USA Jet DC-9 Crash in Mexico.

[Tbun]

Still waiting.....

[VViscount]

This is another video from a different angle of the crash.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=598_1232204642

[Gandalf123]

Thanks MadDog and VViscount for the video links. That plane looks seriously out of control. On the second video, it looks like he is spinning or rolling. I don’t think this is pilot error. This looks like something mechanical.

If anyone is interested, I may post a full translation in the following days.

Areynaldos. Thanks for the offer. I think we would all really appreciate the transations.

[brianw999]

Very seriously out of control just before impact. If you look at the first video, just before the main fireball, there is a small flash such as might be caused by taking out a powerline ? Could have been a major contributor to the fire but that must have been one hell of an impact anyway.

[Foxtrot]

^The LiveLeak video's caption states the date of that video as July, 2008, is that the same video as of the first one? Anyway, it does appear that the USA Jet DC 9 was quite out of control. Sucks that the pilot was killed, R.I.P. I hope the first officer survives.

[Gabriel]

I had not seen the videos until now.

Rather than lack of control, I'd rate it like overcontrol (or PIO: Pilot Induced Oscillations), since the airplane is able to recover from a large roll to one side, but overshoots the recovery and rolls to the other side.


Other than the airplane violently rolling to one side and the other, I can see that the airplane has a marked nose-up pitch attitude.

I would guess that the airplane stalled or was at the boundary of the stall.

In the boundary of the stall, not only the ailerons have little effectiveness but also the roll damping (which is a major factor in roll handling characteristics) disappears. The large, probably full travel, control inputs made by the pilots to try to control the airplane in these situation also mean that the roll spoilers are largely deployed a lot of time during the event (one side and the other alternatively), further degrading the airplane's performance (more drag and less lift).

It's similar to what happened in the MD-80 (which is a derivative of the DC-9) no-flaps take-off accidents in Detroit and Madrid. The plane flown at the boundary of the stall, lost roll control and, after rolling to one side and the other, crashed.

Could it be a typical (in general aviation) base-to-final turn stall accident?