ATR-72 Down in Taipei

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by flipper35

Help me out here, I am not seeing any evidence of damage on the tail anywhere in these pictures or in the video.

That looks like something on the leading edge is missing but I think it's an optical delusion.

That bump up by the fuselage is a street lamp if I'm not mistaken

[flipper35]

I still am not seeing it. I think SM is correct, it is part of the background blurring into it. Plus, if it hit that building, it would not be on that part of the aircraft. It would be on the right side or bottom.

[flipper35]

It all looks intact here still. So are you saying it fell off after this point?

[stomachmonkey]

Reports are saying the black boxes showed both engines lost power.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/transasia-airways-plane-crash-pilots-clutching-controls-engines-lost-power/

[jyl]

TransAsia Pilots Apparently Shut Off Wrong Engine - ABC News

Says one engine went to idle and pilots shut the other one down.

"Aviation Safety Council Executive Director Thomas Wang, speaking at a news conference today, presented preliminary findings based on the flight-data recorders, which were recovered after the plane crashed in the Keelung River in Taipei. Wednesday’s crash killed at least 35 people, with eight still missing. Four bodies were recovered today, officials said.

Within a minute of takeoff, the plane's right engine triggered an alarm, Wang said. The data, however, showed it had not shut down, or "flamed out," as the pilot told the control tower, but rather went into idle mode, with no change in the oil pressure, he added.

After that, the pilot apparently shut down the left engine, the only engine producing power, a maneuver that Wang said officials are continuing to investigate."

[Scuba Steve]

Just like that C5 that went down near Dover about 10 years ago.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by jyl

TransAsia Pilots Apparently Shut Off Wrong Engine - ABC News

I'm surprised these guys were able to find work again

[ted]

"but evidence presented so far will raise questions over whether they accidentally cut the wrong engine"


Taiwan pilots 'faced problem with one engine, restarted the other'

[Noah930]

"but evidence presented so far will raise questions over whether they accidentally cut the wrong engine"





Taiwan pilots 'faced problem with one engine, restarted the other'

Are you kidding me?!

Regardless, what happened is terrible. But somehow it feels even more terrible when it's an avoidable error that causes tragedy like this.

[Rinty]

Yet another example of why you should fly first world airlines when travelling in the third world (if possible).

[greglepore]

Yo Widebody...I get dark humor, but that's both racist and offensive, particularly given that the pilots are dead. I know where it came from, but think for just a minute, would it be cool to do the same thing if the pilots were black or Muslim or...

[Cajundaddy]

Sounds like another cockpit coordination error that got them killed. That plane is designed to still fly on one engine but it is far less effective with no engines.

[stomachmonkey]

Yo Widebody...I get dark humor, but that's both racist and offensive, particularly given that the pilots are dead. I know where it came from, but think for just a minute, would it be cool to do the same thing if the pilots were black or Muslim or...

As tasteless as it may have been that is real

http://youtu.be/CaOkTKfxu44

[greglepore]

I know that-it was wrong then, and those guys didn't pay the ultimate price-its why I said I know where it came from.

Cripes, a USAF aircrew made the same error, as alluded to above, and no one made ethnic jokes about them. I don't usually get my panties in a bunch, but this is so beyond the pale.

[ossiblue]

Apparently, it's quite easy to shut down the wrong engine in many aircraft. A former NTSB investigator/official stated she, personally, investigated fifteen crashes that killed 185 people, in which the wrong engine was shut down. Other aviation experts also say it is surprisingly easy to erroneously shut down an engine--something about which the general public has no clue. This particular accident is shining light on something insiders have known for years.

At least two of the pilots (there were three aboard) had in excess of 6500 hours each. They were experienced pilots.

[930addict]

Yo Widebody...I get dark humor, but that's both racist and offensive, particularly given that the pilots are dead. I know where it came from, but think for just a minute, would it be cool to do the same thing if the pilots were black or Muslim or...

Well....
Racist
noun
1. a person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

I see no racism in what wide body posted.
I work with some asian engineers here in sf bay area and they thought it was hilarious.
I still can't believe they read that on air.

[fingpilot]

Back in my turboprop days (like 1960 something), I had a sim instructor that would fail the fuel control in say.. the left engine. It would fail wide open, even more than maximum power. The airplane lurched, yawed, and invariaby, being primed for something failing in the sim session, the pilot would revert to dead foot, dead engine, and double-quick-time shut down the right-side engine that was making less power, as evidenced by the yaw and the rudder feedback. As soon as the hands stopped flying and the good right-side engine was secured and feathered, the operating engine, having been running at 150% rated power, gives up the ghost, usually violently, and bam, you are flying a glider.

It was a great exercise, and REALLY taught you to do the second item in the immediate shutdown memory checklist.

Verify.

I used to preach letting the bad engine produce power as long as there wasn't any fire and you needed some altitude.

All bets are off if it won't feather, or there is a fire. Either of those, you were going to earn your pay.

[930addict]

Not to hijack but last year on one of my flights home we had an engine failure on approach. We didn't know what happened until after we were on the ground but thinking back I knew exactly when it happened. As we were descending through 10k feet the plane yawed to the left with a pretty good force - enough to push me against the side of the plane but nothing violent - then kind of wobbled and straightened out. I thought it was a crosswind. We stopped our decent and turned south for about forty miles then turned around and descended on a very gradual glide path. When we got closer to the airport I could see flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. I thought maybe they were having a drill or something until they started chasing us down the runway. It wasn't until we stopped on the runway that the pilot told us what happened. It was a delta flight on CRJ-700.

My wife was monitoring my flight in the car at the airport. She said that my status went from on approach to delayed. Also apparently they cleared the airspace because there were no planes landing or taking off until after we landed.

I'm glad my pilots knew what they were doing.

[rattlsnak]

It comes down to training and proficiency. Just came back from my 6 month recurrent and our instructor gave us a great exercise. On take off we hit a flock of birds and the left engine failed and right engine caught on fire. Identify Verify.... Leave the fire burning and secure the dead engine. He congratulated me. He said I was 2 out of 100 that didn't shut off the burning engine and made themselves a glider. There is nothing you have to do in so much of a hurry that you make a mistake like that and like those guys did.

[Seahawk]

In the H-60 I flew, there were also some very insidious engine electronic control unit failures that could easily be misdiagnosed without very through training...meaning the aircrew would shut down the good engine and the engine with the real problems would go "high side" and shut itself down.

Depending on altitude, it was swim call.

The sim training was outstanding. I learned a lot. While horrific, unfortunately some of the links in an accident chain are very fragile.

Originally Posted by fingpilot

Back in my turboprop days (like 1960 something), I had a sim instructor that would fail the fuel control in say.. the left engine. It would fail wide open, even more than maximum power. The airplane lurched, yawed, and invariaby, being primed for something failing in the sim session, the pilot would revert to dead foot, dead engine, and double-quick-time shut down the right-side engine that was making less power, as evidenced by the yaw and the rudder feedback. As soon as the hands stopped flying and the good right-side engine was secured and feathered, the operating engine, having been running at 150% rated power, gives up the ghost, usually violently, and bam, you are flying a glider.

It was a great exercise, and REALLY taught you to do the second item in the immediate shutdown memory checklist.

Verify.

I used to preach letting the bad engine produce power as long as there wasn't any fire and you needed some altitude.

All bets are off if it won't feather, or there is a fire. Either of those, you were going to earn your pay.