DU pilots: Just found this old aviation accident article I wrote in 2000.

[DemoTex]

This was written from a Romanian Ministry of Transportation accident report and other extensive research. It involves an in-flight incident with a Dassault Falcon 900B. I stumbled onto this on the internet, quite by chance. I had lost all my files and copies of this article. It is one of my best, so I am very happy to have a copy of the published piece back in my collection. It was originally published in Aviation International News in October 2000.

This article got me nominated for a top British aviation journalism award in 2001. It is very technical, and very scary. Basically, 70% of the passengers on this flight from Athens to Bucharest died, in flight (one later in a hospital), in an incident that lasted only a few seconds at about 15,000 feet. Read this to learn why you should ALWAYS wear your seat belt in an airplane. ALWAYS!

http://www.ainonline.com/issues/10_00/oct_report_101.html



BTW: The Falcon 900B was the aircraft of choice of Enron's Ken Lay. He had a fleet of them. The Falcon 900 is what Lay supplied to Bu$h for parts of the 2000 campaign tour.

[mcscajun]

1. A technically dense read...

so...for those of us who don't get the aerodynamics and pitch profiles, etc., what happened? Were the passengers not wearing seatbelts thrown against the inside top of the cabin?

Note: I always wear my seatbelt from takeoff until landing, except when I am on my way to/from the toilets.

[DemoTex]

2. I warned you! Technically dense, yes.

However, if you muddle through it all, the blood-and-guts part is pretty straight forward:

During those 24 sec after the autopilot disengaged and between FL 150 and FL 140, the aircraft experienced 10 pitch axis oscillations–lasting from 1.5- to 3.5 sec each–with maximum recorded load factor values of 4.7 g and -3.26 g. The digital flight data recorder (DFDR) measured absolute acceleration (g factor) changes from about 3g to near 8g over a period of about two seconds per oscillation for each of the 10 oscillations. To put this in perspective, the limiting load factor range for the Falcon 900B is 2.6 g to -1 g.

Imagine Barry Bonds with a heavy bat. Imagine your head as the slow-pitched ball. Get the picture? The cabin and it's contents were Bond's bat.

[donco6]

3. Yuck.

Sounds like they not only got bounced around the cabin, but the drink cart acted like a battering ram on people and the fuselage.

I've often wondered why those drink carts are built like Mac trucks.

[DemoTex]

4. Carts = lethal weapons

The history is suppressed, for good reason. The airlines, and their suggar-daddy (Sam), keep cabin injuries out of the news. As a former ALPA accident investigator, I'm here to tell you carts and lap children constitute the same problem in an accident or in-flight upset. Too many people have never had physics.

[mcscajun]

5. Quite true...

...many of us never got to Physics in H.S.

[DemoTex]

7. I did not mean to be pedantic.

It is obvious what stuff does with respect to turbulance in an airliner interior. Only, as an airline captain, I have probably seen worse than the ordinaty "Joe" has. Maybe not.

[mcscajun]

8. No problem...

...worst I've seen (and I know this is really nothing) was the result of an emergency landing at an unscheduled stop -- to deliver a passenger having a cardiac incident to a waiting ambulance. We landed so fast and so hard that all the overhead bins opened up and stuff started to spill out, and some of the doors for the oxygen masks got knocked open, too. Weird.

[donco6]

6. I get so annoyed when the Seat Belt sign goes off . . .

. . . and all over the cabin you hear "click click click click". I've read enough of these reports, and watched enough air disaster documentaries to know that keeping the lap belt on is essential. But that won't help me when the 300 lb behemoth next to me starts flying through the air.

I remember one flight out of Houston when we took off without the slats/flaps extended. My partner tried to tell the flight attendant but she wouldn't listen. We made it off the ground anyway. Is it OK to ever do that???? He about had a heart attack. (I didn't know enough at the time to be worried.)

My friend will never fly American, as he says they have the worst record for stupid mistakes. Just his opinion, probably, but they seem to make more than their share.

[DemoTex]

9. "Took off without the slats/flaps extended" ?

Are you reporting from heaven or hell? Dead man talking. Believe me friend, you did not survive a takeoff in a swept-wing transport jet (throw out the Fokker's) without some wing devices extended. Had that have happened, you would be speaking from the grave (just like the 150 souls on the NWA MD-80 -- oh I know that bitch -- that tried a no flap/slat takeoff in Detroit a decade back).

[donco6]

10. I'll talk to my friend again and see if he can remember.

I distinctly remember him freaking out - but maybe it was just the slats? I don't know. It was a commercial airliner - Continental, I believe.

I know I'm not dead! (poking my arm)

[DemoTex]

11. Continental had some old DC-9-10s. Texas International airplanes.

They had no leading edge devices, if I remember correctly (I do have a DC-9 type-rating, but for the MD-80). The DC-9/MD-80 is a strange aircraft. I was a Boeing guy in a strange-strange land when I checked out on the weird MD-80.

[donco6]

12. That would explain a lot.

Hard to lower slats when you don't have any.

So you're a Boeing man, huh? Do you have a professional opinion about the Colo Springs incident back in 91? That rudder issue always worries me whenever I fly a 737 to this day.

[DemoTex]

13. Can you say "Parker-Hannifin"? Can you say US Air 427?

Boeing 737 300/400s had big problemos. I had an upside-down-o at 37,000 feet in 1989. That was a rudder trim problem over Denver at 2 AM. A few days later there was a fatal accident at LGA with the same rudder trim setting problem (US Air 5050). Boeing ignored.

[DemoTex]

14. Actually,the MD-80 (DC-9) is the strangest airplane I have ever flown.

But I could land that MoFo! On 7/8/2001 I had a total pressurization failure at 35,000 feet in an MD-82 over West Virginia. I did the high-dive down to 10,000 feet. The peeps in the back (148 that day, full load) got the "rubber jungle." They were freaked. I calmed them, and then slicked that sucker on the ground at PIT so that no one felt anything!

[slutticus]

15. 4.7 g and -3.26 g

Ouch.

[DemoTex]

16. Bingo!

You got it! 8-G differential. Bang-bang-bang! Bond's bat.

(Slutticus, thanks for reading my piece in detail).

[slutticus]

17. You're Welcome

I actually want to become a pilot some day. As soon as I find a job (I just got out of grad school) and save up enough money, I want to get my VFR certificate.

It's an expensive endeavor, but I really can't wait...


Any advice?

[buddysmellgood]

18. DU Pilots huh? You know, I tried to charter a bus to take people

from Wisconsin to Ohio for a rally a couple of weeks ago. I finally found a coach, but the trip required two drivers. If we left at 4:30 in the morning we would get to Columbus at 1:00. We would then leave at 4:00 and get home at midnight. Grueling and the cost was about $85 a head IF I could find 48 people to go. That's like $3500 bucks. Well, I found three people. I didn't have much time to organize. I could have raised money to offset the cost for the travelers if I had more time.
I think you know where I'm going with this.
How much does it cost to charter a plane. I'm thinking there are going to be some critical rallies in our future where it will be important to get bodies to Washington or Ohio.
Could we get DU pilots to donate their services if we can raise the money to charter the plane?