Pakistan plane crash: Jet carrying 107 people crashes into houses near airport

[Gabriel]

I'm afraid you're incorrect.

Not surprisingly...

For LVL CHG climb thrust will go to CLB, for LVL CHG descend thrust will go to idle. Provided A/T is on, of course.

Thank you.
And if you manually move the levers out of CLB or idle, will they automatically return to CLB and idle? (always with the AT on)

I need to go back to my manuals of the Mad Dog add-on for Flight Simulator (half-joking)... I think it was different in the MD-80. If I remember correctly selecting IAS/MACH in the vertical mode would do nothing with the thrust. And even if you select a descent the plane would climb if you select more thrust that what is required to hold the altitude at the speed selected in the IAS/MACH vertical mode. I think that the AT mode went to CLMP (clamp, the AT will stop moving the levers), and from there you can manually set the levers where you want or you can select an EPR hold AT mode and select CR, CLB, MCT, or TOGA. If you select a speed hold mode in the AT it would disconnect the IAS/MACH vertical mode and change to a vertical speed mode with the current altitude target and current actual vertical speed.

So, for example, if you are crusing at FL330 and want to climb to FL350 at the current Mach, you would select 35000 in the altitude window, select IAS/MACH (the IAS/MACH window, which is the same as the vertical speed window, will show the current Mach), and then select CLB thrust rating computer and EPR hold in the AT.

If you want to descent from cruise, you would select say 10000 ft, IAS/MACH mode, manually idle the throttles, and select the desired IAS/Mach value. In the meantime you would select (but not activate) 250kts in the AT window so when the plane reaches 10000 ft it will level off and slow down to 250 kts and hold it.

But it has been many years since I last used this add-on so my memory may be off.

[ATLcrew]

but in the Boeing when you select what I think is called LVL CHG (IAS/MACH altitude mode in the MD-80) the thrust levers just stop being managed and they will stay put wherever you put them.

I'm afraid you're incorrect. For LVL CHG climb thrust will go to CLB, for LVL CHG descend thrust will go to idle. Provided A/T is on, of course.

[Evan]

I don’t give a rats ass how they get down to 1000 feet...AT THAT POINT, get things on target and maybe run a landing checklist...

Maybe...?

Well, fortunately for us, most non-Pakistani airlines do give a rat's ass. So we have managed guidance and a descent mode on the A320 that maintains a speed range around the best fuel-economy speed while taking into account altitude constrictions and brings you down to the glideslope where you can make a nice, passenger-friendly, life-sustaining transistion to final. Why not use this? Why not respect the value of human life over your own ego? Why be a cowboy when cowboys are a thing of the past?

[Gabriel]

I don’t give a rats ass how they get down to 1000 feet...AT THAT POINT, get things on target and maybe run a landing checklist...

Well, it seems we are finally starting to converge here (you and me, maybe not Evan).

But this is not what happened. Then never got things on target, gear or no gear.

[3WE]

Please keep dismissing folks that had fake licenses (and the lack of gear) and violated all sorts of stuff and get your descent procedures written so the airline can resume flying.

Crews get rushed all the time...go arounds even happen...

I don’t give a rats ass how they get down to 1000 feet...AT THAT POINT, get things on target and maybe run a landing checklist...

[Evan]

Ok Evan, you win. If they had made a conservative descent and forgotten the gear, they would not have crashed.

If they had made a proper descent (i.e. conservative of human life), it would have been impossible to forget the gear, so there would not have been a crash.

What made forgetting the gear possible are the conditions arising from the rushed, overspeeding descent that they did make.

Plus everything Gabriel just said about going around after touching down without gear.

You can't win this one. TIme to give up.

[Gabriel]

Ok Evan, you win. If they had made a conservative descent and forgotten the gear, they would not have crashed.

If they had done a conservative approach and used stabilized approach criteria they would have been much more unlikely to raise he gear after lowering it and not notice or ignore the warnings. For once, they would not have had other GPWS warnings like sink rate and pull up, only too low gear, and they would not have had the flaps overspend warning. And then, they would have had much less workload and would have followed a more standard flow of actions that would have reduced the likelihood of the mistake in the first place.

AND if they still landed with the gear up, they would have been much less likely to initiate a go around. You'll see, they didn't initiate the go around the second they touched down on the engines. They bounced at least 3 times barely losing speed in the process. They were too fast and overspending the flaps, so lots of lift still and little weight-on-engines and hence little friction. Now, combine touching down way too far down the runway, way too fast, and not slowing down. Compare with crossing the threshold at 35 ft and Vref, retarding, flaring and bleeding off some speed before touching down (still on the engines) in the first 2000 ft of the runway with 30 knots less of speed. They would have not bounced. The plane would have firmly settled on the runway. Starting the landing roll with much less speed, no bounces, much more friction, decelerating fairly and with a whole runway ahead would have reduced a lot of motivation to attempt the go-around. And even if they tried, at that low speed it would have likely been impossible to achieve the high AoA required to make lift = weight again.

[3WE]

Ok Evan, you win. If they had made a conservative descent and forgotten the gear, they would not have crashed.

[Gabriel]

Your point also does not change the fact that someone might chop the power, use draggy things (like proper use of landing gear) and a little airmanship and maybe arrive at the runway in decent shape...

Be my guest.

But if the plan fails and you are not stabilized by 500ft (which includes being in lading configuration, on track, on slope, on speed and landing checklist complete), go around.

[Evan]

Good. And, for this case, had they ‘put’ the gear down, no crash, regardless of “your point”.

The problem is not the steep approach.

I’ll give you:

1. Forgetting the gear.
2. Crossing the threshold at 200+ knots.
3. Dudes with fake pilots licenses being widespread.

Indeed,#3 could be said to be “an accident waiting to happen”, and might be grounds for more oversight and public beatings.

Your point also does not change the fact that someone might chop the power, use draggy things (like proper use of landing gear) and a little airmanship and maybe arrive at the runway in decent shape...

Man, are you serious or just trolling? As I said earlier, aviation safety is not about what you can't pull off on a good day, it's about defending against what can go wrong on a bad one. And sooner or later that bad day will arrive. This crash might be a perfect demonstration of that fact.

The following is true of all pilot error crashes:

And, for this case, had they____________, no crash.

For many of them, this also:

Had they not improvised themselves into a situation conducive to error, no crash.

[3WE]

My point, again and for the last time ...They had already had repeated incidents this year associated with this kind of hasty approaches.

Good. And, for this case, had they ‘put’ the gear down, no crash, regardless of “your point”.

The problem is not the steep approach.

I’ll give you:

1. Forgetting the gear.
2. Crossing the threshold at 200+ knots.
3. Dudes with fake pilots licenses being widespread.

Indeed,#3 could be said to be “an accident waiting to happen”, and might be grounds for more oversight and public beatings.

Your point also does not change the fact that someone might chop the power, use draggy things (like proper use of landing gear) and a little airmanship and maybe arrive at the runway in decent shape...

[Gabriel]

My point, again and for the last time, is that this was going to end bad sooner or later, gear up, overrun, landing gear collapse, loss of control or something. They had already had repeated incidents this year associated with this kind of hasty approaches.

[3WE]

Where? Post # please?

Why do you insist with just the gear issue? They crossed the threshold at 210kts overspeeding the flaps. CLEARLY and UNDOUBTEDLY (yes black and white) the gear was not the ony issue here. Even if they had lowered the gear and gotten away with it, this would have been very very VERY bad airmanship worth of immediately firing both pilots and revoking their licenses for life (again, yes, black and white) (although that would have never happened because no one outside of the airline would have know it and the airline was encouraging this behavior).

I don't know- keep looking.

And don't imply things he didn't say.

I am paraphrasing, but my recollection is that he said he probably could have gotten the plane down and stabilized and configured and basically on-target for a normal landing...

It would be a little challenging, but he thought he could do it if 10 cell phone batteries simultaneously caught fire [hint] and the closest airport was a similar situation.

That being said, I think his first choice was to make a 360 (assuming the cell phone battery fires were extinguished).

I don't think I'm saying it's JUST a gear issue.

But I think Evan wants to write extensive descent procedures, and why would he expect THEM to be followed when "Gear-Down-Three-Green" seemed to escape this crew...

And if they had remembered that equally basic (and liberally checklisted) procedure, the bad touch down and bad go-around would have extremely likely given them a powered aircraft...

So, I do rank the gear screw up as kind of pivotal...

Crossing the threshold at 210 knots does not guarantee a crash...and probably is OK on a 14K ft runway too. No wheelies....not so good.

[Gabriel]

I do, however, have something against using it below 10,000 AGL, or at least below 5000 AGL. It's inherently vulnerable to pilot error and extremely dangerous at low altitude if the FCU is not set up correctly, as we have seen. And it shouldn't be needed there.

I don't understand what you have in mind. What is the risk? If you could go from TOD all the way down to glideslope-intercept altitude without interruptions (something that you almost never can do due to ATC), I would leave it in open descent all the way to that point. Of course, when you level off at that altitude, or at any point in between due to ATC constrains, you would go to altitude hold and speed-on-thrust.

And, by the way, I don't know how it works in the Airbus where the thrust levers are normally left in CLB unitl 20ft, but in the Boeing when you select what I think is called LVL CHG (IAS/MACH altitude mode in the MD-80) the thrust levers just stop being managed and they will stay put wherever you put them. You can put them in idle but if you want a lower sink rate you can move them forward a bit to add some thrust, and the pitch will adjust itself to keep the selected IAS/Mach.

[Evan]

It is the 2nd or 3rd time that you mention this. Do you have anything against and idle descent in open descent mode (i.e. speed-on-pitch)? For me it is the correct way to descend if not using VNAV.

I only mentioned it because it parks the thrust at idle until a new mode transition. I do, however, have something against using it below 10,000 AGL, or at least below 5000 AGL. It's inherently vulnerable to pilot error and extremely dangerous at low altitude if the FCU is not set up correctly, as we have seen. And it shouldn't be needed there.

I am with you that he likely attempted some improvised fuel/time saving profile. But I don't think that the profile they ended up flying was what he had in mind. For example, I don't think that he intended to cross the threshold at 210 knots. I think they screwed it up even by their standards, and then were stubborn and arrogant to fix it in a proper way and instead attempted to salvage it. And they would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for the mysterious reason that they retracted the landing gear.

Yes, as I said, things went wrong this time.