Everything is starting to point to pilot error in the crash of the 777. From watching a home video of the crash, the plane was so slow, it was barely flying when it hit the ground, skidded in a cloud of dust and eventually damn near flipped over.
The reports say the stall warning came on before the crash, which usually means things are fixing to get really bad, especially when only a few dozen feet above the ground.
I don't think either pilot has a real promising future and the engineers of the 777 get an attaboy. Something hitting the ground at over 100 mph, staying together and then allowing almost all the passengers to escape is a marvel.
What's the old pilot saying about running out of airspeed, altitude, and ideas?`
ReplyDeleteThat's one thing about aircraft: they all reach the ground, eventually.
DeleteAmazing how far air safety has come since the 70's and early 80's. Back then it would have been fortunate to find two survivors after a crash like that.
ReplyDeleteMy question here is if there wasn't some failure of the autothrottle or other system to hold their airspeed, and then fail to warn them that it was dropping, or that their approach profile was wrong. Regardless, there will be some finding of pilot error since they should've noticed it dropping before things got critical. May be a case where they relied so much on the automation that they neglected to monitor their airspeed, or even look out the window.
I think they'll find a lot of pilot error, but lack of experience has my vote. Flying from a moist, cooler air mass into a warmer less dense air mass dictates an altitude correction to compensate for any drop due to the less dense air. I'm not a pilot, but know enough to not take chances with mother nature.
ReplyDelete