My family and I had a really wonderful flight on a UAL B738 on the 23rd CHS to ORD. It’s an amazingly competent and comfortable aircraft. We usually get RJs in Charleston, so a honest to goodness full sized “contemporary” airliner is really appreciated. United has their A team working our little town. I remember not so long ago your only option was Metroliner with a stop in Walterboro or Conway on the way to ATL.
Juan Brown has a pretty good take on this, IMHO.
150mph at impact good lord.
Yeah, I think that on the initial approach they were in the 140s. Me, like every other pilot, looking at that video is thinking why the hell were they not dirtied up? Bless them, but as JB says they must have been in ground effect for a while.
I imagine it’s ref was way faster than that. A fully loaded -800 with a typical landing fuel load approaches in the low 150s. But that’s Flaps 30. The Jeju flight had Flaps 15 or less, maybe way less. I would put it’s ref at 160 - 170. (Knots). They were going off the end regardless just because of the low initial friction of metal on pavement. What made the day impossible was that odd nose-up attitude. “Odd” only if they knew that the gear was in the well. If they thought the gear was down, the pitch attitude makes sense.
Reports keep talking about a “gear malfunction”. I don’t buy it. The likelihood of both mains failing to freefall is astronomically low. And they had one hydraulic system working as indicated by the right thrust reverser. So it’s unlikely that even the normal extension was inop. The flaps can be extended to 15 electrically in the event of a hydraulic failure.
The hard part about this will be the fact that it took place in Korea. They will work as hard as they can to save face and blame everything except for what actually happened until there’s overwhelming evidence to say otherwise.
They are lower in the ground effect, which normally would make an aircraft pitch up… Hard to tell by how much, of course, but a gear up landing is more or less a test flight. You don’t really know what to expect. And, as you say, if they anticipated a normal touch down, that never came, that makes things seriously hard to predict.
The New York Times interviewed the individual who recorded the highest quality video of the Jeju flight passing overhead, the teardrop pattern to the opposite runway, and the crash. He owns the restaurant located at the spot where he recorded the video. The reason he started recording was that the plane was making, as he called them, “loud bangs”.
Loud bangs says a lot. And it is chilling. Now, like all of us, I am only slightly more informed than I was when I wrote the initial post above two days ago. But I have what I feel COULD be a clear image of the tragedy. A similar awakening happened to me after the Lion Air Max crash years ago. I started out thinking, “Wow, those guys really screwed the pooch!” Being able to keep myself separated from their experience allowed me some detachment. But then a picture began to develop and I saw myself possibly taking the same steps that led them to their doom.
Back to Jeju. The bangs COULD indicate compressor stalls. I’ve experienced them on a couple of occasions. They are loud, scary and often push the jet laterally as power surges with each cycle. The only recourse is to reduce the power. IF the stall isn’t caused by damage, the engine will operate normally thereafter. In one video, the plane can be seen after its initial go-around climbing away and a puff can be seen from the right engine (the engine who’s reverser can be seen deployed during the skid).
[Warning: what follows is conjecture. Maybe even “fiction” is a better word.] The POSSIBLE scenario that shakes me is this: The crew hit birds on their initial approach. MAYBE an engine was smoked at that point. Usually pilots don’t go around from an engine failure on final. However, if they saw/feared more birds, it’s not totally off the reservation to go. The left motor was lost. But now the right motor begins to compressor stall—making the bangs heard by the photographer. Losing power and energy, after the stress of a bird strike and go-around, is enough to take any pilot to their limit. The bangs continue. The only choice is to reduce that one good throttle. In the panic of the situation they teardrop around for runway 19 before they become a glider with no options. (In my fiction…) the left engine is gone, so no hydraulic pressure there. The right engine is damaged. Now that should not affect hydraulic pressure so long as the core is turning. But maybe(?) the pump was taken out by some flying portion of the damaged engine. (That is a generous interpretation because the right reverser can be seen deployed. There was SOME hydraulic pressure.) The captain feels his/her only hope is to point toward the 19 numbers before the right engine fails entirely. The FO lowers gear and flaps as commanded but nothing happens. There is the alternate gear extension on the floor but there is no time and the captain is completely focused on getting the jet on the ground. There is also an electric flap extension on the overhead but that takes many minutes to deploy. Again, time. The other, less generous, interpretation is that one pilot pointed the jet at the numbers and neither pilot thought about configuration. Like I said, this is all likely my own fiction. But I can experience it and viscerally relate to the possible actions that led to the result we witnessed.
I agree with much of your fiction @smokinhole …
I suppose it’s also possible they shut the wrong engine down (hey…it happens) and were limping around on the damaged engine. The urge to return to an airport immediately is often one that is a mistake…but different circumstances have different requirements. Smoke in the cabin/cockpit is one of those ones that is sometimes a land right now item (unless you can determine the source and isolate it of course). I haven’t really watched the video many times. I guess it isn’t feasible that they touched down…scraped…realized the gear wasn’t down…and then went full power again? I don’t see the rudder moving much…so that doesn’t seem to be the case IF they were single engine.
I rarely turn to fighter pilots for lessons in airmanship. But one thing they only half-jokingly say is step one in any emergency is “wind the clock”. And they mean it. It’s down there my your leg. Take a moment to wind it (,or flick it, or pretend it’s still there.) This moment of easy nonsense gives your brain a chance to put the problem in perspective. The first instinct is almost always the wrong one. Our mantra: Fly The Airplane; Silence The Warning; Confirm The Emergency.
I just read that while the black boxes have been recovered, the data recorder was missing its power cable…this just gets weirder doesn’t it.
Well if true, that sucks. But the CVR will tell them 90% of what they need to know.
These are absolutely viable scenarios.
I see media and some ”experts” discuss this accident, secure in the knowledge that this is the airports fault! Who puts a wall there?
It’s just another take on the bad apple theory. It’s easy to find one causal factor that we can blame the whole unfortunate tragedy on. And indeed, had the runway or clearway been longer, this would most likely had a successful outcome.
But thousands of aircraft have made successful landings there, and none of those blew up, so was this a ”dangerous” airport? Enough people have seen that wall to be able to have informed opinions about it.
But back to the crew… Were mistakes made? Probably. There always are. But that’s not really interesting other than as a confirmation that there were humans handling a breakdown of technology.
I mentioned it before, the crew did what made sense to them, at the time.
@BeachAV8R’s example of shutting down the wrong engine has indeed happened, more than once. The crews who did that didn’t identify a faulty engine and said, hey, let’s shut down the healthy engine and see if that fixes the broken one! That would not have made sense. No, they had some other motivation for doing what they did, because they almost certainly performed their actions because they meant it was the right thing to do, based on their interpretation of the situation. And this is what needs to be investigated. Not why they didn’t do what we in hindsight can see that they should’ve done. We need to see why they did what they did. Because if one trained and qualified crew tried to solve the problem in that way, you can be certain that other crews could’ve done the same.
What happened in the cockpit of the Jeju 737 will be investigated in depth. It will be interesting to see what the investigators will focus on.
I hope they focus on a crew that tried to keep their safety net together, when technology failed them. Or will they focus on a crew that should’ve travelled to the future to foresee the outcome of their actions and then go back in time to save the day, as investigators unfortunately often do…
Sit on your hands for a while, as we call it 
This is La Guardia, one of the busiest airports in America.
Both of LGA’s runways are 7002’ long, 1000’ shorter than the shortened accident runway. The accident crew had 400’ from departing the runway to hitting the concrete. At La Guardia you have 200’ until you hit the fence and then go for a swim. Is La Guardia safe? Yes. Is it less safe than nearby JFK? Yes. We make these risk assessments every time we fly as passengers and pilots. In 1992 the crew of USAir 405 assessed wrongly when they chose not to re-deice the jet. They went off the end. That was not La Guardia’s fault.
Something tells me skidding into water is a different type of impact than smacking into a concrete structure (which happens to be against ICAO regulations). They aren’t equivalent comparisons, objectively speaking.
And if my opinion is the only one disagreeing with a large number of experts, well, I’d have to start reassessing my opinion.
Of course it is. The point was that not all airports are created equally.
Here’s a pic I snipped from a video from youtube. It’s the threshold for RWY13 LGA. There’s quite a drop-off there and lots of structure that will wreak havoc with a thin skinned airframe.
ICAO issues guidelines and recommendations that the local government agencies can make into rules and regs.
There are many, many, non standard airports around the world. Almost all of the ones here in Norway…
Not sure what you mean by that, but my view on this is that there are preciously few actual experts who have expressed anything in the media. The real experts usually keep quiet, until they know. We are just speculating here.
Another point I was trying to make, and actually wrote, is that it’s far too easy to focus on just one causal factor. Yes, the embankment did them in. If that didn’t do it, the airport perimeter wall may have, etc. Everybody knew the embankment was there and it has been factored into every performance calculation ever made, before takeoff and landing. We need to study more facts to properly explain why 179 people died in that crash.
I had a brilliant examiner and trainer a couple sessions back through Flight Safety on the PC-24. Some of the other guys don’t like him…think he is too tough…don’t like his delivery. I totally got it though…I accepted that he had things to teach me and was willing to put aside my aviation prejudices. The biggest one for me that he was seeing in me was that I wasn’t “trusting” the airplane. I’m only a few years into this Honeywell Apex avionics…and the PC-24 is designed for single pilot…so it does “help” you a ton…but an old-schooler like me is always wary. At one point he had me put away my iPad with my approach plates and everything and said “You don’t need those. Yes, you’ll use them in the real airplane…but I just want to show you that you can trust the airplane and the profiles that were built to make it easy for you.” And he was right. All of the approach information is in the airplane. Approach transitions, altitudes, speeds, missed approach…all of it. And the managed speed modes are there such that you are basically just swinging flaps and gear and letting the plane do its thing. He knew I was already a good pilot (well…as @smokinhole once put it (I think)…I have the appearance of it…I can’t remember that post of just being confident and that sort of being the tail that wags the dog…) Anyway…he knew I was an good (OK-ish) pilot and he was just pointing out that I could be better if I also learned to trust the things that were built to help me. Free up some of my very limited brain power.
Anyway. Damn…that was a long introduction to the real story…which was about…
This instructor was basically relating to my partner…who is a bit fast-handsy…the story of when he was a brand new CRJ co-pilot. He was paired with a senior captain and on takeoff there was a big bang…some caution light or another went off…and they start climbing…and this obviously wasn’t an item that was of supreme importance based on the Captain’s experience. So my instructor was sitting there all green and anxious and ready to go…checklist out…and the Captain his the PA button and asks for a cup of coffee. They are continuing the climb…coffee comes forward…Captain takes it…takes a sip. Sets it down. Turns to my instructor… “Let’s see what we got for X problem…” And they start to run the checklist. No panic. No instinctive reaching for stuff.
There are times when that is absolutely necessary. No doubt about it. But many times…quick action can just dig yourself deeper.
Anyway…so the mantra of the briefing was basically…“Take a sip of coffee…” And even as a relatively older and experienced pilot…I took the briefing as a great reinforcement. He is a good instructor. No telling if the story is actually true or not… LOL…but it was a good one the way he told it.
Beautiful!
I was sitting on the deck at the Downwind at PDK at dusk one summer evening. Some pilot friends and I were having a few pints talking planes, checking out who was on the ramp at Signature, and of course grading landings. A TBM, Malibu, or a similar turbine single got it wrong and ran off the end of 20L. He/she got into the approach lights, but not as far as the fence. Firetrucks were scrambled and when we saw no fire and a door open, we chuckled and become instant cynics and experts on the accident and what the pilot did wrong.
Not long after, maybe a week, I had had lunch there again and was heading back to the office. Traffic slowed to a crawl passing through a subdivision. When I finally arrived at the seen of what I thought was a fender bender, I looked to my left and there was a Piper Saratoga balancing on its nose, the tail perfectly vertical held in place by tree branches. It had landed in the pines after a fuel starvation issue and slid through the branches to rest in someone’s front yard. The cabin door was open and the occupants gone, already taken by first responders. I heard through the grapevine later that they didn’t make it. Damn. I began regretting earlier cynicism.
Hoover giving his usual no nonsense take on what we know so far:
