A Beech 1900D (not the same airline) similar to the one that crashed in Kenya. Photo by Wesisnay.

One Blue Bird Aviation pilot was killed when a Beechcraft 1900D (registration 5Y-VVQ) crash landed at Wilson Airport in Nairobi, Kenya (Original reports point to two pilots being killed, but this was adjusted by Kenyan media recently– I’ll update this if anything changes).  The accident happened yesterday (November 9, 2009) sometime after 8:00 AM local time.

The cargo aircraft, carrying a hallucinogenic plant known as miraa that is banned here in the US, departed Wilson Airport (HKNW) for Mogadishu in Somalia at 6:30 AM.  One hundred and seventy miles into the flight, the aircraft developed an unspecified problem and a decision was made to return to HKNW.  While trying to perform an emergency landing at the airport, the aircraft struck the airport fence and crashed into a ditch, catching fire in the process.  The pilot and copilot were pulled alive from the wreckage, but the pilot died on the way to the hospital while the remaining survivor is at the hospital.  The airplane had been aloft for nearly two hours when it crashed.

It is the fourth accident in three months at Wilson Airport.  Local investigators have been able to retrieve the flight recorders.  While the pilots indicated to local controllers that they were having problems with the aircraft, it is unclear if they specified the nature of the difficulties.  I’m particularly curious as to why this plane returned to Nairobi after being so far along the flight.  Was the problem originally not severe enough to warrant an immediate emergency landing or did the pilots try to get back to Nairobi recklessly?  I understand that at Lamu and Garissa (both in Kenya), airports that were closer to the plane at the reported time of trouble, Blue Bird Aviation maintains operations so they may have been better options to land in.

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The Piasecki PV-18 is similar to this Piasecki H-25. (Photo by U.S. Navy)

A 1951 Piasecki PV-18 (HUP-1 Retriever) Korean War-era helicopter (registration N183YP) crashed one mile south of Adelanto Airport (52CL) in Adelanto, California killing all three occupants aboard.  The accident happened yesterday (November 7, 2009) in San Bernardino County, California (Mojave Desert area).  Pilot Joseph “Joe” William Pike was killed along with two other occupants.

While much is still unknown about the crash, the accident occurred after the aircraft departed 52CL on its way to Flabob Airport (RIR) in Riverside, California.  The helicopter crashed near Victor Street, one mile south of the airport.  It appeared the helicopter had struck power lines, but it is unclear if this is the cause of the accident or if it happened as part of other events.  Most of the helicopter, with the exception of the tail area, burned in the accident.  Some (unverified) reports claim the helicopter made an emergency call to a local airport.

The helicopter pilot was very experienced and had time flying helicopters as an instructor and for the sheriff’s department.  As mentioned before, determining what went wrong here is difficult until the accident investigation moves along a bit.  While it appears that the helicopter struck power lines before the crash, it is difficult to say if this was the cause of the accident (although certainly a contributing factor).  Something may have happened beforehand that led to the power line strike.  The pilot had restored the helicopter with the help of his two sons.

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Cessna Skyhawk SP similar to that in the accident. Photo by MilborneOne (Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0)

Michael Piette, a nationally known forensic economist, and Mark Renet were killed when the Cessna 172 Skyhawk SP (registration N5194X) they had rented crashed in the woods northwest of Tallahassee Regional Airport (TLH), Florida for unknown reasons Wednesday night.  The accident occurred at around 7:20 PM EST, a little bit more than an hour after sunset.

The airplane, which the men had rented from Eagle Air Corporation, had just departed the airport as the men meant to fly in the airport’s traffic pattern to practice takeoffs and landings.  Soon after takeoff, the airport’s air traffic controllers noticed there were fires to the northwest of the airport, near Aenon Church Road, and notified authorities.  There was no distress call by the pilot or anything else that indicated an emergency was going on.  Investigators pointed out the plane impacted trees and the ground at a shallow angle.  The aircraft burned to the ground.

With as little information as there is in this accident, it is difficult to get a handle on what could have happened.  It could have been an engine failure and they may have been trying to land in the dark, but it could have been anything else for all we know, such as disorientation in the early evening hours.

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An Il-76 similar to the accident aircraft (although the one in the picture is a tanker and not a cargo variant). Photo by www.kremlin.ru.

To us westerners, any mention of Russian airlines often leads to images in our heads of uncomfortable, classless cabins and thought of reckless safety violations (although now that I think about it, these are the images that come to my head when I think of our own airlines as of late.  While the world has known some unfortunate Russian aviation accidents for what are considered flagrant safety violations, the reality is that the aviation industry in Russia has come a long way and it is comparable to that of many other places in the world.  Russian military aviation may be an exception, as a recent string of accidents may be showing the condition of its aging fleet.  For the workhorse of the Russian Air Force, the four engine, high-wing Ilyushin Il-76 Candid, a couple of recent accidents seem to be a warning that the overall age of the fleet may be getting too old.  The latest of these occurred Sunday, November 1^st in Mirny (Sakha Republic), Russia when a departing Il-76 crashed soon after takeoff killing all 11 crewmen on board at around 2:00 AM Moscow time.  This was the second accident in less than a month, after one of another Il-76’s engines fell off a wing on October 7^th.

Sunday’s Il-76 was being operated by the Russian Ministry of the Interior and had arrived from Yermolino Airport (UUWE), reportedly delivering diesel to Mirny Airport (UERR).  After unloading, the aircraft then departed on a positioning flight to Irkutsk Airport (UIII) with no cargo being carried (so overweight issues don’t appear to be a probable cause).  Conditions on takeoff were good, with no winds.  As the plane approached 100 feet, it banked right and crashed 2 miles from the runway in an open field (no victims on the ground).  Investigators quickly recovered the flight recorder after the crash.  Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office Investigation Committee has opened a criminal investigation on the accident (which may be how accident investigations are generally handled over there as I am not familiar with the process in Russia).

The crash raises concerns about the current state of Russian military aviation.  News reports have pointed out that while the country has increased its wealth a bit with the recent oil market boom and military spending has been upped a bit, orders for newer aircraft have been slow to come.  The overall fleet age has increased and some of the aircraft have begun to show their ages.  Of course, an engine falling off a plane (as in the October incident) is probably more indicative of faulty continuing airworthiness certification and maintenance issues than an aging fleet.  A well maintained and inspected older plane will fly just as good as a new one.

The factors involved in this accident are unknown for now.  This could be some form of dual engine failure on the right wing that may have caught the pilots by surprise, but two engines failing in tandem is a rare thing unless the fuel supply was affected somehow.  The temperature was low (-11°F), so some form of icing could be involved, but I’m not sure if there was a moisture source in the area for the ice to form.  Right now, anything could have caused this plane to crash and the accident may have to do with something completely unrelated to the age or maintenance of the aircraft.

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A Cessna 310J similar to the one involved in the accident. (Photo by AHunt. Public Domain)

Imagine that you are at your house, quietly going about your day, when a plane bursts in through the garage door, explodes, and sets your cars and house on fire.  That is exactly what happened last Friday (October 30, 2009) in Lawrenceville, Georgia (Gwinnett County) at 1:11 PM EDT.  A 1965 Cessna 310J (registration N308J) twin-engine aircraft, piloted by James Wardlaw, crashed through the garage door of a residence, impacted the cars inside, and immediately exploded, killing the pilot and Judith Kirchner, who was in the house’s first floor when the accident happened.  The woman’s husband was upstairs and managed to safely exit the residence, although he had to be restrained by neighbors so he would not go back in the house and attempt to get his wife when he realized she did not come out.

The Cessna 310 was on a flight to Upper Cumberland Regional Airport (SRB) in Sparta, Tennessee from a nearby airport and its last known radar contact was reportedly at 2,800 feet above sea level.  According to National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) investigators, the aircraft was in a steep turn and possibly attempting to return to Gwinnett County Airport-Briscoe Field (LZU), from where it had just departed, when the crash happened.  The aircraft approached the house from the north and the departing airport was 4 miles to the south.  A tree to the north of the house was clipped, but another home was spared from the accident as the plane missed it by merely 15 feet.  There were no radio communications by the pilot indicating something had gone wrong beforehand.  The aircraft was apparently traveling at 200 knots (nautical miles per hour) when the plane crashed through the house.

Clouds at the time of the accident were overcast and the flight was being conducted under an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) flight plan.  Neighbors said it was foggy at the time of the accident and that they could hear the engine before the crash.  Wardlaw was headed to Tennessee to see his 6 children (other reports state grandchildren).

The Cessna 310J is registered to KM Aviation in Meridan, Idaho.  The house was at the 2300 block of Walker Dr.

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(Photo by Fernando Montalvo for Velozia Air)

On my last post, I mentioned how distracted pilots spent last week overshooting destinations because they were apparently using laptops in the air and taxiing into active runways when other planes were using for takeoff.  The latter of course, is a very dangerous scenario.  The deadliest accident in aviation occurred this way and, ever since the Tenerife disaster of 1977, many systems have been put into place to keep it from happening again.  Of course, while usually we talk of airplanes crossing into active runways, we must also look at when a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767-300ER suddenly touches down on an active taxiway, instead of on the runway, as happened at Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport (ATL) on October 19, 2009.  Yet another incident to add to last week’s weird incidents.

Delta Air Lines Flight 60, coming in from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at 6:05 AM EDT (193 people on board), was given clearance to land in ATL’s runway 27R, marked by the red box in the picture below.  For those of you not familiar with runway layouts, the aircraft was supposed to have landed on the darker line with the letters 27R on the right side of it.  The plane would have approached the runway from the side labeled 27R.  However, for who knows what reason, the 767 landed on parallel taxiway M (just above the runway in the layout).  The National Transportation and Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are investigating the matter, naturally.

Atlanta runway diagram. The area of the incident is marked by the box.

Winds were calm and visibility was good (10 miles) for this early morning (and still night) landing, so gusts did not cause any problem and the pilots could clearly see ATL’s runways.  Runway lights were turned on and, as always, are a different and brighter color as the standard blue taxiway lights (runway lights are white, except towards the end at which point they turn yellow).  Heck, there are other lights on a runway that clearly identify it as such: runway centerline lights, touchdown zone lights, runway edge lights, etc.   So how the heck did they mistake taxiway for a runway and land a 767 on it?  Do they need Bruce Willis (a.k.a. John McClane) to light up the runway with fire like in Die Hard 2?  Luckily, no other airplanes or ground vehicles were on the taxiway.  A good thing since ATL is one of the world’s busiest airports and anyone who has been there knows how busy the taxiways can be.

It will be interesting to see what the investigation turns up.  October 19^th through the 25^th: Pilot Distraction Week (hey, Discovery has Shark Week).  Hopefully, this kind of event stays “last week” and we don’t see anything more like this in the coming weeks.

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Not one of the aircraft involved in the incident. Not same type either. (Photo by Fernando Montalvo for Velozia Air)

It seems flying an aircraft is not as exhilarating as non-pilots think it is and may be so downright boring these days that staying alert in the cabin could be almost impossible (maybe all the automation?).  Most of you know about the Northwest Airlines flight crew that overshot their destination last week, presumably because they were using their laptops (maybe playing Microsoft’s Flight Simulator).  Lucky for the passengers, the rest of the crew (the flight attendants) were still on duty and knocked on the cabin door, ending the in-flight internet café saga and resulting in a 180° turn back to the airport and into the hands of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators.  Not to be outdone, two planes came less than 100 feet of colliding with each other at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) on Sunday (October 25, 2009) in California.  Turns out a possibly distracted crew of a Midwest Airlines’ Embraer 190 jet may be to blame for the 2:50 PM PDT incident which also involved a Northwest Airlines jet.

Midwest Airlines flight 1503 from Milwaukee, Wisconsin had just landed at one of LAX’s runways and, as it taxied back to the terminal, controllers had asked the pilot to hold short of a parallel runway so Northwest’s flight 623, a Boeing 757, could depart on its way to Honolulu.  According to reports, the Midwest crew acknowledged the order, but failed to comply with it and began to cross the runway in use by the Northwest plane.  An air traffic controller immediately ordered the Midwest plane to stop and disaster was averted.  Hundreds of people would have probably been killed in the collision.  Some witnesses say the planes came as close as 15 feet from each other, while the FAA will only confirm that the distance was less than 100 feet and they are looking into determining just how close this close-call was.

Some of LAX’s taxiways had just been equipped with runway stop bar lights which indicate when a pilot cannot cross into an active runway, but, according to reports, the lighting system was not installed at the incident intersection.

In all likelihood, the incident occurred because of an in-cabin distraction, whether flight related or not.  The FAA is investigating and I’m sure we will know soon enough what happened (hopefully, the pilots weren’t logging off their laptops).  It is possible one of the pilots acknowledged the command, but another crewman was at the controls and failed to listen in on the conversation.  I actually made this mistake myself in the 90s while on my first Cessna 172 flight (see HERE for that story).

Of course, this incident reminds those in the aviation world of the Tenerife airport accident back in 1977 (Canary Islands, Spain) in which two Boeing 747s collided after a communications misunderstanding.  That accident killed 583 people, the highest toll in an aviation accident.  An accident between the Embraer 190 and the Boeing 757 would not have been as deadly, but it would have been just as troubling and tragic.  Of course, and passengers don’t like to hear this, runway incursions are a lot more common than many passengers even imagine.  This one, though, was a lot closer than most.

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F/A-18s similar to accident aircraft. (Photo by Itzel Guillen for Velozia Air)

A Marine Corps McDonnell Douglas (Boeing) F/A-18 Hornet suffered a rough landing this past Saturday at Jacksonville International Airport (JAX) in Jacksonville, Florida.  The incident, involving a crew of two, happened at 12:30 PM as the aircraft were arriving from Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Beaufort in Beaufort, South Carolina to perform a flyover during Sunday’s Jacksonville Jaguars vs. St. Louis Rams game (NFL).  The plane belonged to Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 224 (VM(AW)FA-224). The two crewmen were OK after the incident.

According to authorities at the airport, the aircraft was one in a flight of three planes.  When the aircraft landed, the left side landing gear collapsed.  The plane skidded a short distance on the runway.  A left wing external tank may have taken the brunt of the damage and saved the aircraft some problems during repair.  It is unknown whether the gear issue was known before the pilot attempted landing or if the first indication of a problem was during gear collapse.  Some reports say the pilot radioed ahead and indicated that they had an unspecified mechanical issue before attempting to land, while other reports make no note of this.

The two remaining F/A-18s did complete the fly-over of the football game.  The damaged aircraft remains in a Jacksonville Florida Air National Guard hanger.

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A Beech 1900D. (Photo by Wesisnay. Licensed as Creative Commons Attribute ShareAlike 2.5)

My co-pilot and I were having an incredibly difficult time landing a Beechcraft 1900D at Memphis International Airport (MEM) in Tennessee.  We were in our fourth approach and things on each approach had been very difficult.  Air traffic control (ATC) had cleared us to perform an Instrument Landing System (ILS) approach to runway 27, but we had to circle to land at runway 18R.  Not such a hard thing if it wasn’t for the extremely low clouds that we could only break out of at 600 feet and the crazy bad turbulence.  Clearly, it was the wrong approach for the conditions.  Oh, and did I mention we were both still familiarizing ourselves with the aircraft.  Taking turns to try and put the aircraft down, we had each failed on three previous attempts to locate runway 18R correctly in the very low visibility.  The approach really wasn’t all that difficult, it was more of a visibility thing.  Normally, I wouldn’t even be trying this approach; circling above the ground in a safe area would have been a clear alternative.

I was at the controls in this fourth attempt.  The approach was coming through smoothly; the bumps seemed to have subsided just a bit; enough to give me a little breather from the difficult conditions.  As I broke out of the clouds, I followed the outline of runway 27 as far as I could and spotted runway 18R.  What made spotting 18R difficult was that with little time to react, 18L and 18C could confuse you if you were not familiar with the airport and both of us were not familiar.  As I began a slight right turn to better my position into runway 18R, the power suddenly dropped on one of the engines.  My copilot identified the failed engine and asked me to verify so that he could do the emergency shut-down procedures.  Being careful not to lose control of the aircraft, I quickly looked down and saw that the left engine had definitely lost power.  I told him the engine was verified.  He proceeded to shut down the engine and I added power to the right engine a bit.  Nothing happened.  It took me a split second to realize that the Beech 1900 had suddenly become a low-performance glider as he shut down the only working engine and I had agreed to it.  With the gear already down, one engine failed, and another shut down, it was only seconds before we hit the ground, so noticing the remaining distance of runway 27 was available for landing, I proceeded to aim straight ahead for landing.  Trying to turn for 18 would only rob me of precious lift and certainly lead to an accident.  Suddenly the power came up on the working engine… my co-pilot had restarted the engine quicker than I expected (quicker than I thought it could be done).  Unfortunately, he had failed to say what he was going to do and I wasn’t ready for the engine.  I had reacted so quickly for an attempt at putting the plane down on runway 27 that I had failed to bring the right engine’s power lever to idle.  As the engine spooled to life, the power from it overpowered the controls and flipped the plane over.  We slammed into the ground in no time, killing ourselves and the passengers that were in the plane with us.  After about three seconds a voice spoke from behind: “All right, let’s call it a night and go to the briefing room and discussed what happened”.  Coming back to reality my copilot and I looked at each other… what the heck had we just done?

Of course, we didn’t kill ourselves or anyone else.  I’d be writing this from the afterlife’s internet service provider if that was the case.  We were in a Beech 1900D Level D flight simulator at Flight Safety International’s facility at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU).  Sure we were alive and well, but for students in the program, crashing in a simulator is a serious matter.  We were taking part in a crew resource management (CRM) seminar and things that day had definitely not gone well.

Granted, the approach and landing requirements that day were a little extreme.  The instructor had specifically selected an airport we were not familiar with and horrendous weather conditions (especially the nasty turbulence) so that we could practice our CRM in a highly stressful environment.  The engine failure was timed perfectly to coincide at one of the worse moments in the flight and the engine failure was created in a way that it was slightly difficult to determine in the instruments which engine was bad.  Still, complacency with procedures had taken over our minds.  We had performed so many practice engine failures in real life on a King Air C90A and simulated in the Beech 1900D that it felt like second nature to us.  We had grown accustomed to the threat and some of its seriousness had washed off a bit.  The very reason why students practiced so much engine failures (so that recovery would be like second nature), had now become a insidious problem, waiting for the moment to pounce.

As with all accidents, a series of mistakes had caused this particular MEM crash in the summer of 1997.  For one, we were forcing a landing in less than optimal conditions.  The simulated weather report given to us by our instructor clearly stated that the conditions for landing were no-go.  A severe thunderstorm was right over the airport.  However, in this case, the exercise required the extreme weather so we had to accept it as go.  Another contributing factor was that, after three failed attempts at seeing the landing runway, I began to concentrate so much on finding it that I was starting to get distracted from other things.  Of course, that was part of the CRM lesson.  We were supposed to learn how to effectively divide the tasks between the both of us and we eventually did, just not that day.  When the engine failed, I immediately moved on to “auto” engine failure recovery mode and even though verifying the failed engine was part of it, I had been distracted enough to fail to place too much attention on the engine readouts (this is before fully digital cockpits became almost standard fare on new planes).  That set up the disaster as we now had two engines out.

I reacted well to the two powered down engines at such a low altitude, but failed to return the right engine’s power lever to idle, which set up the final disaster.  The plane had to be flown and landed safely, but when my copilot chose to restart the engine quickly without telling me, it was deadly.  My speed had dropped down below minimum control speed and the almost full throttle on the right engine made for a wicked fast roll over into the ground.  Frankly, I was amazed on how things went from OK to bad, and even more amazed at how much faster they went from bad to really disastrous.  How the heck did we do so many things wrong in succession?  It definitely, showed me a few things about “automating” processes in my head and taking things for granted in the cockpit.  We never did crash again in any simulator (or in real life for that matter), even though we experienced worse scenarios.

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According to reports, the pilot departed Anoka County-Blaine Airport (ANE) and his destination is unknown.  The crash occurred near Flying Cloud Airport (FCM).

The twin-Navion is a particularly old plane, with the aircraft in this accident having been built in 1946.  Another crash occurred August 12, 2009 in Eden Prairie when a Beech E18S crashed on its first flight after being purchased.  You can read more about that accident HERE.

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