitated before the warning horn sounded since it sounds at 10k.
This is going to be an interesting one.
Typically in a slow depressurization, if the Cabin Pressurization warning sounded at 10k, the pilots would have donned the QD O2 masks until they regained pressure. If it looked like they would not be able to regain pressure before exceeding a cabin alt of 14K, they would have initiated an emergency descent.
So far it appears they did not use the QD O2 and they didn't inform ATC of a problem and request a descent.
Lots more to learn here.
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Originally posted by cpxxx
If the text message was true and someone saw the pilot. Then the cockpit door was open. If so, how come no one gave him oxygen?
The way I'd read it is the pilot went back to the main cabin to check what was happening and collapsed, remember the F-16s saw the co-pilot slumped over the controls but no sign of the pilot. Those cockpit doors swing shut on a spring iirc, so no one would have been able to reaccess to cockpit except the stewards maybe?
Having watched all the air investigation stuff I can on Discovery ( :) ) I can imagine the pressurisation alarm being overlooked if a whole pile of air con unit alarms were going off as well. A lot of situations like this always seem to be about information overload.
The question would be what were the cabin crew doing that they couldn't give aid to the pilot, or re-enter the cockpit? If I was a passenger and saw the pilot collapsed I certainly wouldn't sit there twiddling my thumbs.
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Originally posted by Vulcan
I can imagine the pressurisation alarm being overlooked if a whole pile of air con unit alarms were going off as well.
It's a really loud horn and the silence button is on the pressurization panel itself.
(http://www.b737.org.uk/cpcspanel.jpg)
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How does the air con unit tie into the cabin pressurisation unit and what other sorts alarms could the air con unit generate?
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Basically, the Air Conditioning packs provide the pressurization air.
It's a great system with a lot of redundancy. You'll note on the pressure controller that there is an "Auto" function of the knob, a "Standby" function and a "Manual" function which can be powered either by AC or DC power, so you can run it off generator or battery power.
To lose pressurization because of a total controller failure would be rare. It could happen but there are lots of options to control outflow.
Inflow is also redundant. There are two AC packs, although flight (with some restrictions) is allowed with one inop. They should not have gone to FL340 with one pack inop prior to T/O. Had a pack failed at FL340, they should have descended to FL250 max IIRC. It's been a while since I was in the books.
A/C Schematic (http://www.b737.org.uk/schemeaircon300.gif)
If they were running with one pack already inop, there's two main lights there to watch.
One is the "Duct Overheat", especially if the pax were complaining of cold. You can dump in heat too rapidly and trip the pack due to a duct overheat. This is usually easy to reset, however, and it cools to reset temp pretty quickly.
The other two are related; the bleed trip and the pack trip. If you get a bleed trip, pack trip is almost simultaneous. You can get a pack trip without a bleed trip. Either of these can be difficult to reset or, in some cases, not resettable in flight.
Nonetheless, the Cabin Alt Horn is the key. Assuming they had two packs since they went to FL340, their cabin alt was probably around 7k in normal cruise. If they lost pressure slowly, the horn would have went off at 10k Cabin Alt, they should have donned the O2 masks and either controlled the cabin or initiated an Emergency Descent.
If they lost pressure suddenly or had a very high rate of climb in the cabin alt, they should have got the horn at 10K, donned masks and initiated an Emergency Descent. The Pax O2 masks would drop at Cabin Alt 14k. A 737 with gear and boards out should be able to get 5+K rate of descent without overspeeding, so figure about 4 minutes to get down to a "breathable" altitude. Shouldn't have been a problem. US airlines practice the ED in the sim at least once a year.
So A/C problems in and of themselves should not have caused this accident simply because there is a "Auot Fail/ Unscheduled Pressurization Change checklist and an Emergency Descent checklist procedures that should be very familiar to the pilots.
To see a representative 737 Pressurization and ED checklist put " 6-3 AUTO FAIL / UNSCHEDULED PRESSURIZATION CHANGE " into Google. It's PDF but won't come up unless you select HTML. Can't link to it anyway.
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My guess as armchair unqualified accident investigator is a sudden decompression at altitude (bulkhead failure or freight door loss) - pilots O2 bottle turned off - captain tries to go aft for portable bottle and collapses in cockpit doorway - plane continues on AP untill out of fuel. Pax oxygen masks drop out on an auto switch which is why they were found with masks on.
A tragic accident - my thoughts are with all the families left.
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"Greek officials said after contact with the plane was lost, air force pilots found it flying above the Euboea peninsula with the pilots slumped in the cabin.
When they returned for a second look they saw two people trying to take control of the plane, but it was unclear if they were crew members or passengers, a Greek government spokesman said."
Sparks,
I don't think it went down without fuel, because it hit a mountain side and the tail stabilizers are still pretty much in one piece.
In the pictures there are no big craters visible and the parts are scattered over a long narrow area, indicating that the plane has crashed at a shallow angle.
Also the parts look to be scattered from downhill to uphill.
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If the plane hasn't been circling it wouldn't have run out of fuel so near to it's destination.
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Two different news sources (Reuters and the Daily Telegraph) are now quoting un-named sources in the Greek defense ministry as saying the bodies recovered were "frozen solid".
I can't see that happening unless whatever happened did so at high alt and persisted for a long time before the plane descended to 10K.
culero
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Thats just some plain scary stuff :(
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Unless the passengers did manage to get it off auto and descended into the mountain (perhaps lost control).
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Now they are reporting that the fighters saw a person wrestling with the controls. That would indeed disconnect the autopilot.
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Apparently people were still alive at the time of the crash.
Of the pilots at least co-pilot was.
However he could been unconcious.
the body of a flight attendant was found from the cockpit.
Apparently there was no flight simulator players onboard, who could've had a sufficient knowledge to bring down the plane relatively safely. :(
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Originally posted by Fishu
Apparently there was no flight simulator players onboard, who could've had a sufficient knowledge to bring down the plane relatively safely. :(
Many of us could have done just that, or had a high probability of doing so.
Give me full access to a certified pilot of whatever aircraft I was in via the radio and i can almost guarantee a safe (maybe rough) landing. Hard to know exactly what flap/throttle settings and airspeed at each point in the glide slope you should be at, even with ILS.
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I dunno, we are talking about the AH O-Club crowd here... I could see some potential indecision between the unconcious air hostess and taking over the plane.
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Originally posted by Vulcan
I dunno, we are talking about the AH O-Club crowd here... I could see some potential indecision between the unconcious air hostess and taking over the plane.
WWAFDBD:rofl :rofl :rofl