News Turkish airlines plane crashes in Amsterdam

[Moonwalker]

BTW, 2.5 G sounds awful low for a structural limit on an airplane, especially one has to carry passengers. Turbulence alone can exceed that for brief periods, and a Cessna 150 can take up to 6.6 G, although the operator's manual says the pilot should never exceed 4.4. While a jetliner should theoretically never need to be bent so hard, it's not difficult to imagine a few dozen situations in which it has to be able to handle it.

I don't think 2.5 g sounds aweful. Passenger comfort and safety is what you're basically looking for on those airplanes, while flying fast. They're not made to be acrobatic machines. But also take a look at the Shuttle, which, as far as I know, does never take more than +-2,5g's.

 

[Andy44]

Well, I'm thinking 2.5 G's whether it's a jetliner or a shuttle orbiter, is probably the never-exceed limit. It'd bet a large sum that the structures can actually take more. If you exceed the manual's limit, you need to get the plane inspected after landing, though. And besides, while passenger comfort is important, it's a good bet that the passengers will be very uncomfortable if the airplane breaks in two on a hard landing!

 

[Hielor]

According to the intarwebz, the shuttle sustains up to 3Gs during a nominal launch.

I'm fairly sure that the potential Gs it could encounter during some of the abort modes are also pretty high.

 

[Robert van der Veeke]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7923782.stm

It appears that the crash is most likely cause by a faulty altimeter and human error.

 

[simonpro]

I'd say it's more to do with shoddy discipline and poor checklists from Turkish Airlines. The sad thing is that if the pilots had been paying attention the entire time then this wouldn't have happened. A simple check of the airspeed would've prevented it.

 

[Urwumpe]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7923782.stm

It appears that the crash is most likely cause by a faulty altimeter and human error.

Yes, as well as not dealing with it - the altimeter displayed -7 ft altitude in 1950 ft altitude. Also, my newspaper reported that they had been on autopilot in that phase, which sounds like a false information.

 

[cjp]

Yes, as well as not dealing with it - the altimeter displayed -7 ft altitude in 1950 ft altitude. Also, my newspaper reported that they had been on autopilot in that phase, which sounds like a false information.

In the Netherlands, -7 ft isn't a strange value. However, you should expect to touch the runway within seconds after seeing such a value. If you're still in the air, you should know something is wrong.

Initially I didn't realize the altimeter could be the problem, because you can easily maintain correct altitude using the ILS (and so does the autopilot AFAIK). But if the autopilot really has that auto-shutdown feature, then the BBC explanation actually sounds plausible.

I understand the altimeter reported a too low value. In that case, the pilots were probably still in the clouds while they were looking at the decreasing altimeter value, and they probably expected to land within dense fog. They should have realized something is wrong when they descended below the clouds, and they were still miles away from the runway.

This auto-shutdown feature of the autopilot sounds like another feature of the type "nice when it works, but disastrous when you don't expect it". The KISS principle really applies here IMHO.