It's a miracle nobody on the bridge was hurt.

(February 4, 2015 at 4:00 pm)JuliaL Wrote: The following speculation is based on nothing other than the dashboard video.



At the very beginning of the video the plane can be seen in a nose high but fairly wings level position over the buildings in the upper left corner.
As the video progresses, the plane rolls ~90 degrees left and slips into the bridge then into the river valley. Stall/spin accidents commonly occur when the pilot tries to stretch a glide by lifting the nose. What I saw was consistent with this pilot trying to land in the river, like Sullenberger on the Hudson, and held the nose too high too long, stalled and fell in.

Experts were saying their best guess was one engine had trouble and the working engine will force the plane to dip to the weaker or no working engine, it is manageable but you need enough airspeed, stalls are nothing more than not having enough wind speed over the wing. The pilot made a split second decision to try to ditch the plane where he have the least damage.

Quote:The pilot made a split second decision to try to ditch the plane where he have the least damage.

That sounds like experience and training....which beats the fuck out of "miracles."

If a miracle is an act of God, and God controls everything, then isn't everything that ever happens a miracle?

Any outcome of any event is going to be viewed as a "miracle" by at least one theist. It's yet another play from the "God can't lose" handbook.

(February 5, 2015 at 8:20 pm)Brian37 Wrote: Experts were saying their best guess was one engine had trouble and the working engine will force the plane to dip to the weaker or no working engine, it is manageable but you need enough airspeed, stalls are nothing more than not having enough wind speed over the wing. The pilot made a split second decision to try to ditch the plane where he have the least damage.

And he probably screwed up. Asymmetrical thrust will cause the aircraft to yaw left, not roll left. The roll to the left was only indirectly caused by engine failure. It's not airspeed, it's exceeding the critical angle of attack for the airfoil. By insufficient airspeed or excessive nose up attitude he exceeded the critical angle and stalled the left wing first. It was the loss of lift of that wing that produced the roll to the left and total loss of control. If he was aiming for the riverbed, he didn't make it in a level attitude for his best chance of a survivable forced landing.
It is possible that the aircraft could not have been recovered. If he had no choice in the matter and bringing the nose down for more airspeed would have caused him to hit the buildings. A single engine out in a twin engine craft during climb out is about the worst possible case: You are making large amounts of thrust at relatively slow speeds so losing one engine produces the most asymmetry in thrust and the most yaw to the bad engine side. But aircraft are certified to be able to handle this situation if properly piloted. He didn't properly handle it.
Engine failure during takeoff

Quote:Infrequent as this might seem, engines do fail and a failure during takeoff has very serious safety of flight implications. The aerodynamic effects of the failure and the immediate actions by the flight crew, which are necessary to ensure an acceptable outcome, are similar to those in a light, twin engine aircraft. However, unlike their smaller cousins, the certification criteria for multi-engine transport category jet aircraft require that the aircraft be capable of achieving a specified minimum climb rate, that will ensure obstacle clearance, should an engine failure occur on takeoff.

I'm sure that turboprops have similar requirements, though I didn't find them right away.

(February 5, 2015 at 8:23 pm)Minimalist Wrote: That sounds like experience and training....which beats the fuck out of "miracles."

Nah, the people on that plane just prayed harder than the people on all of those other flights that god didn't get to in time. Except for the people who died... bet they wish they'd been praying now!

If the pilots has started praying instead of acting, I wonder what would have happened...

Don't always listen to the aviation experts you hear on the TV. Some, although not all, talk utter rubbish.

First off, an aircraft of this performance specification is perfectly flyable on one engine. A normal engine rundown after takeoff is a relatively simple and well practiced drill. Essentially you need to put a load of ruddder in to counteract the yaw, you identify and shutdown the correct engine (both pilots should confirm that the correct engine is being shut down), and then focus on flying the plane and accelerating once above an altitude, normally 1000ft.

It appears that the incorrect, working engine (left) was shutdown, whilst the other was producing idle thrust only. The crash could have been caused by some sort of non standard technical problem with the engines causing complete confusion and the wrong engine to be shutdown or perhaps something else entirely. Normally these crashes have a few contributing factors.

The aircraft looks to have stalled, with a wing drop to the left as the right engine was still producing some extra airflow over the right wing. At this point it is essentially uncontrollable without consierable height to recover from the stall. It could have gone below Vmca (min controllable speed with the rudder with one engine only), but this doesn't look like that from the video.

(February 6, 2015 at 9:14 am)FreeTony Wrote: It appears that the incorrect, working engine (left) was shutdown, whilst the other was producing idle thrust only. The crash could have been caused by some sort of non standard technical problem with the engines causing complete confusion and the wrong engine to be shutdown or perhaps something else entirely. Normally these crashes have a few contributing factors.

The aircraft looks to have stalled, with a wing drop to the left as the right engine was still producing some extra airflow over the right wing. At this point it is essentially uncontrollable without consierable height to recover from the stall. It could have gone below Vmca (min controllable speed with the rudder with one engine only), but this doesn't look like that from the video.

My bolding.

I fully agree with your assessment based on my limited information.
Where did you hear that it was the right engine which failed? All I heard was the report of a flameout without specifying which side.
I expect the pilots will be found to be at fault in some way though how is yet to be determined. Single engine out should not cause loss of control without some other failure. None appears to be obvious from the dashcam video. The nose high, wings (nearly) level at the beginning of the clip followed by what looks like a stall/spin entrance to ground impact seems pretty damning of the pilots to me.

Fox is reporting the pilot may have shut down the good engine by mistake.

Doesn't sound too much like a miracle, more like a fuck up now.