Crash at SFO

[kham]

The difference today is that information is dessiminated much faster -- its the party line to state "take months if not years...." but the reality is that that is a load of legalistic horseshit. They likely KNOW right now what happened. We know for a fact the aircraft was well below Vref of 137 knots -- how far NTSB wont say -- that alone says they were in deep shit. Normal approach should be Vref PLUS 5 or more. A flap 30 approach is not unusual, but for a rook, well its not easy. Then we have them well above glide path at 1100 feet alt, initiating descent of 1500 ft/min - which you would have to kill almost at once, since thats double the normal descent rate. You can see this coming -- high rate, reduce power, now kill that rate, but now you well behind the power curve. Pitchup, add power, but even the engines on 777 have to spool up. Power comes on, and this will INCREASE pitch up unless you put the nose over. If this had been a carrier approach it would have ended in a ramp strike.

On Jul 7th the NTSB reported in a press conference at San Francisco Airport, the crew was cleared for a visual approach to runway 28L, the crew acknowledged, flaps were set at 30 degrees, gear was down, Vapp was 137 knots, a normal approach commenced, no anomalies or concerns were raised within the cockpit, 7 seconds prior to impact a crew member called for speed, 4 seconds prior to impact the stick shaker activated, a call to go-around happened 1.5 seconds prior to impact, this data based on a first read out of the cockpit voice recorder. According to flight data recorder the throttles were at idle, the speed significantly decayed below target of 137 knots - the exact value not yet determined -, the thrust levers were advanced and the engines appeared to respond normally.

Power at idle... yeah, this is not a complicated accident. You get a stickshaker 4 seconds from touchdown? You have seriously fucked up your approach

[kham]

FlightAware has some good discussion going on.

Vref almost -30
Yeah
If it wasn't for Boeing building them tough, you'd be looking at 300 dead here.
And one commenter says, he has it on pretty reliable authority, the CP of the United 747 waiting to roll blurted out "Holy Shit! Look at this guy!" I suspect they already been interviewed, they had a frontline seat for the crash. There's hard data posted there showing the glidepath, and it's pretty clear they did pretty much what all speculation has put together so far. They just quit flying the damn plane.

Jesus, the GPWS must have been screaming, plus the sink rate alarms, and the radalt auto callout must have been going bananas.

[BSink42]

It's still amazing that there were only two fatalities. Sad that there were any at all, but amazing there weren't more.

[Mynock]

Too slow was what fucked them over but saved them at the same time. If you watch the crash video you see it try to lift up as it's spinning off the runway. A little more speed and it would've flipped over and come apart and it would've been nothing but bodies.
So who's bright idea was it to let a guy with 30 hours experience fly the plane? Jesus Christ that's like ten more hours of supervision then I got when Walmart hired me.

[bbjohn]

I wonder how much, if anything, San Francisco Bay's infamous weather had to do with this. You can have crystal clear skies and great visibility, but those winds can be fierce. Ask anyone who ever went to a ballgame at Candleshtick Farce...er, Candlestick Park.

I went to a game at AT&T Park in downtown San Francisco a couple of years ago, and I couldn't believe how cold and windy it was in June. Okay, I'm from the Arizona desert, but cold is cold! I remember thinking that, if this was an improvement over Candlestick, I didn't want to know what it was like at Candlestick.

An pilot flying a fully-loaded plane of a type he's not familiar with for the first time and going into SFO with those winds for the first time. Can you say 'recipe for disaster?'

- Big Bad John

P.S. I actually like AT&T Park. It has great sightlines, and the food is incredible. If you're ever there, I recommend the Cha Cha Bowl from Orlando's Caribbean Barbecue. It's easy to see why it's a local favorite.

Okay, now I'm hungry.

[kham]

The winds were SW at 8 knots, and had been 10 or less for the day. Weather cannot be a consideration here, unless one wants to argue it was TOO good.

[schlamm]

Mynock, keep in mind that was time in that particular bird *only*, wasn't his first flight by any means and there was an instructor/captain in the cockpit with him. Somebody wasn't minding the store to be certain, but one cannot pin the relatively low number of hours in the 777 as the only cause. Flight is a lot like driving a vehicle with three dimensions to keep track of, once one has the basics the characteristics and quirks of a particular plane can be learned via experience.

The only airplane I've ever heard of that was unlike flying anything else was the MD-80 series, the long fuselage was described as like flying a telephone pole with regard to pitch command response

[kham]

MD-80/DC-9 you also have the T-Tail issues as well as blanking off and disruption of airflow into the engines from the wings , at higher pitch angles. 777 thats not an issue.

The autopilot was disconnected at 1600 feet 82 seconds prior to impact, the aircraft descended through 1400 feet at 170 KIAS 73 seconds prior to impact, descended through 1000 feet at 149 KIAS 54 seconds, 500 feet at 134 KIAS 34 seconds, 200 feet at 118 KIAS 16 seconds prior to impact. At 125 feet and 112 KIAS the thrust levers were advanced and the engines began to spool up 8 seconds prior to impact, the aircraft reached a minimum speed of 103 KIAS 3 seconds prior to impact, the engines were accelerating through 50% engine power at that point, and accelerated to 106 knots. The vertical profile needs to be assessed first. There was debris from the sea wall thrown several hundred feet towards the runway, part of the tailcone is in the sea wall, a significant portion of the tail is ahead of the sea wall in the water.

So high and hot --- a bad start usually results in a bad landing. Going idle power, a heavy like a 777 would drop like a ruptured goose.

[General Woundwort]

I personally like the 777. It feels real good - unlike the DC-10, for example, which always felt like it was trying to fly itself apart.

Hoping not to derail the topic (MODS???) but I enjoyed the analogy of the DC10; it's spot-on. However...I can't agree on the 777. There's one champion of the skies, and it is Air France's Airbus A380 . Nothing like flying business class in that big, beautiful baby.

[bbjohn]

I recall an old issue of MAD Magazine from 1980 listed their "Phobias for the '80s." One of them was fear of boarding a DC-10. Mechanical failures led to some disastrous DC-10 crashes in late 1970s, including one outside Chicago's O'Hare Airport.
I thought at the time, in my teenager mind, how dumb it was to let a plane go into production before all the bugs had been worked out.

From what I see here, it sounds like all the bugs on the DC-10 and its successor, the MD-11, stiil haven't been worked out.

Today, I think this is even dumber. Of course, it wouldn't be the first time an American corporation has put a product onto the market while having good reason to believe it wasn't safe.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

- Big Bad John