Scudrunners

Well here is the first real answers from the Flight Recorders
It appears they either ignored or glossed over their check lists and missed the Pitot Heat.


[b][size=4]Black Box Data Tells of Chaos Before Plane Crash Near Moscow[/size][/b]



[img width=500 height=281]https://themoscowtimes.com/static/uploa ... 32d075.jpg[/img]


Black box data recovered from the ill-fated airliner that crashed outside Moscow last week suggests that the plane’s pilots had received different speed measurements preceding the crash, leading to chaos and hampering attempts to stave the tragedy.


Saratov Airlines Flight 703 plummeted in the Moscow region four minutes after departing from Domodedovo Airport on Sunday, claiming 71 lives.


The pilots' "inarticulate cries" can be heard on the flight recorder immediately before the crash, the Kommersant business daily reported on Thursday.


Citing an unnamed source familiar with the black box data, the outlet said that it showed “the pilots didn’t understand why distorted speed readings showed up on the displays,” hampering efforts to bring the critical situation under control.


According to the data, the pilots had failed to turn on the heating of the An-148 aircraft’s pressure measurement equipment before takeoff, despite the procedure being listed on a preflight checklist.


The pilots reportedly got into an argument about the data while trying to solve the problem, increasing the speed and tilting the plane to the ground preceding the crash.


Earlier, Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC) said that the pilots had failed to turn on the heating unit for the plane’s pressure measurement equipment, which displayed incorrect speed readings in cold weather.


Russia’s Investigative Committee said Thursday that it would consider the black box data in its criminal investigation of the crash.










[url=https://themoscowtimes.com/news/black-b ... scow-60528]https://themoscowtimes.com/news/black-b ... scow-60528[/url]




The Sorry State of Russian Aviation Safety
“If we don’t urgently deal with this problem, these tragedies will simply continue to happen”




[img width=500 height=281]https://themoscowtimes.com/static/uploa ... c10ed7.jpg[/img]


The plane was in the air only five minutes before its steep fall began. Left dead were six crew members and 65 passengers, including three children and a Swiss national.


Flight 703 only made it 80 kilometers southeast of the capital after departing Domodedovo Airport on Sunday afternoon. Operated by Saratov Airlines, a regional carrier, the An-148 aircraft was headed for Orsk, a city in southern Russia between the country’s border with Kazakhstan and the southern tip of the Ural Mountains.


Sunday’s scenes were all too familiar for Russians: It was the third major civil airliner disaster in recent years.


Even though 2017 was reportedly the safest year yet in commercial passenger jet travel worldwide, the spate of crashes in Russia, experts say, will continue unless the country's civil aviation agencies are overhauled.


What caused the latest tragedy is only in the early stages of being pieced together.


Investigators said that they are exploring a wide range of possibilities, including poor plane maintenance, inclement weather and human error — though terrorism was ruled out quickly, with the Investigative Committee saying that the plane was intact before the crash.












[url=https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the ... fety-60475]https://themoscowtimes.com/articles/the ... fety-60475[/url]


Russia: Plane crash caused by pilots’ error on speed data




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MOSCOW (AP) — Investigators say the crash of a Russian passenger plane that killed all 71 people on board may have been caused by the pilots’ failure to activate heating for pressure measurement equipment, resulting in flawed speed data.


The Interstate Aviation Committee said Tuesday, after studying the plane’s flight data recorder, that Sunday’s crash occurred after the pilots saw varying data on the plane’s two air speed indicators.


The flawed indication came because the pilots failed to turn on the heating unit for the plane’s pressure measurement equipment prior to takeoff.


The pilots put the An-148 on autopilot after taking off from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport but took manual controls back when they saw clashing speed data.


The plane plummeted into a snowy field six minutes after takeoff, killing all 65 passengers and six crew.




[url=https://apnews.com/ce5fca8731de4c09a7679378195ce080]https://apnews.com/ce5fca8731de4c09a7679378195ce080[/url]




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[img]https://apnews.com/ce5fca8731de4c09a7679378195ce080[/img]




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Attitude indicator.  Power.  Get it sorted.

I just don't understand how it could all go to hell just because heat was not selected...

One could say the same for AF447.

Fog of war, that few seem to comprehend.

[url=http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/Birgenair ... Report.pdf]http://lessonslearned.faa.gov/Birgenair ... Report.pdf[/url]

So many lessons.  So little interest in learning.

Once more, with feeling:

[b]THERE WILL BE NO NEW CAUSES OF AVIATION ACCIDENTS THIS YEAR.  AGAIN.[/b]

If you insist on crashing an airplane in 2018, you will be
reliving history, that you refused to learn from.

[quote author=John Swallow link=topic=7958.msg22058#msg22058 date=1518800003]
Attitude indicator.  Power.  Get it sorted.

I just don't understand how it could all go to hell just because heat was not selected...
[/quote]

Easier said than done unfortunately. You need to have been trained for this - a big part of the training is recognising what is going on. If you don't correctly identify the problem then you're not going to solve it imho.

In complex aircraft you may get a huge number of warnings and a long list of inoperative components that can mask the real issue.

In this accident I also don't understand how the Pitot heat wasn't selected. There must have been some yellow/amber lights showing somewhere.

When I did Sim training I used to give a dual generator failure - this always caused confusion. The next day I'd give a simultaneous dual engine failure on descent and watch as the crew once again did the procedure for dual generator failure. The symptoms are pretty well identical.

[quote]recognising what is going on ... correctly identify the problem[/quote]

Once more:  [b]fog of war[/b]

A little von Clausewitz and Sun Tzu goes a long way.

I really don't know why pilots today seem to think
that pitot/static system problems are something novel,
but apparently they are.

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_447[/url]

[url=https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_B-2_bom ... on_sensors]https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/US_B-2_bom ... on_sensors[/url]

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgenair_Flight_301]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birgenair_Flight_301[/url]

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroperú_Flight_603]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeroperú_Flight_603[/url]

[quote author=Colonel Sanders link=topic=7958.msg22083#msg22083 date=1518963249]
[quote]recognising what is going on ... correctly identify the problem[/quote]

Once more:  [b]fog of war[/b]
[/quote]
Fog of war is nothing more than a reduced situational awareness due to excessive focus on one detail.  You can say I've never been there and wouldn't know, but we've all been there.  I see it all the time in sloppy ILS approaches or engine failures on departure where the pilot means well but looks in all the wrong places, just digging their hole deeper and deeper.


What do you do to fix it?  My philosophy is to strip down what you're doing to the very basics and build it back up from there.  Two tasks: wings level, ball centred.  Radio doesn't matter, checklist doesn't matter.  Back to basics.  Slowly add the rest of what you have to do from there.

Target fixation can be an inappropriate [i]response[/i] to a loss
of situational awareness.  Or hell, it could precede it,
or even be the cause of it!

The first step is to [b]admit that you have a problem[/b].

Trying to discern exactly [b]what the problem is[/b], can be
very difficult and as I mentioned before, may require
months or even years of effort from combined teams of
engineers from different manufacturers and subcontractors.

It is ridiculous in the extreme for people to suppose that two
line pilots in 20 seconds could reasonably duplicate that effort
and results.

I have observed over many decades that under life-threatening
stress, people do not rise to the occasion, as people romantically
suppose - instead, they [b]sink to their lowest level of training[/b].

As I have mentioned before, humans have these gorgeous
huge frontal lobes.  Unfortunately, when events occur too
quickly for the cognitive processing loop of the frontal
lobes, the ancient lizard brain on the top of your brain stem
takes over.  And it doesn't always do the right thing.

There are many different kinds of scenarios that pilots
are faced with, in the cockpit.  Some - generally when
you are close to the ground - demand immediate, correct
analysis and response.  A good example is tailwheel flying -
I have spent many years, teaching people's lizard brains
to instinctively and correctly drive their feet in a near-
autonomous fashion.  This does not often happen correctly
and this is why there are no more tailwheel aircraft - they
have all been wrecked.  The same applies to riding a motorcycle
in traffic, which many people say is impossible to safely do.

After years - decades - of manual transmission driving,
have you ever amused yourself, watching your hands and
feet instinctively operate the clutch and gas pedals and
gearshift?  A pleasure indeed.

I get shit on regularly for this in the brave new world of
the 21st century, but I believe that there is no substitute
for [b]knowledge and skill[/b] in the cockpit.  No checklist in the
world, no matter how thick or how long, can possibly substitute
for a fundamental understanding of what is going on, and
the acquired skill after many years of effort, which permeates
your lizard brain.

Years ago, the NTSB tried to do a study of the causes of airline
accidents, and the sole conclusion they arrived at was a correlation
between the age when a pilot started training, and his ability to
handle a nasty situation.

People think I'm stupid compared to them, but there is simply
no substitute for the fundamental understanding of mathematics,
physics and engineering.  It has kept me alive in the cockpit for
many decades, while my friends have died.

Or if you're a pilot, try to remember:

[b]ATTITUDE + POWER = PERFORMANCE[/b]

which is something of an antiquated idea, these brave new days
of thick checklists, but comes in handy during a pitot/static
failure.  The trick is sometimes figuring out what the aircraft's
attitude actually is - which instruments are feeding me garbage?

As you point out, prioritization is paramount:

[b]AVIATE
NAVIGATE
COMMUNICATE[/b]

Always, always [b]FLY THE AIRPLANE[/b].  Respect the lift equation,
and stay the hell away from the ground until you have it under control.


Data point:  many decades ago, one crappy night. I had a static port plug
up in a descent, which caused the airspeed indicator to vastly over-read.

What a nasty trap, designed to make you stall and die on approach.  I
landed with the airspeed indicator reading Vne on final, because

[b]ATTITUDE + POWER = PERFORMANCE[/b]

re: [b]fog of war[/b] ... as a young pilot, I had no fucking clue what the root
cause was, until after I landed.  The aircraft didn't have an alternate
static port, so unless I did the old "break the VSI glass face" trick
which no one remember anyways, I couldn't have done anything
anyways, except fly the airplane, which I did.

Here's a useful tool for dealing with the fog of war:

[b]Do you have lots of altitude?[/b]  Seriously consider letting
go of the flight controls.

If you are very close to the ground, prompt and correct
control inputs will be required, and unless you know what's
going on, probably won't be the correct ones.

I know that letting go of the flight controls really bugs the
shit out of pilots, but it often works amazingly well.

See Beggs-Mueller spin recovery, which Spencer Suderman
proved in the Pitts to lose less altitude.

See AF 447, where the pilot held the stick all the way back
for 3.5 minutes and demonstrated a marvellous falling leaf.

See Colgan 3407, where the pilot's response to a stall was
to haul back as hard as he could on the control column,
resulting in some snap rolls.

Look at almost every unusual attitude accident where the
aircraft is upside down, and the pilot hauls back on the
stick, trying to do a high-speed split-S, because he wants
to go up.

I remember reading some years back than in 7 of the 8
last airbus accidents, they would not have occurred if the
pilot had let go of the stick.  That's probably not true, but
it's interesting to think about.

[b]STOP MAKING THINGS WORSE[/b]

On the subject of heroes, this crew are mine:

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Ai ... _and_crash]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Ai ... _and_crash[/url]

[quote]The CVR transcript reveals the pilots' continuous attempts for the duration of the dive to regain control of the aircraft.

At one point, unable to raise the nose, [b]they attempted to fly the aircraft upside-down[/b][/quote]

They were killed by maintenance, of course, but Jesus, what great pilots.

Well never flown the crash aircraft type and I suspect none of us have anytime in an Antonov 148, most aircraft I have operated let me know if I try and advance the thrust levers without the pitot heat on.


Was this a "pilots forgot to put the Pitot heat on" or was it mechanical eg the switch was on but no heat. This accident taking place in Russia on a Russian manufactured aircraft I suspect this will be blame the pilots no matter what. Maybe I am just getting old and cynical, at least they got the landing gear up.