Air France jet landed too far down the runway, probe finds

"Quoting data from the ground radar and witnesses..."

I guess a $200 CCTV camera and $1000 digital video recorder running
24/7 is way too expensive or sophisticated to have at an airport to
provide a video record of take-offs and landings. Instead we'll pay
thousands of $$$ for specialists and external services, consultants,
to try to figure out just where and how the plane landed.

So we have to rely on ground radar and eye witness accounts of such
incidents.

Yea, I guess it makes sense that a corner gas station has a video
recording system to catch people that pump gas and then drive away
without paying. It makes more sense to have a video system recording
that situation than what what happens to airplanes at our major
airports...

We wouldn't want to catch people in the act of being negligent or
botching their job. No, that would be too unfair.

I bet it's the pilot's union that is against having full-time video
recording of airport / runway operations.

The Air France pilot's ****ed up, plane and simple. Better for them
that this case will be boiled down to heresay about where the plane
touched down, arguments about accuracy of ground radar, etc etc.

-------------------------------------------

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2...tm?POE=NEWISVA

Air France jet landed too far down the runway, probe finds

TORONTO (AP) — The Air France jet that crashed earlier this week
appeared to have landed too far down the runway, which may have
contributed to it skidding off its path and into a ravine before
bursting into flames, investigators said Friday.

All 309 people on board survived.

Investigators said it was too soon to determine whether the long
landing, combined with torrential rains and gusting winds, was to
blame for the crash.

"We do have some information that the aircraft did land long," the
chief investigator for Canada's Transportation Safety Board, Real
Levasseur, told a news briefing

-------------

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems...8/s1431629.htm

The Air France plane which crashed at a Toronto airport landed a long
way down the runway before overshooting and ending up in a fiery
wreck, a senior investigator said on Friday.

The Canadian Transportation Safety Board's lead investigator, Real
Levasseur, confirmed there had been problems with the landing Tuesday
when asked about a newspaper report that flight A358 was too far down
the runway and could not stop in time.

"There are quite a few witnesses that did state that they observed the
aircraft landing halfway down the runway," Mr Lavasseur said.

"The information that I have is that the aircraft landed longer than
normally or longer than usual for this type of aircraft."

Quoting data from the ground radar and witnesses, the Toronto Globe
and Mail newspaper said the big Airbus A340 jet was "nearly halfway
down the 2,800-metre runway 24L before it touched".

Canada's Transport Minister Jean Lapierre said just after Tuesday's
crash that he had been told the plane had "landed too late".

Mr Levasseur said on Thursday that the plane was travelling at almost
150 kilometres an hour when it left the runway.

The plane landed in a violent lightning storm and ended up 200 metres
from the runway in a wooded gully but all 297 passengers and 12 crew
survived the near disaster.

Two of the crew and 12 passengers remained in hospital on Thursday,
some with broken backs, but none of the injuries were considered
life-threatening.

The Globe and Mail said investigators were "puzzled" by the high-speed
overrun, but one scenario was that after the plane touched down too
far along the runway, the pilot momentarily reapplied power as if he
was going to take off again and try a new approach.

The operation is called a "go-around" and is the recommended procedure
for an unstable approach when the aircraft has only limited stopping
distance.

Investigators have questioned the co-pilot who was in control for the
landing, but no details have been given.

Experts have found the black box flight recorders but they are to be
sent to France for examination by the French Accident Investigation
Bureau.

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Fly Guy wrote:
"Quoting data from the ground radar and witnesses..."

I guess a $200 CCTV camera and $1000 digital video recorder running
24/7 is way too expensive or sophisticated to have at an airport to
provide a video record of take-offs and landings. Instead we'll pay
thousands of $$$ for specialists and external services, consultants,
to try to figure out just where and how the plane landed.

So we have to rely on ground radar and eye witness accounts of such
incidents.

Yea, I guess it makes sense that a corner gas station has a video
recording system to catch people that pump gas and then drive away
without paying. It makes more sense to have a video system recording
that situation than what what happens to airplanes at our major
airports...

We wouldn't want to catch people in the act of being negligent or
botching their job. No, that would be too unfair.

I bet it's the pilot's union that is against having full-time video
recording of airport / runway operations.

The Air France pilot's ****ed up, plane and simple. Better for them
that this case will be boiled down to heresay about where the plane
touched down, arguments about accuracy of ground radar, etc etc.

Nice assumption. You know what happens when you ASSUME.

Obviously, you have heard of what windshear and microbursts can
do, with giving gains on reported winds by the tower at the time they
were landing. Those gains could easily push any given plane further
down the runway than they intend to touch down at. It happens all the
time when wind shear advisories are in effect at an airport. This just
so happens to be one of those cases. Not that the pilot screwed up. But
that the weather severely impacted the touchdown.

And before thinking about asking to go around for another
attempt, the climbout would have put the plane directly into one of the
two main thunderstorm cells there. The only other thing they could have
done, would have been to divert to CYUL from the beginning. They didn't
want to because a) CYYZ was still open, and b) it was at the pilot's
discretion (no, that does not put him in the wrong, nor imply he was
wrong).

In short, the pilot did what he thought was right for that
time, and encountered weather phenomena that caused the landing to be
too long, and crash.

BL.
- --
Brad Littlejohn | Email:
Unix Systems Administrator, |
Web + NewsMaster, BOFH.. Smeghead! | http://www.sbcglobal.net/~tyketto
PGP: 1024D/E319F0BF 6980 AAD6 7329 E9E6 D569 F620 C819 199A E319 F0BF

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A Guy Called Tyketto wrote:
In short, the pilot did what he thought was right for that
time, and encountered weather phenomena that caused the landing to be
too long, and crash.

We don't know what the pilot did.

We don't know when the pilot realised something was wrong with the landing and
if, at that point, he had any options.

This investigation will have plenty of recommendations that will span a lot of
areas from runway ends, airport operations and weather info communications and
pilot training on how to better evaluate landing risks and TOGA decision.

If I were on that plane (and had a window seat), I'd (a) know from
experience how far is too far as far as touch-down is, and (b) I'd
have my GPS on (like I usually do when landing at any airport) and I'd
have YYX-24 selected as my destination (I have several GPS waypoints
programmed for YYZ, both for the take-off and touch-down points). If
I were on that plane, I'd have the whole approach stored on my GPS and
I'd already have it plotted on my computer when I'd get home (with an
over-lay of YYZ) to see where it touched down.

Why don't you speak to the issue of airports (in general, YYZ in
particular) not having a continuous-loop video recording goings on of
the runways, apron, etc? When will the airports get out of the stone
age and do the right thing and have a video record of their
operations? Or are they too afraid they'd lose control of their
ability to dodge blame when things happen? Is it the ATC's ? the
pilots? Why are they afraid to have a video recording? Doesn't the
flying public deserve such a system, if only so that those bozo's can
learn from their mistakes?

(and yes, the story of the jet landing too far down the runway is
getting lots of traction in the media).

Fly Guy wrote:
Why don't you speak to the issue of airports (in general, YYZ in
particular) not having a continuous-loop video recording goings on of
the runways, apron, etc?

I agree with you on this. Consider the Concorde incident. Had they had video
cameras on the runway, they may have been able to prove which airplane had
lost metal pieces before the Concorde took off.


This may be all moot though. The canadian government seems to be buckling
under the pressure from the police state south of the border and will
institute a no-fly list with data shared with the bush and bliar regime. There
may be a lot less flying in Canada.

Fly Guy wrote:

If I were on that plane (and had a window seat), I'd (a) know from
experience how far is too far as far as touch-down is, and (b) I'd
have my GPS on (like I usually do when landing at any airport) and I'd
have YYX-24 selected as my destination (I have several GPS waypoints
programmed for YYZ, both for the take-off and touch-down points). If
I were on that plane, I'd have the whole approach stored on my GPS and
I'd already have it plotted on my computer when I'd get home (with an
over-lay of YYZ) to see where it touched down.

Are GPS devices permitted on descent?

mrtravel wrote:

Are GPS devices permitted on descent?

If they could, they'd tell you to turn off your pace maker if you had
one.

Since I've established that my Gecko GPS doesn't interfere with the
planes I'm on, I use it when I feel like it (sometimes covertly).

Fly Guy wrote:
mrtravel wrote:

Are GPS devices permitted on descent?

If they could, they'd tell you to turn off your pace maker if you had
one.

Since I've established that my Gecko GPS doesn't interfere with the
planes I'm on,

Has the airline industry accepted your findings.


I use it when I feel like it (sometimes covertly).

--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

Joseph Meehan wrote:

Since I've established that my Gecko GPS doesn't interfere with
the planes I'm on,

Has the airline industry accepted your findings.

Insurance companies play a larger role in directing or creating the
in-flight rules that are implimented by the airlines. Aircraft
manufacturers are strangely silent on the issue of electronic items
used by passengers. When liability is even a remote possibility, the
answer is always to dis-allow the behavior. Lumped in with that are
concerns (legit or not) that pax must be focused during takeoff and
landing and have nothing to divert their attention. We are told it's
because of technical (interference) reasons, but that's largely a
cover story.

Lies, mis-information and incomplete information form the back-bone of
the operation of commercial aircraft, the interaction between crew and
passengers, between gate-agents and passengers, and even control tower
and pilots. Immediately after the crash-landing in Toronto, ATC was
telling arriving planes that they'd better divert - that the airport
would be closed "for quite a while". They were not told that a plane
had crash landed, and even if they had, pilots of planes still in the
air would not be telling their passengers of the incident and that it
was the reason they were being diverted.

A central concept regarding passenger use of electronics is to
prohibit the use of any device that can give passengers any sort of
real-time information about what is happening in the world around them
(in general) and specifically their immediate surroundings (inside
their own plane, at the their destination airport, etc). This
includes radio and cell phone use, and (probably) the more rare use of
GPS (an incredibly useful source of true information about where the
plane is and where it's going, if you're so inclined to want to know).

If carry-on electronics (and their uncontrolled use on-board) really
did pose a threat to a plane, then they'd be taken away from us at the
screening and x-ray security stations (along with nail clippers,
lighters, switch-blade style car-keys, etc).

Fly Guy wrote:
Joseph Meehan wrote:

Since I've established that my Gecko GPS doesn't interfere with
the planes I'm on,

Has the airline industry accepted your findings.

Insurance companies play a larger role in directing or creating the
in-flight rules that are implimented by the airlines. Aircraft
manufacturers are strangely silent on the issue of electronic items
used by passengers. When liability is even a remote possibility, the
answer is always to dis-allow the behavior. Lumped in with that are
concerns (legit or not) that pax must be focused during takeoff and
landing and have nothing to divert their attention. We are told it's
because of technical (interference) reasons, but that's largely a
cover story.

Lies, mis-information and incomplete information form the back-bone of
the operation of commercial aircraft, the interaction between crew and
passengers, between gate-agents and passengers, and even control tower
and pilots. Immediately after the crash-landing in Toronto, ATC was
telling arriving planes that they'd better divert - that the airport
would be closed "for quite a while". They were not told that a plane
had crash landed, and even if they had, pilots of planes still in the
air would not be telling their passengers of the incident and that it
was the reason they were being diverted.

A central concept regarding passenger use of electronics is to
prohibit the use of any device that can give passengers any sort of
real-time information about what is happening in the world around them
(in general) and specifically their immediate surroundings (inside
their own plane, at the their destination airport, etc). This
includes radio and cell phone use, and (probably) the more rare use of
GPS (an incredibly useful source of true information about where the
plane is and where it's going, if you're so inclined to want to know).

If carry-on electronics (and their uncontrolled use on-board) really
did pose a threat to a plane, then they'd be taken away from us at the
screening and x-ray security stations (along with nail clippers,
lighters, switch-blade style car-keys, etc).

In other words No.



--
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit