ATR 72 - crashes into river on T/O - Taipei Songshan

[Phil Perry]

ATR-72 turboprop crashed into river shortly following takeoff from Taipei Songshan airport. . . .

 

Look up BBC News Asia ( Etc. . .) for report on this incident. Some graphic pictures / video of the aircraft striking a road bridge before entering the water inverted. . . .multiple fatalities but SOME survivors ( rather lucky )

 

(Sorry, the link just WILL NOT post due to my email problems probably. . . .)

 

Phil

 

 

[Fly_inverted]

i'm looking at the BBC website which has got a satellite map showing the airport and the crash site. looks like the pilot might have been aiming for the beginning of a straight stretch of river.

 

 

[rankamateur]

i'm looking at the BBC website which has got a satellite map showing the airport and the crash site. looks like the pilot might have been aiming for the beginning of a straight stretch of river.

But he was relying on his rudder and fuselage for all of his lift!

 

 

[Phil Perry]

But he was relying on his rudder and fuselage for all of his lift!

OOOOOH. . . .you CRUEL bugger ! ! !

 

 

[Phil Perry]

At least the poor pilot was reported as having called Mayday three times as per manual,. . . .it's a shame that in that particular circumstance, it appears that noone could. . . .

 

Very Sad that.

 

 

[facthunter]

I have watched various images and it appears the aircraft was trying to clear the buildings (which It did) with diminishing airspeed and the left wing Dropped as it entered a stall. Seems the left engine is the failed one. I can't fault anything I see there. The wings were level cresting the buildings .. so it was under control then. Nev

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

reported that he took action to avoid the apartment building and that was that.

 

 

[dutchroll]

I have watched various images and it appears the aircraft was trying to clear the buildings (which It did) with diminishing airspeed and the left wing Dropped as it entered a stall. Seems the left engine is the failed one. I can't fault anything I see there. The wings were level cresting the buildings .. so it was under control then. Nev

Could have been VMCA problems there. The way it severely yawed and rolled, coupled with the reported engine failure, seems indicative of loss of directional control with reducing airspeed to me.

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

Pprune has a thread with plenty of comments from pilots with high time on type.

 

And not only was he trying to miss the buildings there were high tension power lines to deal with as well.

 

 

[dutchroll]

He certainly would've been trying to miss buildings, but not to save the people inside the buildings! It's unfortunate that the media interpretation of how an accident pans out almost never matches the reality revealed in the CVR tapes.

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

Trying to miss? From the videos widely available they had no control of the aircraft at the time.

 

Early reports look like they have shut down the wrong engine!

 

http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/transasia-atr-flight-data-suggests-wrong-engine-shut-408774/

 

 

[dutchroll]

I should have written "may" have been trying to miss buildings. I would agree that he probably had no control judging from the extreme attitude the aircraft ended up in.

 

The point being that when the media report that he was being a hero by saving people on the ground, it's highly unlikely to be true!

 

 

[facthunter]

When an engine auto feathers the main problem is dispensed with. (drag) There would be follow up actions but they would not be critical or need to be done quickly. I can't see the likely hood of shutting down a good engine. being a factor. Misidentification has featured inlow technology situations in the past generally caused by anticipating a suspect motor that had some indications of a problem. When this aircraft crashed it would appear that neither of the engines was feathered.. Nev

 

 

[Guest Howard Hughes]

From the videos I have seen, looks like neither engine feathered, with the right engine at higher power setting.

 

 

[facthunter]

If one engine has feathered The second engine is locked out from the auto feather working .Jet jockeys are lucky to not have to bother with all this. A prop on a plane doing 300 kts is hard to manage. The Allison engine /Prop in the Electra / Hercules is about 3 days of an intensive course. The engine runs the same speed on the ground as it does in flight.Only the pitch changes .Nev

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Not knowing anything about these aircraft, can they fly on one engine? maybe not on take though?

 

David

 

 

[jetjr]

Smh says today, number one went onto autofeather, number two wasnt delivering thrust either, ATR can perform on somgle engine

 

Pilots tried to restart #1

 

Narrowly missed office and residential buildings, multiple stall warnings

 

All started at 1300 ft

 

 

[GAFA]

From Avhearld;

 

On Feb 6th 2015 Taiwan's ASC reported that the investigation so far determined from flight data and cockpit voice recorders: the aircraft received takeoff clearance at 10:51L, in the initial climb the aircraft was handed off to departure at 10:52:33L. At 10:52:38L at about 1200 feet MSL, 37 seconds after becoming airborne, a master warning activated related to the failure of the right hand engine, at 10:52:43L the left hand engine was throttled back and at 10:53:00L the crew began to discuss engine #1 had stalled. At 10:53:06L the right hand engine (engine #2) auto-feathered. At 10:53:12L a first stall warning occured and ceased at 10:53:18L. At 10:53:19L the crew discussed that engine #1 had already feathered, the fuel supply had already been cut to the engine and decided to attempt a restart of engine #1. Two seconds later another stall warning activated. At 10:53:34L the crew radioed "Mayday! Mayday! Engine flame out!", multiple attempts to restart the engines followed to no avail. At 10:54:34L a second master warning activated, 0.4 seconds later both recorders stopped recording.

 

Later the day Feb 6th 2015 the ASC also released an English version of the initial release detailing further that when the first master warning activated associated with the right hand engine the crew "called it out", then the left hand engine thrust lever was progressively retarded to flight idle. At 10:53:24L the condition lever was set to fuel shut off position resulting in the shut down of the left hand engine. Following several call outs to restart the left hand engine the parameters suggest the left hand engine was restarted at 10:54:20L, however, at 10:54:34L another master warning sounded, the CVR recorded unidentified sounds and both recorders stopped.

 

From this it appears the crew identified the wrong failed engine and shutdown the operating engine.

 

 

[dutchroll]

Not knowing anything about these aircraft, can they fly on one engine? maybe not on take though?David

All civil RPT twin engine aircraft must meet performance standards enabling them to fly on one engine from "V1" speed on the runway during takeoff right through until landing. The FAA/EAA/CASA certification requirements are all substantially the same in this respect.

Of course this assumes your remaining engine is functioning normally!

 

Some people get confused between certified twin prop passenger transport aircraft (Dash 8, ATR, etc) and small twin GA aircraft (eg like a Duchess or whatever) where an engine failure colloquially "takes you to the scene of the accident". The single-engine performance certification standards are very different - much more stringent for the passenger transport aircraft.

 

 

[DGL Fox]

Thanks for the explanation DR

 

David

 

 

[facthunter]

Seems like a classical missidentification of an engine failure. Which one? Dead foot, dead engine, but the autopilot may have already been engaged, perhaps masking the effect

 

Every action should have a 'CONFIRM #1 engine throttle CLOSED/ FEATHER and confirm #1 fuel control to cut -off (GENERIC example). Where the other pilot is busy trying to do some departure procedure and fly the plane this is not easy to do. IF the actions were only a follow up for the auto feathered engine, but applied to the wrong one, it is a fatal error. Not the first time such a thing has happened.

 

I know of a pilot who disabled 3 of 4 engines (not permanently but had them with no power) by incorrectly identifying engines, before moving several levers. Another one where 2 engines (both in this case) to feather on final below 500 feet. (Rapidly restarted by an alert Captain). Moral... Check before moving "anything" and don't rush it. Nev

 

 

[Guest ozzie]

There is the manipulating pilot IE the one who is flying the aircraft and the support pilot, who will confirm all actions of the manipulating pilot. Rule one, fly the aircraft, then take action, forget about radio until aircraft is secured, no one on the ground can help. LOOK and SEE what your hands are doing Call your actions and the support pilot will confirm, THEN take the appropriate action. FOLLOW procedure. Pre take off brief by manipulating pilot will include verbal description of actions to be taken in event of EFATO. (Did they do this brief?) I suppose each company has their own version but they will all closely follow this.

 

Amazing thing with this incident is the high time all of the crew (3 pilots) had and it still went to crap. I could understand this happening if it was one of those flight crews with 200hrs TT each but this is going to be one real interesting episode of Air Crash Investigation.

 

 

[kgwilson]

TransAsia GE235: Shutting down the wrong engine

 

good summary

 

By: David Learmount

 

London

 

Source: Flightglobal.com

 

This story is sourced from Flightglobal.com

 

19 hours ago

 

Taiwan's accident investigators have taken the unusual step of publishing part of the flight data recorder printout for the crashed ATR 72-600 almost as soon as it was available to them. There are no rules or protocols saying they must do so, and none saying they should not.

 

The printout they released concerns only the data for the engines. It is a series of graphical lines describing the state of 12 different engine parameters against a timeline, with barometric altitude also displayed. The graphs provide numerical values for some of those parameters; others just show whether a switch is on or off – like the fuel shut-off valve for example.

 

This data tells the investigators, in great detail, what happened, but still not – at this stage – why it happened.

 

The graph shows that the crew certainly suffered the engine "flame-out" they reported in a Mayday call to ATC: the turbine temperature for No 2 engine (the right-hand one) dropped, power was lost and the propeller auto-feathered.

 

But then, in the stressful situation prevailing from that point, the crew carried out the shutdown drill for the working engine, so it stopped too.

 

Why would the investigator release this information so soon without knowing the cause?

 

The investigators knew the information about this critical mistake would soon have to be released, and it looks as if they believed it would be better to publish the cold data that shows what occurred, rather than to make a statement – without releasing the data – that could be interpreted as a premature judgement about the human factors of this case.

 

Perhaps the most famous previous case in which a disaster occurred because an engine failed and then the crew mistakenly shut down the good engine (rather than the damaged one) was the British Midland Boeing 737-400 crash at Kegworth, UK, in 1989. In that case 47 of the 126 people on board died.

 

In the TransAsia case the total airborne time for flight GE235 was 2min 40s.

 

All was going well for 45s after take-off, but as the aircraft was climbing through about 1,200ft (pressure altitude) the turbine temperature for the No 2 engine dropped and the engine auto-feathered. It is not clear why. The aircraft continued to climb on the power from the remaining engine, reaching a maximum height of about 1,650ft.

 

But during that short period the crew allowed the power lever (throttle) of the failed No 2 engine to stay where it was, and started slowly pulling back the power lever of engine No 1 (the working left engine). When it had been reduced almost to idle setting, the fuel was shut off and the right engine also feathered. Just before they shut off fuel to No 1, they advanced the throttle of the failed No 2 engine as far as they could, as if it would provide them with additional power.

 

At that point there would have been a total absence of engine and propeller noise, but lots of alarms going off as systems lost their electrical power. From that time onward the crew had, as it turns out, 1min 15s of gliding time before hitting the surface. That is not really long enough to go through a successful engine re-start drill, but they did begin an attempt to re-light No 1 about 15s before impact.