Co-pilot error caused AA 587 crash

Dave wrote:
Coming out of a very low (legal) ceiling, the rny was not
directly under the a/c, and the crew tried to correct laterally and
doing so, the decent rate increased. They started the go around to
late, the AC slammed down on the rny hard, the nose gear ripping the
control functions as it rammed vertically up through the floor
above.

The TSB report clearly stated that the pilots initiated a go around WITHOUT
LANDING, with airspeed that would have required landing before speed was high
enough to climb again. Upon starting to climb again, the skidoo did regain
some altitude before stalling, after which it fell to the ground where its
recessive skidoo genes became dominant again.

One problem is that the flight director had not been programmed to handle such
a situation, neither had Bombardier foreseen/simulated situations such as
those. While the FO (PIC) was trying to climb according to normal climb rates
provided by the flight director, the captain did not realise that the newbie
co-pilot wasn't aware of the very low airspeed.








The throttles were stuck at high power, directional control
was lost, and everybody was along for the ride into the trees WAY off
to the right of rny 15 way past the intersection. One engine was
STILL producing substantial power as the equipment arrived.

The A/C was ON THE SURFACE, engines pushing it along for the
entire trip, impact point to the pucker brush. (the damage from the
nose gear severed the the throttle controls so the crew were unable
to retard the thrust). It DID NOT "stall into the trees"...and it
did not "travel through the forest". - It was stopped cold by the 1st
tree (a rather large and very strong tree), at the edge of the
cleared area, the tree still standing in the middle of the fwd cabin
where the (severe) injuries occurred.

Hence the "skidoo " story, - the track of the A/C was
continuous along the snow...

Add to this some really bonehead PR work by Air Canada..

Oh... thats another story... sorry...

Dave

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 00:46:30 -0400, nobody wrote:

Sylvia Else wrote:


That accident actually has a lot of commonality with the Air Canada flying
skidoo accident at Fredericton.

Plane put at low altutude with engines at low speed. In both cases, pilots
decide to rev up engines to regain altutude (for the airbus, pilot was just
showing off, for the skidoos, the pilot aborted landing). In both cases,
engines took some time to spin up and produce necessary thrust (nature of
turbine engines).

In the case of the flying skidoo, because of no FBW, the pilot stalled the
aircraft as he tried to climb above trees, and it fell in the snow and
traveled in the forest until it hit a tree. In the case of the 320, the
computer didn't allow the pilot to raise the nose, avoiding a deadly stall.
But the computer didn't know trees were ahead, so plane traveled into the trees.

Had the pilot increased thrust earlier, the plane might have regained
suffiencty speed to be able to start climbing without stalling and nobody
would have noticed anything.