Plane crash in Brazil with ~60 people
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Ashwin @AR87 are here to discuss two "on-paper" not great results for United over the last week, but are there positive signs of progress despite what the ex-United pundits are saying?
They also preview the big game Europa League game against Lyon.
Holy feck
feck, that looks really bad. I assume no chance anyone survived it.
fecking hell. Can't imagine what the poor passengers must've been feeling at that moment when the planet stalled 
Jesus, I was going to say maybe better than just diving down, then I saw the smoke
Jesus. Sounds like a helicopter as it goes down.
Motherfeck what a terrifying way to go. Awful
Wreckage seems to have fallen in amongst some sort of residential area
Well shit, that's a flat spin. On an ATR 72, no less. The ADS-B track looks very weird, like they just hit a wall at 17000 feet and just went down almost vertically suddenly. Only a little over a minute from normally cruising along until impact.
They were just cruising along, weren't climbing or slowing down prior. First thought going by the circumstances is heavy icing that either went unaddressed, or the anti-icing system failed.
Edit: Just looked up the conditions in the area, weather data does in fact show severe icing conditions in the region at the time.
They were just cruising along, weren't climbing or slowing down prior. First thought going by the circumstances is heavy icing that either went unaddressed, or the anti-icing system failed.
Edit: Just looked up the conditions in the area, weather data does in fact show severe icing conditions in the region at the time.
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Looks like it has absolutely no speed or control. How does that even happen? Say the engines die, wouldn't you still have some amount of control with the flaps and stuff instead of just dropping straight down like a helicopter?
Fecking awful way to go. Imagine the passengers must have been scared shitless for quite a while..
Fecking awful way to go. Imagine the passengers must have been scared shitless for quite a while..
Its a stall. Multitude of ways that could have happened, the video looks a bit stormy so could be weather related. Icing reported in the area apparently and ATRs have a spotty record in those conditions.
Wow, I imagine the G forces at the front and back of the plane were adding to the terror.
Nobody hurt on the ground.
That's about the best we could have hoped for after the crash.
Must be one of the worst ways to go. Pure terror and you know you can't survive it. At least on impact you hope it's sudden.
May they rest in peace.
Yes that's a good theory....I've never seen a plane of this size get into a flat spin like that in the modern era. It's going down like a model aircraft in the footage. It will be a miracle if casualties are limited to just the plane.Well shit, that's a flat spin. On an ATR 72, no less. The ADS-B track looks very weird, like they just hit a wall at 17000 feet and just went down almost vertically suddenly. Only a little over a minute from normally cruising along until impact.
They were just cruising along, weren't climbing or slowing down prior. First thought going by the circumstances is heavy icing that either went unaddressed, or the anti-icing system failed.
Edit: Just looked up the conditions in the area, weather data does in fact show severe icing conditions in the region at the time.
I haven't read anything yet about the flight data and cockpit voice recorders being recovered intact yet. Those should shine a light on the probably causes. Icing seems very likely to have played a part in it though.
Something that is very weird to me looking at the Flightradar24 chart is how choppy the ground speed of the aircraft is:
This is definitely not normal, and you can watch other ATRs on the same route displaying relatively smooth curves how you would expect. Looks like a data or sensor error, because an aircraft swinging that wildly between over 300 and under 100kts of ground speed would not stay flying. Other earlier flights of this specific aircraft show similarly choppy curves.
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Oh no... That's awful
Oh wow. The last half a minute terror for the passengers...
RIP to the passenger and crew. Saw this video after we landed this morning. Can’t imagine what everyone on board was going through.
All of us seem to agree that this is icing related. We had an ex turbo prob pilot from South Africa tell us how he lost 10,000 feet as his aircraft post performance due icing as its anti icing system failed. They only regained control as they reached closer to the ground and the ice melted. But they never entered a spin and the wings didn’t completely stall.
Of course, I am not sure if this is the actual cause of this accident. But once a T-tail aircraft gets in to a flat spin, where its also in a deep stall, not much one can do to recover.
All of us seem to agree that this is icing related. We had an ex turbo prob pilot from South Africa tell us how he lost 10,000 feet as his aircraft post performance due icing as its anti icing system failed. They only regained control as they reached closer to the ground and the ice melted. But they never entered a spin and the wings didn’t completely stall.
Of course, I am not sure if this is the actual cause of this accident. But once a T-tail aircraft gets in to a flat spin, where its also in a deep stall, not much one can do to recover.
Holy feck that’s terrifying.
RIP to the people on board
RIP to the people on board
What irritates me probably the most so far is that the entire region had an active SIGMET (SIGnificant METeorological information report) reporting severe icing between 21000 and 12000 feet. The operating handbook is pretty clear on what to do with severe icing: get the hell out of there. So I cannot help but wonder what this aircraft was doing there, smackdab in the middle of the area and altitude range for which severe icing was reported.
This is what the aircraft manual says about severe icing:
Note the important part within the frame at the start of the page. The list within the frame are the steps the pilots are supposed to undertake and is actioned in order from top to bottom.
Multiple aircraft already had confirmed the SIGMET and themselves reported severe icing conditions in the area. Reports state the the accident aircraft itself had even asked for a lower flight level due to icing (although not declaring an emergency at any point in time, neither mayday nor pan-pan), which was denied by air traffic control for unknown reasons. So the pilots were clearly aware of the problem.
The thing is though: if they noticed severe icing, both best practices and the official procedure required them to start an escape maneuver from those icing conditions on their own initiative. You can see above that notifying the Air Traffic Control is at the bottom of the list, after the point that orders to escape the severe icing conditions. You don't ask the ATC for permission to get out of there, you start getting out and then tell the controller about it. In the end it is the pilots, not the ATC, who have to make the judgement calls they deem best suited to ensure the safety of their aircraft.
I am really trying to wrap my head around why the aircraft was where it was. It all looks so entirely avoidable to me. I am absolutely not trying to assign blame to anyone at this point in time. I am trying to understand it, and it just doesn't make any sense to me.
This is what the aircraft manual says about severe icing:
Note the important part within the frame at the start of the page. The list within the frame are the steps the pilots are supposed to undertake and is actioned in order from top to bottom.
Multiple aircraft already had confirmed the SIGMET and themselves reported severe icing conditions in the area. Reports state the the accident aircraft itself had even asked for a lower flight level due to icing (although not declaring an emergency at any point in time, neither mayday nor pan-pan), which was denied by air traffic control for unknown reasons. So the pilots were clearly aware of the problem.
The thing is though: if they noticed severe icing, both best practices and the official procedure required them to start an escape maneuver from those icing conditions on their own initiative. You can see above that notifying the Air Traffic Control is at the bottom of the list, after the point that orders to escape the severe icing conditions. You don't ask the ATC for permission to get out of there, you start getting out and then tell the controller about it. In the end it is the pilots, not the ATC, who have to make the judgement calls they deem best suited to ensure the safety of their aircraft.
I am really trying to wrap my head around why the aircraft was where it was. It all looks so entirely avoidable to me. I am absolutely not trying to assign blame to anyone at this point in time. I am trying to understand it, and it just doesn't make any sense to me.
The preliminary report is out: https://dedalo.sti.fab.mil.br/en/85259
Disclaimer: preliminary reports are purely factual statements of what happened. Voice cockpit and data recorders, ground radar and weather data, radio communication, aircraft condition according to the latest reports, that sort of stuff. They do not investigate the why or how. That, and the conclusions drawn from it, will only come with the final report.
From the preliminary report it seems like the pilots continued flying through icing conditions despite having received an airframe deicing system failure warning upon first activation. They kept receiving icing warnings from their ice sensor at multiple times throughout the flight, and certainly they were able to see the ice buildup on their IEP (Ice Evidence Probe) right outside the cockpit window. A little over a minute before the aircraft stalled the SIC (co-pilot) also commented about "a lot of icing", so the pilots definitely were aware of this. The aircraft's speed warnings did all go off in order of severity as they should have, the warnings for low cruise speed when their speed fell 10kts below where it should have been, then the degraded performance warning and finally, 12s before the control over the aircraft was lost, the increase speed warning activated, followed immediatly by the stick shaker and aural stall warning activating.
Disclaimer: preliminary reports are purely factual statements of what happened. Voice cockpit and data recorders, ground radar and weather data, radio communication, aircraft condition according to the latest reports, that sort of stuff. They do not investigate the why or how. That, and the conclusions drawn from it, will only come with the final report.
From the preliminary report it seems like the pilots continued flying through icing conditions despite having received an airframe deicing system failure warning upon first activation. They kept receiving icing warnings from their ice sensor at multiple times throughout the flight, and certainly they were able to see the ice buildup on their IEP (Ice Evidence Probe) right outside the cockpit window. A little over a minute before the aircraft stalled the SIC (co-pilot) also commented about "a lot of icing", so the pilots definitely were aware of this. The aircraft's speed warnings did all go off in order of severity as they should have, the warnings for low cruise speed when their speed fell 10kts below where it should have been, then the degraded performance warning and finally, 12s before the control over the aircraft was lost, the increase speed warning activated, followed immediatly by the stick shaker and aural stall warning activating.
Incompetent pilots, then?
Sounds like they should be reviewing how that pilot got his licence doesn't it?
I do not really want to assign blame before the final report, that is just not what the prelim report is for. But it certainly does look like it to me. There are two points on the very short checklist for an airframe de-icing system failure that that we can say were violated from the data:
1) The aircraft did not leave and avoid the icing conditions.
2) The aircraft fell below the required minimum speed of icing bug (165 kt in their case) + 15, as the aircraft's triple warning of "INCREASE SPEED", stick shaker and aural warning activated at 169 knots during the turn that immediately preceded the stall, eleven knots below the bare minimum they should have had.
Did they disclose the names of the victims?
The airline disclosed them: https://blog.voepass.com.br/nota-6-...tripulantes-atualizacao-10-de-agosto-de-2024/
Sad. I was just reading about a few passengers who were at the wrong gate and missed the flight. I'll never fight to get on a flight ever again if I'm late.