Continental Flight 3407 crashes in Buffalo, 44 aboard

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by srandallf

local news is nonstop on this story..wonder about the rest of the country. its freakin amazing. if a greyhound bus with 50 nuns flew off the grand canyon you would hear the story for about 5 minutes. this story is even superseding the usual drive by shootings and stabbings

it is very sad. i live under a flight path in rochester and they fly overhead all day long...i often wonder "what if..."

Unless it's a car chase in Los Angelos. Then it is WORLD NEWS.

[ramonesfreak]

is it nonstop? even some network tv shows here are cancelled and just "special reports" are on here...on and on. ive gotta shut it off as its so damn depressing. in 37 years i cant recall any plane related accidents in upstate NY except small private owed planes that crash all the time. never a commercial plane ever

[fingpilot]

Originally Posted by 450knotOffice

The ATR crash in '94 at Roselawn, Indiana was an ATR -72.

I'm with Norm on this. The Dash-8 is well known for its ability to handle a lot of ice. In fact, as common as they are and considering where they are most commonly used - in the cold, icing prone northern states - I can't think of one single icing accident that has involved a Dash-8.

My feeling on this one is that there was something else that led to this accident and that icing may have been a non-factor, or that the crew may have simply screwed this up all by themselves.

This is a Dash-8 Q400:

Scott;

You and I come from similar schools of thought. You know as well as I do that 'some airplanes carry a lot of ice well'.... Some don't. I've flown both; Baby DC9's (Ice certain death machine), Challengers (gotta keep your eyes on that one).

Then there are the Gulfstreams. Universally known to 'carry a lot of ice', so much so, that midway thru the icing certification trials of the G2 (in 1960-something), they could not load the tail of the airplane enough to affect any performance in any way. I have seen the pics of that airplane landing. Ram's horn ice buildup on leading edge of tail that was 2 feet thick (one foot above, one foot below). The FAA allowed the plane to be free of any de-ice equiptment on the tail of every Gulfstream ever manufactured since. Only the first 13 of the G2's have the plumbing installed, but the plumbing was severed and sealed in the leading edge of the verticle fin. GRUMMAN was SO proud of this fact that they TO THIS DAY they insert an inspection panel that CANNOT be polished (the normal state of all leading edges of Gulfstreams) in the leading edge of the fin. It was an extended middle finger to the competition ...... Next time you see one, look for it, it is at the base of the verticle fin.

Knowing this, we never worried too much about icing. Normally our icing exposure was during a 3K a minute climb(maybe 15 seconds), or on final approach, or worst case, stuck at an altitude where water content, air temp and skin temp all conspired. Everything from the tops at 40000' to on approach to SFO out over the Pacific (worst ever). Almost declared that day. On the G2, there were windshield wipers (no one ever used them except as icing indicators.). We picked up so much ice in one minute, the windshields became opaque, the wipers started shedding tennis ball-sized chunks that went into the engines, and full power was required to climb only 3000 feet to escape it. Landing at SFO, the power never came off for the approach or flare, and there was almost 4 inches of clear ice hitting the pavement as the plane sat on the ramp. It shed for an hour.

A one minute exposure.

[fingpilot]

It's 20 minutes long.

It tells exactly what happened last night, I'd be willing to bet.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2238323060735779946

[URY914]

Seems that the pilot was from the Tampa area. His wife was a school teacher and had a son in high school.

[rattlsnak]

Sing, dont know much about Challengers, but todays CRJs dont have any tail anti ice either as Bombardier doesnt think they need it. I have seen the whole airplane covered with 2-3 inches on the nose cone with no issues. Of course the wings were clean but the tail had traces of rime.

Scott, does the ERJ have anything on the tail?

[air-cool-me]

Flew similar aircraft.. ATR-72..

We did spend a whole sim ride in hellish ice enounters.. ATR has problems with ice buildup blanking out the ailerons .. In really bad ice it would start rolling and with full controls it would slowly correct... scary stuff.. no hydraulic fly controls eather... just you moving the controls around.

The ATR-72 was better then the ATR-42 In ice because the tail was farther away from the downwash off the wing and had a greater moment being farther away from the CG.

Only time I had it bad was just flying thru the top of a cloud.. maybe 5 seconds total inside... but when we popped out the other-side the whole windshield had at least an inch.. took a bit of time to melt it off.

the Q400 had a reputation as a great aircraft in ice, I try not to speculate but if the upset occurred during flap deployment its hard not to think tailplane stall.

[450knotOffice]

Sing, after I typed my first response this morning, I had to leave for work to fly a five leg trip. While driving to the airport I heard the investigator describe what led to the upset and thought to myself, "this is a classic tail stall in icing conditions". I haven't heard of this happening in a long, long time.

As you know, it's a nasty way to lose the airplane. The airplane will build up ice on the horizontal stab for any number of possible reasons and will begin to lose its ability to keep the nose up. The crew may still have the autopilot on, so they wouldn't "feel" the change in control pressure. The nail in the coffin comes when the flaps are deployed and the wing's added downwash increases the negative angle of attack of the stab to a critical value and a sudden tail stall occurs. This will manifest itself as a sudden, rapid, and very severe pitch down - many times to well past vertical within a second or so. The added speed in the dive would also serve to increase the wing's downwash and would simply make matters worse for the pilots by deepening the tailplane stall. It's a hellish scenario. The only way to possibly recover from such a scenario would be to retract the flaps to lower the tailplane angle of attack to try to regain pitch control. Not likely however.

I feel awful for those pilots and the passengers and flight attendants.

Rattlsnak, the Embraer RJ has hot wings, horizontal stab and engine inlets but nothing on the vertical. It has been deemed unnecessary by the powers-that-be. I've had the airplane iced up pretty heavily on a few occasions but the critical surfaces have always (always) remained clean. The unprotected surfaces, on the other hand, have gotten pretty ugly on those occasions. The airplane became a lot more sluggish and heavy feeling but flew just fine in terms of control feel. I feel pretty confident in that airplane in icing conditions.

[Zef]

Thanks Scott for the explanation...Very interesting stuff.
http://www.liveatc.net/forums/atcaviation-audio-clips/continental-(colgan)-8-crash-in-buffalo/?action=printpage
The copilot was 24-year-old Rebecca Lynne (Morris) Shaw...It's so sad.....
http://www.kvnews.com/articles/2009/02/13/news/doc4995e11470a1e531840788.txt

[Ray B]

It'll be interesting to see the actual cause. Until then it's all speculation. I don't even bother watching TV after the initial report. The reporters always seem to find the bubba that usually starts his analysis with: " Well, me and mama wuz on the back porch and heard this big bang..."

[Embraer]

145 only has horizontal stab anti-ice, 170 doesn't have any tail heating.

[Neilk]

Check out this Video on tail icing. The researchers at NASA recreated the tail icing scenario about 12 minutes into the video. It is incredible to see what a little ice on the leading edge of the horizontal stab will do to the airflow. At 3000 ft or so, the pilots didn't stand a chance. Poor souls.

[avt007]

Originally Posted by beepbeep

SAS had big problems with undercarriages with three spectacular landings and sold all of them.

Is this 6:th Dash that crashed?

SAS sold their early Q400s (which were snapped up immediately by an Australian operator), then they bought more brand new Q400s. They like the aircraft, now that it's had some in service experience and mods done.
Last year, the wait to buy a new Q400 was 2014. Now with the economy soft, you could probably buy one sooner, but still, they are very popular.

[fingpilot]

Originally Posted by Neilk

Check out this Video on tail icing. The researchers at NASA recreated the tail icing scenario about 12 minutes into the video. It is incredible to see what a little ice on the leading edge of the horizontal stab will do to the airflow. At 3000 ft or so, the pilots didn't stand a chance. Poor souls.

It always amazes me how people will post in a thread without actually having read anything posted in that thread ahead of them.

Kinda like forgetting something in a checklist cuz you're in a hurry.

Or forgetting that lesson the instructors hammered into you because of a crash that just happened in real life then you go into the sim and duplicate because you were stupid and didn't pay attention in class.


That exact same link to the tailplane icing was posted exactly 7 posts before yours. Seven. The time, in seconds, to plumment from 2300 feet above the ground into an occupied house 5 miles short of the runway, upside down, tail covered in ice.

[Neilk]

Originally Posted by fingpilot

It always amazes me how people will post in a thread without actually having read anything posted in that thread ahead of them.

Kinda like forgetting something in a checklist cuz you're in a hurry.

Or forgetting that lesson the instructors hammered into you because of a crash that just happened in real life then you go into the sim and duplicate because you were stupid and didn't pay attention in class.


That exact same link to the tailplane icing was posted exactly 7 posts before yours. Seven. The time, in seconds, to plumment from 2300 feet above the ground into an occupied house 5 miles short of the runway, upside down, tail covered in ice.

Well excuse me! I had been following the thread and came back to the thread and thought I had I had rejoined where I left off. Reading posts on Pelican isn't quite as important as your checklists!

[nostatic]

that video was amazing - seeing the flow reverse at the leading edge is scary. Fluid dynamics is a harsh mistress.

Hasn't auto pilot been used more and more on approach lately, largely due to GPS technology?

[air-cool-me]

No. GPS is just another form of navigation(among many) that you can use with or without the autopilot.

Trust me, you dont want me to hand fly the whole trip... but myself and most pilots maintain proficiency by kicking it off as often as they can. For me, if its nice outside i try and take if off below 10,000ft workload(and worn outness) permitting.

[fingpilot]

Sorry Neil;

I see stuff happen out there in the aviation world that is sheer stupidity. It hits home when you have to justify someone else's stupidity to your boss after he tells you that you cannot fire that someone for being incompetant (It's a relative of his... or he/she's a nice person...). You never forget that feeling. You schedule every flight with this idiot hoping for something illegal that will take the discretion out of your boss's hands; but they are warned, and make nice nice for however long it takes.

Then years later, you read about that person on the front page having done something stupid (and usually identical) to the stupidity you witnesssed and paid for years ago. I paid for backing down with a loss of integrity, this time people paid with their lives.

It gets personal real quick.

I shouldn't have taken it out on you. Truly.

Michael.

[jeffgrant]

Originally Posted by Neilk

Check out this Video on tail icing. The researchers at NASA recreated the tail icing scenario about 12 minutes into the video. It is incredible to see what a little ice on the leading edge of the horizontal stab will do to the airflow. At 3000 ft or so, the pilots didn't stand a chance. Poor souls.

Very cool video... thanks!

(both links)

[rick-l]

Originally Posted by nostatic

Hasn't auto pilot been used more and more on approach lately, largely due to GPS technology?

I know this plane wasn't equipped to do this and I hope it is not too big a detour to be considered a hijack but I was talking to a pilot who said from an economic standpoint the airline would prefer auto-land. He just had to see the flare engaged message happened at a reasonable altitude.

Is this true?