Asiana 777 crash in SFO

[ameriken]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=eotOVyXQYmc

 

[warpedbored]

It is really amazing anyone survived.

[ameriken]

It is really amazing anyone survived.

 

No kidding, I couldn't even imagine the centrifugal/g-forces in the back of the plane when it did that semi-sorta cartwheel...being thrown up 30, 40, 50 feet in the air and then slammed to the ground. Amazing also how the fuselage remained relatively intact and that all the fuel tanks didn't rupture.

 

Kudos to Boeing for building such a sturdy aircraft.

[dnoblett]

More details on USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2013/07/08/asiana-airlines-san-francisco-crash/2497769/

[ameriken]

My wife flew Asiana to Shanghai in 2010 and though she was quite pleased with their service (I think she returned on the same or a similar flight) she has now sworn never to fly them again.

 

She also just returned last Wednesday from Shanghai but this time we had booked her on United. Coincidentally just as they were about to touchdown in SFO on the same runway they had to do a go around. She said the pilot announced the tower called for the go-around due to traffic on the runway.

[Randy W]

Unusual pattern of spine injuries from jet crash

So far, two people are unable to move their legs — doctors don't yet know if the damage is permanent — and several others have needed surgery to stabilize their spines so they can move, said Dr. Geoffrey Manley, neurosurgery chief at San Francisco General Hospital who is overseeing their care.

 

Among the worst injuries are crushed vertebrae that compress the spinal cord, and ligaments so stretched and torn that they can't hold neck and back joints in place, Manley said in an interview Monday.

 

That 305 of the 307 passengers and crew of the Asiana jet survived the crash is remarkable, and a testimony to improvements in airline safety in recent years. More than 180 people went to hospitals with injuries, but only a small number were critically injured.

 

Still, Manley said even among those who suffered mild spine trauma, he is struck by a pattern that shows how their upper bodies were flung forward and then backward over the lap belts that kept them in their seats and undoubtedly saved their lives.

 

The injuries are somewhat reminiscent of the days before shoulder belts in cars, although much more severe, said Dr. David Okonkwo of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who isn't involved with the survivors' care.

 

Does that mean shoulder belts in airplanes would prevent such injuries? Okonkwo said that's simplistic considering how much more speed and force are involved in a plane crash. Shoulder belts might just transfer that force to the neck, he cautioned.

 

"If you put in the shoulder belt, it might just move the injuries up further. Your head weighs a tremendous amount," agreed San Francisco's Manley.

 

[tsap seui]

For a major league crash like that crash was those folks are some kind of lucky to even be alive. Like Ken said, kudos to Boeing for building a tough aircraft like the triple 7 demonstrated itself to be. That the plane held together like it did was nothing short of incredible, bordering on miraculous. Boeing deserves high praise for building such a tough bird. I always liked triple 7's but my respect for them just went up dramatically.

 

I really feel for those folks in the plane. Not only for the spine injuries, etc, that are going to come out of this but for the mental trauma. The mind works in strange ways when dealing with something so traumatizing as this crash. It is setup to cope with the immediate trauma of focusing to help you escape and whatnot but it is later down the road (even up to years) that it eats away at you...at first it goes into survivor mode and often shuts out much of the horrific events of the crash giving you a general sense of well being....but it has stored up every single detail of what you went through. Every detail of their bodies being slammed around, every scream, every aspect of what you endured....your fear that words can't even express, everything is on a tape in your head....every smell, every sight or sound, it is all in your head.

 

I hope the survivors won't try and block this stuff out. I hope they talk about what they went through with someone, professional "listeners", or a family member, or a friend, whoever....just talk about it or write about it when those thoughts come up, and don't suppress the thoughts and mental videos at all.

 

Talking about it is far and away the best, and really the only "medicine" for the hidden and insidious mental injury that can come from something like this crash. They can treat your broken arm, etc, fix your cuts, put you back together but it is that unseen injury that can take you down, often, later in your life.

 

We all deal with extreme mental trauma in different ways. The mind is a great and wondrous thing, but it has every detail stored. It is how you bring out (or don't) those details that can bring you down, and again, it can bring you down years down the road. I really hope those folks find someone to talk to.

 

Talk about it....such a simple concept. We often think, oh take some valiums or other pills so you don't think about it. All that crap does is tone down the problem, push it back for another day. The last thing you want to do is tone it down, push it back farther in your mind....for get about it. WRONG!!!!!! Talk about it NOW....get the beast out into the daylight and discuss it early. Cry about it, scream about it, just get it all out. If you don't, if you suppress it and think you are strong or okay, or think I'm a man I can handle it....that beast within will often fester, grow, and eat you alive from within. Direct how you live your life, how you deal with stress or things in general. It can and will put you on your knees....or in your grave. It's a silent unseen killer that can rob you of your happiness in life, ruin your relationships, and rule your life, usually in dementrial ways.

 

And the only real medicine is to talk about it. Almost too damn simple of a concept.

 

I wish those survivor with spinal injuries well too. They survived the crash, I hope they can still function after the swelling has gone down and live a full life. Too often we had chopper crews who survived the crash, yet all four of them became para or quadriplegics. Healthy young men who could never walk again, or could never walk without pain.

 

The more I think about the pilots who let this happen the more it pisses me off. Yeah, we all make mistakes, and yes, we all have to learn our trade. But, there were four people in that damn cockpit. The aircraft commander teaches the peter pilot the craft....WITH HIS HANDS ON THE CONTROLS TOO. Yes, all of the facts aren't out yet. But.....a clear calm day....no cross wind, no wind shear...too slow, too low....where in the hell was the aircraft commander? He or she is the responsible one. There are two damn sets of the exact same controls in that cockpit. When an aircraft commander teaches a peter pilot he has his hands on the controls too. He feels the ship and his hands automatically does what needs to be done AS HE FEELS IT GO WRONG!!!!! There is no "face" in a damn cockpit with 300 trusting souls in the back. The effing aircraft commander doesn't sit there hands off and let the new guy crash the effing plane. ILS off that day and computers be damned...every ship has it's own feel and a damned aircraft commander should know every nuance of his ship. He should be one with his bird. Seat of your pants isn't an abstract phrase.

 

Good luck to the survivors in the rear. For the ones up front and in control I can only hope they find a sudden and devastating mechanical problem in their black boxes, otherwise they didn't stick their landing and it is all on them. Pilot error in a plane with trusting people in the back is a totally unforgiving sin...and that should be PILOTS error as they have two sets of controls in each plane, not one.

 

tsap seui

I'm gonna go take my purposely dull axe and go chop a tree down.

[Randy W]

A fairly poignant picture here

 

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/D7KfI36Buh8FxYNbT0OiBw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU3NztweW9mZj0wO3E9ODU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/dc333d7cf3171b16370f6a7067003d72.jpg

Tuesday's Asiana Flight 214 comes in for a landing over the wreckage of Saturday's Asiana Flight 214 …

[Allon]

I will second Tsap's well written admonition to get to talk therapy now and not let it bury itself within.

 

The word we use is "beast" or "dragon" and that's exactly what it is. It will emerge later when you least expect it and you have no control over what happens. The beast not only affects you but those around you and in the worst ways -- anger being the worst of them. And then you wonder what happened afterwards.

 

The best indication that someone will be OK after a traumatic experience is that they cry. If you see someone cry after a trauma, even a kid, never tell them "Don't cry." It's the healthiest thing they could be doing.

 

But if it goes on for days, slap the hell out of them. (Only kidding. )

[Steve in USA]

A fairly poignant picture here

 

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/D7KfI36Buh8FxYNbT0OiBw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU3NztweW9mZj0wO3E9ODU7dz05NjA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/dc333d7cf3171b16370f6a7067003d72.jpg

Tuesday's Asiana Flight 214 comes in for a landing over the wreckage of Saturday's Asiana Flight 214 …

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.”

- Robert Frost

[dnoblett]

More interesting details, two flight attendants that were in the rear of the plane were ejected and found in the debris alive, probably ejected when the tail came off.

 

Sounds like there was some confusion with the auto-thrust system, this is supposed to maintain a constant air speed, and should have maintained at least 137 knots for landing, however the plane was down to 105 knots when it hit the seawall tarring off the landing gear. Sounds like auto-thrust indicated on for one pilot and off for the other.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57593064/2-asiana-flight-attendants-ejected-in-crash-and-found-on-runway-ntsb-says/

[ameriken]

More interesting details, two flight attendants that were in the rear of the plane were ejected and found in the debris alive, probably ejected when the tail came off.

 

Sounds like there was some confusion with the auto-thrust system, this is supposed to maintain a constant air speed, and should have maintained at least 137 knots for landing, however the plane was down to 105 knots when it hit the seawall tarring off the landing gear. Sounds like auto-thrust indicated on for one pilot and off for the other.

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57593064/2-asiana-flight-attendants-ejected-in-crash-and-found-on-runway-ntsb-says/

 

I heard about this today. Gonna be interesting to hear how this all pans out in the end...someone should have been keeping an eye on the airspeed indicator and caught the drop in speed long before they hit 105 kt.

[dnoblett]

More on the airspeed issue, sounds like the auto-throttle has 3 modes, Off, Armed, and Engaged, it seems that the system was armed not engaged, so in essence the engines were idle.

 

One big problem pilots face is too much automation, isolating them from actually flying, and sometimes they loose focus on things. They should have been paying attention to air speed on approach and not assuming that the auto-throttle would be handling this.

 

Another read: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20130710/DA7EJC0G0.html

[dnoblett]

Now this is how you land one of these planes, no auto-throttle.

 

http://youtu.be/vXj65a0490Y

[tsap seui]

You nailed it Dan. Everything that flies has a feel to it in flight. And, there is a verbal cockpit protocol both on the ground and in the air. The voice recorders from the "orange" boxes is showing a complete lack of verbal protocol between the pilots on this triple 7's approach.

 

Up above I mentioned the word "face" in that cockpit. My first thought when I first heard the plane was too low and too slow (and knowing it had Asian pilots in the cockpit) was "face".

 

I hate that word "face" and what it means to how many Asians folks let it run their lives. I became aware of it from my wife of course, and from reading more about it on Candle. Wenyan and I often discuss issues of "face". I study it when I am in China and we often laugh and kid each other about "face" and how important it is to many people.

 

I listened to two different experienced airline pilots, who currently fly triple 7's and one of them chilled me to my marrow when he said that "years ago the FAA and even similar agencies in some European countries considered banning Asian, in particular Korean, carriers from landing in American airports. Why? because of "face" issues in the cockpit. I about fell outta my chair when I heard this pilot say that. FACE in the damn cockpit.

 

Again, face was my first thought when I heard that plane was too low and too slow. For some reason I could just picture those four pilots, giving face to the senior pilots, even as the plane flew into the damn seawall.

 

The cockpit protocol is that one pilot controls the aircraft while another calls out verbally the airspeed, altitude, and descent rate. Apparently those verbal commands are nowhere on the voice recorders. What a major and criminal mistake. Those pilots are trained for this, it is something that is done day in and day out on every flight...a total no brainer. What the hell were those idiots doing? Well, it will show up. For those pilots to sit there and not follow simple cockpit protocol pisses me off to no end, and it was part of what I fear when on Asian carriers...that damned face crap, afraid to say anything to a senior pilot even as he makes a mistake. Four pilots in the cockpit and no one reads out airspeed, altitude, and descent rate????????? They should all be fired, put into chains and never allowed into a commercial carrier's cockpit. That is unforgivable, and criminal. Who, in their right minds takes anything for granted in a cockpit? And who, as a professional pilot doesn't "feel" his aircraft on a final approach? I guess we see who.

 

While I was commercially rated at one time I never flew for a national carrier but aviation is aviation, you have protocols in the cockpit. those protocols were set up from many years of aircraft flying the skies. You even have written checklists, for both the preflight, inflight, and shutdown procedures. I grew up in the rough and tumble world of military aviation. There is no "face" in a cockpit. You screw up you get called on it, IMMEDIATELY, and before you fly the damn bird into the ground. Pilots don't give each other slack in the cockpit. Slack, and something so stupid as "face" in the cockpit gets people killed. AS the pilot said yesterday, the FAA saw it years ago and even considered banning Asian carriers from landing in America they thought the issue was so serious.

 

I gotta say, every flight I have been on in China and even the few where I flew to China other than on United has given me the willies to have Asian pilots. Not because I have prejudice against Asians in any way or think their pilots aren't as well trained as other pilots, no, it was just because of "face" in the cockpit. I've got no fear of flying and for 5 years as an instructor I would have 250-300 takeoffs and landings each year as I flew in to many cities in America and down under to teach a 2 to 3 day class, then get onto a plane and head off to the next class. My life revolved around flying and airports.

 

Oh well, the facts will soon enough become clear and very evident. I hate the thought that people are dead, and many will become para and quadra plegics because something so simple as the words, "airspeed, altitude, and descent rate" weren't spoken in that aircraft.

 

Oh yeah, you see the extreme angle of attack of the nose of that triple 7 as it hit the seawall. That was the pilot trying to go around....only thing is, when you raise the nose of an aircraft without enough airspeed, you only fall quicker into the ground. He needed the airspeed to get the lift....sadly for the passengers, he had neither by the time they woke up to what they were doing. They, the asleep pilots, should all be taken out and shot for their criminal sins. This crash is inexcusable and never should have happened. It wasn't pilot error more like "pilots" error...4 asleep pilots in the cockpit.

 

Face....be damned.

 

tsap seui