A Sukhoi Superjet 100 crashed in Indonesia last Wednesday. As always, there’s been a lot of confusing and conflicting reports in the media, so here is my attempt to document the factual aspects of this terrible accident.

The Sukhoi Superjet 100 is a fly-by-wire short-to-medium range jet with capacity for 75-98 passengers. The jetliner was the first new model to be produced in Russia since the end of the Societ Union.

The Superjet 100 entered commercial operation in June of last year, with five aircraft currently active in the Aeroflot fleet and one with Armavia.

The aircraft involved in the accident, the Sukhoi Superjet 100 MSN 95004, made its first flight in July 2009 and had accumulated over 800 flight hours in over 500 flights. It had no serious technical problems.

The Superjet was a part of a publicity road show to demonstrate the aircraft to Asian airline executives. Russian blogger Sergey Dolya posted a collection of photographs from the tour on his LiveJournal account. The aircraft photograph at the top of this post is also by Sergey Dolya and links to his gallery.

On the 9th of may, the aircraft, registration RA-97004, was at Jakarta’s Halim Perdanakusuma Airport in order to perform demonstration flights for media and airline representatives.

Here is a video of the aircraft coming into Halim:

The flight was crewed by two pilots with extensive flying experience. The Captain was the chief test pilot at Sukhoi with a military background and over 10,000 flight hours. He did the first test flight of the Superjet. His first officer was also a test pilot at Sukhoi. The Straights Times has reported that neither had flown in Indonesia before.

The aircraft took passengers on a demonstration flight that morning, which lasted 30 minutes and returned to Halim without incident.

The passenger list for the second flight was not updated although some of the invited guests did not arrive and others took their place. As a result, there have been conflicting reports regarding the souls on board. As of yesterday, Sukhoi’s statement says that there were 45 people on board.

Shortly after 14:00 local time, the flight departed for the second demonstration flight of the day. The aircraft was at 10,000 feet near Mount Salak. The peak of Mount Salak is at 7,254 feet however, there is a valley leading between the mountains that the pilots may have decided to fly through.

At 14:21, one of the pilots requested a descent to 6,000 feet, which was acknowledged.

That was the last radio call from the aircraft. Radar contact was lost between 14:21 and 14:33. The last track showed the aircraft in a right-hand turn descending through 6,200 feet.

The Emergency Locator Transmitter did not go off, leading aircraft personnel to hope that the aircraft was still in the air. After 3 hours, the maximum endurance for the flight, the alarm was raised.

The Indonesian Air Force was unable to start an immediate search and rescue as a result of the thick fog and bad weather. The wreckage was discovered the following day at 5,300 feet MSL and 6 paratroopers parachuted to the crash site, where they stated they had no hope of finding survivors.

The Air Force has stated that the initial impact was at 6,250 MSL into a sheer cliff, which the wreckage then slipped down.

The impact site appears to be just below the ridge line.

The Jakarta Post have reported that satellite surveillance shows that Mount Salak was obscured in thick cloud at the time of the crash.

Video footage of the crash site taken from one of the rescue helicopters has been posted to YouTube:

A pilot with local knowledge wrote about the area in the Jakarta Globe:

Superjet Disappears South of Jakarta: Notes From an Aviation Consultant | The Jakarta Globe

I’ve flown around that area a lot in the past. It’s nice and scenic in visual and meteorological conditions (VMC). But between Mt. Salak and Mt. Pangrango, one has to have their wits around and not have a lapse of situational awareness. Some very strange winds are up there, and conditions are unpredictable even in VMC, and in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC), it’s damn awful. I must thank my fortunes to not have to go through the pass between those two mountains anymore these days.
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If these guys were only armed with Jepp approach, STAR, and en route charts, a simple “fly out along R206 to 30NM and turn back”, would be fine in VMC, but deadly in IMC and bad localized weather.

Meanwhile, an Aeroflot flight attendant posted to Twitter with commentary on the crash.

Aeroflot Fires A FA Over Superjet Crash Remarks — Civil Aviation Forum | Airliners.net

As soon as the news about the crash came through, she reportedly twitted with text roughly translated as “A Superjet crashed? (Devil Laugh)… Shit of a plane. Pity not at Aeroflot. Could do with one of the planes out or have them all sold back to someone…”

Aeroflot responded by posting her letter of termination on the corporate Twitter account.

I spent much too much time browsing the web and not enough time writing. The result? A collection of interesting aviation articles and videos for your amusement!

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Top tip: play this one in full-screen mode for the full effect.

GoPro + F18 = AWESOME
Footage taken from fighter detachment at NASWI with VFA-204.

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I never knew wingtips could be so fascinating:

Yoga for jets: why planemakers prefer bent wingtips via reddit.com

There are, so the industry saying goes, only three secrets in the commercial airplane business: the selling price, the production cost and the shape of the wing.

Boeing on Wednesday trumpeted its latest achievement in aerodynamics as it battles Airbus — wingtip to wingtip — for the lion’s share of a $2 trillion market for narrowbody Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 models over the next two decades.

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It takes a special kind of geek to get excited by this page:

Airplane Boarding

By pressing play you can view a simulation of different airplane boarding strategies. Note, random boarding (i.e. boarding all rows at the same time) is faster than back-to-front boarding. Hence, you will actually speed up the boarding process if you board before your turn in back-to-front boarding. Try and explain that to your boarding agent :)

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Whereas the appeal of this one is easy:

Test flight of the last 195th F-22 Raptor fighter on March 14, 2012. The final F-22 Raptor was delivered to the USAF in ceremonies on May 2, 2012 at the Lockheed Martin manufacturing facility in Marietta, Georgia.

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As if pilots didn’t have a difficult job already:

Reports: North Korea jamming South’s air traffic navigation – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs

North Korea has been busy for the past week, trying to jam the navigation signals going to civilian aircraft over South Korea, according to reports in South Korean media.

Through Wednesday afternoon, the GPS satellite signals to more than 250 aircraft have been affected, the Chosun Ilbo reported, citing South Korea’s Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs Ministry.

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I would think the FAA had better things to do with their time:

FAA rips Delta passenger for filming bird strike
Grant Cardone target of FAA probe for not turning off electronic device on takeoff

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And finally, well, all I can say is ouch!

That’s a road that he’s on, not a taxiway. The aircraft somehow left the ramp, went between two hangars with a foot of clearance on each side and wound up bouncing through a drainage ditch. Obviously took out the nose gear and had a propstrike.

7S5 Independence, Oregon, for those wondering.

[...]

No, the 5 foot deep drainage ditch behind the airplane is responsible for the nose wheel failure. Not sure how fast he was going, but he cleared it…almost. The aircraft didn’t change direction. It came from directly behind where it’s sitting. To the left, just outside of the frame there is a gap between two hangars that is just wide enough for the plane to get through. The road it’s sitting on is between the ramp and the air park houses.

Today, aircrash investigations centre around the black box – that is, the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR). I have always thought of them as rather straight forward: one collects flight data and the other records voices in the cockpit.

However, when I started to do some research about flight recorders, I was taken aback at how much I didn’t know. Explaining my own ignorance would take more than a single blog post so I limited myself to the top five things that surprised me.

1. The very first flight data recorder was invented by the Wright brothers. They created a device which recorded propeller rotations, distance travelled and time spent in the air.

Charles Lindbergh also had a flight data recorder which was in a plywood box and inked data, including altitude, onto a paper roll. A major breakthrough took place at the Marignane flight test centre in 1939. They created the “type HB” flight recorder that kept a record on photographic film. But not until World War II did we have an FDR which was expected to withstand high-speed impact and fire.

More information: Flight data recorder history – Wikipedia

2. There’s no clear history as to why the container of flight recorders (FDR and CVR) is called a black box. A black box obviously needs to be highly visible, so it can be found amongst wreckage and even underwater. The flight recorder container has a minimum height and width and it is painted bright orange and highlighted with reflective tape.

I found a number of theories explaining why we called them black boxes, none of which seem particularly compelling:

• A journalist referred to the initial prototype as “a wonderful black box” as it was based on a wire recorder used for espionage.
• Early recorders were painted black (there’s no evidence of this that I can find).
• They can get charred in accidents and turn black.
• During World War II, the RAF experimented with various electronic innovations for aircraft and often covered the prototypes in black metal boxes to prevent reflections. Thus any new electronics added to an aircraft was referred to as a black box and the name stuck.
• The initial flight data recorders had to be opened in a dark room to prevent light from corrupting the record.

Convinced? Me neither. Regardless, the phrase “black box” has been used within the transport industry for various forms of recording devices, including planes, trains and automobiles, since the 1940s.

3. Australia was the first country to make cockpit voice recorders a requirement for commercial aircraft. I knew that the modern flight data recorder was effectively invented in Australia but not that the Australians the first to make flight recorders compulsory.

In 1960, a twin-engine Fokker Friendship F-27 flew into the ocean with 25 passengers and 4 crew on board. The investigation failed to find the cause and the inquiry recommended that all passenger airliners have flight recorders installed. Not long thereafter, the Brooklyn airline collision in December of 1960 was the first time that the flight recorders were critical in a crash investigation. Now I can’t imagine an investigation that doesn’t rely on the data gathered from the black boxes.

More information:
Trans Australia Airlines Flight 538 – Wikipedia
Photos of 1960 Brooklyn airline crash that sparked new era of ‘black boxes’ | Mail Online

4. Recorders were originally housed in the cockpit along with the instruments and the pilots. Only after several accidents where the Flight Data Recorder was not recoverable did they get moved to the rear of the aircraft, based on the presumption that following the initial impact, the rear of the aircraft would be moving at a slower speed. In addition, the units initially only had to withstand a 100gs impact which was increased to 1000gs.

The key components of modern solid-state flight recorders are called Crash-Surivable Memory Units (CSMUs).

They go through a whole sequence of surviveability testing including:

Crash Impact Test — It has been agreed that 3400gs for 6.5 ms would be required to meet most accident scenarios. This test is actually performed with a cannon. A Fairchild CVR has survived a crash that was estimated to be more than 6000 gs.

Static Crush — In this test, 5,000-pound pressure is applied against all six axis points.

Pierce Test — A pierce test employs a 500-lb. weight dropped from 10 feet. It has been modified to be performed with a hardened steel pin.

Fire Test — The devices are subjected to 1100 degrees Centigrade for 60 minutes, then undergo 10 hours at 260 degrees Centigrade.

Source:
L-3 Aviation Recorders

5. Personal black boxes already exist. Microsoft has developed technology called the SenseCam, conceived as a personal black box accident recorder.

It is a thin, light-weight camera with a wide-angle lens which takes photographs automatically as you go about your business. Cathal Gurrin has worn one around his neck every day for the past five years.

The SenseCam doesn’t have a viewfinder and there is no way to frame the photo. It has a fish-eye lens to capture as much of the wearer’s viewpoint as possible. It can be triggered by a timer or using internal sensors that watch for changes in light-intensity or light-colour, the wearer’s temperature, or even a change in direction/speed using a multiple-axis accelerometer. These changes can trigger a photograph to be taken.

The Vicon Revue is currently available as a commercial product for £299. It is being pitched as a memory aid for special events and to support people with memory impairments.

More information: Microsoft Research SenseCam

I don’t think I’ll be wearing a little life logger around my neck any day soon, though. It gives me the chills. Would you?

I received this from reader Albert Masetti as a demonstration on eye fixation.

Michael Bach, a Professor at the University of Freiburg has a full page of Optical Illusions and Visual Phenomena. The strength of this site is that he allows for controls for each of the illusions, so that you can check for yourself what is actually happening (as opposed to what you are seeing). Each illusion has a full explanation as to the effect and why it occurs. He’s kindly given permission for his experiments to be recreated, so you play with his Motion Induced Blindness example here:

You should see a rotating array of blue crosses and 3 yellow dots. Now fixate on the centre (watch the flashing red/green spot). Note that the yellow spots disappear once in a while: singly, in pairs or all three simultaneously, right?

In reality, the 3 yellow spots are continuously present, honest! This is captively called “motion induced blindness” or MIB.

A retired Marine aviator describes the phenomenon:

This is a great illustration of what we were taught about scanning outside the cockpit when I went through training.

We were told to scan the horizon for a short distance, stop momentarily, and repeat the process. I can remember being told why this was the most effective technique to locate other aircraft. It was emphasized repeatedly to not fix your gaze for more than a couple of seconds on any single object. The instructors, some of whom were veterans with years of experience, instructed us to continually “keep our eyes moving and our head on a swivel” because this was the best way to survive, not only in combat, but from peacetime hazards (like a midair collision) as well.

We basically had to take the advice on faith (until we could experience for ourselves) because the technology to demonstrate it didn’t exist at that time.

Michael Bach of the University of Freiburg, who created the original page, explains the effect:

Steady fixation favours disappearance, blinks or gaze shifts induce reappearance. All in all reminiscent of the Troxler effect, but stronger and more resistant to residual eye movements.

There is no consensus as to the explanation in vision literature yet. I personally think that motion is not necessary, any (temporal) change in the image will suffice. [Note added 2008-03-07: see now Wallis & Arnold, 2008.] A more recent paper from that group (2009) sugggests a link of MIB to “motion blur / motion streak” suppression. If so, MIB would be illusion subserving a useful purpose in everyday vision. This also holds for a different explanatory approach by New & Scholl (2008) who conclude that “rather than being a failure of visual processing, MIB may be a functional product of the visual system’s attempt to separate distal stimuli from artifacts of damage to the visual system itself.”

If you fixate steadily, all structures are imaged on their same retinal location. This leads to local adaptation on the retina (the Troxler effect, often incorrectly addressed as “fatigue”). By adding additional temporal modulation (here the rotation), effectively the background noise is increased. Thus the Troxler disappearence is more pronouned and/or happens faster.

In other words, it may be that the reason for this effect is to keep us from being distracted from motion blur affecting distant objects when we are moving quickly.

I shouldn’t have hopped the fence.

It was shut with a big padlock and surrounded by barbed wire so I can’t exactly claim that I hadn’t noticed it.

But I’d walked such a long way – 5 miles! – just to take some photographs for my blog, it seemed such a shame to give up at the last hurdle. There was no one else there so it wasn’t like I was getting in anyone’s way. And it wasn’t like there was anyone to tell me off – just me and some cows off in the distance.

I didn’t know that they were guard cattle.

But let me start at the beginning…

Brookmans Park is a small village in Hertfordshire, population 3,475. There isn’t much exciting to say about the place: the locals are friendly, the Indian restaurant is divine, the village green is pleasant in nice weather.

However, pilots who fly around southeast England will recognise the name as home to the Brookmans Park VOR (BPK) which is used by aircraft flying in and out of the London area.

When I found out that I was going to be trapped visiting family staying locally for a few days, I immediately thought of BPK and wondered if I could actually visit a VOR and find out what they look like.

A VOR (VHF Omni-directional Radio) beacon is a navigational aid which broadcasts on a specific radio frequency in such a way that a pilot can get a bearing from the VOR to her aircraft.

Note: Patrick Flannigan has a better explanation of this on Aviation Chatter: How VORs Really Work and you can even test it out yourself on his VOR / ADF Navigation Simulator.

If you want to know the detail, the Wikipedia article on VORs is probably the best single reference:VHF omnidirectional range

You can also read about how pilots use VOR’s on Plastic Pilot’s guide: Flying VORs For Dummies

It turned out that the Brookman’s Park VOR is not actually located in the village but a few miles east near Epping Green. The weather was glorious and I needed an excuse to get out of the house thought a walk would do me good, so I made my way there, walking along the country roads and enjoying the mild weather.

I used a hand-held GPS and reached the location after about 2 hours gentle strolling.

That’s when I discovered that the VOR was in a field, surrounded by a fence with two padlocked gates.

It seemed so sad. I could see the field and the VOR and a herd of cattle grazing in the distance. I considered my situation for a few moments and then convinced myself that the fence was merely to keep the cattle in, surely not to keep me out. Besides, I wasn’t going to do any harm. I just wanted a closer look at the VOR.

So I clambered over the fence with my camera in hand.

The ground was firm beneath my feet and the sun warmed my shoulders. A light breeze carried the scent of freshly-cut grass to me. The bird song was only interrupted by the roar of the engines overhead. If I had any chance of forgetting my purpose in coming to this lovely location, the air traffic would make sure I was reminded.

I was taught to avoid routing directly overhead popular VORs and VRPs when flying visually. The issue is that flying directly over the VOR effectively concentrates the traffic into a single place. This was the first time I had a visual.

There was never any question of danger, the separation was more than enough but it did feel a bit like Grand Central Station above my head as various low planes from all directions flew straight towards the VOR.

I admit it: I regularly plug a route into the GPS, jumping from VOR to VOR in a dot-to-dot pattern to ensure I don’t get lost. Max Trescott recently wrote about flight safety and indentifying local hotspots and standing at the VOR, I could see exactly what he meant.

This was one.

Despite the traffic overhead, it was a pastoral scene, the golden colours of September all around me, the cattle lowing and a blackbird singing in the distance. I walked closer to the VOR.

It was much bigger than I expected. I stepped around the cow pats and peered up at the phased array antenna. BPK looked both old-fashioned and futuristic, like something I might see in a 1950s sci-fi film.

I walked up to the fencing surrounding the structure and began talking close-up photographs when I realised that the cows were getting louder.

The two clumps of cattle I’d seen off in the distance had joined forces and come to deal with the intruder.

Of course, I didn’t realise this immediately. I simply thought that they happened to be wandering my way. I took a few more photographs, thinking the juxaposition of the cattle and the VOR would make for an interesting contrast.

The cows kept on coming. Now in my defence, I’m very much a city girl. I grew up in Los Angeles where there is not a lot of wildlife to be found, unless you count pigeons.

So I still did not realise that there was an issue. I thought the cows were interesting and I was pleased for the great opportunity for some nature shots. I looked for a clean bit of grass and knelt down, taking a few more photographs before I realised …

…that they were coming after me.

I smiled nervously and gave the cows a little wave. This had no effect at all. I decided that perhaps I had outstayed my welcome. I assured them that I was on my way and that I hoped they had a pleasant afternoon.

I turned my back. Mistake. Never turn your back on a herd of guard cows.

I heard the trotting of running cattle behind me.

I spun around and they screeched to a halt, a few yards behind me, chewing in a melancholy way, pretending that they weren’t after me.

I turned to continue walking to the gate. I heard the hooves thud against the grass. I whirled towards them and they stopped again, blinking innocently.

I began walking backwards, keeping an eye on what I now knew were killer attack cattle, ready to defend the VOR against all intruders.

They stumbled forward, slowly closing the gap between us. When I felt the cool touch of shade of the trees, I knew I was close to the gate. I turned around and made a run for it.

I had no idea I was capable of hopping a fence in a single bound but I’m glad for it.

The cows clustered at the fence and stared at me. They didn’t make a sound but the message was clear:

“AND STAY OUT.”

I assured the guard cattle that I had every intention of respecting fences in the future. Then I edged my way backwards until I was safe on the main road and I made my way back to civilisation.

And people tell me general aviation is dangerous!

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This was originally posted in September, 2009. I can vouch for the fact that the Killer Cattle Protection System works: I have not trespassed on CAA land since.

I am going to be spending the weekend at Eastercon, an annual science fiction and fantasy extravaganza. If you are attending, please come and say hello! I’ll be speaking on the panel on Social Media in Science Fiction on Monday afternoon.

So I’m not around for a new post today. In keeping with the Eastercon theme, I’ve put together this collection of aircraft from the future for you to enjoy.

Ascender

Ascender is a small sub-orbital spaceplane designed to use existing technology and to pave the way for later vehicles on our development sequence. Ascender is specifically designed to generate spaceplane revenues at minimum development cost and risk, and thereby to be attractive to private-sector investment. Ascender carries one pilot and one passenger or experiment. The passenger remains strapped in his/her seat during the flight. Ascender takes off from an ordinary airfield using its turbo-fan engine and climbs at subsonic speed to a height of 8 km. The pilot then starts the rocket engine and pulls up into a steep climb. Ascender has a maximum speed of around Mach 3 on a steep climb and can reach a height of 100 km.

Find out more: Bristol Spaceplanes – Ascender

Spaceplane

Astrium’s business jet-sized spaceplane will take off and land conventionally from a standard airport runway using its jet engines. At an altitude of about 12 km, the rocket engine are ignited and in only 80 seconds the craft climbs to 60 km altitude. The rocket propulsion system is then shut down as the plane’s inertia carries it on to over 100 km, enabling passengers to hover weightlessly for some minutes and to witness the most spectacular view of Earth imaginable. After slowing down during descent, the jet engines are restarted for a normal landing at the airfield. The entire trip will last approximately two hours.

Find out more: The Spaceplane: rocketing into the future – Folders | Astrium

Lynx

This two-seat, piloted space transport vehicle will take humans and payloads on a half-hour suborbital flight to 100 km (330,000 feet) and then return safely to a landing at the takeoff runway.

Like an aircraft, Lynx is a horizontal takeoff and horizontal landing vehicle, but instead of a jet or piston engine, Lynx uses its own fully reusable rocket propulsion system to depart a runway and return safely. This approach is unique compared to most other RLVs in development, such as conventional vertical rocket launches and air-launched winged rocket vehicles “dropped” at altitude from a jet powered mothership.

Find out more: XCOR Lynx Suborbital Spacecraft / spaceplane

White Knight

The White Knight is a manned, twin-turbojet research aircraft intended for high-altitude missions. First flight was in August 2002. Design mission – provides a high-altitude airborne launch of SpaceShipOne, a manned sub-orbital spacecraft. The White Knight is equipped to flight-qualify all the spacecraft systems, except rocket propulsion. The White Knight’s cockpit, avionics, ECS, pneumatics, trim servos, data system, and electrical system components are identical to those installed on SpaceShipOne. The White Knight’s high thrust-to-weight ratio and enormous speed brakes allow the astronauts in training to practice space flight maneuvers such as boost, approach, and landing with a very realistic environment. Thus, the aircraft serves as a high-fidelity moving-base simulator for SpaceShipOne pilot training.

Find out more: Scaled Composites: SpaceShipOne & White Knight

Skylon

SKYLON is an unpiloted, reusable spaceplane intended to provide inexpensive and reliable access to space. Currently in proof-of-concept phase, the vehicle will take approximately 10 years to develop and will be capable of transporting 12 tonnes of cargo into space.

Though the SKYLON has primarily been designed to launch satellites, consideration has been given to its passenger carrying capabilities. SKYLON is basically a hypersonic aircraft with hybrid engines, changing their mode of operation as the vehicle leaves the atmosphere. On return, because it is an aircraft, it has a cross range capability and ends its flights by landing conventionally on a runway.

Find out more: Reaction Engines Ltd : Current Projects : SKYLON

ARES

A unique capability to explore the atmosphere, surface and interior of Mars. During its flight, the ARES rocket-propelled airplane will fly over 500 km of geologically diverse terrain, obtaining previously unobtainable measurements of Mars’ remnant magnetic fields, atmosphere boundary layer and near-surface water.

Find out more: ARES – A Proposed Mars Scout Mission

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And not so forward-thinking (nor even really “flying”) but amazingly cool nevertheless: an 800-pound, 45-foot long paper airplane.

It’s not every day that a giant paper airplane is released high over the Arizona desert. In fact, it’s never been done. But that’s exactly what the Pima Air & Space Museum did on March 21, 2012. The video shows the complete flight (including crash landing!).

I’ll be back next week with my feet more firmly on the ground.

The headlines have been full of the story of the Captain of a JetBlue flight who panicked on board and was locked out of the cockpit. In the interests of not arguing with everyone I meet, here is a run-down of what happened, unembellished by media excitements.

Let’s get this out of the way first:

No, there is no evidence at this time that the Captain was on drugs, was known to have a brain tumour, was a terrorist himself or was an alien from Mars. Please disregard any and all headlines of this nature. No, it is not true that “a passenger had to land the plane” – an off-duty Captain was travelling on the flight and assisted the First Officer, who was the Pilot in Command throughout.

Here’s what we know so far, primarily based on the federal affidavit released on Wednesday.

The captain of JetBlue Flight 191 was Clayton Osbon, 49 with twelve years service and described by the president of JetBlue as an old friend and consummate professional. He has no history of problems.

He was featured in Richmond Hill Reflections magazine last year.

Clayton Osbon: Flight Standards Captain for JetBlue Airlines

He’s flown in 35 different types of airplanes in general aviation and is approaching eighteen thousand hours. It was his job at Net Jets, where he was hired in January of ‘94, which allowed him to fly the Gulfstream IV, the predecessor of the G450 and G550, all over the world. During this time he lived, for a few years, in Lisbon, Portugal and Lyon, France.

…At home, Clayton is working on leadership coursework. “Putting it down on eight and a half by eleven sheets of paper,” he says. He wants to be a motivational speaker down the road. “It starts with a greater enhanced knowledge of one’s being…you know, I’d like to think the world is more than just getting up in the morning, making a cup of coffee, going to work, coming home, kissing your wife good-night and going to bed.”

Flight 191 was an Airbus A320 in good condition. The first officer was Jason Dowd.

On Tuesday, Captain Osbon was late arriving for the flight and missed the routine crew briefing. The flight departed half an hour late. However, there is no evidence that he was agitated or acting bizarrely at that point.

At 07:28 EST, JetBlue Flight 191 departed New York for its 06:55 scheduled flight to Las Vegas. There were 135 passengers on board, many of whom were attending a security convention in Las Vegas. As a result, there was a large number of police officers and prison guards on the flight.

As they were climbing out of JFK, the captain referred to being evaluated by someone. First Officer Dowd did not know what that meant. Captain Osbon spoke about religion and the FO stated that his statements were not coherent. He became concerned when the the captain stated that “things just don’t matter.”

Osbon apparently spoke on the radio, telling the air traffic controllers to be quiet. He then turned off the radios and admonished his First Officer for trying to use the radio. I’ve not been able to obtain the ATC recordings of this interaction.

Osbon continued to speak whilst dimming all the instruments and made a number of comments which concerned his first officer, including “we need to take a leap of faith” and “We’re not going to Vegas.”

First Officer Dowd said that Osbon tried to “correlate completely unrelated numbers like different radio frequencies” and then began a type of sermon.

An off-duty JetBlue captain was a passenger on the flight and at about 3½ hours into the flight, the FO suggested that they invite him to the cockpit.

Captain Osbon ignored the suggestion and left the cockpit, breaking JetBlue procedure, to use the toilet at the front of the plane. He found it was occupied and banged on the door, shouting that he needed to go.

First Officer Dowd alerted the flight attendants to the situation and asked them to bring the off-duty captain to the cockpit. The First Officer then locked the cockpit door and changed the security code.

Osbon paced the length of the plane, speaking about 150 souls on board, religion, September 11 and terrorists. He appears to have walked to the back of the plane and then shouted “guys, push it to full throttle” while sprinting back to the front of the plane with the flight attendants giving chase. The Flight Officer announced over the PA system that Osbon should be restrained.

Osbon then tried to re-enter the cockpit and realised he was locked out. That’s apparently when he began to scream that the plane was going down. You can the captain at the beginning of this passenger video:

Flight attendants and several passengers pulled him away from the cockpit door and held him down in the forward galley.

The passengers were justifiably confused.

U.S. charges screaming, incoherent JetBlue pilot – Yahoo! News Canada

Passengers who were on the plane described a chaotic mid-flight scene in which a man in a JetBlue uniform, apparently locked out of the cockpit, began banging on the door and demanding to be let inside. Passengers subdued him.

“People behind me, a bunch of big guys, started going up there and trying to help, and we found out that the guy banging was actually the pilot, and he was trying to get into the cockpit because the other co-pilot had locked him out,” passenger Grant Heppes told Reuters.

“Everybody seemed pretty nervous,” he said. “Nobody was sure that was going on.”

Several male passengers were able to subdue him in the forward galley and restrained him using seat belt extensions and zip-tie handcuffs. A passenger said that in the end there were six men holding him down, with more congregating in the aisle ready to jump on the pilot if he broke free.

Affidavit depicts drama on Flight 191 | Amarillo Globe-News

Passengers described Osbon as a large man, standing more than 6 feet, 3 inches tall and weighing roughly 250 pounds. They said that when they tried to apply zip-ties to his wrists, he snapped the restraints, forcing passengers to take off their belts to bind his arms. A passenger said they held Osbon for roughly 30 minutes as the plane diverted to Amarillo.

The ATC recording of the flight coming into Amarillo, Texas has been posted on YouTube. It is interesting in that it is unremarkable. The First Officer is calm and matter-of-fact as he diverts the plane and declares an emergency.

Flight 191 landed in Amarillo at 16:13 local time on Tuesday in Amarillo.

From the affidavit

The flight attendants elected to have the aircraft land without having the assisting passengers return to their seats, because the flight attendants felt they could not risk letting Osbon get up off the floor. The aircraft landed with passengers still restraining Osbon in the galley.

JetBlue stated that they are sorry that the passengers were put into the situation but are very thankful for their efforts. “What the customers did to help our inflight crew was amazing and we really appreciate their efforts, and also the cooperation of everyone on board – it contributed to the safe landing.”

Clayton Osbon has been charged with interfering with the duties of the flight crew which can bring a sentence of up to twenty years in prison. He is currently in a guarded facility at a hospital in Amarillo.

The NTSB have the cockpit recordings and are investigating.

BlueTales » JetBlue » Update on Flight 191

On behalf of the Crew of Flight 191, we would like to express our appreciation for the public’s kind words and well wishes for the crew. We understand and appreciate everyone’s desire to hear directly from the crew regarding their experience, but they have decided to decline all media opportunities at this time in order to spend time with their families.

I’m just glad that the airline isn’t arming their captains in case of emergency: now that could have been a real threat.

A round of applause for the passengers who helped to resolve the situation. Another reminder that it is everyday people — not technology, not air marshals, not airside security — that were able to respond. We can’t predict every situation but we can rely on people to do their best to resolve problems as they encounter them.

This flying like a bird video was released on Monday and swiftly shared around the aviation community. In this two minute video, Janos Smeets shares the success of his 8 month long project to fly with “human bird wings” that he developed based on principles from Leonardo DaVinci. Last August he wrote that he was inspired by sketches that his grandfather drew of a flying bicycle which his mother found in the attic. Last week, he posted to the blog to say that his dream had finally saw reality:

I did it! This weekend I brought out my wings again for a second test. And here it is. Do I need to say more? Just watch the video

Jarno Smeets was hailed as the Flying Dutchman in the mainstream press including US, the UK, Germany, Belgium and others. Note that these articles have been updated to relate to the hoax but originally reported the story as news.

Meanwhile, the YouTube video had over four million views and twelve thousand comments, many arguing that the video was a hoax.

There were key issues with verification: the video itself does not show any detail of how the wings work and the blog itself never shares project details.

Various sites supported Jarno, with detailed explanations of the physics behind the wings and graphs from video analysis tools. Even Mythbuster’s weighed in with Thoughts on The Mechanics of Assisted Human Flight – Tested.

Meanwhile, the arguments in the YouTube comments continued. The Register updated their article with some suspicions:

Man FLIES with Android-powered homemade bird wings • The Register

We do note that there seems no reason for the ground cameras to stay so far away from the intrepid birdman during launch, and that the wings show no signs of the loading they would be under during such a flight. Furthermore the hardware doesn’t appear to contain a battery of the sort which would be required – bearing in mind that this would be a very large battery even for a flight technology more efficient than an ornithopter.

We strongly suspect that this has no more validity than certain other exotic personal-flight inventions which have been known to entrap journalists in the past.

However we would stand by our statements above “it still looks like a marvellous way to fly” and “it’s still an admirable achievement”.

Wired Science, having defended the physics, posted to state that they could not find “the man who identifies himself as Jarno Smeets”.

Bird-Man’s Resume Doesn’t Check Out: ‘Nobody Knows Him’ | Wired Science | Wired.com

A LinkedIn page for Jarno Smeets, which is linked from Smeets’ website, says that he worked at Pailton Steering Systems from 2008 to 2010. John Nollett, the group managing director for Pailton Engineering Limited, said there is no record of anyone by such a name.
Wired also contacted Coventry University in the UK, where Smeets’ online profiles claim he attended school from 2001 to 2005.
The university’s student records staff searched their full digital records database, which contains students’ names who attended from 1986 to the present. They told Wired they found only one entry for anyone by the last name of Smeets: Alexandra Smeets, who attended from 1999 to 2000. No record for Jarno Smeets could be found.

Last night, filmmaker and animator Floris Kaayk admitted on Dutch national television that the project was a hoax. (If you don’t see the English subtitles, click on the CC button.)

Kaayk admitted that he never expected to get so much attention for what he called an art media project as an experiment in online media. He created the persona “Jarno Smeets” for the project eight months ago as a means of telling a story via a blog. “It’s about the dream [of flying] that so many people have,” he said.

To be precise, Human Birdwings was an online adventure and invention story in which fictional character Jarno Smeets developed wings in a do-it-yourself manner. The intention of this project was to share a personal, yet universal dream about flying like a bird.

Kaayk posted on his personal site that he plans to distribute a “making-of” documentary about this project next month.

Meanwhile, the argument in the comments on YouTube continues…

In 2010, Continental Airlines was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for the Air France Flight 4590 disaster in Paris a decade earlier.

Continental called the judgement “absurd” and vowed to appeal. That appeal has now started in Versaille this month. The crash, in July 2000, is described as “the beginning of the end” of Concorde’s commercial flights. Concorde was retired by both Air France and British Airways in 2003.

Air France Flight 4590 departed Paris at 16:42:17 local time. Witnesses saw the plane take off with flames coming out of the engine. At 16:44:30, the burning plane stalled and crashed into the Hôtelissimo Les Relais Bleus Hotel in Gonnese. All 100 passengers and nine crew were killed as well as four people in the hotel.

The French BEA (accident investigation bureau) determined that there was a strip of metal on the runway which punctured the Concorde’s tyre.

The tyre exploded and large pieces of flying debris struck the craft. The vibrations caused a fuel valve on the wing to burst open. The resulting fuel leak was likely to have ignited from the sparks from the landing gear wiring which had been severed when the tyre exploded. The crew began aircraft rotation (take-off) as the fire ignited. The flight engineer shut down engine two in response to the fire alarm.

The undercarriage (with severed/burning electrical wiring) would not retract. The report found that the resulting configuration meant that the remaining three engines did not have sufficient power to climb. The crew attempted to divert to Le Bourget; however engine one failed and the port wing began to melt, causing further destabilisation. Finally, engines three and four failed and the crew lost control as the plane stalled into the ground.

The strip of metal, a titanium alloy strip measuring just 435x29x34mm (approx 17x1x1.3 inches), had come from a Continental Airlines DC-10 which had departed for New Jersey five minutes before the Concorde.

The accident report concludes with the following:

The accident was due to the following causes:

• High-speed passage of a tyre over a part lost by an aircraft that had taken off five minutes earlier and the destruction of the tyre.
• The ripping out of a large piece of tank in a complex process of transmission of the energy produced by the impact of a piece of tyre at another point on the tank, this transmission associating deformation of the tank skin and the movement of the fuel, with perhaps the contributory effect of other more minor shocks and /or a hydrodynamic pressure surge.
• Ignition of the leaking fuel by an electric arc in the landing gear bay or through contact with the hot parts of the engine with forward propagation of the flame causing a very large fire under the aircraft’s wing and severe loss of thrust on engine 2 then engine 1.

The BEA found that the titanium strip had not been manufactured nor installed in accordance with manufacturer procedures. Titanium was not a suitable material to use for the repair.

French authorities began a criminal investiagion of Continental Airlines. On the 6th of December in 2010, Continental Airlines was found criminally responsible for the disaster and Continental mechanic John Taylor was given a 15-month suspended sentence for negligence. Continental was fined 200,000 Euros and ordered to pay one million Euros to Air France.

Continental stated at the time that Concorde was unfit to fly and that the aircraft caught fire before hitting the metal strip.

The appeal is based on the argument that Concorde’s design was flawed and it was structural vulnerabilities which allowed such an incident to happen. Continental’s lawyer stated “Air France, a civil party, could have been among the accused if some experts hadn’t been former Air France employees.”

The Concorde already had a reputation for burst tyres and the US NTSB had expressed concern about this issue as early as 1981. However, the French BEA determined that although a burst tyre “is not an improbable event on Concorde”, neither had it ever caused a fuel fire. The BEA believe that a burst tyre without external cause explodes into smaller parts and thus could not have triggered the effect that lead to the structural failure of the fuel tank.

Continental lawyers are no longer arguing the cause of the accident but have focused on the findings. They appear to be claiming that the metal strip should not have caused such a catastrophe and the design faults of Concorde are to blame.

PPRuNe poster cwatters has pointed out that this appeal may well be dismissed by the take the victim as you find him rule:

Eggshell skull – Wikipedia

This rule holds one liable for all consequences resulting from his or her tortious (usually negligent) activities leading to an injury to another person, even if the victim suffers an unusually high level of damage (e.g. due to a pre-existing vulnerability or medical condition). The term implies that if a person had a skull as delicate as that of the shell of an egg, and a tortfeasor who was unaware of the condition injured that person’s head, causing the skull unexpectedly to break, the defendant would be held liable for all damages resulting from the wrongful contact, even if

1. such damages were not reasonably foreseeable, or
2. the tortfeasor did not intend to cause such a severe injury.

The poster points out that there is at least one case where the rule was applied in shipping collisions (PDF) but I’m unsure if there is French precedent.

The trial is expected to continue until the 9th of May although the defence is hoping for a fast dismissal: they have argued that the retrial on the same charges is unconstitutional. The first day of hearings on Thursday was devoted to procedural questions.

Henri Perrier, former head of the Concorde program at Aerospatiale, did not appear at the hearing. His lawyer argued that his 82-year-old client is too frail to attend the proceedings and requested that the case to be dropped.

French court begins hearing Concorde crash case appeal – Monsters and Critics

The court rejected a request Thursday for the case to be scrapped. It came from a lawyer for one of the accused, Henri Perrier, former head of the Concorde programme at Aerospatiale, who argued that his client, aged 82, was too frail.

The court decided instead that Perrier and another Aerospatiale employee will face separate court proceedings in January 2013. They are accused of having known about the plane’s engineering flaw and not having done anything to prevent the accident.

Meanwhile, this short documentary about the Concorde still makes me well up:

Special thanks to reader RJ Wade for bringing this to my attention.

If you’ve flown a retractable, you’ve had it drummed into you: put the undercarriage down, check you put the undercarriage down and then check it once on short final.

I came close, once. I was doing a circuit to land at North Weald. I wanted to get around quickly and took a decision not to lower the gear just yet. The warning tone sounded, of course, but I’d done it intentionally, so I ignored it. On finals to land, I did my final check: red, blue, three greens. That’s the prompt to look at the fuel flow (fully rich) and the propeller (fully fine) and the landing gears (all three extended).

Needless to say, I saw nothing where my three green lights should have been and immediately went around. I felt sick to my stomach realising how close I’d come – all it would have taken was one further distraction and I could have written off the plane.

You may think it will never happen to you but then again, none of the pilots in the following clips thought it would happen to them!

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Favourite statement on the video: “I said we were going too fast!”

We did not know, what will happen in the next 4 minutes. I was filming the approach for my personal video files, than it happens. The crash. Right after the crash, we don’t knew what was happening. We all survived. This video shows the approach to the altiport megève. Both, the pilot and the mountain rate teacher have several thousands of flight hours and a huge experience, but it happens, that the gear was forgotten. On the video you can hear the warning signal of the plane, that indicates, that the gear was not pulled out. No one was harmed by the crash.

After the crash, we tried to move the plane, but we had to get a tractor to pull the crashed plane from the runway. You can see this in the further video.

So I can give you the following advice: Check your gear twice or use a plane with a fixed gear.

I particularly like this comment by 1editor1 defending the pilots:

The gear up landing can happen to anyone who flies a retract. External pressure and life distractions will bite you at sometime, whether it‘s running a stop sign, leaving the iron on or car unlocked. The perfect storm for a gear up. You’ve booked that getaway with your buddies in the TB20 that you haven’t flown for 5 weeks. This has been a ball buster. Your wife has just served the divorce papers, the bank won’t refinance your home and your daughter is pregnant by your best friend. FOCUS!

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Of course, the other risk is that you raise the landing gear before the plane has left the ground, as in this poor Russian MIG:

A safety “squat switch” prevents the gear from raising when the weight of the plane is on it. The safety is there in case of inadvertent selection of GEAR UP while on the ramp or taxi. Once the weight of the aircraft is removed, the gear will operate as selected.
This pilot simply took off with the gear lever in the up position, as soon as the weight was removed, the gear raised as designed.

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Landing a big plane with its gear up is a particular challenge (although I think quite a bit less likely to happen as a result of a missed checklist!).

Here’s a Boeing 727 doing it right:

The flight IR-742 from Moscow, Sheremetyevo was on approach to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini Airport around when the crew did not receive a down and locked indication for the nose gear and aborted the approach. Following unsuccessful troubleshooting the crew decided to divert to Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport where a low approach confirmed the nose gear was not extended. The crew subsequently performed a landing without the nose gear and came to a stand still on both main gear and the nose of the aircraft. The aircraft was evacuated, no injuries occurred.

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And here’s a hang glider… sadly not quite doing it right:

100% pilot error. A $200.00 Landing. I should have landed at the lower lz.

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And finally, the most beautiful gear-up landing I’ve ever seen was this King Air landing at Atlanta, Georgia, as shown on CNN:

I have to admit: that’s a smoother landing than I manage with the gear down!