Bagram Jumbo Crash

[Harry Muff]

Unbelievable footage.

Possibly a combination of high head winds and steep take-off angle, or cargo moving around. Either way, it didn't end well.

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icfVsql38oc

[jollygiant]

Farkin hell......

[srad34]

Crikey, looks like it just lost power?

Awful stuff....

[IforB]

That was a stall/spin, nothing to do with power at all. It appears from first glance that the load shifted aft or they lost elevator control, it pitched up, exceeded the critical angle of attack so that the wings stalled and down she went, the spin came from the yaw moment allied to the stall and down she went.

A horrible accident and RIP to the peeps on board.

[trackdaybob]

Feck!!!!

[Harry Muff]

That was a stall/spin, nothing to do with power at all. It appears from first glance that the load shifted aft or they lost elevator control, it pitched up, exceeded the critical angle of attack so that the wings stalled and down she went, the spin came from the yaw moment allied to the stall and down she went.

A horrible accident and RIP to the peeps on board.

Bear in mind where they are. All aircraft have climb out steeply to avoid rocket attack. Incidentally, the Talibannies have already tried to claim it.

I think the pilot got his sums wrong as well as being a bit too confident.

[rureadyboots]

Poor bastards. The thing just fell out of the sky.

[IforB]

Bear in mind where they are. All aircraft have climb out steeply to avoid rocket attack. Incidentally, the Talibannies have already tried to claim it.

I think the pilot got his sums wrong as well as being a bit too confident.

Sorry but from my perspective that balls.

You have a lot of protection from stalls in commercial aircraft, from stick pushers and shakers, horns and lights that go off left right and centre, Alpha floor protection in Airbuses as well as the fact that any pilot can see and feel a stall coming a mile off usually and the recovery actions are ingrained from day 1 of flight training.

I've had freight shift and it's fucking scary even when you can still cope with it. The way that thing was hanging in the air suggests to me that they couldn't get the nose down and that can only be because of a failure, non recognition of the problem (which I seriously doubt) or the fact it was simply unrecoverable due to a sudden rearward shift of CofG.

[Harry Muff]

Fair enough, but there's no need to be rude about it.

I was thinking about this: Oops, and this: Oops_2. There was a video of one of them but I can't find it.

One of the articles references a third recent incident involving a Thomson 767 but the link has expired.

Those take-offs were standard, and not the steep angled jobbies that are necessary in Afghanistan.

It could well be that it was a loading error, but I'm saying we should keep our minds open to pilot error. It does happen.

[IforB]

Fair enough, but there's no need to be rude about it.

I was thinking about this: Oops, and this: Oops_2. There was a video of one of them but I can't find it.

One of the articles references a third recent incident involving a Thomson 767 but the link has expired.

Those take-offs were standard, and not the steep angled jobbies that are necessary in Afghanistan.

It could well be that it was a loading error, but I'm saying we should keep our minds open to pilot error. It does happen.

That's not rude! I can be if you want though.

I'm very aware of these incidents and they are very different hings from this crash, for a start neither ended in a smash up.

I'm also going to say that I do know more than most about flying an aeroplane and whilst pilot error is always the first consideration in an incident, in this case, I'd be very surprised given what was happening in the video.

I can guarantee that video will be in the training material in every airline around the world soon. I know it's going to be in ours. We discussed it at length this morning amongst the management and training pilots and we all think it was most likely to be a shifting load. Once the FDR data is made available, then the actual info will come out, but at the moment, the most likely scenario is an aft CofG which overwhelmed the ability of the crew to control the aircraft in pitch, then that may have been exascerbated by the crew going to full noise on the engine (supposition) which gives an extra nose up pitch which can deepen the stall, with yaw from the engines spooling up, then adding in the stall will give the spin and then that's all she wrote.

Whilst the handling of the aircraft might get called into question for why it ended up as bad as it did, the initial cause is likely to be the aft CofG and the guess would be that it happened on rotation.

This is a freight aircraft and doesn't just have pilots on board, but load masters as well who look after loading and paperwork, so whilst it's possible that they loaded it wrong initially, they probably wouldn't have got as high as they did, they would have crashed a bit earlier.

All supposition of course until the report comes out, but it's educated supposition.

[srad34]

What he said ^^^^.......

[2Smoke]

Something else for the next Human Factors course then. RIP to those that were onboard, general opinion in work points to load shift but it'll all become clear soon enough.

Is it likely these days for a mechanical failure to occur on modern aircraft? I mean one on one of the primary flying controls..

[IforB]

Something else for the next Human Factors course then. RIP to those that were onboard, general opinion in work points to load shift but it'll all become clear soon enough.

Is it likely these days for a mechanical failure to occur on modern aircraft? I mean one on one of the primary flying controls..

Highly unlikely, not impossible of course, but given the redundancy in the primary controls I find it hard to give it much creedence especially given the other option of a load shift, which is unfortunately not unknown.

[IforB]

Having spent 2 years in an air mobile brigade and done a fair bit of aircraft loading as a result I'd be extremely surprised if shifting cargo turns out to be the causal factor.

The plane was loaded with 5 or 6 MRAP's and these are similar in size/mass to vehicles I've loaded, under loadmaster supervision, and they are secured by getting on for a hundred nylon strops. From what I can remember you're talking about the load securing mechanism having to withstand 3 or 4g in horizontal acceleration.

I'd not be surprised if somebody got the CoG calcs wrong - from what's being said on pprune by an aircrew member who's flown MRAP's in 744's they need significant counter balance ballast/load/fuel to get the CoG in the right place when they are carrying the number of MRAP's that were reported as being on board the 744 that crashed.

Those MRAPS are bloody heavy beasts, I can imagine one of them shifting and if it did move, then the thing could snap staps like confetti.

To get that big fucker standing on it's tail around 1500ft up, the CofG would need to be well out. It can happen but you find out about wonky CofG's at rotate if not before, to be that far out, they would definitely had a tail strike and may never have got off the deck in the first place, there are plenty of examples of a/c dragging their arses and plowing straight on.

That's why we were looking at a load shift. I've had one of them when I flew freight, but fortunately it was just about controllable. Properly Scary shit. I also had a badly loaded a/c, but fortunately it was a forward CofG and was something we could deal with. It still focussed the mind though.

Being out of balance rearwards is the killer, it makes the aircraft unstable and do what the video showed.

With the 744 they are complex bastards to load and fuel, with fuel everywhere and seriously fucking the loading up is perfectly possible.

Too much speculation is a bit mawkish and hardly helps at this point, but I've no doubt that it was it a load problem of some kind we came down on the probability of a load shift as to get it that badly loaded would be a monumental screw up by numerous people, most of whom are now dead.

[Beanerno1]

All my thoughts watching the video have already been posted above,, ifor wouldn't the flight recording ect have already been recovered as the conclusions drawn?

[jimjambandit]

that gives me chills, poor fuckers.

[Mrdrink]

I have someone on my bookface that has flown with the crew on board that aircraft. He and the others are saying it must have been a CoG shift too.

Poor sods, its never nice see a vid like that knowing that theres no escape for them.

[IforB]

All my thoughts watching the video have already been posted above,, ifor wouldn't the flight recording ect have already been recovered as the conclusions drawn?

Finding the FDR is one thing and then getting the data out of it another. If it was intact and the data still solid, then it doesn't take long to rerun it, but my guess would be that getting it wouldn't be much of an issue, but that it won't be replayed until the FAA inspectors have got it, taken it back to the US and then they would go about it very carefully.

If we have an incident, then we will do and FDR and QAR (Quick Access Recorder- a more accessible copy of the FDR that we use for our own purposes) dumps and we can generally run the flight within minutes of getting the data, but that's not for a serious accidents and relies on everything being intact.

The FDR data is only one part of an investigation, yes it's a huge part, but there's nothing that will directly tell you about the loading, they'll have to interpret the data and look at how the a/c performed, where the flight controls were in relation to the the attitude of the aircraft and then draw conclusions, so it still takes time to look into this and draw meaningful conclusions. It's a slow, but very thorough process when the accident investigators need to get involved.

[porter_jamie]

dont they have load cells or whatever in the landing gear?

[IforB]

Some aircraft do, but the vast majority don't. They aren't very reliable really.

[IforB]

That's another reason for discounting the poor loading and gives a bit of creedence to a load shift. Obviously they may have fuelled the thing incredibly badly, but that was a long way out.

It might seem difficult to imagine these enormous straps snapping or coming off, but it does happen and something the size of an MRAP doesn't need to move far before it seriously screws things up. Just a few feet can make the difference.

Obviously it could be either reason, or even something completely different.

[IforB]

Interesting, I'd thought they'd have used multiple massive straps, but I can see the logic of that.

What are they mounted to though? If that failed, then no amokunt of straps would stop something that mahoosive moving.

[outkast]

We had an MRAP come off a trailer here, it was chained front and rear. I don't know the back ground other that the chaining is inspected and done by a qualified slinger. I'm thinking the driver swerved/fell asleep.

[IforB]

That's really interesting Mike, I didn't realise that was how they loaded them, but I can see a whole load of single failure points in that pic. If that ridiculously strong front bumper failed, then that's a failure point, as is the single rail most of the straps are attrached to. I'm obviously not discounting the idea, but I can see many ways that a failure could occur there.

[Harry Muff]

The aircraft landed at Bagram solely for fuel and to comply with security regulations. Nothing else changed.

[outkast]

A route from Camp Bastion to Dubai requires a South Westerly track.

Bagram is about an hours flight time North East of Camp Bastion.

What would prompt adding 2 hours flight time to a journey simply for fuel?

I read somewhere it was a private contractor plane, so I'm guessing more flight time/distance = more money

[Harry Muff]

A route from Camp Bastion to Dubai requires a South Westerly track.

Bagram is about an hours flight time North East of Camp Bastion.

What would prompt adding 2 hours flight time to a journey simply for fuel?

Apparently juice is a shit-load cheaper there. Also, commercial airports don't accept aircraft directly from military airbases. Bagram is technically an airport still and therefore can provide the security clearance needed. I think they call it a "cleansing stop".

[bikemike]

Is there any official word about the cause of this yet?