Thai Crash

[full back]

Terrible tragedy
I see there was 3 men from N Ireland on the plane
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6997681.stm

Heard that the pilot was given the option of cancelling the flight & then landing it at a different airport but refused both options

[muppet]

Terrible tragedy and it is amazing that there are survivors.

Heard that the pilot was given the option of cancelling the flight & then landing it at a different airport but refused both options

That has been the case with every single flight in history.

[muppet]

80% of Airline crashes are caused by pilot error, strange when they insist on having 2 pilots for every commercial flight even though it only takes one to fly a plane.

Put The Sun away like a good lad.

[muppet]

Can i ask you a very simple question? Even if it were true that it only takes one pilot to fly, what would happen if he became ill or even just went to the toilet? (Dont include autopilot in your answer as it is little more than intelligent cruise control) 

[muppet]

The pilot was given the choice of landing at another airport but he chose to try to land, a mistake which cost over 80 lives.

The first half of your statement is nonsense. A pilot always has the choice, he is not given the choice as there is no one to give him that choice. ATC have no authority to 'divert' aircraft despite the lazy journalism that suggests otherwise. The second half of you statement may turn out to be libellous if a system failure turns out to be at fault.

If you want to engage in speculation at least start with something concrete rather than a Murdock hacks hunch.

Here is the half hourly weather at Phuket at the time of the crash:

  VTSP 161030Z 29011KT 3000 -RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 25/24 Q1006 A2973
VTSP 161000Z 27009KT 3000 RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 25/24 Q1006 A2973
VTSP 160930Z 27008KT 3000 RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 23/22 Q1006 2972
VTSP 160900Z 27012KT 1000 RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 24/23 Q1006 2973
VTSP 160830Z 24012KT 4000 SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 26/24 Q1006 A2971 VCSH NW
VTSP 160800Z 27007KT 4000 SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 26/24 Q1006 A2972 VCSH N
VTSP NIL
VTSP 160700Z 33003KT 3000 -RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 25/24 Q1007 A2975
VTSP 160630Z 33004KT 3000 -RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 25/24 Q1007 A2976

[ludermor]

Ah Ha! it all clearer to me now!

[oneillcup2007]

God bless All on that plane... but for crying out loud Muppet!   

[muppet]

God bless All on that plane... but for crying out loud Muppet!   

oneillcup2007 I am just giving the deceased pilots the benefit of the doubt and defending them from uninformed nonsense.

[Square Ball]

Gotta ask...

Muppet, what does all this mean?

VTSP 160630Z 33004KT 3000 -RA SCT015 BKN110 BKN300 25/24 Q1007 A2976

[muppet]

VTSP Four letter airfield code in this case Phuket (EIDW is Dublin)
160630Z 16 is the date (16th) 0630 is the time and Z stands for Zulu which is an old name for Greenwich Mean Time
33004KT This the wind. 330 is the direction 330 degrees is roughly Northwest and 4 knots is about 5 mph.
3000 This is the visibility in metres.
-RA This means light rain and is used to qualify the visibility. i.e. The light rain is causing the visibility to be 3000 metres.
SCT015 this is the lowest cloud level and means less than half of the sky at 1500 feet above ground
BKN110 The next cloud level. Bkn is 5-7 eights of the sky 110 is 11000 feet
BKN300 As above
25/24 this is temperature celcius and dewpoint
Q1007 this is pressure in hectopascals (millibars new name)
A2976 I think this is pressure in inches of mercury but am open to correction.

[muppet]

but I would say if the pilot could choose again he would make a different choice.

The irony here is that it appears he did make the decision not to land. The crash seems to have happened after he made the decision to perform what is called a go-around.

[Aerlik]

Like I said in the post re. Colin McRae, the media are at their vulture-worst after any aviation accident especially where fatalities are concerned, picking through the scraps of innuendo and then piecing together what they want the general public to believe, and I am speaking from experience having known a pilot who was killed over here last year.  I was the last to speak to him on the ground and heard his last call to Brisbane Centre before the accident happened.  The media then dragged out some cnut who wouldn't know his arse from his elbow and had him blame the engineering firm not pilot error.  To date the Air Transport Safety Bureau (Oz) has yet to release its findings.
Already after this latest tragedy the scum press here in Oz are hypothesing picking bits of an interview by an aviation expert and changing them around completely, thus contradicting everything he said.
Which brings me to this discussion.

5times, in General Aviation the figure for pilot error is much higher more like over 90% and fuel starvation is one of the biggest killers.  Human error is indeed a factor in all aviation-related accidents but based on the weather supplied by Muppet there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the weather was dangerously bad.  To be honest if I were to get that weather forecast every time I flew to Newman during the wet season I'd he happy.  One must draw the line between the forecast weather and actual weather.  There is absolutely no suggestion of thunderstorm activity in that weather forecast.  And because there is no indication of thunderstorms, there is little or no likelihood of windsheer, the scariest phenomenon to experience on approach.  It will either lift you or slam you.   What would be more beneficial to read would be the Terminal Area Forecast or even better the Trend Type Forecast, which are increasingly more accurate; the latter supercedes the others and is what is used by pilots at major centres.  Not all airports have such reporting facilities sadly.  
Briefly the 1000/3000/4000 is the visibility in metres; of these the 1000m is a concern as the shortest in Perth is 2400m. But light rain (-RA) and rain (RA) was falling
270011kt is wind speed from the west at 11 knots.  Nothing special.  One assumes he was landing towards the west.
SCT015 is scattered cloud (36-48% cloud coverage) at 1500ftAGL. Very easily dealty with and it ties in with the temperatures given of e.g. 23/22 meaning that at the ground level the temp was 23C (approx) and at 1000ft AGL the temp was 22C meaning that condensation layer was approx. 1000ft AGL, hence the scattered cloud at 1500ft.
BKN300 (are you sure that is correct?) means 84-96% cloud coverage at 30,000feetAMSL.  I'm not so sure that is correct.  It might be BKN030 (3000ft) which would tie in with the conditions at the time of the crash.
Q1006 refers to barometric pressure.  Nothing exceptional there considering the other weather.
I don'know what the A2973 represents though.

Based on the account given by one John Gerald O'Connell, an Irish survivor shown on TV around the world, he mentioned the plane coming in very fast and  then touching down and going up again and then going down....crash.  Well, it's a fact that unless you are flying at 5 ft above a runway it is extremely difficult to judge speed.  It happens to me as I come in to land.  In the cruise it seems to take forever to get anywhere but in those last few seconds, even though you are at approach speed (Vref) the ground and the trees suddenly come rushing towards you...well they weren't effing there at 30.000ft so it's inevitable that you think you're going too fast.  And it pisses me off to hear gonads on the ground masquerading as witnesses saying the plane seemed to be coming in too fast.  You have absolutely no idea how fast a plane is going unless you are in the cockpit.  And as a matter of fact, even 10kts too fast is just that, too fast.  With regard to the plane bouncing up again, well I dunno, the voice cockpit recorder will shed some light on that.  Perhaps the pilot decided to go around below his "decision altitude" the point where an approach can be continued or aborted if the runway isn't sighted, and considered it safer to land the aircraft and power up as he had distance and momentum, I dunno.  Time will tell.

Muppet I'm not sure if you are intending to be flippant or serious with your comment that every single flight had the option of diverting to another airport.    It is true we do have the option of cancelling the flight and it is the responsibility of the Pilot in command to make that decision.  I have done so in my career...better to be down here wishing you were up there than up there wishing you were down here.  We don't always have the option of diverting due to a wide range of factors but in the planning stage, alternate an alternate airport must be given.

Re. two crew requirements.  It's mandatory for all aircraft above certain weight and performance limits.  Both are endorsed on the type of aircraft.  The captain is pilot-in-command while he is in the left seat and the co-pilot is his back-up, there to provide redundancy and therefore safety and to share the workload.   Eventually the First Officer will have accrued enough co-pilot time to be offered the role of captain which requires more training/testing.  The autopilot is flicked on a few seconds after take-off as in big jets the workload would be too great.  Hell why not use it when it's there to lessen the load and allow you to concentrate on monitoring systems etc.   So if the captain went for a piss/passed out, then the first officer would continue to monitor the cockpit systems.  There is no indication at this stage if the FO was actually flying the aircraft on approach. The cockpit of any aircraft is a very methodical place where certain procedures must be performed at specific times with cross-communication vital.  Hence the need for the cockpit voice recorder. For your info, flight crew are not allowed to eat fish while on duty.  I believe most companies insist the flight crew eat different meals too.

Muppet, I don't know where you got your information but Air Traffic Control have got every right to divert aircraft and do so all the time.  I get diverted from Perth every time I fly in.  I want a straight route through but almost always get pushed out of the roads while the big jets are landing or taking off and just last Wednesday, I overheard Melbourne Centre (which covers the bottom half of Australia outside capital cities and when radar coverage is available - effing big country with lots of blank zones) advising two southbound jets that the weather was so bad in Perth and there was such a hold up of traffic waiting to get in that they should prepare to be diverted to Kalgoorlie and even back to Pt.hedland, over 1000nm to the north.  

Let's all wait and see. Please.

[muppet]

Aerlik 3000m in rain at 150kts appears more like 500m to the jockies.

As for your ATC comment I may not have made myself clear. It was merely a technicality but ATC may only close an airport or refuse clearance to land. They cannot 'divert' an aircraft in the sense that media suggest they frequently do. The Captain decides where the aircraft goes. 

[Aerlik]

Aerlik 3000m in rain at 150kts appears more like 500m to the jockies.

I'm not sure what it is you mean by that. There's no indication of any wind at 150kts...that's a hurricane/cyclone lad.  The airport would definitely be closed.

As for your ATC comment I may not have made myself clear. It was merely a technicality but ATC may only close an airport or refuse clearance to land. They cannot 'divert' an aircraft in the sense that media suggest they frequently do. The Captain decides where the aircraft goes. 

Of course they can divert aircraft.  It happens often, especially in inclement weather.  Once the aircraft has been given a clearance to land it is up to the pilot to proceed though.

[muppet]

Muppet, I don't know where you got your information but Air Traffic Control have got every right to divert aircraft and do so all the time.  I get diverted from Perth every time I fly in.  I want a straight route through but almost always get pushed out of the roads while the big jets are landing or taking off and just last Wednesday, I overheard Melbourne Centre (which covers the bottom half of Australia outside capital cities and when radar coverage is available - effing big country with lots of blank zones) advising two southbound jets that the weather was so bad in Perth and there was such a hold up of traffic waiting to get in that they should prepare to be diverted to Kalgoorlie and even back to Pt.hedland, over 1000nm to the north. 

You misunderstand my use of the word divert. I am not talking about being diverted around some danger area. Diversion in this context and the one mentioned earlier is the act of changing the destination airfield. ATC do not divert aircraft from one airport to another. It can't possibly be that way as, for example how do ATC know if there is enough fuel on board to reach the airport being diverted to? The Captain or sometimes an operations controller can decide for whatever reason to change the destination. ATC can only refuse to accept a flight, they can't decide what its destination will be. 

And because there is no indication of thunderstorms, there is little or no likelihood of windsheer, the scariest phenomenon to experience on approach.

In Australia CBs might be the most common source of windsheer but around here it could be a whole load of things. For example Shannon (it would be Shannon) built a huge hanger just west of the main landing runway. When the wind is from the west landing aircraft will get windsheer just over the lights. LHR has similar phenomenon.