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Aeroflot Superjet 100 fire and evacuation at UUEE

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  • I will take a vow of silence for a while.

    --- Judge what is said by the merits of what is said, not by the credentials of who said it. ---
    --- Defend what you say with arguments, not by imposing your credentials ---

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    • Originally posted by Gabriel View Post
      I will take a vow of silence for a while.
      I've presented the finding of the report.
      There is nothing in it to justify an immediate landing when doing so was that risky.
      There is nothing in it that prevents them from holding, burning off fuel and methodically working the problem.
      There is nothing in it that prevents them from completing the required checklists (which they skipped).
      There is nothing in it that justifies ignoring warnings and disregarding CRM.

      There is something in it that confirms that company pilots were repeatedly using bad stick technique is DIRECT mode (but nothing that explains or justifies it or suggests that it is due to control difficulties).
      That needs further investigation because SOMETHING needs to be fixed there. I believe that something is, as you have pointed out, a lack of training and practice in that mode.

      HOWEVER,

      There is nothing in that correlates amplified stick handing in DIRECT mode with a bounced landing. Of the 7 flights on the plot, 6 of them did not bounce on landing.
      There is nothing in it the corelates amplified stick handling in DIRECT mode with excessive landing speed. Of the 7 flights on the plot, 6 of them landed below 150kts.

      As for the crash itself, we all know that bouncing is the result of being unstable in the final and that SOP is to go-around as a minimum cautionary requirement. That lesson was hard-learned through repeated tragedy and w/o aircraft. Go-arounds not only prevent 100% of bounced landings, they are the only sure way to prevent them. You can argue that better recovery technique will suffice but we both know that the required level of skill under pressure is more than we can expect of pilots across the industry, so it can't be the solution. The only solution is to never land in that unstable condition if a go-around is a safe option. The solution is to never proceed beyond MDA in that condition. The solution is to continue to defend the passengers against pilot over-confidence and risk-taking (which remains very entrenched in the culture).

      3WE can continue to be the apologist for rule-breaking and risky decision-making. He is actually a valuable member of this forum because he represents the rebellious and cavalier mentality behind this very entrenched problem and the continued resistance to learning humility from the mistakes of history. He's an interesting case-study. Thankfully, he's not an airline pilot, but I fear there are still many out there who think like him.

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      • Originally posted by Evan View Post
        No, don't "close the investigation". Often investigations reveal other vulnerabilites. I would still recommend:

        1) Exploring the reason for more active control inputs by pilots when in DIRECT law (is it training? Is it psychological? Is there something about the aircraft response in DIRECT mode?)
        (The latter is unlikely as the aircraft was flown extensively during flight testing in DIRECT mode and some of the test pilots commented that it is very benign and even that they prefer the handling in this mode)

        2) Exploring ways to prevent the EIU units from rebooting after a lightning strike, thus keeping the aircraft in Normal Law. And making the avionics generally more fail-passive during a similar lightning strike.

        3) Exploring ways to ensure that the gear doesn't damage the spar web during multiple impacts in excess of 4G.

        4) Exploring the human factors involved that led to very poor decision-making.

        5) Exploring ways to overcome risk-taking and overconfidence and strengthening respect for the danger posed by severe weather systems.



        How many are within your control? The industry already made this determination. Stable Approach Criteria is gospel now. Not going around when passing a certain stabilization gate outside the criteria is explicitly dangerous and a violation of safety culture (and pilot-passenger trust). Man, that's progress! No more dive and drive. No more passenger roulette. And the same goes for a predictive windshear warning, let alone two of them.

        Sure, there will always be exceptional circumstances where this does not apply. But none of those circumstances were present here. If there were, the report makes no mention of them.

        As far as this report tells us, the crash was the result of pilots bent on task completion and willingly gambling with passenger lives on the outcome. That cannot be tolerated. They lost about 40 chips on this hand.



        The incident crew inputs are far more pronounced in the final moments. The other flights may have been more stabilized. The principal difference is that the other flights landed intact and did not bounce.

        What is different about them? Perhaps the other flights didn't try to advance thrust or make abrupt pitch occillations to the stops at the last moment in a desperate attempt to stabilize rather than go-around.

        I'm actually surprised that you would defend them Gabriel after all we've learned. You blow off the stable approach criteria (or fly into known wind-shear*), all bets are off and anything can happen. Everything after that is just what happened, not why it happened...

        * known wind-shear = the predictive wind shear has told you there is wind shear ahead and the possibility strongly exists.
        Gratefully noted and acknowledged.

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        • Originally posted by Evan View Post
          3WE...I fear there are still many out there who think like him.
          ...pilots who think that one should know procedures well, AND NOT forget fundamental aerodynamics either...that maybe relentless pull ups are bad, airspeed should be watched on short final (with a hand on the power levers), and that a go-around near decision height should involve appropriate, near-full power and a measured, but skillfully applied, crisp pull up while monitoring key flight parameters?

          You do have strange ideas.
          Les règles de l'aviation de base découragent de longues périodes de dur tirer vers le haut.

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