Hiro11

Here's a tour of the Udvar-Hazy annex of the National Air and Space Museum at Dulles Airport. If you didn't know, the Udvar-Hazy houses the bulk of the Smithsonian's (incredible) collection and presents the aircraft very well. Also, this guy has a very relaxing voice and does a nice job describing what he's looking at.


Of particular note to me in this video are some nice shots of really interesting late WW2 German aircraft, all of which are the last surviving examples in the world:

- At 32:00, a Dornier DO 335 Pfeil, which is a very large fighter with an unusual push-pull prop design that was the fastest prop-driven fighter of the war.

- At 13:52 and again later in the video, some brief shots of a Horten Ho 229 while it was under restoration at the time of this video. This plane finally went on display in 2018 after 7 years of restoration. This is a jet powered flying wing designed by untrained brothers and built out plywood that apparently actually worked fairly well. It's incredible what desperate people can accomplish.

- And, my favorite, at 32:30 the only surviving Arado AR 234 Blitz. An absolutely beautiful jet-powered light bomber / reconnaissance plane and the spiritual father of the U2. This one still has the reusable JATO packs under the wings and a tank-style periscope. The pilots of this plane were incredibly brave:
1. All airstrips in Germany had been destroyed by the time this was available, so they launched in rough fields, clearings in forests etc. Whatever they could find. The early jet engines didn't develop enough thrust at low speeds, so the plane used the aforementioned recoverable JATO packs that were filled with toxic, volatile chemicals.
2. Earlier versions used a very rickety-looking trolley that (usually) dropped off after takeoff and some very sketchy looking skid landing gear. Imagine landing this lightly constructed thing at 200 mph in an icy field on skids.
3. Likewise, imagine doing 400+ mph in a rattly, flexy plane made out of baling wire, tin foil and hope. It has essentially no armament, no redundancy and no armor at all. Well placed small arms fire could likely bring it down. You ain't getting out of that cockpit if you have a problem.
Just a total deathtrap.

All of those aircraft were captured during Operation Lusty, which is a really interesting story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Lusty

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Thanks for the link Jsmth321

The latest information available suggests that the final was commenced at 3,500 ft, 5 miles out, should have been around 1500ft. agl.

Result:

Unstable approach.

Touched down a mile or so after the R/W threshold.

Landing gear was not down and locked.
Both engines hit the R/W, landing aborted, go around initiated.
The resulting damage caused a double flame-out.
This deployed the RAT (no electrics, which stalls if below 140kts.)
Glide approach attempted.
Crashed.

All the above is not confirmed.

zzrmark

I'm not an avionics expert but that sounds to me as though the pilot's doctor messed up on his medication prescription...

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Avionics?

I don’t know about his prescription but I would suggest that his training and ability would be more relevant.

Pulaski

Juan Browne/ Blancolerio did a good YouTube summary of this, including looking at the multiple scrape marks on the runway, combined with some cockpit-tower audio, and after noting how far along the scrape marks were, and that the plane bounced twice (three sets ot marks) hinted strongly that the plane came in too fast, tried to lower the landing gear at too high a speed (it won't lower above 260kts), and the pilot ignored the audible warning that the landing gear wasn't down. So touching/ scraping at high speed AND far too far along the runway, (which should have caused a go-around even before the first bump/scrape) created a pending catastrophe, that was never going to end well.

We will have to see what the official report eventually says to confirm, or give an alternative explanation.

markonline1

I have so many problems with this!
There is no mention on the tapes of the gear not being down, either from the pilot or ATC.
Why did the crew try and put the aircraft down 1000ft outside of the TDZ.
Why did the crew try and instigate a go around after striking the runway 3 times with the engines.
Why did the pilot ignore 3 separate calls from ATC to say he was above assigned altitude (by a considerable margin)
If there was any issue, why did the crew not declare an emergency.
I read on Twitter that the captain was one of PIA’s most senior pilots. This is all very screwed up. I suspect once the black boxes are recovered and examined (I haven’t heard that they’ve been recovered yet), the answers will become apparent rather quickly. If this turns out to be pilot error, and it’s unfair to apportion blame without all the facts being known, this will probably be one of the most major **** ups in aviation history!!!!!

zzrmark

Yup, I definitely know little about Avionics, aviation too.

Without a doubt, and while PIA don't have the best record (to put it mildly) one would be surprised if a long time pilot with 4700 hours on the A320 alone was in the habit of making high and fast approaches on a regular basis.

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IMO, it was all over when a landing was attempted from the approach at 3500ft 5 miles out. It could be done by some but only in an extreme emergency, an out of control cabin fire for example.

As well as audible warnings for gear not down and locked, there are several visual warning lights.

Most A320 pilots would suggest that forgetting to lower the gear would be virtually impossible. Sadly, it appears that it was possible in this case.
As mentioned previously, we will have to wait until the CVR and FDR's are examined.

Pulaski

Juan Browne says the boxes have been recovered in one of his (three, to date) videos, but I haven't seen a corroborating report. And yes, everything so far is pointing towards this being a monumental ****-up, but then so was Asiana 214 at SFO.

scrubbedexpat091

According to various media reports from 2 days ago, the FDR & CVR were recovered.

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Markonline1, I’ll try to answer some of your questions.


There is no mention on the tapes of the gear not being down, either from the pilot or ATC.?

I too am surprised ATC did not tell the crew that the gear was not down.


Why did the crew try and put the aircraft down 1000ft outside of the TDZ.?

Too fast and too high over the R/W threshold, I guess. I think it was more than 1,000.


Why did the crew try and instigate a go around after striking the runway 3 times with the engines.?

Perhaps on realizing the gear was not down until the engines hit the ground. If the a/c was doing say 140kts, 1 mile of concrete left and no brakes would have made a mess but much fewer casualties I would have thought. Landing distance available is 11,152 ft .


Why did the pilot ignore 3 separate calls from ATC to say he was above assigned altitude (by a considerable margin)?

He was in overload mode I would expect or the PNF (pilot not flying) who would be talking to atc missed the calls.


If there was any issue, why did the crew not declare an emergency.?

Bad airmanship, bad communication between the crew (CRM) possibly.



For the crews sake, I hope I’m wrong.

Giantaxe

LATAM the latest to go chapter 11. They’ll hardly be the last.

markonline1

Again, I’m not a pilot, but isn’t the requirement that the approach is stable by 1000 ft? High and over speed is anything but stable. It goes back to if there was an issue, why did the crew not declare an emergency. There’s bad airmanship, and then there’s suicidal flying. This appears at the moment to be the latter.

Why did the pilot ignore 3 separate calls from ATC to say he was above assigned altitude (by a considerable margin)?

That’s the thing though, he didn’t miss the calls. If I remember correctly, he was told he was at 7000 instead of 3000 and he responded with something like we’re fine.

Pulaski

Maybe he was distracted by the cockpit alarm going off (audible in the ATC audio), that is apparently sounding because the landing gear isn't down because the airspeed was too high.

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When you asked “Why did the crew try and put the aircraft down 1000ft outside of the TDZ” I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about landing 1000ft past the Touch Down Zone and not 1000ft above the glide slope.

Never heard about the 1000ft rule (JAR-OPS1), maybe a company or FAA thing. When I last operated into Gatwick, 2001, a frequent request from atc was to keep 170kts to the marker, that was 1325 agl on 26L about a 4-mile final. Vref would be around 130kts.We could refuse their request but it was never a problem. Certainly, stabilised by 500ft.




Good point