Well, michal already posted a link to a dfdr readout that clearly shows #2 first failing, then the fuel shutoff being pulled on the #1. If that readout is real, then the problem with the second engine failure was completely pilot induced.

 

Clearly the airline sucks, not the aircraft.

And it's competitor had serious accidents as well, so much so that airlines got rid of their fleets completely.

 

In this case, I can hardly fault the aircraft, regardless of personal opinion, same with the Colgan Q400 crash, I know operators who believe it Is a death trap, but that accident was pilot induced.

 

Talking to a current ATR pilot, he said on a single engine and a hot day, he would expect 300fpm climb at the minimum on a single engine and a heavy load. Nothing wrong with those figures.

 

He also enjoys the ATR, yes there are a of of memory items on it but they were not by design, more by pressure from external agencies. He has flown the aircraft for 8 years and enjoyed them after moving from the Dash 8-300.

 

If this indeed was the action of the pilots shutting down the wrong engine, the airline will most likely face a large amount of pressure to shut operations temporarily or permanently. Saddest part, the victims of the previous crashes should have been enough to raise questions on this operator.

Edited February 7, 201511 yr by n4gix
Removed excessive quote.

What is going on with the standards of airmanship in the Far East?

 

This latest, aircrew-induced crash with fatalities to add to the last Air Asia climbing at an insane rate.

 

R.I.P the sad losses suffered.

 

 

This latest, aircrew-induced crash with fatalities to add to the last Air Asia climbing at an insane rate.

 

 

Until the full report is out you shouldn't accept that as pilot induced. 6,000fpm is not an insane rate in as much as all rate of climb indicators are calibrated for that. Also and more importantly CBs in the tropics tower to 50 or 60 thousand feet so the up/downdrafts are ferocious. So that rate of climb is much more likely to have been weather induced.

You just don't fly through tropical storms it's almost certain death. Control surfaces will exceed their gust limits and fail or even become detached. To make a deliberate decision to fly through a major storm (as  did the captain of AF447)  is stupidity and had he been flying for UK airline (had he survived) he would have been severely reprimanded at best! The pilot of Air Asia left it too late. (he could have overruled ATC to save his a/c). The problem with bad weather is that you don't know just how bad it's going to be until bits start falling of your aeroplane.

 

Talking to a current ATR pilot, he said on a single engine and a hot day, he would expect 300fpm climb at the minimum on a single engine and a heavy load. Nothing wrong with those figures.

 

300fpm in perfect conditions is a very small margin of safety. 10 degrees above ISA and you can halve that. Also it was cloudy so there probably was some light turbulance as well.

In any a/c when things go wrong close to the ground there is little or no time for the pilots to react and recover. They in effect have to be there already ahead of the a/c anticipating its actions before the a/c itself thinks of it!

Good points, vololiberista, but overall, for good number of years, standards of aviation in that region, overall, have not exactly been all that good.

Before there are any more chauvistic comments, remember the British Midland 737-400 (G-OBME) on the approach to East Midlands Airport in the UK. The cause was that the fight crew shut down the No 2 engine after a fan blade  fractured in No 1 engine. The flight crew had 24 min to sort out the problem but No 1 engine suffered a major thrust loss due to secondary fan damage less than 1 min from touchdown. 47 passengers were killed.
 

It's not uncommon to commit that mistake and that's why it's imperative to use CRM, identify, verify and then perform the action necessary. Shutting down the wrong engine can be avoided by the proper use of CRM.

Forgive my ignorance but.....is it not obvious which engine has lost power? If not, why not?

Forgive my ignorance but.....is it not obvious which engine has lost power? If not, why not?

 

Good question. Various instrument indications can make it difficult to know, and on this flight particularly, because a dead turbo prop engine does not necessarily show obvious signs in the same way as a pure jet. You have torque, power, temperature, fuel flow all to consider and until or unless the bad engine actually shuts down, you are likely to get fluctuating and confusing instrument readings.

 

I think the ATR has automated engine state detectors but maybe the crew looked at the fluctuating readings and chose the wrong engine to shut down before waiting for other more definitive clues.

 

The best possible way is to observe the behaviour of the aircraft itself. If the right engine is delivering less or no power compared with the left you will get assymetrical attitude clues, the most obvious being a yaw TOWARDS the dead engine.

 

In their (understandable) panic, given that the ATR was in a city environment and only at 1,350 AGL, they ignored the physical reaction of the ATR and feathered then shut down the wrong engine. If they had waited a while to gather their thoughts they would not have reacted so quickly, but waited until ALL the obvious signs had been assimilated.

 

They then realised they'd shut down the wrong engine and attempted several times to restart it, forgetting they had put that engines fuel cut off switch to OFF, hence the start sequence repeatedy failed. After several attempts to re-start they twigged that the fuel cut off was in the wrong position and put it in the ON position then restarted again. By this time they were at the point of no return. The wrongly shut-down engine was halfway through its successful start up sequence when they hit the road and river.

 

Another factor was that someone pulled the nose up instead of maintaining level or better still lowering the nose immediately after the beginning of the incident. That was no doubt done to gain as much altitude as possible, but instead of then lowering the nose and gaining speed, the stick was kept back thereby provoking stall conditions.

 

The trace of the flight showed an abrupt nose up and a speed decay from 113 knots to 83-85 knots. This created more drag in addition to now two engines not producing power and at least one not feathered. The ATR descended in a more or less stalled state from that point all the way to the ground.

 

Of course this is all very well to say now, but when you are flying barely 1k over high rise city buildings it is not surprising there was panic, so I am not judging the pilots - it must have been appallingly stressful.

 

Assuming nothing catches fire, I believe good training says wait and absolutely confirm which engine might need shutting down before doing so.

Would it be possible to modify any of the instruments so that pilots on future flights are provided with more accurate information? Having to wait to determine which engine is experiencing problems does not sound like a great option to me when every second counts.

This flight had the worst luck. Even after the terrible cockpit management they may have been more survivors if they had of struck hard ground and broken up rather than in the water. 

Would it be possible to modify any of the instruments so that pilots on future flights are provided with more accurate information? Having to wait to determine which engine is experiencing problems does not sound like a great option to me when every second counts.

 

I believe there are ATR pilots who think the engine failure systems, sensors and procedures are perfectly adequate, so I think Zoran is right. This sounds like poor training and cockpit management. But it really is easy to say that when none of us was there.

This flight had the worst luck. Even after the terrible cockpit management they may have been more survivors if they had of struck hard ground and broken up rather than in the water. 

Rather the opposite don't you think? They would have hit hard ground broken up and caught fire. So no survivors.

That's what I was thinking. Many of the passengers may have drowned in this crash, but there appears to have been no fire in an aircraft which was presumably full of fuel. If that fuel had ignited due to a crash on hard ground, I doubt whether 15 people would have survived.