Boeing 777 Crashes At San Francisco Airport 506
Asiana Flight 214 from Seoul crashed while landing at San Francisco Airport today. Early reports suggest the plane was unstable as it touched down, which led to the tail of the plane breaking off. There are no official casualty reports yet, but passengers were seen walking off the plane. Preliminary estimates say one or two dead and 75 being transported to area hospitals. (Others are reporting two dead and several dozen injured.) Eyewitness report: "You heard a pop and you immediately saw a large, brief fireball that came out from underneath the aircraft," Anthony Castorani said on CNN. "At that moment, you could see that that aircraft was again starting to lift and it began to cartwheel [Ed: he likely means spinning horizontally, like a top]. The wing broke off on the left hand side. You could see the tail immediately fly off of the aircraft. As the aircraft cartwheeled, it then landed down and the other wing had broken." The media has estimated about 290 people were on board the plane. The top of the cabin was aflame at one point, but it's not known yet whether that affected the passengers. "Federal sources told NBC News that there was no indication of terrorism." Some images from the news make it look like the plane may have tried to touch down too early, hitting the seawall just before the runway.
Photo (Score:5, Informative)
http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/SFO_crash-e1373139561971.png [thinkprogress.org]
Shows it upright, with at least one wing still attached.
Except (Score:3, Informative)
It didn't cartwheel, it spun around like a top.
No Cartwheeling (Score:3, Informative)
Pictures show the aircraft sat on the ground with the tail missing and the forward roof burnt out but it certainly did NOT cartwheel or bits would be scattered down the runway. It seems that all passengers and crew have been accounted for with no fatalities.
Ganty
Re:"Crashes in"? (Score:5, Informative)
Survivor Story (Score:5, Informative)
Samsun Exec. David Eun survives, posts pic [theverge.com]. Then proceeds to teach CNN some manners [twitter.com].
No, the wings didn't break off (Score:5, Informative)
The tail broke off, not the wings. And the aircraft didn't "cartwheel". There are many good pictures of the wreckage. The wreckage is sitting on the ground alongside the runway, right side up, wings intact, on its belly. The tail assembly is completely detached from the plane. Much fire damage to the top of the fuselage, which is puzzling.
There are pictures of the passengers evacuating, including, inevitably, one of the passengers who just evacuated taking pictures of the plane.
Too early to discuss causes. Reports indicate the plane landed short in an nose-up attitude, but it's too early to say why.
No Casualties (Score:3, Informative)
http://avherald.com/h?article=464ef64f&opt=0 [avherald.com]
The aircraft burst into flames and burned out, all occupants were able to evacuate the aircraft in time and are alive. There are reports of a number of injuries, mainly burns, the majority of occupants escaped without injuries.
Emergency services reported all occupants have been accounted for and are alive.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:1, Informative)
I'll be willing to bet a Bitcoin that the pilot was trying to land the airplane instead of just letting the computer do it.
You obviously don't know much about aviation safety and procedures then. The most dangerous parts of flight are (as with any mechanical device) during changes of state. For a plane, the most severe emergencies happen during take off, and landing. "auto pilot" is typically only used once the plane reaches target altitude, and its primary function is to make minute and rapid corrections to the flight profile to enhance stability (passenger comfort) and reduce drag (improve fuel efficiency). It is not used during take off or landing, and although either could be handled by computer, I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system. All of them are on the drawing board.
Planes are not landed by computer; they are landed by human beings. Typically three of them -- the pilot, copilot, and flight engineer. Although, for some aircraft, there is no flight engineer position as that position is increasingly being replaced by sophisticated electronics. The reason for two pilots is in case one of them becomes incapacitated. This is actually an infrequent occurrance -- it's all too easy to become disoriented, especially during a night flight with turbulence. Considerable training is given to identifying these situations and providing smooth hand-off of control. Although injurous to one's pride, a captain should never feel obligated to continue flight operations if he feels disoriented or uncomfortable -- and airlines should never punish a pilot for indicating such incapacitation at any point during the flight to the crew. Sorry, getting preachy... I'll shut up now. ;)
Re:Not geek news... (Score:3, Informative)
It is justified. If only because the underlying tech that brought so many images of the crash so fast from smart phones and whatnot give evidence of the degree that new tech is influencing news.
Also of techie interest is that so many of the passengers survived such a destructive crash. Planes today are a lot more crashworthy than the last generation.
I grant that the babes among us who have never learned to use a sliderule and probably most of them have never even touched one might not recognize the techie aspects of this. But the old geezers among us-- you know, the ancient ones who made the Internet and the digital cameras and cell phones and things like that-- appreciate this story and others like it. It helps us see just what kind of benefits our work has brought to society.
Now get off my damn lawn.
Re:news for nerds (Score:4, Informative)
Samsung VP David Eun was on that plane, that makes it our business.
He posted a picture of the crash: https://path.com/p/1lwrZb [path.com]. His post says "most everyone" is fine, but that is selection bias. For crashes like this, the injured/dead are usually in one section, and those are NOT the people you see walking away.
Re:No Cartwheeling (Score:5, Informative)
There are actually bits of debris on the runway [turner.com] starting almost with the rocks separating the runway from the bay. The integrity of the fuselage says it did not cartwheel (objects this big don't move in one piece like the movies - they'll disintegrate with just moderate lateral forces). But the debris trail and missing tail suggest it came down at a high angle of attack hitting tail-first possibly from a stall (in a regular landing you hit landing gear-first), then hit the ground hard enough to collapse its landing gear and skid off the runway. The jagged yellow partial dome you see at the tail end of the fuselage is the plane's aft pressure bulkhead - the end of the pressurized section of the fuselage. So nobody was in the tail portion which broke off.
The high AOA suggests the pilot was pulling up trying to gain altitude (or at least decrease the rate he was losing it). Possible reasons are an engine problem (with inadequate thrust, pilot was trying desperately to glide a little further to make the runway) or some failure of the flaps (if they retract, they increase the plane's stall speed possibly causing the plane to drop out of the air). Or wind shear (sudden tailwind deprives the plane of lift and pilot pulls up to try to maintain altitude - unlikely given the weather). Or pilot error (was coming in too high and tried to bleed altitude too quickly, instead of declaring a missed approach and trying again), though the tail striking short of the runway makes this unlikely unless the pilot accidentally put the plane into a stall.
Re:Open airplanes (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately, most airplane accidents and incidents are due to pilot error, ATC error and maintenance mechanic error (I think in this order). Problems with hardware or firmware that are unrecoverable in spite of following proper procedures are pretty damn rare. For example, AF447 was not directly caused by any hardware failing - it was due to the pilots not following procedures and good practice.
Re:Survivor Story (Score:5, Informative)
Then proceeds to teach CNN some manners
They wanted to talk to him about the crash and he said he didn't want to divert attention away from the crash. I'm not even sure what that means.
If you've watched any of what passes for "news" at all today, it's full of talking heads speculating on every possible thing, from the myriad of ways people could have died (ranging from blunt trauma to smoke inhalation because gee fucking golly, the plane carries so many people it must have taken forever to get everyone off and who knows what happens to your lungs in that type of environment!) to just who's fault it could have been that it went down in the first place. And that's all from aerial helicopter footage and an interview with an idiot who used to in some way work with traffic control.
Now can you just imagine what would happen if they got even the slightest tidbit of first-hand information? Oh wait you don't have to, there are half a dozen 5-star "informative" threads on here already discussing just why the plane's wing was or wasn't sheared off while doing some kind of barrel roll a-la Starfox64.
So yeah, when this guy posts as much information as he feels confident doing, including a very uplifting and hopeful picture immediately after the crash showing survivors leaving what looks to be a mostly intact plane, and then doesn't feed the media's desperate attempt to capitalize on the situation any more than they already have been, I am kinda grateful.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system.
Well, that's your problem, then, since autoland has been around for a while and I have been through a zero visibility autoland landing all the way down to the runway. On exiting the plane, I've asked the first officer if they did it manually or using autoland, she said autoland. It was a by-the-book landing, by the way, as far as I could tell. Very smooth.I could tell it was a bit of a crab landing since the nose swayed right as soon as the main gear touched down. So, it was autoland with side wind, too.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:5, Informative)
It is not used during take off or landing, and although either could be handled by computer, I'm not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system. All of them are on the drawing board.
Autoland systems were developed in the 40s and perfected in the 60s by the Brits.
Developed for military purposes and then perfected for commercial purposes because England had endless problems with zero visibility due to their fog + pollution.
Autoland systems are so accurate that a fudge factor was added in, since multiple aircraft will all land on the exact same patch of runway and destroy the surface.
I can't say why you're "not aware of any passenger aircraft that has such a fly by wire system."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_landing_system#Special_CAT_II_and_CAT_III_operations [wikipedia.org]
Re:Open airplanes (Score:5, Informative)
This is the problem with non-free airplanes. If the blueprints had been free under a freedom preserving license I'm sure the problem that caused the hiccup had been found.
. . . and the plane could have been printed on an off the shelf 3D printer . . .
. . .and from the MakerPlane website:
"MakerPlane [makerplane.org] is an open source aviation organization which will enable people to build and fly their own safe, high quality, reasonable cost plane using advanced personal manufacturing equipment such as...3D printers."
Re:"Crashes in"? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No, the wings didn't break off (Score:4, Informative)
Are there any major airports in the US that don't have cameras recording the runways?
There is no general requirement or expectation that airports visually record all runway events. Commercial airliners are permitted to autoland with essentially zero visibility [youtube.com] (SFO CAT III landing, for instance) and VFR landings take place with as little as one mile visibility. One SFO runway is 2.25 miles long and there are 4 independent runways. I'm guessing you would need at least 32 costly all-weather cameras lining the runways to have a chance at capturing most, but still not all, runway activity, and this is not done; airports have better things to spend those tens of millions on.
Between the flight data recorder, cockpit voice recorder, approach radar and physical evidence there will be absolutely no doubt about precisely what happened to this airliner. The only thing lost for lack of video is the attention of gawkers.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:5, Informative)
The pilot HAD to manual land, the ILS system and PAPI glidepath height assistance for runway 28L (and 28R) at SFO is down, as reported in the current NOTAMs [faa.gov](Check for SFO)
That means he was relying on nav beacons and glidepath estimates to come in. Given that SFO's beacons are approx 1.2 miles apart, if he picked the wrong beacon to guild his descent he would have been too high, dropped steeper than usual to get down once he noticed the discrepancy, and didn't have the necessary power to flare and ascend at the end of the runway, so he tailstruck. That makes it pilot error, but confounded and mitigated by most (if not all) the regular guidance and assistance systems they rely on being out of commission.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that right now, there's little to no ILS at SFO, as a result of government-mandated construction work to shift the landing zone inland (ironically, to prevent this exact situation), requiring the antennas to be relocated.
Re:Pilot error? (Score:5, Informative)
Citation: takeoffaviationweather.com [takeoffavi...eather.com]. The relevant bits:
KSFO
28 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28L Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
28 NAVAID Localizer Type Directional Aid Runway 28R Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
28 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Glide Path out of service started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
23 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Inner Marker out of service until Aug 22 23:59
20 NAVAID Instrument Landing System Runway 28R Category 2/3 Not Authorized started about 1 month ago ending in about 1 month
Emphasis mine.
Re: Open airplanes (Score:4, Informative)
When the pilot then gave the plane the correct input (nose down), the plane picked up speed and the stall warnings began again. Completely the opposite of what's actually going on, and probably confused the hell out of the pilots. At that point they probably guessed they were experiencing an electronic/computer problem, and probably began disregarding all the alarms they were hearing.
It's tempting to blame the accident on how easy it is to miss the "dual input" warning during a confusing and dangerous situation where all sorts of warnings are going off, and say that a force-feedback system like Boeing uses is superior. But with Boeing's system, one pilot slumped over or deliberately pushing his control column to crash the plane would hinder the other pilot from controlling the aircraft, possibly causing an accident [wikipedia.org]. With Airbus' system, the conscious pilot just pushes a button and he has complete control. It's not that one method is better than the others, they're just different, and vulnerable to different failure modes. AF447 just happened to hit upon a failure mode of the Airbus system.
It's also worth pointing out that the other two major crashes caused by disorientation following instrument failure were 757s. So while the dual inputs probably added to the confusion, it's still highly likely AF447 would have crashed anyway even without the dual input problem. The overwhelming cause of the accident was spatial disorientation coupled with reluctance to believe the instruments after a systemic failure (the airspeed inputs feed into multiple other systems that update the pilots on the state of the plane).