Lion Air JT610

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GBNorman

OBS Chief
Joined
Feb 26, 2017
Messages
573
Just my less than educated thoughts:

The crash of Lion Air JT610 shortly after  takeoff from Jakarta resulted from two unrelated events.

The inbound Flight Crew reported malfunction with airspeed and altitude controls known as pitot tubes, that have been around since the "Spirit of St. Louis", if not before.

The maintenance facility "signed off", but did little else.

The JT610 crew just plain "forgot" how to manually fly an aircraft. Great to have controls so sophisticated that that the Flight Plan is simply "loaded in" and automation "takes it from there", but the guys up front failed in their responsibility to know something wasn't right....and SPLASH.
 
Certainly not an unrealistic scenario, but I get the impression that they were well aware something wasn't right, it was reported that they requested return to origin airport because of trouble. 
 
The icing of the pitot tubes contributed to the crash of Air France A332 in 2009.  The icing  occurred at a high altitude.  Could the pitot tubes be a contributing cause in this tragedy given the altitude that the plane reached and the climate of the region where the accident took place?
 
A pitot tube is an extremely useful device but it is not a fundamental necessity for a sufficiently trained human pilot to successfully operate and land a modern commercial aircraft.
 
I believe that it was AF 447 that you are referencing, but the aircraft was an A330-200 series, so it would be abbreviated as an A332. 


The flight that I referenced was the one that departed Rio de Janerio  to Paris.  The plane was a A330.  I was not aware of the flight number AF 447.

It is a sad reading for anyone reading the accident report for this AF flight.  When this Lion Air flight's accident report is finalized, I don't doubt that it will reveal sadness for those families who lost loved ones.
 
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It appears that the Flight Deck knew something was wrong in that they requested permission to return.  It further appears that the aircraft stalled. Reportedly they were at FL5 (5000ft) when the event occurred, which one would think is sufficient to disable the playthings and fly out of the stall (don't know first hand, but don't they teach that stuff in flight school?).

Sounds like a rerun of AF447.
 
AF447 was cruising at FL35 at the start of the incident, quite a ways into the flight, rather than at a relatively low altitude at the beginning of a flight.  Anything any of us do now is just guessing, and we should probably wait for solid info, like radar track, radio transcripts and FDR/CVR readouts. 
 
It is probably the most fundamental device on the aircraft. More so than anything.
A functioning pitot tube is necessary for automated analysis and programmed flight management.  That being said, a sufficiently trained and tested human pilot should not require an active pitot tube in order to successfully operate and land an otherwise properly functioning aircraft.  When pitot tubes fail a human pilot can work around the loss of instrumentation and automated systems which rely upon those measurements.  Malfunctioning pitot tubes are listed as contributing factors in the loss of several commercial passenger aircraft, not because they are absolutely necessary to safely operate the aircraft in question, but because conventional pilot training and routine aircraft operation can leave human pilots insufficiently prepared to recognize and mitigate such failures in a timely fashion.  If losing a pitot tube is tantamount to losing the entire aircraft we may as well hand everything over to a computer at this point.
 
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Gotta sound like an industry insider ya know? :lol:

Incidentally, I am often guilty of it myself, so this is partly self-criticism. The industry that I professionally belong to is too exotic in most cases for much public interest. So I masquerade around as insider of other industries from time to time :hi:
 
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A first-time for me since 9/11; flying EDDM/MUC to KORD/ORD this past August, the United Captain enabled "Channel 9" for departure. "I'd swear" I heard Flight Levels referenced with two digits, i.e. FL35 = 35000ft.

An interesting note; while English is the worldwide language for Air Traffic, some of the "English" spoken overseas is "not exactly" that of the King. Those here who regularly travel to Asia will likely agree.
 
A first-time for me since 9/11; flying EDDM/MUC to KORD/ORD this past August, the United Captain enabled "Channel 9" for departure. "I'd swear" I heard Flight Levels referenced with two digits, i.e. FL35 = 35000ft.
You sure you were at cruising altitude at that point? And that you didn't miss a zero?
 
Quote: cpotisch

You sure you were at cruising altitude at that point? And that you didn't miss a zero?

 "I'd swear" I heard Flight Levels referenced with two digits, i.e. FL35 = 35000ft.

But be it noted "I'd swear" is within quotations.

However,  let me note that I don't fly that much - only three trips (six flights) this year - and all on United. I have no idea if other airlines offer their passengers air traffic monitoring.
 
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An interesting note; while English is the worldwide language for Air Traffic, some of the "English" spoken overseas is "not exactly" that of the King. Those here who regularly travel to Asia will likely agree.
The quality of English use by ATC controllers varies widely across Asia. I have flown on the UA nonstop from EWR to DEL and BOM where Channel 9 was on, and one time we even overflew Iran. In general the ATC over most of the Stans used passable English. The Iranian controller was professional using crisp clear English. The American controller in Afghanistan did not even bother responding until we were half way across Afghanistan. In Pakistan we were greeted  with a "Salaam Aleikum", after that it was reasonable English, until departure with a "Khuda Haafiz". Indian controllers were professional but interestingly using standard greeting with non-Indian aircraft, and an Indian greeting with some Indian aircraft. If you want to witness/hear what apparently sounded like controlled chaos you have to spend some time listening in on Mumbai TCA. If you think New York or SOCAL is bad you haven't heard anything yet.

Later on I was looking at general traffic density in the areas we passed, and what struck me is the general lack of traffic density on the corridors through the Stans, including Pakistan with some additional domestic traffic. But once you enter India, whewh! It sure has a very robust domestic market with a huge collection of international O/D and overflights, what with almost every flight from Europe to Southeast Asia overflying some part or the other of India as it seemed.
 
"I once heard" that internally within Russia, the Controllers speak in Russian. If any foundation to this, it is likely in areas in which there is no international traffic.

Lest we forget, Russia is a "mighty big place".
 
"I once heard" that internally within Russia, the Controllers speak in Russian. If any foundation to this, it is likely in areas in which there is no international traffic.

Lest we forget, Russia is a "mighty big place".
The Russian controllers spoke widely varying quality of English with the UA flight. At least on the channel that was managing what I presume is the en route function of an international corridor, there was no Russian spoken.
 
A functioning pitot tube is necessary for automated analysis and programmed flight management.  That being said, a sufficiently trained and tested human pilot should not require an active pitot tube in order to successfully operate and land an otherwise properly functioning aircraft.  When pitot tubes fail a human pilot can work around the loss of instrumentation and automated systems which rely upon those measurements.  Malfunctioning pitot tubes are listed as contributing factors in the loss of several commercial passenger aircraft, not because they are absolutely necessary to safely operate the aircraft in question, but because conventional pilot training and routine aircraft operation can leave human pilots insufficiently prepared to recognize and mitigate such failures in a timely fashion.  If losing a pitot tube is tantamount to losing the entire aircraft we may as well hand everything over to a computer at this point.
Not sure what you're trying to say, but pitot tubes are absolutely essential to be operational, at least one of them at least. It has less to do with automated flight, and more to do with that they tell the airspeed of the aircraft to the pilots. In small pistons, they are directly linked to the airspeed indicator. In larger aircraft it goes to an air data computer and then directly to the airspeed indicator. Whether hand flying or in auto-pilot, the pilots need to know how fast the aircraft is going through the air. It is probably THE most important piece of information to have, and you can't have that without working pitot tubes. Luckily there are three on most commercial aircraft. The likelihood of loosing all three are slim to none. I'll give you that it does take proper monitoring and crosschecking to find the bad pitot tube, if it were to happen. The plane usually tells you if there starts to be a discrepancy. I suppose if all three tubes went bad, there are charts in the Quick Reference Handbook that we can dig through to look up weight and thrust settings to fly in case things really get. It's probably the last thing I want to do. Also, automated flight is a tool to transfer workload between the computer and the human. Even when it's on, pilots constantly have to monitor and always have to tell it what to do. Many times, it's actually a higher work load on the pilot to have it on, so we turn it off. It's all about workload management. In the end, pitot tubes are essential.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/asia/lion-air-crash-safety-failures.html

Gobble Gobble

The Times has quite an article today reporting on Lion Air safety deficiencies.  Of interest is the report how it is their practice simply to "cannibalize" one aircraft for a part to repair another (guarantee you the Air Force is known for that, anyone else around here who has been in Service knows their branch does same). However, rather than grounding the canibalized aircraft, they will simply replaced that part with the defective one from the other aircraft

Oh well, X your fingers.
 
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