"It's hard to believe in this day and age we still rely on "suck and blow" instruments like this."Interesting idea there, Ian! But from where would you want to get that information? While you could get true alt and thus vertical speed from GPS, do we really want to rely on GPS only? What if the system is shut down or a satellite fails?And from where would you get airspeed? You'd have to know the exact wind direction / speed to be able to derive airspeed from groundspeed. Unfortunately, a GPS alone is not enough to get wind speed/direction.I don't really see an alternative there.Regards,Mark

Here's the approach they would have made, https://164.214.2.62/products/digitalaero/t...nso_whiskey.pdf

I remember seeing a National Geographic docu on this particular accident - must be awful in hindsight to think that the crew & ATC thought they were at a good altitude & good speed.

Perhaps it is the translation into english which is making me feel this way, but the cabin crew seemed *overly* confused as to what was going on - not to mention seemingly disagreeing with each other on many counts. Again, it may be the translation doing it, but it seems as though they are frantically trying everything in the book without taking stock in the situation. For me, the radar altimeter would instantly become my new best friend.The 767 is equipped with an INS (and/or GPS) system, right? Hopefully it is possible to extract speed information out of the INS/GPS so I could get a basic look at how fast I was going.If the terrain wasn't too hilly, I'd settle in at an altitude and burn off/dump some gas, and try to make my way back to the field. If I had speeds coming in from the INS or GPS, my copilot would be watching the radar alt and speed readout, calling it out. It would be a rough landing no doubt, but with a little coordination, probably do-able. I wonder if any professional pilots carry a handheld GPS in their flightbags "just in case" - but I am not sure how well it'd function in the front office of a long aluminium tube. -Greg

Hand-held GPS's function very well. Just make sure they are up close enough to the 'windscreen'...Regards,jack

This one *really* makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.I saw a very similar situation around 15 years ago as the aircraft commander (captain) of a USAF C-141B Starlizard flying between two bases in South Korea. In this case, the maintenance people determined that water had collected in the static lines and froze both of the static lines solid, yielding much the same result as taped-over static ports.Here's how we played it. On departure (winter, and as cold as a witch's you-know-what) passing maybe 8000 feet, I noticed that the airspeed was increasing despite an already abnormally high pitch attitude. I cross checked it against the copilot's side and standby instruments, and to my dismay, none of the three were in agreement. And...worse still...none of the altimeters agreed either. Keep in mind that the ROK is covered with scads of towering cumulogranite clouds...not a good way to fly.Thc CP, the FE and I talked...briefly...about what we were seeing, and the sense of spatial disorientation and panic really started to set in fast. We were in grey soup with big mountains all around. Bad juju.Here's where hundreds of hours of top-quality US Air Force training saved our asses. I had the engineer give me an MRT thrust setting...I had the copilot set it, and I put the nose up to a pitch setting that I had seen a hundred times before. No time for looking in QRHs or AOMs. I either knew it or I didn't. The airplane could not possibly do anything but climb safely in that condition. I had the copilot check the weather...it was dog crap all over the Korean peninsula, so I decided to divert to Yokota Air Base in Japan. They had a 5000 ft overcast ceiling there, but I knew I could descend over the Pacific and get under the cloud cover without hitting anything there.The next problem was how to determine our altitude and speed for a safe descent and approach. Again, the thousands of hours every member of my crew spent studying and training on this bird paid off. The three of us put our heads together, and we decided to use the cabin altimeter...which uses a pressure port on the interior of the plane...as an altimeter. We devised a procedure to bring up the cabin altitude as we descended, keeping a maximum 10,000 ft cabin altitude. Once we reached 0 PSI cabin differential pressure, the cabin altimeter would give us a rough reading of our altitude from a completely independent and internal source.For airspeed, we improvised on a technique often used for wind shear avoidance, using the INS groundspeed with corrections for reported surface winds...plus 20 extra knots for shear effects and for mama.We flew for arouund 90 minutes on pitch and power alone, doing crude guesstimates of our altitude based on the cabin press and differential pressure. Once out over the Sea of Japan things were a lot less tense...but you could still have heard a pin drop on the flight deck as we pulled the power back and flew a pitch-and-power descent until we broke out of the clouds over the water at around 6000 ft on the cabin altimeter. The approach and landing was a piece of cake using the INS speed data. And to this day, I don't think a single passenger on that jet had a clue how ugly things had gotten for a few terrifying minutes over Korea.Moral of the story...there are no substitutes for regular doses of high-quality training. The systems knowledge, cockpit resource management, and emergency procedures training that the AF pounded into us from the very beginning were the difference between success and a C-141-shaped hole in the side of a Korean mountainside. The real value of this sort of training is evident when you consider that I had maybe 2,000 hours of flying time, and less than 1,000 hours in the C-141 when this happened. I find myself wondering how much time the crew on this Aeroperu jet spent in training during the months preceding the accident.RegardsBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Washington, DC

Excellent story Bob. Thanks for sharing. I wish you were my pilot on all my commercial flights :-)

"Once we reached 0 PSI cabin differential pressure, the cabin altimeter would give us a rough reading of our altitude from a completely independent and internal source."Great story, Bob. Glad you're still here to tell it :-)Unfortunately, not all the (life) saving techniques that can be applied to one aircraft can be carried over to another. Interesting to note that on some 767's, the Cabin Diff Pressure gauge may not give you an accurate reading if the static ports are blocked. However, cabin altitude should give you a reasonable facsimile of outside pressure once you have confirmed that the cabin pressure diff is actually zero (I guess, if you've had the outflow valve wide open for a few minutes.... or someone has opened a window :-).... the differential pressure should be equal).BTW, I'm wondering how helpful a third crewmember would have been in the AeroPeru incident. Cheers.Ian.

>Glad you're still here to tell it :-)Me too! Although this is probably my best close-call story, I've been much closer to a 21-gun salute several other times, but they happened so fast it's almost no fun to tell. Went nose-to-nose with a solo student in the traffic pattern in a T-38 in my younger days...was close enough to see the detail on his helmet as he passed under my jet. 500+ knots of closure, and less than 100 ft separation that time.>>BTW, I'm wondering how helpful a third crewmember would have>been in the AeroPeru incident. An insightful question. When I was flying in the 89th Airlift Wing (Presidential and VVIP transport) we fought quite hard to keep flight mechanics/engineers on airplanes even as small as the Gulfstream III. An extra brain and set of eyes is worth everything when things are going badly. I'll tell you, when flying a Cat II ILS approach in really crappy vis, having a guy dedicated to watching the engines and caution panels is a real plus.CheersBob ScottATP IMEL Gulfstream II-III-IV-V L-300Washington, DC