Flydubai Flight 981 Crashes on Landing in Rostov-on-Don, Russia

[Evan]

And, what does that the cross wind at altitude have to do with a go-around decision on short final anyway. The surface crosswind at the time of touchdown is sort of where the proverbial rubber meets the pavement, and is rather relevant to short final too.

Stabilization height or decision height is where the rubber DECIDES to meet the road. If they were off 1/2 dot off LOC, for example, or the pilots thought the approach felt unstable for ANY reason, they would hopefully go around. We don't know what sort of WS or turbulence they were getting into at that moment, and the METAR won't tell us that. METAR is more about whether to attempt the approach in the first place. There may have been larger crosswing component involved.

But whatever. They decided to abandon it and the reason doesn't seem to be visibility, so I'm guessing moderate windshear/turbulence and being too far off centerline at that point. None of that causes a crash if the go-around is done correctly. So who cares why they went around? The question is, what went wrong after that...

[3WE]

So pilots are not supposed to consider surface winds and calculate a crosswind component and keep it in mind during their approach?

Just trying to figure out why your panties got in such a wad when I did that and determined that the surface crosswind itself wasn't particularly extreme- and I'm not so sure that the crosswind at DH was orders of magnitude different.

Too many posts were suggesting (directly or indirectly) that they should have known better than to even initiate an approach...I don't think I agree with that.

Yes, the video and tower tapes tend to suggest that things were ok during the initial go-around.

[Evan]

Too many posts were suggesting (directly or indirectly) that they should have known better than to even initiate an approach...I don't think I agree with that.

No, no, I never said that. From attempting the approach to abandoning it I can't see any problem as long as they didn't pass their stabilization height. You started this when I responded to BoeingBobby's suggestion about autoland and I posted the autoland crosswind limit. It might have been above 15kts, maybe above 20kts at that moment (not to mention excessive headwind gusts). All we have is surface gust information. But as I keep saying... not an issue here because they didn't continue....

[Black Ram]

Latest on the accident

Sources close to the investigation allegedly say the following:

- Upon deciding on going around, PF turned AP off and executed the procedure manually
- PF did not account for the different GA behavior of the aircraft with AP off and the aircraft began climbing "like a jetfighter"
- The aircraft reached a "critical climb angle" and its speed started to decay
- A disagreement emerged between PF and PNF
- PF continued to pull on the control column, while the PNF started to push it forward and shout something on the lines of "Stop. What are you doing?"
- The two pilots did not seem able to understand each other, and as the plane began plunging towards the ground, there were mostly desperate screams of terror
- It is difficult to determine who was flying the plane at that moment.


My comments:

No mention of stall alarm

RIP all on board.

If all this makes it to the final report, then something will need to change drastically in the way pilot training is conducted. Enough is enough.



Source: http://www.rbc.ru/society/28/03/2016...a688?from=main

[Gabriel]

If all this makes it to the final report, then something will need to change drastically in the way pilot training is conducted. Enough is enough.

I expected to see something like that, and I agree with the comment above. But let's not dramatize. The immense vast majority of the flights end in a safe landing (including those in challenging conditions), the immense vast majority of the go-arounds don't end in a crash (including those in challenging conditions), and the immense majority of the flight crews understand each other fairly well most of the time. While we are having a bigger share than I (and I guess all we) would like of these cases of non-understandable control inputs, the accident rate is really really low. We don't see accidents like this every day, week or month. Just a couple per year that, while still unacceptable, seems not so terrible when compared with millions and millions of flights per year.

[Black Ram]

I didn't mean it that way. I agree flying is generally very safe. It probably has never been safer than in the past 10-15 years. But that's not good enough, because it is real people who die in such silly and unnecessary accidents. These things shouldn't happen. Aeroflot 821, Colgan, AF447, Afriqiyah, Tatarstan.

Pilot fatigue is also a problem, and it needs to be addressed. But I think pilots should be trained so they never make such mistakes, even when there is fatigue or some other issue

[Gabriel]

Exactly.

[3WE]

[assuming the reports are accurate]...something will need to change drastically in the way pilot training is conducted...

I understand your comment...

...but I think current training trains (with no obscurity/no insidiousness) to not_do what your reports allege to have happened.

I do not know what should be changed.

Evan will cite culture and hiring/screening (and fatigue). I don't argue against that, but again, there are significant screening and safety-culture programs in place. Perfect, no, but can they be reasonably improved?

[Parlour talk]I also very much want to attribute this to gross mental melt down due to fatigue- (not drastically misguided training)???

[BoeingBobby]

Not sure why he would have hand flown a go-around especially after what he had been going through for the previous 2 1/2 hours. Never flown a 73 but in the 74 the STANDARD procedure is TOGA flaps 20, positive climb, gear-up, 400 feet agl LNAV, 1000 feet agl VNAV. Clean up to what you need to either, go into the hold, shoot another approach, or go to the alternate.

[3WE]

Not sure why he would have hand flown a go-around...the STANDARD procedure is...1000 feet agl VNAV....

I may be mis-reading something...but it strikes me that 1000 feet might provide decent leeway and an opportunity to get into an extremely steep, "unrecoverable" climb?

[BoeingBobby]

I may be mis-reading something...but it strikes me that 1000 feet might provide decent leeway and an opportunity to get into an extremely steep, "unrecoverable" climb?

Pitch bars! There is always a time for click, click, use your sick and rudder skills. Oh that's right we have been HERE before haven't we?

[Black Ram]

but I think current training trains (with no obscurity/no insidiousness) to not_do what your reports allege to have happened.

I do not know what should be changed

I know they do train go-arounds, stall avoidance and recovery, etc. That's why I say that they way training is conducted should change, because while there is training for all that, obviously we are missing something. Cultural issues are sometimes a big factor, but I think the underlining problem has to do with human factors and psychology. It seems that as it is, you can't reproduce the real-world panic, startle effect, fatigue, etc. in the simulator. I also don't know what exactly has to change, but I think there needs to be a massive effort to understand the psychology and human factors involved that cause such seemingly rudimentary mistakes to happen over and over again. It's not necessary that training is "drastically misguided". Maybe it's just incomplete.

[Black Ram]

Not sure why he would have hand flown a go-around especially after what he had been going through for the previous 2 1/2 hours. Never flown a 73 but in the 74 the STANDARD procedure is TOGA flaps 20, positive climb, gear-up, 400 feet agl LNAV, 1000 feet agl VNAV. Clean up to what you need to either, go into the hold, shoot another approach, or go to the alternate.

I don't know either, but this is the information we have for now. Of course it's still unofficial stuff.

[3WE]

Pitch bars! There is always a time for click, click, use your sick and rudder skills. Oh that's right we have been HERE before haven't we?

Indeed.

I guess my question (hidden question) was, "Yikes, 1000 feet is just almost enough to screw up your stick and rudder skills (in a manner similar to that a private pilot without an instrument rating might do)...am I missing something BESIDES looking at FD bars and AI depiction and using the "stick" to maintain pitch...(which I take your answer as "No, not really.") Thanks.

[Evan]

Sources close to the investigation allegedly say the following:

- Upon deciding on going around, PF turned AP off and executed the procedure manually.

Why??????

There must be more to this story. Did they shut off the AP or did it disconnect? As I posted before, it WILL disconnect if the TO/GA buttons are pushed during single-autopilot operations. Did this happen? Did it surprise them and cause disorientation? Did they react by firewalling the thrust levers and getting into pitch coupling? Did they ignore the FD's (sure seems like it) and why? Where was the pitch trim? Did they get into somatogravic illusion and fly in down?

Whatever happened, happened very fast. I usually rant about operators not instilling strong CRM culture but if this was entirely disorienting and conflicting the pilot's expectations, even the best CRM isn't necessarily going to happen. The thing to stress here (as BoingBooby has) is STANDARD procedure. Go-arounds should be automatic unless there is some overriding reason against that. We have seen too many needless accidents attributed to improvisation where procedure was called for. Especially by fatigued pilots.

The other thing is systems familiarity. No type-rated pilot should ever be 'surprised' by a system behavior unless it is malfunctioning. "What's it doing now?" It's doing what it supposed to do. (This part is pure speculation).