Breaking News on CNN - Sad Story

[FlyingColors]

Wanna see more evidence how sick and twisted this country's priorities are.

Just punch up yahoo.com
Top headline:

"Plunging necklines and halter tops popular among female Emmy attendees.» View photos"

Shallow disrespectful bastards!

[Alex T]

I learned an AirTran First Officer was one of the dead on the flight, he was commuting to ATL to work on an afetrnoon flight for AirTran.:(

Alex

[moose135]

Wanna see more evidence how sick and twisted this country's priorities are.

Just punch up yahoo.com
Top headline:

"Plunging necklines and halter tops popular among female Emmy attendees.» View photos"

Shallow disrespectful bastards!

The problem is since we're aviation fanatics, this is big news to us. For most people, this is one more news item - if it doesn't effect them personally, most likely when they heard the news reports they thought "That's terrible!" and went on about their business.

[SengaB]

Just looking at this diagram from my jepp charts shows that those 2 runways could easily be confused. It doesn't help that there is one Taxiway- only (A) that leas to the top of both runways. Not A-1 B-2 etc.


Senga

[PhilDernerJr]

Fayette County Coroner Gary Ginn said “Most of the injuries are going to be due to fire-related deaths.”

Injuries due to fire-related deaths? I can imagine the doctor's diagnosis now:

Patient: So what's wrong with me doc?

Doctor: Well it appears you died in a fire.

Patient: That sucks. That would explain how I got injured.



I think it's very sad that this accident happened. It sounds like some people involved with being a little lax and not paying attention. The rwy lights should have been operable, too.

[USAF Pilot 07]

I'm no pilot, but looking at the Jepp chart posted, how does one confuse RWY26 with 22. If you're taxiing to 22, don't you say to yourself "OK, I'm going to cross the threashold of one runway before I reach my assigned one". And what was the towers role in all of this? Shouldn't they have noticed that the RJ was rolling on the wrong RWY?

To me it just seems like these lives were "unecessarily" lost because of a stupid mistake made by one or two people who weren't on top of their game.

There should be some sort of "checklist" in place to ensure that a plane is using the proper runway, especially in smaller airports where these RJs are sometimes the only planes that fly in and out...

When I was flying down at the airfield here this summer for a pre-UPT, UPT style screening program, even though we used the exact same runway every time, under VFR conditions, we'd still make sure our nose was pointed in the right compass direction before taking-off. In fact we'd do a ton of things before takeoff to ensure that just about every instrument was working properly.
My IP, who's a civilian dude, who used to do some flying for Continental Express said that a lot of the stuff they made us do here was because we were all pretty much new to flying, and because we were flying in the military. He was saying that we have some of the most strict checklists, and that when he was flying commercially they didn't do half the stuff that both we (and active duty military pilots) were required to do...
So Moose, maybe there's a gap in between military and civilian procedures?

Anyway, I hope the F/O makes it out of this ok, and may the people who died on the plane RIP.

[PhilDernerJr]

I dont know if he'd want me to mention his name, but a well known Anet photographer was supposed to be on that plane.

[hiss srq]

You always do a compass check upon geting her lined up on the runway or at least I do. Let us not be too fast to bash the flight crew because many factors are involved. No one crash is attirbuted to a single thing though the NTSB and FAA like to make you and themselves think it. It is a series of events that caused it, low crew rest time, trying to make the off time, maybe a missprint in NOTAM's there are soooooo many factors involved in this stuff. The NTSB will print up a crash report that says PILOT ERROR soo fast but in that there is always a few factors that actually led to the incident but the final one was pilot error.

[RDU-JFK]

So what actually CAUSED the crash? I assume the plane got airborne and the engines failed/stalled due to the shortness of the runway? I'm not technically savvy, but what led to the crash if an aircraft takes off on too short of a runway?

[PhilDernerJr]

Yeah, I assume a stall based on not enough runway to gain sufficient speed.

[hiss srq]

So what actually CAUSED the crash? I assume the plane got airborne and the engines failed/stalled due to the shortness of the runway? I'm not technically savvy, but what led to the crash if an aircraft takes off on too short of a runway?

Engins would not have stalled, it would be an aerodynamic stall otherwise known as a loss of lift. It is entirely possible that the plane never even made it off the runway or did just barely and clipped somthing that brought her back down namely a tree maybe. It reminded me immediately of the NW MD-80 many years ago when I heard about it. I really feel for all those involved. On a side note Scarey Mary is already at it on the Communist News Network. (CNN)

[moose135]

So what actually CAUSED the crash? I assume the plane got airborne and the engines failed/stalled due to the shortness of the runway? I'm not technically savvy, but what led to the crash if an aircraft takes off on too short of a runway?

That's a common misconception - the engines "stalled", when in fact the wing stalled. Most likely scenario, they go charging off into the darkness, and suddenly realize the end of the runway is coming up a lot sooner then they expected. It's too late to try to stop, so you pull it off, hoping it will fly. It does for a short time, probably in ground effect, but the slow speed and little or no climb rate doesn't allow you to clear the fence at the end of the runway, and trying to pull the nose up further causes the wing to stall, losing lift and making a sudden return to Earth. Remember, gravity wins every time.

This may sound way too geeky, (or maybe a little strange) but last night I downloaded a CRJ-200 for MS Flight Sim 2004 and tried taking off from Rwy 26. No matter what I did, when using a normal takeoff (brake-release, push up the power, and make a normal rotation & climbout) I hit the trees at the end of the runway. Rotating early caused me to mush along in ground effect, skip across the grass & hit the trees. Only when I tried a "short field" takeoff - hold the brakes, let the power spool up before moving, and make a steeper climb at lower airspeed, was I able to get airborne safely.

[Derf]

[..............Only when I tried a "short field" takeoff - hold the brakes, let the power spool up before moving, and make a steeper climb at lower airspeed, was I able to get airborne safely.

Question, were you firewalled when you released the brakes?? did you drop the flaps at 80KTS and how far off were the throttles from the calculated powersetting for the normal runway.

[moose135]

Question, were you firewalled when you released the brakes?? did you drop the flaps at 80KTS and how far off were the throttles from the calculated powersetting for the normal runway.

Well, it was around midnight when I was doing this, so I didn't get into figuring out power settings and all. I did let the engines spool up to 100+% before releasing brakes, but I had flaps down throughout the run - that's what I remember of short field procedures back in the day. On my normal takeoff attempts, I did push the power up to 100%, although I did that as I started the roll, so they were still spooling up as I was moving.

[FlyingColors]

Question, were you firewalled when you released the brakes?? did you drop the flaps at 80KTS and how far off were the throttles from the calculated powersetting for the normal runway.

Well, it was around midnight when I was doing this, so I didn't get into figuring out power settings and all. I did let the engines spool up to 100+% before releasing brakes, but I had flaps down throughout the run - that's what I remember of short field procedures back in the day. On my normal takeoff attempts, I did push the power up to 100%, although I did that as I started the roll, so they were still spooling up as I was moving.

Very cool!