I was hired in as a Captain with Air Tahoma. Urs Anderegg was the Captain I did most of my 25 hours IOE with. Urs was one heck of a Pilot and human being. After my training I was sent to the Philippines to fly the last 5 months of a FedEx contract from Subic Bay to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. When that was over I was airline home. As it turned out, my Northwest flight from Japan was landing in Detroit about the same time Urs and the other 2 guys were being killed in Columbus. (Labor Day, 2008) I haven’t read through to many of the comments here because all the couch potato super pilots bug me. For those that care. One of the F/O’s at Air Tahoma put up a short video as a memorial to Urs Anderegg. Maybe it will help if all those super pilots actually see the man their criticizing. Urs had years as a B727 Captain. He was a Sweed. One correction to the video. The guy in the right seat flew the CV580 20 years earlier as a Captain. But this was a new hire training flight. So I wouldn’t call him equally experienced. ruclips.net/video/e2vOCPRgDog/видео.htmlsi=p3r6jarNgeAVPlgE
@ I knew the mechanic that hook the cables up wrong. But just as a fellow company employee, not personally. I was sent to Miami and actually started flying a run Urs usually flew. I had my own incident in Miami. Taking off one morning at gross weight, at about 100kts the left engine auto feathered. It happened so fast it about jerked me off the runway before I could get the power levers pulled back to idle. Come to find out they had the prop assembly off during the night and when they put it back on there’s some Orings that had to be lined up, and they didn’t get it right and as I was taxing out it was pumping prop oil out down to the stand pipe. (Just enough oil left to auto feather) mechanics in training had done that without supervision. If I would have gotten it airborne and it auto feathered at say 100’ I’m positive I would have been a smoking hole in Miami. The Urs crash and my experience really worked on me. I quit a month later, the day before the FAA shut Air Tahoma down with 30 violations, never to be allow in ANY kind of aviation business ever again. I always thought the mechanic would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. But I don’t believe he was, nor do I know what happened.
It is totally wrong to lay even some blame on the captain in this crash. We are trained to react to certain events/conditions in specific ways; training reinforces behaviors that become automatic over many hours of flying. When the crap hits the fan, training takes over. The captain did the best he could to save the crew and the airplane. The mechanic caused this.
@@Milkmans_Son You would not find this on walk around. Control movement and direction would be normal. He had an un-airworthy aircraft and no Altitude or time.
@@Milkmans_Sononly flight control free movement is checked. They don’t physically check direction of travel, and especially trim. The crew depends on the proper maintenance procedures and inspections by the ground crew. My son is a senior crew chief ( Tech Sargent) in the U.S. Air Force in charge of F-35 fighter aircraft maintenance. The buck stops with them!
I recall a similar incident involving a friend and a Canadian Forces CC-109 Cosmopolitan. He too was faced with the elevator trim being reversed, however, he recognized the elevator trim problem and was able to safely return and land after take-off.
Oh my goodness ... my *very first flight* was on a CV-580 FL564 LNK to OMA ... I wasn't even a teenager yet (just 'mature for my age'). I took the Grehound bus from Omaha to Lincoln, took an 'airport limousine' to the airport and boarded the flight. I will *never forget it* ... and the engines were so loud, I sw-ore to myself that "I couldn't even hear myself think"; but I was absolutely captivated by it all.
This is a very common error. Trim tabs operate in the opposite direction from what an uneducated mechanic might assume. I got into a huge argument with my supervisor one day over which way the tab needed to move. He had Air Force training, I had vocational training that he always viewed as a pansy-ass copout to REAL training. We were rigging controls on a now-extinct business jet called a Lockheed JetStar I. He had instructed three junior mechanics in how to do this. I caught one of them rigging an aileron tab backwards and told him to rig it opposite. He said the supervisor told him to do it that way. I went and told him the guys were rigging the tabs backwards and he blew up at me about me never knowing what I was talking about and keep my nose out of it because my ideas were totally wrong and ridiculous to even suggest it, yadayada... I went off and got the Maintenance Manual and showed him how the trim tab points UP to move aileron down, and points DOWN for aileron up. He still tried to prove me wrong! I yelled at him that I would go to the shop's owners if he did not have the guys redo the tabs correctly. He didn't. He just angrily sent to them to me to explain the manual to them. He was one of the most inept mechanics I've ever known. The Air Force just says "Do this!" but no explanation why. He hated me and said I was always wrong but he was the one who was always wrong about everything, and he was my boss. This shit happens! Maybe I saved some people that day, I don't know, but pilots- -it's ultimately on you and your preflight checks. Be ready for it! If trim makes things worse, it's rigged backwards! Go the other way with it! Fortunately pitch trim on the JetStar was a pivoting horizontal stabilizer with no confusing trim tabs.
That certainly wasn't USAF training, that was just his own arrogance or ignorance. He probably wasn't even in the AF. We did everything 'by the book' and always did full ground tests and checks before final sign off. In tech school two instructors we had were ex-AF with years at Lockheed.
@Texeq I don't know what his training really was, but he was definitely retired Air Force. He couldn't do anything right, and he was so hard-headed he could not learn anything. He got mad at me for taking too long to make a little repair doubler cut from a piece of junked wing skin. I told him I had to strip the old paint off of it so I could know the direction of the metal grain because I needed to bend it across the grain. He yelled at me that sheet metal does not have grain. Another time he went to release gas pressure from the main gear shock strut of an Israeli Arava 201. He started taking out the fluid filler plug instead of the air valve. I tried to stop him but he says "this is what the book says, Guy!" just as a jet of hydraulic fluid nearly put his eye out. While he was down at the ER I looked in the manual and it said release gas pressure from the AIR VALVE, then loosen the filler plug to release any residual pressure. Guess he missed that first step. I don't know how he ever got any accredition.
If you can barely gain altitude, making a turn is suicide. They needed to go straight ahead for as long as possible before turning back. Try to gain whatever you can.
I thought the same thing. If you cannot climb, but the engines are operating relatively normally and you haven't lost any flight surfaces, my gut is to level off at whatever altitude you can muster and fly straight and level while you work the problem. I look ahead, within a few degrees of my current heading, for an airport with the necessary resources (fire, rescue, undertaker, lawyers, etc.). If I have no choice but to return to the same airport, I'm going to make a turn that is so slight, and so level, that a passenger could barely tell we are turning. Banking at a time like this really is suicide.
This was 100% a Maintenace mistake. There are certain things that a flight crew "takes for granted" pilots "assume" the wings are attached to the airframe properly because they have no way to find out. The pilots had no way to tell the trim tabs cables were reversed.
In a case like this, blaming the captain reminds me of what they tried to do to Sullenberger. Just because they didn't pull off a miracle, doesn't mean they are to blame.
@@halnwheels please don't believe the tripe they presented in that movie where they made the NTSB appear to be attacking Sully. That was just for sensationalism in the movie. They did not do that in real life.
@@brians9508 You appear to be right. I find it disappointing that the movie would put an agency that we depend on in such a despicable light. But as a point of illustration, it highlights how unfair it is to suggest that had the captain done so-and-so, they could have salvaged the situation. I suppose they could have also squished all the passengers towards the front of the plane to counteract the trim. Thank you for straightening me out on the misrepresentation in the movie.
So tragic that those onboard perished with such a simple mechanical oversight. How about having color coded cables with non interchangeable end fittings on the elevator trim system!
I worked in the Jet Shop (AIMD) at Whidbey Island, we had a mechanic who was good friends with an inspector and got in the habit of just doing several procedures at a time before getting the inspector to come over and "gun deck" the paperwork. It worked until it didn't. One of the engines this guy built blew apart in the testing bunker, chunks of engine embedded into the concrete. Turned out he put in the gas seals backwards, and surprise, surprise the inspector never checked it but signed off on it. These procedures are redundant for a reason. IF this mechanic had bothered to have someone physically check as he moved the trim tabs from the cockpit he would have caught the mistake, IF the inspector had done his/her job the mistake would have been caught even if the mechanic's check failed, and last but not least, IF the pilot/copilot had the seen the repair to controls had been done and had the ground crew verify as they moved them this plane and LIVES would have never been lost. Redundancy is there to SAVE LIVES, don't skip it.
As a retired USAF Crew Chief, we would check all the flight controls for proper operation before every flight on the KC-135. With the crew onboard, the crew chiefs would stand behind the aircraft watching for proper operation of the tabs and controls. It took a lot of training for the crew chiefs to know exactly what to look for.
I flew the CV-240 for AT. The 240 even with the P&W 2800 was a real sweet heart. never had any maintenance issues while there. This crash caused the company to loose it's FAR125 ops after the FAA audit.
When I had to do test flights after any work on the flight controls, I personally walked around the aircraft and confirmed proper movement. After that, I made the F/O do the same..... to confirm for himself. Such a shame what happened here....RIP to all.
You are correct, if the log shows a trim problem fixed ,inspector or no inspector ,check for proper movement on the tabs. It happens,and often caught in the preflight.
I was an aircraft mechanic in the military and all maintenance preformed was inspected by QA. I don't see how something this important was able get by. People should be in jail for allowing this to happen.
There was a lot more going on with this flight than even the video shows. Additionally, I don't know how thorough the actual investigation was but the Final Report is just slightly south of garbage. Big questions aren't even addressed let alone answered. There was probably far too much going on during this flight. The PIC was the FAA designated Check Airman on type for the company. The First Officer and Observer had just been hired four days prior to this flight. This was their first flight for the company. So not only "was [this] the first flight following a maintenance Phase 1 and Phase 2 check, which included flight control cable rigging as part of the check. The flight was also intended to provide cockpit familiarization for the first officer and the observer, and a training flight for the first officer." Apparently these two pilots were specifically hired to back fill the PIC's pending retirement. I'm now less sure that it was unfair to include the PIC as being a part of the problem but I'm also not on that bandwagon. This wasn't a check ride but it was a training flight for two brand new employee pilots who were hired four days prior to the fatal flight. The Captain didn't know them from anyone, how they operated or how much they paid attention to detail. His job was to train them up on the company protocol and in this particular case how to receive and check out an aircraft after heavy maintenance. Unfortunately the report doesn't say a single word about how they conducted the pre-flight inspection. It doesn't mention anything about the tech log or the maintenance log or if the crew ever reviewed either document to even notice that the work had not been signed off. It doesn't mention whether or not the Captain asked to see the maintenance log. It doesn't address why the RII inspector never signed off the work. It doesn't even say the inspector was notified that the work was ready for inspection. It doesn't say a word about the company environment and attitudes toward safety. It lists the PIC's incorrect handling of the situation as one cause for the accident but really doesn't address how and why the Board came to that conclusion other than he didn't take the correct action [during the 2 minute flight]. And it's not as if this report was written in the pre-WWII era when how to write such reports was being developed. It was written in 2009, just a few years ago. Too many unanswered questions for an investigation involving fatalities.
Sounds like Air NZ Erabus crash. No mechanical fault but altered and incorrect nav data input to computer before flight. Crew not told, Mountain now in wrong position and with white-out the sightseeing tour flew into it. Altitude was too low but earlier flights had done the same for the view. All died. NZ CAA blamed pilots, a Judge reviewing the crash noted the error and fought Air NZ but was over ruled politically. A real blot on the otherwise uncorrupt NZ. The politician was Robert Muldoon, a dictatorial deadshit, voted out soon after.
FYI I know this is just a reproduction video to illustrate a certain crash of a 580.But the plane used in this video is no 580. This is a short fusaluge, short wings Convair 240 with Allison engines. Also this might be a 1956 airframe but the first 580 flew with Frontier Airlines in 1964. OK, Thanks....
The former Rickenbacker AFB, and before that, Lockbourne AFB. I'm curious, Don't they do a flight control check with a ground observer on headset to call off the movement like the Air Force does? That would've told them all they need to know.
To trim nose down when you need to climb up is just NOT something a pilot can do.. It goes against all you are trained to do. To say that they should have done it is just an insult. If they were up at 10,000 feet ok, maybe but down low that is just not going to happen
A few years ago a mid-size airliner in Europe went for its first flight after heavy MX and as soon as it lifted off the pilots realized that the ailerons were reversed. They managed to get it back on the ground after a hair-raising flight. Can't remember the details but they may also have used the autopilot which, apparently, will keep the wings level and input the needed corrections. I flew smaller planes at an airline but I was constantly envisioning every conceivable failure and what I'd try to do to survive. This pilots bear much of the blame for not carrying out a thorough control check.
This one broke my heart. If elevator back pressure isn’t producing enough rail down force to raise the nose sufficiently on take off, elevator trim is the next automatic thing to help you. He was doing the best possible thing to get the plane out of a critical situation he didn’t create. He was probably a superior airman. RIP crew
I flew with Urs Anderegg in December of 1984. St Lucia Airways had just fired their 2 Canadian pilots who were flying the L-100 (C-130) J6-SLO and Urs was coming in from Switzerland as a replacement. I was current and ATP type rated and was hired to get Urs current. He was a good pilot and nice guy. That being said, as a civilian trained pilot he was not familiar with the concept of controllability checks...if you're having control problems you maintain the last configuration and speed when you could maintain control of the aircraft. Keeping the gear and flaps down was good but they kept the throttles at takeoff power and subsequently kept increasing speed which made elevator control pressures increase with the trim tabs rigged backwards. It would be similar to a runaway trim emergency...most transport category aircraft procedures in that case call for disconnecting the trim system (stop using it) and reducing power and reducing airspeed to maintain control.
Well as somebody that flew with Urs myself, I agree with what you said. But here’s the problem. When crap is hitting the fan, your brain just can’t think fast enough. I’ve had and I’m sure many people have had situations that happened so fast that is was almost impossible to think fast enough. Fortunately in the few I had, it all worked out. But they could have easily went the other way too. After my situations, afterwards, I’d beat myself up. Why didn’t I think of this, or that? The point is, I was over taxed. Throw in fear, and it only gets worse. That’s why all the Monday morning quarterbacking bugs me so much. I wasn’t there! But they weren’t either.
This is what scares me about OSV maintenance facilities. I’ve been involved in enough HMVs, A-checks and C-checks in my career at a major airline, to know that an aircraft cannot receive an airworthiness release until all of the task cards and non-routine items have been closed out. That certainly includes making sure that there are no blank sign-off boxes. Especially, RII/IDT blocks. Every time one of our airplanes was close to leaving C-check, a mechanic was in the cockpit running flight controls, with someone on the ground on a headset making sure that the controls were doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been caught before a pilot ever came near that airplane. Upon further research, I guess that the trim rig was accomplished by in-house maintenance personnel. I’m surprised, because a C-check is considered to be a heavy check. Most small cargo outfits would normally farm this work out to OSVs.
I have flown on CV-580s many times. I always thought of it as a trusty old work horse that will get you there. Once at a foggy Detroit metro, it could land when the swept wing birds couldn't. I have also had rides on the earlier military version, the T-29 Flying Classroom. Again a solid bird.
When I was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, their mechanics were locked out due to a strike. Northwest outsourced their maintenance to mechanics who would show up to the aircraft in dilapidated old trucks. I have never been so scared in my life.
What a shame for many reasons. I worked as an A&P on those wonderful 580's back in the '80's in Anchorage with ERA/Jet Alaska. Those things were rugged, dependable workhorses up there. We had three '53 airframes with around 60,000 hours back then.
So, the Captain should disassemble the airplane for inspection before each flight? And should the Captain be trained for inflight correction of mechanic incomprtence? In my opinion, the producer's opinion is ignorance at work.
Using a threat based mitigation strategy, an initial flight following re-rigging of a primary or secondary flight control system should have had an enhanced flight control check. No disassembly required. Maybe 2-5 minutes required. Modern aircraft have a synoptic display screen and this can be done without leaving the cockpit. On older planes another pilot can watch the flight controls from outside, no big deal. From the dawn of aviation flight control mis-rigging has crashed airplanes and killed people. Contrary to popular opinion a lot of mistakes in aviation won’t necessarily kill you. Reverse-rigged flight controls will kill most who encounter them. If the minimum standard for mechanics is perfection then there would be zero mechanics in the world. Human factors have to be accounted for. Safety Management Systems (SMS) are utilized having several layers of protection. All work done by a mechanic should be reviewed by an inspector. The work order should be reviewed by RTS or return to service. In addition this flight should be considered a NRFO (non routine flight operation) and the crew should be briefed on how to preflight and fly it. Often pilots are designated NRFO and conduct these flights specifically. This wasn’t a normal flight and should have been considered high risk. If you are aware of the Swiss cheese safety model then, in this case, the pilots were the final piece of cheese… 25 years in with 15 more to go, being that last piece of swiss cheese.
It is always hectic at de-hangering time. I cannot understand how the check c paperwork package was not complete. At our check c the pages and cards were numbered and in duplicate. They were inventoried and confirmed completed by the A&P lead an foreman. The person who signed off the log is responsible.
I am no pilot, just an automotive engineer. I remember a near fatal accident with a Germany's government aircraft: in the first flight after maintenance the pilots suffered spoilers assisting the ailerons working reverse to the ailerons. Better pilots check all control services prior to first flight after maintenance. ALWAYS! At least if they intend to enjoy a long life.
Amazing how a simple f**k-up like mis-rigging elevator cables can go completely unnoticed. Didn’t the crew perform any control surface checks, knowing what maintenance had been performed on the 580?
If I'm the captain, I'll look at the maintenance log and notice the work has been performed, but it's not signed off by the inspector. I wouldn't even start engines until all work performed has been inspected and signed off.
And after a C check and after reading the Aircraft Maintenance entry Manual and seeing the work done, at least go thru a flight surfaces operations check visually observed and confirmed by ground personal of correct operation
Trim cables reversed ? Clearly the core of this accident was maintenance incompetence not pilot incompetence. I hope the maintenance guys are still living with guilt for these preventable deaths.
A couple of things that could’ve been done is to get the gear up, and depending on the airspeed get the flaps up. Gear in the down position usually provides a nose-down pitching moment. Likewise, flaps down, in most airplanes, provides a nose-down pitching moment. Another question is, did they have the runway to reject takeoff when the AC wasn’t responding as expected, rather than haul it off the ground?
My flight instructor gave me a Cessna 172 that was just out of maintenance. (He wanted to see if I would notice that the ailerons were rigged backwards) I went through t he checklist "Flight controls free and correct". I said "check" Then he said "are they?" That is when I took a second look and said "OH S%^T."...
I worked in the Jet Shop (AIMD) at Whidbey Island, we had a mechanic who was good friends with an inspector and got in the habit of just doing several procedures at a time before getting the inspector to come over and "gun deck" the paperwork. It worked until it didn't. One of the engines this guy built blew apart in the testing bunker, chunks of engine embedded into the concrete. Turned out he put in the gas seals backwards, and surprise, surprise the inspector never checked it but signed off on it. These procedures are redundant for a reason. IF this mechanic had bothered to have someone physically check as he moved the trim tabs from the cockpit he would have caught the mistake, IF the inspector had done his/her job the mistake would have been caught even if the mechanic's check failed, and last but not least, IF the pilot/copilot had the seen the repair to controls had been done and had the ground crew verify as they moved them this plane and LIVES would have never been lost. Redundancy is there to SAVE LIVES, don't skip it.
As an A&P RII inspector this hit me in the gut. None of the pilots on this flight are at fault. Shotty maintenance is the blame. Should they have caught this on the preflihght? Checking proper trim tab movement direction is most likely not on the preflight checklist. Timeline pressures could be a factor like when management harps on you and tells you the plane isn't making money sitting on the ground.
No it wouldn't have!!!!!!! If the trim tabs are in the neutral position, the pilot doing the pre-flight inspection would not know that the tabs were rigged backwards. You obivously are not qualified to make this judgement, but as a 30,000 hour retired airline pilot, I am.
That is a Monday morning quarterback thing to say. It would be totally against training to reverse the trim input. The only thing I can say as a pilot is that a much more detailed preflight inspection should have occurred.
A Delta L 1011 took off from SAN. On climb out the elevator cables came off the spool and jammed the elevator in nose up. No nose down possible by the pilots. Just be fore stalling, the capt reduced power and the nose dropped and didn’t stall. They successfully landed at LAX. was reducing power totally against training?
A bit rich to blame the captain. The operation of the trimming should have been checked by who ever did the maintenance. And it should have been checked again when the aircraft was accepted back from maintenance by the air line. Both times the checkers should have known the trim tab is like a rudder on a rudder, or what ever , they should know which way it suppose to move and checked that, particularly if this is a common error that can be made, In my own field, A bit like polarity when connecting a building to the power grid.(Getting it wrong has lethal consequences. Blaming the pilot is a bit like blaming the poor bastard who turned on the brass outside tap with wet feet. "Oh he should have done a polarity Check? No that was not his job, His job was to clean the outside of the new building, .That is the electrician and the electrical inspectors job. or this case maintenance tech, his supervisor and the air line when they get the aircraft back.
Two experienced pilots like that should've known to do a careful control check after heavy maintenance. Low-budget outfit like that you never know who's spinning the wrenches.....
N587X CVR Transcript 3:03 CAPTAIN: Checks ready. Takeoff 3:32 FIRST OFFICER:VEE ONE. 3:37 FIRST OFFICER:ROTATE. 3:55 CPT:Oh sh**! 3:59 CPT:Oh yah yah yah. Pull pull pull! 4:02 CPT:Pull! 4:04 CPT:Pull pull! 4:05 THIRD PILOT:Want me to help? 4:08 CPT: Pull pull! 4:37 CPT:We have to go back. Pull pull. 4:40 F.O: Tahoma 587’s got to come back. 4:51 TWR:587 right or left traffic? 4:54 F.O: Left traffic Tahoma 587. 4:57 TWR: Alrighty. 4:58 CPT:Pull pull pull pull! 5:00 [[sound of heavy breathing]] 5:02 THIRD PILOT:Come back on the trim? 5:07 CPT: There's nothing anymore on the trim. 5:10 CPT:Pull.. pull you two pull pull! 5:13 TWR:Tahoma 587 check wheels down‚ the wind's 070 at four and cleared to land. 5:27 CPT:Pull pull! 5:28 CPT: Let's go on the left side. 5:31 CPT:Pull pull! 5:32 THIRD PILOT:I got it I'm pulling! 5:34 CPT: Pull.. left left! 5:36 CPT:Pull! 5:38 F.O:Jesus. 5:43 CPT:Pull pull pull pull! 5:44 CPT:Arghhh! 5:46 THIRD PILOT:God help us.
This is similar to what happened to the Boeing 299 (B-17 prototype) / On a test flight , the 299's elevators had been inadvertently left locked . It crashed on take off killing the two Boeing test pilots.
Cockpit lay out is totally wrong for a 580. Navy 542817 (C131h, a 580) lost almost the exact same way Nov 1986 at Dothan Al civilian rework facility. Cables rigged wrong and far to long, all 3 killed on board on test flight.
Don't the pilots do a walk around check pre-flight and move the elevators with their hands? I suppose noone is inside watching the yoke? When then, they test the yoke pre-flight, do they look out the window and make sure the elevators are going up the right way?
Certification standards back then were less stringent than they are today. Old designs are often “grandfathered” , that is exempted from newer requirements. Now, modern transport aircraft can disconnect or split primary flight controls to overcome situations where one system has jammed or malfunctioned. Even the Boeing 737 is riding on the coat tails of grandfather. To my knowledge it still does not have control split and disconnect circuits such as required in later designs. I count the Convair 580 as the worst handling aircraft I have ever flown, with one of the worst cockpit layouts I have seen. The aileron/rudder interconnect system was diabolically heavy at high speed. The earlier Boeing 737s (on which later variants were grandfathered) were nice to fly, but with progressive increases in size, power and weight, are now pretty ordinary. I’d hate to experience a serious flight control problem in one!
Buddy, you just don’t get it! The 580 doesn’t have any control boost of any kind. It’s cables and pulleys just like your 172. You have to basically fly the trim because you wouldn’t be strong enough other wise to fly it. Why do you think all of them were pulling back and still couldn’t override the out of trim condition. The 580 is a flying tank.
I will just say I always read the maintenance logs and made certain everyone signed off on the requirements of their role in the chain of responsibility. Also during the preflight inspect the maintenance issues. Testing the trim would have revealed the giant problem and saved the day. Too bad but Murphy got this crew but good ! If you trim nose up and she goes nose down reverse your actions because the shit started with trim reversals. Commom sense would have told me to suspect a reversal. Plus an inspector failed to sign off is a giant red flag!!
It's almost crazy that he couldn't suss out the fact that as he trimmed up the nose of the plane was going down or it made pulling harder so either thought maybe he'd he'd kind of felt that and maybe corrected it knowing the work that was done on a plane I don't blame him at all especially when your feet off the ground in your panicking to gain any sort of lift but it seems like they flew it long enough that he'd have figured it out but sadly they did not If they landed in a cornfield and yet all still perished is sad too.
Aviation is supposed to be the industry where, lessons are learned and mistakes not repeated! Yet, here we are again, cables swapped, connectors swapped, fuel meters instruments swapped with different types of aircraft. Murphy’s laws is famous for saying that, if you allow for something to happen, over great numbers, it’s guaranteed to happen. Therefore, markings on cables and visual ground checks, different connectors, different shapes for different aircraft instruments etc. etc. Sometimes I’ve got the impression that, training of professional aviators should include, some general knowledge on human nature and mistakes prevention. I did spend tons of hours in meetings dedicated to FMEA (failure mode, engineering analysis), to prevent and/or detect mistakes, that was in microelectronics manufacturing, because our customers were worried about recalls, how about aviation being worried about dead passengers?
People don't take pride in their work anymore. It's all about where's my paycheck on Friday . Trust me I had workers like that . Didn't care about the equipment
Consider the mechanic doing it on purpose😮 there are psychopaths everywhere😮 to not be aware of that is to be a fool😮i would have looked at prosecuting the mechanic😮 immaterial whether or not there's an indictment😮 IT SENDS THE RIGHT MESSAGE😮i don't play😮
Maybe overloaded, lifting the landing gear reduces drag, increasing airspeed. LOW ALTITUDE BANKING LEFT OR RIGHT NOT ALLOWED. DEICEING WILL BE BE TO THE SECOND,Controlled by the airport groundcrew and an system.
Aircraft was empty. This was only a post-maintenance check flight - the aircraft hadn’t yet been returned to revenue service. Regardless, the plane didn’t stall - it was mis-rigged to where the trim tabs were exerting more downward force on the nose than the elevator was in trying to lift the nose. The more “up” trim the captain added, the more downward force resulted (again because the cables were incorrectly rigged). Ultimately the nose dropped below the horizon and flew itself right to the ground. RIP
Must have been a POS maint. outfit. Where I worked inspectors were all over everything and everything was signed off. You got one and showed him the work so that he signed it for you. Lot of eyes on stuff. Mech did not follow the manual and the insp did not show up. They both totally liable. Or maybe the insp was not notified, whoever passed on unsigned paperwork also.
I get so angry when pilots sre nlamed for everything that goes wrong. Obviously this catastrophe was none of their doing. Blame those who are at fault!!
I hope that the maintenance guy and the inspector can sleep well, their negligence work cost the life of three humans , I don't care about airplane, it's something replaceable, but lives not😢
I was hired in as a Captain with Air Tahoma. Urs Anderegg was the Captain I did most of my 25 hours IOE with. Urs was one heck of a Pilot and human being. After my training I was sent to the Philippines to fly the last 5 months of a FedEx contract from Subic Bay to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. When that was over I was airline home. As it turned out, my Northwest flight from Japan was landing in Detroit about the same time Urs and the other 2 guys were being killed in Columbus. (Labor Day, 2008)
I haven’t read through to many of the comments here because all the couch potato super pilots bug me.
For those that care. One of the F/O’s at Air Tahoma put up a short video as a memorial to Urs Anderegg. Maybe it will help if all those super pilots actually see the man their criticizing. Urs had years as a B727 Captain. He was a Sweed.
One correction to the video. The guy in the right seat flew the CV580 20 years earlier as a Captain. But this was a new hire training flight. So I wouldn’t call him equally experienced.
ruclips.net/video/e2vOCPRgDog/видео.htmlsi=p3r6jarNgeAVPlgE
Thank you for your knowledgeable perspective. Do you know if the mechanic or inspector were held accountable ?
@ I knew the mechanic that hook the cables up wrong. But just as a fellow company employee, not personally. I was sent to Miami and actually started flying a run Urs usually flew. I had my own incident in Miami. Taking off one morning at gross weight, at about 100kts the left engine auto feathered. It happened so fast it about jerked me off the runway before I could get the power levers pulled back to idle. Come to find out they had the prop assembly off during the night and when they put it back on there’s some Orings that had to be lined up, and they didn’t get it right and as I was taxing out it was pumping prop oil out down to the stand pipe. (Just enough oil left to auto feather) mechanics in training had done that without supervision. If I would have gotten it airborne and it auto feathered at say 100’ I’m positive I would have been a smoking hole in Miami. The Urs crash and my experience really worked on me. I quit a month later, the day before the FAA shut Air Tahoma down with 30 violations, never to be allow in ANY kind of aviation business ever again. I always thought the mechanic would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. But I don’t believe he was, nor do I know what happened.
@@doolian1t118it was stated that this was unknown..
So sad
It is totally wrong to lay even some blame on the captain in this crash. We are trained to react to certain events/conditions in specific ways; training reinforces behaviors that become automatic over many hours of flying. When the crap hits the fan, training takes over. The captain did the best he could to save the crew and the airplane. The mechanic caused this.
Together with sloppy procedures in maintenance.
This is a simple problem to figure wile sipping a G&T with your feet on the desk..
and here I thought preflight was on the captain
@@Milkmans_Son You would not find this on walk around. Control movement and direction would be normal. He had an un-airworthy aircraft and no Altitude or time.
@@Milkmans_Sononly flight control free movement is checked. They don’t physically check direction of travel, and especially trim. The crew depends on the proper maintenance procedures and inspections by the ground crew. My son is a senior crew chief ( Tech Sargent) in the U.S. Air Force in charge of F-35 fighter aircraft maintenance. The buck stops with them!
I recall a similar incident involving a friend and a Canadian Forces CC-109 Cosmopolitan. He too was faced with the elevator trim being reversed, however, he recognized the elevator trim problem and was able to safely return and land after take-off.
Oh my goodness ... my *very first flight* was on a CV-580 FL564 LNK to OMA ... I wasn't even a teenager yet (just 'mature for my age'). I took the Grehound bus from Omaha to Lincoln, took an 'airport limousine' to the airport and boarded the flight. I will *never forget it* ... and the engines were so loud, I sw-ore to myself that "I couldn't even hear myself think"; but I was absolutely captivated by it all.
This is a very common error. Trim tabs operate in the opposite direction from what an uneducated mechanic might assume. I got into a huge argument with my supervisor one day over which way the tab needed to move. He had Air Force training, I had vocational training that he always viewed as a pansy-ass copout to REAL training.
We were rigging controls on a now-extinct business jet called a Lockheed JetStar I. He had instructed three junior mechanics in how to do this. I caught one of them rigging an aileron tab backwards and told him to rig it opposite. He said the supervisor told him to do it that way.
I went and told him the guys were rigging the tabs backwards and he blew up at me about me never knowing what I was talking about and keep my nose out of it because my ideas were totally wrong and ridiculous to even suggest it, yadayada...
I went off and got the Maintenance Manual and showed him how the trim tab points UP to move aileron down, and points DOWN for aileron up. He still tried to prove me wrong! I yelled at him that I would go to the shop's owners if he did not have the guys redo the tabs correctly.
He didn't. He just angrily sent to them to me to explain the manual to them. He was one of the most inept mechanics I've ever known. The Air Force just says "Do this!" but no explanation why. He hated me and said I was always wrong but he was the one who was always wrong about everything, and he was my boss.
This shit happens! Maybe I saved some people that day, I don't know, but pilots-
-it's ultimately on you and your preflight checks. Be ready for it! If trim makes things worse, it's rigged backwards! Go the other way with it!
Fortunately pitch trim on the JetStar was a pivoting horizontal stabilizer with no confusing trim tabs.
Thanks for sharing your experience. It sounds like you definitely did save some people that day.
This!
Well said!! I am a 30,000 hour pilot and I agree with you 100%.
That certainly wasn't USAF training, that was just his own arrogance or ignorance. He probably wasn't even in the AF. We did everything 'by the book' and always did full ground tests and checks before final sign off. In tech school two instructors we had were ex-AF with years at Lockheed.
@Texeq
I don't know what his training really was, but he was definitely retired Air Force. He couldn't do anything right, and he was so hard-headed he could not learn anything. He got mad at me for taking too long to make a little repair doubler cut from a piece of junked wing skin. I told him I had to strip the old paint off of it so I could know the direction of the metal grain because I needed to bend it across the grain. He yelled at me that sheet metal does not have grain.
Another time he went to release gas pressure from the main gear shock strut of an Israeli Arava 201. He started taking out the fluid filler plug instead of the air valve. I tried to stop him but he says "this is what the book says, Guy!" just as a jet of hydraulic fluid nearly put his eye out. While he was down at the ER I looked in the manual and it said release gas pressure from the AIR VALVE, then loosen the filler plug to release any residual pressure. Guess he missed that first step.
I don't know how he ever got any accredition.
If you can barely gain altitude, making a turn is suicide. They needed to go straight ahead for as long as possible before turning back. Try to gain whatever you can.
I would agree with that 100%. Like the saying goes, Altitude above you does you absolutely no good.
@@bobmillerick300 100% de acuerdo
I'm not a pilot, not even on a sim, but I was thinking that too
Yup, there's a saying as old as aviation itself- "Never turn back"
I thought the same thing. If you cannot climb, but the engines are operating relatively normally and you haven't lost any flight surfaces, my gut is to level off at whatever altitude you can muster and fly straight and level while you work the problem. I look ahead, within a few degrees of my current heading, for an airport with the necessary resources (fire, rescue, undertaker, lawyers, etc.). If I have no choice but to return to the same airport, I'm going to make a turn that is so slight, and so level, that a passenger could barely tell we are turning. Banking at a time like this really is suicide.
Very poor form blaming the Captain.
My they RIP 🙏
you mean Rest In Peace?
This was 100% a Maintenace mistake. There are certain things that a flight crew "takes for granted" pilots "assume" the wings are attached to the airframe properly because they have no way to find out. The pilots had no way to tell the trim tabs cables were reversed.
In a case like this, blaming the captain reminds me of what they tried to do to Sullenberger. Just because they didn't pull off a miracle, doesn't mean they are to blame.
@@halnwheels please don't believe the tripe they presented in that movie where they made the NTSB appear to be attacking Sully. That was just for sensationalism in the movie. They did not do that in real life.
@@brians9508 You appear to be right. I find it disappointing that the movie would put an agency that we depend on in such a despicable light. But as a point of illustration, it highlights how unfair it is to suggest that had the captain done so-and-so, they could have salvaged the situation. I suppose they could have also squished all the passengers towards the front of the plane to counteract the trim. Thank you for straightening me out on the misrepresentation in the movie.
So tragic that those onboard perished with such a simple mechanical oversight. How about having color coded cables with non interchangeable end fittings on the elevator trim system!
I worked in the Jet Shop (AIMD) at Whidbey Island, we had a mechanic who was good friends with an inspector and got in the habit of just doing several procedures at a time before getting the inspector to come over and "gun deck" the paperwork. It worked until it didn't. One of the engines this guy built blew apart in the testing bunker, chunks of engine embedded into the concrete. Turned out he put in the gas seals backwards, and surprise, surprise the inspector never checked it but signed off on it.
These procedures are redundant for a reason. IF this mechanic had bothered to have someone physically check as he moved the trim tabs from the cockpit he would have caught the mistake, IF the inspector had done his/her job the mistake would have been caught even if the mechanic's check failed, and last but not least, IF the pilot/copilot had the seen the repair to controls had been done and had the ground crew verify as they moved them this plane and LIVES would have never been lost. Redundancy is there to SAVE LIVES, don't skip it.
As a retired USAF Crew Chief, we would check all the flight controls for proper operation before every flight on the KC-135. With the crew onboard, the crew chiefs would stand behind the aircraft watching for proper operation of the tabs and controls. It took a lot of training for the crew chiefs to know exactly what to look for.
The loss of life is the most important thing, but the loss of a beautiful CV580 is terrible too.
The business was lost also...all because of a stupid mistake.
I flew the CV-240 for AT. The 240 even with the P&W 2800 was a real sweet heart. never had any maintenance issues while there. This crash caused the company to loose it's FAR125 ops after the FAA audit.
When I had to do test flights after any work on the flight controls, I personally walked around the aircraft and confirmed proper movement. After that, I made the F/O do the same..... to confirm for himself. Such a shame what happened here....RIP to all.
You are correct, if the log shows a trim problem fixed ,inspector or no inspector ,check for proper movement on the tabs. It happens,and often caught in the preflight.
I was an aircraft mechanic in the military and all maintenance preformed was inspected by QA. I don't see how something this important was able get by. People should be in jail for allowing this to happen.
I was just wondering if there was a way to check controls before takeoff.
@@JohnRichard-f3q Well then, someone would stand at the tail, with a walky-talky and say "up trim" or "down trim" it just doesn't work that way.
Exactly. A bit shocking no one bothered to check the trim was working normally after the maintenance was done.
There was a lot more going on with this flight than even the video shows. Additionally, I don't know how thorough the actual investigation was but the Final Report is just slightly south of garbage. Big questions aren't even addressed let alone answered.
There was probably far too much going on during this flight. The PIC was the FAA designated Check Airman on type for the company. The First Officer and Observer had just been hired four days prior to this flight. This was their first flight for the company. So not only "was [this] the first flight following a maintenance Phase 1 and Phase 2 check, which included flight control cable rigging as part of the check. The flight was also intended to provide cockpit familiarization for the first officer and the observer, and a training flight for the first officer." Apparently these two pilots were specifically hired to back fill the PIC's pending retirement.
I'm now less sure that it was unfair to include the PIC as being a part of the problem but I'm also not on that bandwagon. This wasn't a check ride but it was a training flight for two brand new employee pilots who were hired four days prior to the fatal flight. The Captain didn't know them from anyone, how they operated or how much they paid attention to detail. His job was to train them up on the company protocol and in this particular case how to receive and check out an aircraft after heavy maintenance. Unfortunately the report doesn't say a single word about how they conducted the pre-flight inspection. It doesn't mention anything about the tech log or the maintenance log or if the crew ever reviewed either document to even notice that the work had not been signed off. It doesn't mention whether or not the Captain asked to see the maintenance log. It doesn't address why the RII inspector never signed off the work. It doesn't even say the inspector was notified that the work was ready for inspection. It doesn't say a word about the company environment and attitudes toward safety. It lists the PIC's incorrect handling of the situation as one cause for the accident but really doesn't address how and why the Board came to that conclusion other than he didn't take the correct action [during the 2 minute flight]. And it's not as if this report was written in the pre-WWII era when how to write such reports was being developed. It was written in 2009, just a few years ago. Too many unanswered questions for an investigation involving fatalities.
Sounds like Air NZ Erabus crash. No mechanical fault but altered and incorrect nav data input to computer before flight. Crew not told, Mountain now in wrong position and with white-out the sightseeing tour flew into it. Altitude was too low but earlier flights had done the same for the view. All died. NZ CAA blamed pilots, a Judge reviewing the crash noted the error and fought Air NZ but was over ruled politically. A real blot on the otherwise uncorrupt NZ. The politician was Robert Muldoon, a dictatorial deadshit, voted out soon after.
Elevator trim rig backwards, also happened to a Beech 1900 out of Hyannis, Massachusetts. Same unfortunate result.
FYI I know this is just a reproduction video to illustrate a certain crash of a 580.But the plane used in this video is no 580. This is a short fusaluge, short wings Convair 240 with Allison engines. Also this might be a 1956 airframe but the first 580 flew with Frontier Airlines in 1964. OK, Thanks....
The former Rickenbacker AFB, and before that, Lockbourne AFB. I'm curious, Don't they do a flight control check with a ground observer on headset to call off the movement like the Air Force does? That would've told them all they need to know.
To trim nose down when you need to climb up is just NOT something a pilot can do.. It goes against all you are trained to do. To say that they should have done it is just an insult. If they were up at 10,000 feet ok, maybe but down low that is just not going to happen
A few years ago a mid-size airliner in Europe went for its first flight after heavy MX and as soon as it lifted off the pilots realized that the ailerons were reversed. They managed to get it back on the ground after a hair-raising flight. Can't remember the details but they may also have used the autopilot which, apparently, will keep the wings level and input the needed corrections. I flew smaller planes at an airline but I was constantly envisioning every conceivable failure and what I'd try to do to survive.
This pilots bear much of the blame for not carrying out a thorough control check.
@@jiyushugi1085. This pilot doesn’t deserve ANY BLAME. You obviously never flew a 580. There isn’t any auto pilot for one.
This one broke my heart. If elevator back pressure isn’t producing enough rail down force to raise the nose sufficiently on take off, elevator trim is the next automatic thing to help you. He was doing the best possible thing to get the plane out of a critical situation he didn’t create. He was probably a superior airman. RIP crew
I flew with Urs Anderegg in December of 1984. St Lucia Airways had just fired their 2 Canadian pilots who were flying the L-100 (C-130) J6-SLO and Urs was coming in from Switzerland as a replacement. I was current and ATP type rated and was hired to get Urs current. He was a good pilot and nice guy.
That being said, as a civilian trained pilot he was not familiar with the concept of controllability checks...if you're having control problems you maintain the last configuration and speed when you could maintain control of the aircraft. Keeping the gear and flaps down was good but they kept the throttles at takeoff power and subsequently kept increasing speed which made elevator control pressures increase with the trim tabs rigged backwards. It would be similar to a runaway trim emergency...most transport category aircraft procedures in that case call for disconnecting the trim system (stop using it) and reducing power and reducing airspeed to maintain control.
Well as somebody that flew with Urs myself, I agree with what you said. But here’s the problem. When crap is hitting the fan, your brain just can’t think fast enough. I’ve had and I’m sure many people have had situations that happened so fast that is was almost impossible to think fast enough. Fortunately in the few I had, it all worked out. But they could have easily went the other way too. After my situations, afterwards, I’d beat myself up. Why didn’t I think of this, or that? The point is, I was over taxed. Throw in fear, and it only gets worse. That’s why all the Monday morning quarterbacking bugs me so much. I wasn’t there! But they weren’t either.
Hey Maurício. Can You Do *TOA Domestic Airlines Flight 63* And *Olympic Airways Flight 830 And 506?* Thanks.... I Guess.........
How about verifying flight control functions on the ground after it has been worked on?
This is what scares me about OSV maintenance facilities. I’ve been involved in enough HMVs, A-checks and C-checks in my career at a major airline, to know that an aircraft cannot receive an airworthiness release until all of the task cards and non-routine items have been closed out. That certainly includes making sure that there are no blank sign-off boxes. Especially, RII/IDT blocks.
Every time one of our airplanes was close to leaving C-check, a mechanic was in the cockpit running flight controls, with someone on the ground on a headset making sure that the controls were doing what they were supposed to be doing. That should have been caught before a pilot ever came near that airplane.
Upon further research, I guess that the trim rig was accomplished by in-house maintenance personnel. I’m surprised, because a C-check is considered to be a heavy check. Most small cargo outfits would normally farm this work out to OSVs.
I have flown on CV-580s many times. I always thought of it as a trusty old work horse that will get you there. Once at a foggy Detroit metro, it could land when the swept wing birds couldn't.
I have also had rides on the earlier military version, the T-29 Flying Classroom. Again a solid bird.
Does it trim via a movable stabilizer or elevator trim tabs?
Mauricio, Do The Air France Flight 358 And *Afriqiyah Airlines Flight 771* Please..... You Can Do In Your Time...... Thank You...
When I was a flight attendant for Northwest Airlines, their mechanics were locked out due to a strike. Northwest outsourced their maintenance to mechanics who would show up to the aircraft in dilapidated old trucks. I have never been so scared in my life.
Mauricio. Do The Recreation Of *Allegheny Airlines Flight 736* And *Linjeflyg Flight 267V* Please....? Thank You...
Wait. Didn't You Gave Mauricio An Suggestion Like A Month Ago?
@@YeahYeahBruhBruhOh Yeah.... But i Can't Find An Good Channel Like Maurício For Example....
@JOTAFILMES Ah... i See.... Anyway, My Pardons....
Beautiful music. Your videos are emotionally powerful
What a shame for many reasons. I worked as an A&P on those wonderful 580's back in the '80's in Anchorage with ERA/Jet Alaska. Those things were rugged, dependable workhorses up there. We had three '53 airframes with around 60,000 hours back then.
I worked there for almost a year during that time. Did you work under Mike Harris?
N150PA was a Cv-240 that was operated by Providence Air Charter, then subsequently by Combs Freightair of Denver. Small world….
Remember a Reeves Air Aleutian?? Connie580s..loaded um in 1980s w.ith. .w.a.l.
@@williamh3823 I do.
The belly pits were barely 2 dufflebags high..laying flat....lol
So, the Captain should disassemble the airplane for inspection before each flight? And should the Captain be trained for inflight correction of mechanic incomprtence? In my opinion, the producer's opinion is ignorance at work.
Using a threat based mitigation strategy, an initial flight following re-rigging of a primary or secondary flight control system should have had an enhanced flight control check. No disassembly required. Maybe 2-5 minutes required. Modern aircraft have a synoptic display screen and this can be done without leaving the cockpit. On older planes another pilot can watch the flight controls from outside, no big deal. From the dawn of aviation flight control mis-rigging has crashed airplanes and killed people. Contrary to popular opinion a lot of mistakes in aviation won’t necessarily kill you. Reverse-rigged flight controls will kill most who encounter them. If the minimum standard for mechanics is perfection then there would be zero mechanics in the world. Human factors have to be accounted for. Safety Management Systems (SMS) are utilized having several layers of protection. All work done by a mechanic should be reviewed by an inspector. The work order should be reviewed by RTS or return to service. In addition this flight should be considered a NRFO (non routine flight operation) and the crew should be briefed on how to preflight and fly it. Often pilots are designated NRFO and conduct these flights specifically. This wasn’t a normal flight and should have been considered high risk. If you are aware of the Swiss cheese safety model then, in this case, the pilots were the final piece of cheese… 25 years in with 15 more to go, being that last piece of swiss cheese.
It is always hectic at de-hangering time. I cannot understand how the check c paperwork package was not complete. At our check c the pages and cards were numbered and in duplicate. They were inventoried and confirmed completed by the A&P lead an foreman. The person who signed off the log is responsible.
I am no pilot, just an automotive engineer.
I remember a near fatal accident with a Germany's government aircraft: in the first flight after maintenance the pilots suffered spoilers assisting the ailerons working reverse to the ailerons.
Better pilots check all control services prior to first flight after maintenance. ALWAYS!
At least if they intend to enjoy a long life.
Just curious-what flight sim is this?
FSX
@@frontcentermusician No. It's Not FSX.... Its Prepar3d (P3D)
Amazing how a simple f**k-up like mis-rigging elevator cables can go completely unnoticed. Didn’t the crew perform any control surface checks, knowing what maintenance had been performed on the 580?
If I'm the captain, I'll look at the maintenance log and notice the work has been performed, but it's not signed off by the inspector.
I wouldn't even start engines until all work performed has been inspected and signed off.
And after a C check and after reading the Aircraft Maintenance entry Manual and seeing the work done, at least go thru a flight surfaces operations check visually observed and confirmed by ground personal of correct operation
They had a recip Convair at that airport that I worked on once, that was older. It was a VIP plane for the state officials.
Trim cables reversed ? Clearly the core of this accident was maintenance incompetence not pilot incompetence. I hope the maintenance guys are still living with guilt for these preventable deaths.
A couple of things that could’ve been done is to get the gear up, and depending on the airspeed get the flaps up. Gear in the down position usually provides a nose-down pitching moment. Likewise, flaps down, in most airplanes, provides a nose-down pitching moment.
Another question is, did they have the runway to reject takeoff when the AC wasn’t responding as expected, rather than haul it off the ground?
My flight instructor gave me a Cessna 172 that was just out of maintenance. (He wanted to see if I would notice that the ailerons were rigged backwards) I went through t he checklist "Flight controls free and correct". I said "check" Then he said "are they?" That is when I took a second look and said "OH S%^T."...
I worked in the Jet Shop (AIMD) at Whidbey Island, we had a mechanic who was good friends with an inspector and got in the habit of just doing several procedures at a time before getting the inspector to come over and "gun deck" the paperwork. It worked until it didn't. One of the engines this guy built blew apart in the testing bunker, chunks of engine embedded into the concrete. Turned out he put in the gas seals backwards, and surprise, surprise the inspector never checked it but signed off on it.
These procedures are redundant for a reason. IF this mechanic had bothered to have someone physically check as he moved the trim tabs from the cockpit he would have caught the mistake, IF the inspector had done his/her job the mistake would have been caught even if the mechanic's check failed, and last but not least, IF the pilot/copilot had the seen the repair to controls had been done and had the ground crew verify as they moved them this plane and LIVES would have never been lost. Redundancy is there to SAVE LIVES, don't skip it.
As an A&P RII inspector this hit me in the gut. None of the pilots on this flight are at fault. Shotty maintenance is the blame. Should they have caught this on the preflihght? Checking proper trim tab movement direction is most likely not on the preflight checklist. Timeline pressures could be a factor like when management harps on you and tells you the plane isn't making money sitting on the ground.
It’s always easy to blame a dead man .
As captain you would think he would have done a flight control surfaces ground check on a pre flight maintenance C check ? , sad all the way around
Swissair 306 when?
A proper preflight inspection would have revealed the discrepancy.
No it wouldn't have!!!!!!! If the trim tabs are in the neutral position, the pilot doing the pre-flight inspection would not know that the tabs were rigged backwards. You obivously are not qualified to make this judgement, but as a 30,000 hour retired airline pilot, I am.
@@MrSuzuki1187. Thank you for pointing out the obvious to one of the super pilots that know nothing!
@@MrSuzuki1187 I was Air Force. The Air Force includes pitch, rudder and aileron trim in the prefights.
It also should have been part of the maintenance inspection.
The flight crew was briefed on the maintenance work that "should have been performed" on the aircraft. 6:56
That is a Monday morning quarterback thing to say. It would be totally against training to reverse the trim input. The only thing I can say as a pilot is that a much more detailed preflight inspection should have occurred.
A Delta L 1011 took off from SAN. On climb out the elevator cables came off the spool and jammed the elevator in nose up. No nose down possible by the pilots. Just be fore stalling, the capt reduced power and the nose dropped and didn’t stall. They successfully landed at LAX. was reducing power totally against training?
A bit rich to blame the captain. The operation of the trimming should have been checked by who ever did the maintenance. And it should have been checked again when the aircraft was accepted back from maintenance by the air line. Both times the checkers should have known the trim tab is like a rudder on a rudder, or what ever , they should know which way it suppose to move and checked that, particularly if this is a common error that can be made, In my own field, A bit like polarity when connecting a building to the power grid.(Getting it wrong has lethal consequences. Blaming the pilot is a bit like blaming the poor bastard who turned on the brass outside tap with wet feet. "Oh he should have done a polarity Check? No that was not his job, His job was to clean the outside of the new building, .That is the electrician and the electrical inspectors job. or this case maintenance tech, his supervisor and the air line when they get the aircraft back.
Pilots should've checked also, as it's their lives on the line.
Inspections were not completed. Why and how did this aircraft leave the hanger?
Two experienced pilots like that should've known to do a careful control check after heavy maintenance. Low-budget outfit like that you never know who's spinning the wrenches.....
A control check DOES NOT CECK THE POSITION OF THE TRIM TABS!!
@@MrSuzuki1187 It does after heavy maintenance, and after any disassembly of the the elevator.
This is strictly the shop's fault. The pilot did everything he could.
I speculate their will be a lawsuit against the mechanic. The pilot should have never been blamed for the crash 😥
The mechanic should have been arrested and faced prison time. It is obvious he never checked to see if it was rigged correctly.
The pilot who called on the name of Jesus: that's the one you will never have to worry about. 🙏🙌❤️🔥🙌🕊️
N587X CVR Transcript
3:03 CAPTAIN: Checks ready. Takeoff
3:32 FIRST OFFICER:VEE ONE.
3:37 FIRST OFFICER:ROTATE.
3:55 CPT:Oh sh**!
3:59 CPT:Oh yah yah yah. Pull pull pull!
4:02 CPT:Pull!
4:04 CPT:Pull pull!
4:05 THIRD PILOT:Want me to help?
4:08 CPT: Pull pull!
4:37 CPT:We have to go back. Pull pull.
4:40 F.O: Tahoma 587’s got to come back.
4:51 TWR:587 right or left traffic?
4:54 F.O: Left traffic Tahoma 587.
4:57 TWR: Alrighty.
4:58 CPT:Pull pull pull pull!
5:00 [[sound of heavy breathing]]
5:02 THIRD PILOT:Come back on the trim?
5:07 CPT: There's nothing anymore on the trim.
5:10 CPT:Pull.. pull you two pull pull!
5:13 TWR:Tahoma 587 check wheels down‚ the wind's 070 at four and cleared to land.
5:27 CPT:Pull pull!
5:28 CPT: Let's go on the left side.
5:31 CPT:Pull pull!
5:32 THIRD PILOT:I got it I'm pulling!
5:34 CPT: Pull.. left left!
5:36 CPT:Pull!
5:38 F.O:Jesus.
5:43 CPT:Pull pull pull pull!
5:44 CPT:Arghhh!
5:46 THIRD PILOT:God help us.
So sad. God rest their souls 🙏
And...THAT is why I don't work on airplanes. Also, I don't know how.
Agreed.
The captain didn't see the lack of inspection in the maintenance record?
So essentially this flight was the safety inspection.
This is similar to what happened to the Boeing 299 (B-17 prototype) / On a test flight , the 299's elevators had been inadvertently left locked . It crashed on take off killing the two Boeing test pilots.
Cockpit lay out is totally wrong for a 580.
Navy 542817 (C131h, a 580) lost almost the exact same way Nov 1986 at Dothan Al civilian rework facility. Cables rigged wrong and far to long, all 3 killed on board on test flight.
The former rickenbacker air force base.
And before that Lockbourne AFB.
@@allenmurray7893 Spent my Air Force ROTC summer camp there in 1972 before I headed off to fly aerospace machines made by the low bidder.
Do they fire the mechanic?
This is a crappy situation that would have bit the best of us.
Don't the pilots do a walk around check pre-flight and move the elevators with their hands? I suppose noone is inside watching the yoke? When then, they test the yoke pre-flight, do they look out the window and make sure the elevators are going up the right way?
The elevator trim was hooked up backwards, not the elevators.
@@dennisconrad6124 Elevator repair men do it up and down......
Move the elevators by hand? This was a Convair 580, not a Cessna 172. The elevators are about 12’ in the air!
I'm no pilot but I guess a pilots mental training might prevent a . . . push down? So sad. May they all rest in Peace.
I’m surprised they would certify a plane that doesn’t have sufficient elevator authority to overcome an out of trim condition.
Certification standards back then were less stringent than they are today. Old designs are often “grandfathered” , that is exempted from newer requirements. Now, modern transport aircraft can disconnect or split primary flight controls to overcome situations where one system has jammed or malfunctioned. Even the Boeing 737 is riding on the coat tails of grandfather. To my knowledge it still does not have control split and disconnect circuits such as required in later designs.
I count the Convair 580 as the worst handling aircraft I have ever flown, with one of the worst cockpit layouts I have seen. The aileron/rudder interconnect system was diabolically heavy at high speed. The earlier Boeing 737s (on which later variants were grandfathered) were nice to fly, but with progressive increases in size, power and weight, are now pretty ordinary. I’d hate to experience a serious flight control problem in one!
Buddy, you just don’t get it! The 580 doesn’t have any control boost of any kind. It’s cables and pulleys just like your 172. You have to basically fly the trim because you wouldn’t be strong enough other wise to fly it. Why do you think all of them were pulling back and still couldn’t override the out of trim condition. The 580 is a flying tank.
They should be able to feel the pressure on the wheel each time and run the wheel back in the other direction....
Older than my car!
No action taken against the mechanics or the company? WHAAA? That should be three counts of manslaughter. Total dereliction of duty.
Ground crew errors are probably resposible for more air accidents than any other sigle entity.
No place for shoddy maintenance,especially flight controls!
I will just say I always read the maintenance logs and made certain everyone signed off on the requirements of their role in the chain of responsibility. Also during the preflight inspect the maintenance issues. Testing the trim would have revealed the giant problem and saved the day. Too bad but Murphy got this crew but good !
If you trim nose up and she goes nose down reverse your actions because the shit started with trim reversals.
Commom sense would have told me to suspect a reversal.
Plus an inspector failed to sign off is a giant red flag!!
Kind of weird he didnt retract the landing gears and flaps.....and cleared the aircraft from any drags
Knowing that either I go by the manual and was at fault, would haunt me . Always have manual when working, lt shouldn't have flown with IA signed.
To say that the PIC should have done this or should have done that is absurd.
Should have retracted landing gear that causes huge drag. Might have stood a better chance
Retract the landing gear!
I agree 100% and also any flaps....
20-20 vision after the event is so easy…
It's almost crazy that he couldn't suss out the fact that as he trimmed up the nose of the plane was going down or it made pulling harder so either thought maybe he'd he'd kind of felt that and maybe corrected it knowing the work that was done on a plane I don't blame him at all especially when your feet off the ground in your panicking to gain any sort of lift but it seems like they flew it long enough that he'd have figured it out but sadly they did not If they landed in a cornfield and yet all still perished is sad too.
They hit the ground at about 200 mph into a woods.
It is almost crazy, but punctuation is your friend...
Worst time to fly an airplane? Just out of maintenance. Ask any commercial pilot/
Aviation is supposed to be the industry where, lessons are learned and mistakes not repeated! Yet, here we are again, cables swapped, connectors swapped, fuel meters instruments swapped with different types of aircraft. Murphy’s laws is famous for saying that, if you allow for something to happen, over great numbers, it’s guaranteed to happen. Therefore, markings on cables and visual ground checks, different connectors, different shapes for different aircraft instruments etc. etc. Sometimes I’ve got the impression that, training of professional aviators should include, some general knowledge on human nature and mistakes prevention. I did spend tons of hours in meetings dedicated to FMEA (failure mode, engineering analysis), to prevent and/or detect mistakes, that was in microelectronics manufacturing, because our customers were worried about recalls, how about aviation being worried about dead passengers?
Looks like AI …..people were marching…
Let's blame the victims?
Why don't air towers have someone experienced who can help a flight crew to troubleshoot?
People don't take pride in their work anymore. It's all about where's my paycheck on Friday . Trust me I had workers like that . Didn't care about the equipment
Consider the mechanic doing it on purpose😮 there are psychopaths everywhere😮 to not be aware of that is to be a fool😮i would have looked at prosecuting the mechanic😮 immaterial whether or not there's an indictment😮 IT SENDS THE RIGHT MESSAGE😮i don't play😮
It wasn't my fault either !!!!
Maybe overloaded, lifting the landing gear reduces drag, increasing airspeed. LOW ALTITUDE BANKING LEFT OR RIGHT NOT ALLOWED. DEICEING WILL BE BE TO THE SECOND,Controlled by the airport groundcrew and an system.
Aircraft was empty. This was only a post-maintenance check flight - the aircraft hadn’t yet been returned to revenue service. Regardless, the plane didn’t stall - it was mis-rigged to where the trim tabs were exerting more downward force on the nose than the elevator was in trying to lift the nose. The more “up” trim the captain added, the more downward force resulted (again because the cables were incorrectly rigged). Ultimately the nose dropped below the horizon and flew itself right to the ground. RIP
Must have been a POS maint. outfit. Where I worked inspectors were all over everything and everything was signed off. You got one and showed him the work so that he signed it for you. Lot of eyes on stuff. Mech did not follow the manual and the insp did not show up. They both totally liable. Or maybe the insp was not notified, whoever passed on unsigned paperwork also.
1956? That plane is ancient🤯
They should have been prosecuted
AI sensational…. Try getting the wheels up next time you run the app.
It’s. REALLY. SICK !…..They just fly….until it crashes ! ! Need mandatory. Law ,30 yr !retirement age ! !
Thiss samê aero-plain azz Partnair 394
I get so angry when pilots sre nlamed for everything that goes wrong. Obviously this catastrophe was none of their doing. Blame those who are at fault!!
But god didn't help them. In fact, they all died.
No AI
Your blaming of the captain earned you a “don’t recommend this channel”.
The NTSB did in its report, not me.
😢
I hope that the maintenance guy and the inspector can sleep well, their negligence work cost the life of three humans , I don't care about airplane, it's something replaceable, but lives not😢
This is not real
Neither are you bott.....
W T F ..................