Lear 55 Philadelphia Crash NTSB Preliminary Report

[The Dread Pilot Roberts]

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/ ... 199630/pdf

The airplane was equipped with a cockpit voice recorder (CVR). The CVR was recovered from the initial impact crater under 8 ft of soil and debris and was sent to the NTSB Vehicle Recorders Laboratory, Washington, DC, for processing and readout. The recorder displayed significant impact-related damage as well as liquid ingress. After extensive repair and cleaning, the 30-minute-long tape-based recording medium was auditioned to determine its contents. The CVR did not record the accident flight and during the audition it was determined that the CVR had likely not been recording audio for several years.

[Colonel]

Well, that’s confidence inspiring.

There is a school of thought that they didn’t have the departure frequency dialed in (either standby or comm2) and when tower gave them the frequency, both pilots put their heads down to do that.

Remember the Everglades?

Apparently there are quite a number of accidents that fit this pattern. Lots of workload on arrival and departure, and that’s some pretty busy airspace especially when English isn’t your first language. Or even American.

Spatial disorientation on takeoff at night isn’t exactly a new problem. Add in more workload from ATC and …

[Colonel]

Remember when this happened? It was a really big deal.

.The crash occurred while the entire flight crew were preoccupied with a burnt-out landing gear indicator light

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern ... Flight_401

Division of labor in the cockpit must be clearly called out. Likely not in this medevac.

And these guys wouldn’t be the first pilots to prioritize talking on the radio, over flying the aircraft. That’s incredibly common these days and really pisses me off when I catch people doing that.

[Slick Goodlin]

You’d think CVRs would get checked if the self test wasn’t enough to actually verify it’s working.

[Nark]

Culture:

Are the pilot’s doing the checks?
Are they encouraged to just get the mission done?

I’ve worked for that guy in Northern Sask.
does it fit? It ships.
I also worked for that guy in Alaska: the mountain isn’t in the middle of the channel, and the weather cams on the other side are showing at least 3sm viz. Get out there and deliver the goods.

Thankfully the wussy airlines over the last few years have a clear-cut go/no-go policy/standards.

[Slick Goodlin]

Yeah maybe I’ve just been lucky to work for stand-up operators. The only sketchy one is me.

[Eric Janson]

Somatogravic illusion is also a possibility.

https://skybrary.aero/articles/somatogr ... -illusions

If you look at the FlyDubai Rostov crash videos it looks very similar.