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My wife was in management at the Hospital in Anchorage when this happened. It was called a 'CODE External" over the hospital wide speakers. That meant that there were a large number of casualties coming into the hospital from outside the hospital (as opposed to a code internal, casualties from an 'In Hospital' emergency'). The emergency plan was designed for emergencies like a plane crash at the airport in town. The expectation was that employees would rush to the hospital to give help within 20 minutes or so. However, even though Providence Alaska Medical Center was the closest Hospital and because of the distance from the incident over the Aleutian Islands, it was still another 6 hours before the first casualties were expected to arrive at the hospital. There were 150, non-English speaking Chinese nationals who needed medical help. Great praise should go to not only the hospital personnel who rushed into work and then waited for the emergency to arrive, but to the passengers and crew who dealt with the victims for A LONG F-ING TIME before they could get real medical help. Also, great appreciation should go to all the employees of every Chinese restaurant in town (especially 'Charlies Bakery') who supplied VOLUNTEER translators to the hospital at a moments notice.
Makes me wonder whether ETOPS should come with better medical support on board. Without it, passengers on an ETOPS flight should be made aware that in case they suffer a medical emergency there may be a delay of up to xx hours or more before medical attention can be provided. Something as routine as appendicitis can become deadly in 6 hours if left untreated.
I was thinking as the video came to a end, and before I read your comment, that there wouldn't be many Chinese speakers for translation in Anchorage, but how great that there was, and they were able to help at short notice.
I've met younger ethnic chinese staff at chinese restaurants who don't even speak any chinese dialects. It's great that the community in Anchorage were able to help in this case, it would have been even more challenging for the hospital staff without translators.
@@petep.2092 I had an experience like this with a flight crew leader -- basically, I was in the middle of a 28-hour journey across the world and was feeling a bit nauseated. I had just boarded my flight, and I asked to use the restroom. The flight crew leader started freaking out and warned me that if I had a medical emergency, I wouldn't be able to get help for likely 8-12 hours. He actually almost kicked me off the plane before I reassured him that I was fine and just a bit tired from the long travel... It turns out, he had just had a flight the previous day in which some experienced appendicitis over the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it was HOURS before the person was able to get proper medical treatment, he was clearly still very shaken up by the whole ordeal.
I've been wanting to design a game where you get an actual college education in your field of choice. VR University, you attend a virtual university with a fully explorable campus. You can meet new people and you must go to your classes like normal. You could also party on the weekend. It would be a huge deal for not only game design but also in public education. For $60-$120 you will get a college education and a virtual social life as well. I can't wait until we get to the point where this is possible. I mean it's technically possible now, but a lot has to happen and a lot has to change for this idea to fully work as designed.
20:10 Part of me is just glad to hear a story where the pilot responded to a stall by putting the nose down. It’s insane how many people have lost their lives to pilots pulling up or doing nothing.
Well it's rare for there to be an incident report when there was no loss of life and the plane landed safely, so the number of times a pilot got confused and mishandled a stall is probably overrepresented in documentaries. Remember Petter usually shies away from anything without an official report (in fact he only once did so without a report) so we're not going to hear much about the times a stall was handled correctly. In fact given there was no one dead, I'm surprised there _is_ a report this time since, again, it's usually reserved for incidents with loss of hull or life.
@@alex_zetsuyeah, exactly. As much as I want to learn about airplane accidents, I also fully recognize the hundreds of times safer flying is than other forms of transportation and the fact that accidents are reporting on the times things didn’t go well (usually), not the more common times when something goes wrong but the pilots handle it well. I think this often confuses less educated people in this area into thinking that plane accidents are common and pilots don’t handle emergencies well, when the opposite is the case.
I remember this very well. I was a World Airways 31:51 mechanic on the MD-11 and after this incident we had to install a mechanical lock on the flap/slat handle. RIP to the two people who died.
And yet, the whole design of the control mechanism sounds brain-dead. The stable operation should not require permanent tension on the control cables, EVER. Tension is an invitation for things to break, towards the one or another direction.
Agreed the mechanism is bonkers. The FAA mandate to make the mechanism “fail open” created a problem that was both more likely and more severe than the problem they were trying to fix.
MD tried many "New" things to make sales many of their ideas were badly engineered and executed, much of this is due to how the company was organised, Management > bean counters > engineering. Thin push rods to lock baggage doors what could go wrong, those big bolts holding the engines on we can go a size down and save some money, & this one let's make this airliner unstable as to see what happens.
My favorite was _X-Men: the Animated Series_ . Sunday was bad, though. The choices were (1) religious programming, like literally watching a preacher read the Bible (boring) (2) Golf (boring). This was before RUclips or the Internet. I'm old.
After a 'difficult' flight back from Spain a few years ago, I became something of a nervous flyer. Since discovering your channel, I've got to the point where I actually listen to your videos to go to sleep at night...now THAT'S progress 😂 Thank you Petter, you're a miracle worker 😁
@justcommenting4981 Nothing particularly dramatic, to be honest. I'm an infrequent flyer anyway, and we got caught in the tail end of a tropical storm. It just meant lots of prolonged buffeting. They kept us strapped in, and all food/drink services were cancelled. As I say, for a frequent flyer, I'm sure it wouldn't have been half as traumatic, but it did shake me up a bit.
Back in the 90s when the seatbelt light went off, you heard the clack-clack of hundreds of belts being thrown open and off like it was a shackle. Different times today, as most now know the risk of unexpected turbulence.
I don’t understand why passengers unbuckle their seatbelts when the seatbelt sign is turned off. It’s not uncomfortable to wear your seatbelt at all phases of flight unless you are a plus size person. You can’t even feel it most of the time.😊
A recent study found that air turbulence over the Atlantic had increased by 55% from 1979 to 2000. And even a few weeks ago, a woman died on a business jet from turbulence. Wearing your seat belt is a must unless you have to be moving around - and you are correct, we HAVE become smarter. Every time I fly into Houston, it's a complete roller coaster due to the constant rain and marine layers mixing in odd ways. It wasn't this bad back in the 80s for sure.
We have very little "bad air" over Africa (where I live and fly over mainly) and I still don't remove my seatbelt unnecessarily and when I must I belt up immediately after.
I was stationed at Ellmendorf AFB, AK (just on the edge of Anchorage, AK) when this happened. Since Shemya was primarily an Air Force base, we were tasked with generating cargo aircraft to ferry passengers from Shemya to Elmendorf, where the passengers were then transported to area hospitals. Everything went smoothly with everyone involved working together admirably. It was later noted that it would have been quicker (it was about a 4 hour flight from Shemya to Ellmendorf or 8 hours round trip) for the passengers to be transported to Japan than to Anchorage since Shemya is actually closer to Japan than to Anchorage. Because of the Aleutian Islands being part of Alaska no one realized this till later.
I live in Juneau, and my family constantly asks me why it's such a big deal for me to have to go to Anchorage to see a medical specialist, and why sometimes I go to Seattle instead. It's just so hard for them to comprehend how big Alaska is, even though they know all the stats about its size. It took me a year to adjust to the distances just between towns in Southeast...Anchorage and Fairbanks are like different worlds lol.
Indeed, with the large number of injured passengers and a stable aircraft, it would have been better to proceed to Anchorage after the incident and get people to hospitals in less time. I say that knowing that hindsight is 20/20 and the people involved made the best decisions they could with the information they had available, of course.
Been watching Mentour pilot since the beginning. I’m not a pilot, just a curious “nervous” frequent flyer. Mentour’s videos have helped to completely eliminate my fear of flying, greatly appreciated!
MD-11F Capt/Instructor- great coverage! Slats went from mechanical control to electronic control and are iinhibited for extension above 280 knots or Mach .55 to avoid a repeat. Even in a stick shaker event, where nornally the outboard panels extend automatically with a "ASE" shown on the PFD lower left.
And there were no more or less events as a result of the change. The change was an appeasement to China and nothing else. I was involved in the change.
Was it this plane that had to step climb? I am trying to remember what plane it was in the 80's that freaked me out climbing out of YYZ over Lake Ontario.
@@AmazonAllie73 All large transport airplanes ("heavies") use step climbs on long routes. They initially cruise at one altitude and then increase the cruising altitude in "steps" over time as fuel is burned off and the aircraft becomes lighter and can climb higher. The weight difference between takeoff and landing can be hundreds of thousands of pounds in large aircraft flying long distances, and as a result, the optimal cruising altitude significantly increases as the flight progresses and that fuel weight is reduced. A fully fueled 747 might start with an initial cruising altitude of 32,000 feet and ultimately step climb up to 39,000 feet (or higher) over the course of a 10+ hour flight.
This isn’t related directly to this story, but your channel has gotten me really into aviation. I started off by binge listening to every story and then trying out Microsoft flight sim. After countless hours with my plug-in yoke, I decided to actually go for it. I found a CFI and I’m loving it so far! Thank you!
Your content is so accessible (especially to someone like me who is not a pilot, not an engineer or in no other way connected to aviation at all), your narration is on point and I can only imagine the work that goes into every video you make because its such a high quality production. Extra kudos for never sensationalizing any of these stories!
I was working for DynCorp in LAX when this plane stopped overnight to de-cater the plane on it's way to Long Beach McDonnell Douglas Aircraft factory about 25 miles from there. I got inside the plane with the China Airlines rep and we walked through the cabin, I will never ever forget what I saw and I wear my seatbelt at all times on airplanes if I'm seated.
Another great video Peter. I always wear a loose seatbelt when flying and this demonstrates why. You just never know if / when it’ll be needed, and can quite literally save one’s life. RIP this two.
@@hamiltonian4698how can you be proud of someone you don't know? Admiration maybe. Proud 'feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions or those of someone with whom one is closely associated. "a proud grandma of three boys"
Ability to master certain academic skills are essential, but I still think the public is best served by a certain personality profile. Being very calm in crisis helps a whole lot. And not too touchy when you run into air traffic controllers who are abrasive. That means a bit more patience than average.
As a Bachelor of Aerospace engineering I got over a dozen of "oh" and "ah" moments during the technical part of this episode due to its extreme correctness. Pleasure to watch such a good content!
As a Ph.D of Aerospace, I didn't. Stability was not explained correctly, which is very typical for pilots. But correct explanation of stability necessarily involves the concept of derivatives, i.e. the _rates_ of change of forces/moments. At which point most viewers will give up...
Yes, it put me to sleep super fast, as planned last night. Probably why the two died due to boring information nightmares. What percentage would you say are only in it for the $$$ cash? 40% I would say. Book worms, they remember every word on a book, but can't contemplate how to put together a Lego Star Wars spaceship, without a saw and some duct tape!!! 😮 Zero reasons a plane should fail. Look at the sky scapers, how ma y have fallen lately? Not as many as planes and automobiles hit each other or totaling themselves. Having an Auto worker strike should frighten Americans to death. Because they hire people with out care of safety. 😮 Life of my dad a former engineer and my grandfather. They never got rich, paid well, not complained or had a Union. They did their jobs as if they were working on a family home. Concerning life, the dignity of life through safety 1st and quality materials only that saves lives. Money they spent put of pocket to help their customers be safer was termsd pride in America once, not too long ago. Today pride is how fat your banks are and cool cars. 😂 Pilots need to have zero automatic anything in their first 5k hours or 8k. Just plain as day this pilot stalled the aircraft twice or 3 times. I know of some 10-year-olds who knew that was not smart. And during an Emrrgency. I don't think the pilot was professional. He probably lied about his hours of flight before being hired. Well it fly itself his parents taught him!
@@zeus6828I somehow knew that "moment" was a term in physics, e.g. "magnetic moment", but could not for the life of me remember what it was beyond "something with forces". I haven't taken any physics other than in high school, haha. I can only surmise that sometime during my endless hours of internet it had been a thing. What you described is a wholly accurate, stepwise account of my thinking. I did *want* to understand it, so I googled it. I then started recursing back through those concepts, eventually giving up because it was too much to do while the video continued to play. I could have pressed "pause", but felt compelled to continue the video. Somewhat ironically, this parallels a common "human factors" problem that many of these videos address. I mused to myself, "Well, he really must have that doctorate!" Because having such a fine-grained understanding of "known unknowns" vis a vis someone else's reasoning is not something that one develops overnight.
When he started talking about inadvertent slat extensions I immediately thought of Airframe. It was released in 1996, so I think we know where he got his inspiration.
A very entertaining book but the way he pictured the sole designer of the aircraft as one grumpy old man sitting in a corner of a hangar instead of the more realistic team of hundreds of engineers working hand in hand was truly " romantic" LOL
Airframe was very enlightening reading giving a complete insight of such a complex machine. Thanks to Michael Chrishton and also thanks to Mentour for explaining it in details.
I would add that the reason the rear stabilizer pushes down instead of helping to lift the plane , is so that the default is always for the plane to want to nose down, which is the more stable position. Nose up = stall = crash. When you build a home made aircraft this is one of the main checks in the air worthiness certification.
I just want to thank you for your channel. I flew for the first time this week and it went great thanks to all your educational content. I was fully prepared and knew all the noises and what they were and what turbulence was. I owe a successful flight to you @Mentour
I loved Michael Crichton's book, Airframe, which was based on this incident. Despite the fictional nature of the story, Crichton didn't resort to sensationalizing the events of the incident and placing undeserved blame on the aircrew. I'm glad Mentour Pilot upheld those standards in his excellent coverage of this incident.
In this case the pilot didn't control more than would normally be needed to correct the problem. The issue is the controls were overly sensitive taking what should have worked and turning it into over controlling. There was some blame for the pilot but the major players were improper training and an unstable design. Unstable designs are great for fighters and acrobatics but for a normal aircraft or commercial aircraft, you should almost be able to take your hands of the wheel and the plane will fly its self. For the DC 11, it needed a computer running all the time to keep it stable.
@Julia-nl3gq yea your right. Thank you. 😊 I posted my comment because that person has been spamming over and over and over but your right, I should have put some thought into my comment.
You have explained the flight specifics without condesention, no extra drama, very educational. I wish more flight docu would talk like this, its usually the same information repeated over and over. I actually learned something! Will be watching more! 😊
@Julia-nl3gq I didn't say it wasn't okay, just that I wish more were formatted like this. I have watched hour.long flight documentaries, where the same phrases are repeated over and over again with more intense music. They also don't provide the same alternative theories or possibilities in the technical way that he does. Yes, I prefer it this way.
Mentour sprinkles just the right amount of drama in, with music and animations. But all those media documentaries just have no idea about the actual technicalities behind this. That's the refreshing part here - we really learn in-depth what it's about, instead of the mostly shallow descriptions and 95% dramatizing of media documentaries.
Hah, same here. If you want to learn something about flight physics, just watch a bunch of Mentour Pilot videos. Eventually you’ll find one where he’ll teach you exactly what you want to know.
I always keep my seatbelt on from beginning to end (meaning full stop @ gate!) of every flight I take. Also, I absolutely love roller coasters but I would not have enjoyed this ride! Thanks for thoroughly explaining exactly what happened on this flight. It is sad that there were two deaths and so many injured, mainly due to not wearing seatbelts!
Well, with a 10 hours flight, you usually have to take the chance and go to the toilet at least once. But I also try to minimize the time without having a seat belt on. Pilots as well on these flights, by the way - the relief crews have to get to their rest quarters at some time, or also to the toilet.
Ah yes, I have a flight tomorrow. Nothing beats watching this type of content before a flight. You get to learn so much about how planes work and how the crew operates.
As an avid player of Kerbal Space Program I appreciated the stability explanation. I have created many a misshapen flying machine but as long as cl is somewhere behind cg with a little distance in between it flies. :) Didn't they used to say, an aircraft with cl behind cg flies badly. An aircraft with cl in front of cg flies once.
But those planes are just different. Jebediah doesn’t care about these forces. 6 Gs of positive force? Jebediah is fine. 8 G negative? Jebediah is confident and smiling as always. A minor case of the front stabilizers being burned off? Jebediah is just sheddig weight. He is nothing like those whiny humans.
Watching this on a transatlantic flight right now. Can’t think of a better way to pass 8 hours than to buy the Wi-Fi and just lose myself in air accident videos. Bliss.
I learned as a kid to keep my seat belt fastened -- that if I need to unfasten it for some reason, to fasten it again as soon as practical. In the vast majority of commercial flights, I never adjusted the seat belt at all between takeoff and landing.
Sir. As an aviation and space enthusiast, I just want to say how much I appreciate your videos for your absolutely captivating story-telling and your technical explanations. I have been closely following your channel for many months (including the Mentour Now channel) and I have learned a lot. God bless you sir and I hope you continue to fascinate us with your quality content.
Captain, I respect you, your channels, and appreciate the content you produce, as I consider it to be high quality, honest, and intended to improve the safety and lives of your audience. It’s with that in mind I ask that you refuse future sponsorships from BetterHelp, who have demonstrated an utter lack of integrity and all of the qualities I identify with you and your channels. Keep up the good work, and thank you for your hard work.
I raised these points with the company prior to agreeing to the sponsorship and they assured me that the points raised had been sorted. I then tried the service out myself and found it to be well structured and helpful. I be er promote a service on my channels that I haven’t used myself and found helpful.
@@MentourPilot Thank you for hearing us, either way. I don’t know that BH has done enough to earn back the damaged trust of patients, but I know how hard it is to earn a living for yourself, and I appreciate your extending the effort!
@@The_ZeroLine Clever, but my concerns extend beyond the atrocious mistakes BH has made, to the detriment of their customers’ health, and into the political trashfire of American politics where the inexcusable failure to guarantee access to basic healthcare to its citizens has created an environment where scam artists and questionable intentions have a head start since so few people have access to local healthcare professionals, and where “gig economy” bullshit has not been meaningfully regulated. This is obviously well beyond the scope of this channel, and I wouldn’t expect anyone here to stake out such strong positions one way or another. I don’t believe that the market of demand for a service like BH should exist in a just world, but I’m also incredibly idealistic.
Michael Crichton wrote a book about a similar occurrence called “Airframe”. But in his version an inadvertent slat extension was nearly impossible in the way it’s presented here. (There was a guard on the handle)
The aircraft involved in this incident continued flying with China Eastern, was eventually sold to China Cargo Airlines, and finally SkyLease Cargo in the US after that. It was scrapped in November 2016.
Fact: China Cargo Airlines is actually a subsidiary to China Eastern. EVA Air Cargo and Singapore Airlines Cargo also hold some minority shares in the company. Not to be confused with China Airlines Cargo (owned by China Airlines).
I have an unopened deck of playing cards from this aircraft given to me by the rep after I walked through it with him on it's way to Long Beach, stopped to get the food off.
I think the technical/scientific descriptions you give provide a rich and much-needed context to understand these accidents and aviation more broadly and are one of the reasons I enjoy these videos so much.
Wow…..yet another great video! Your channel is seriously the best. You don’t only focus on the accident but give us so much mind blowing background information of the plane construction, operating systems etc….that all help in understanding the true nature of what went on. Kudos xx
Very well done. My dad who was an aero engineer always talked about trim drag. So I new about that, but the discussion on pitch stability by changing the CG to reduce trim drag was was very well done. You do a great job on these videos.
As far as i know, this accident was one of the two, from which Michael Crichton took his inspiration, while he was writing a novel "Airframe". And the other one was Aeroflot flight 593.
Looking at the synopsis it seems like the plot is almost exactly what happened with this case. It's surprising he was able to get a novel about such a niche topic published, honestly. It's very interesting for a 30 minute video but I don't know how interesting it would be for the average person to read a whole novel about it!
In the 80's I was flying in a DC-10 from LAX to Sydney at night. 3 hours into the flight when most people including myself were sleeping at high altitude the plane suddenly ran into some kind of wind shear. I was in the center part of the plane, inner seats about where the wings were, and we suddenly got severe G forces, first positive and then negative. The plane was flexing like crazy and the engines started screaming like they were advanced to full power. At some point we started descending at a steep rate which is when I thought we were going to crash, but a short time later, though it seemed very long, we leveled out. Captain came on intercom about ten minutes after leveling off to tell us we had hit high altitude wind shear and we had to return back to LAX at a lower speed and altitude because the plane may have been damaged. When we got back to LAX 4 hours later we were greeted by many fire trucks and ambulances on the runway as quite a few people had been injured hitting the ceiling during the event and taken out on stretchers. I think it was a Continental DC-10 and I would love to get any information on this incident. Is there a resource Mentour Pilot that I can access to find out what really happened?
Sounds like a reasonable safety procedure to descend as quickly as possible to a breathable altitude if there's any suspicion of a depressurization. Absolutely no time to make PA's in that case, no matter how scary it can be for the passengers. And of course divert to nearest reasonable airport. Sounds like the pilots did exactly what they should have done. Not sure about engine power. But I would assume that if you're not at max mach or indicated airspeed limit, and anything sudden happens to the airspeed, toga power is always the correct choice while you figure out what's happening.
@@justcommenting4981 not strange at all, as there aren’t many airports (... or land at all) between Los Angeles and Sydney. Perhaps Papeete, but it might have been further than LAX at that point (and possibly without the company’s mechanics).
As a chemical engineer who studied process control, the way you described the LSAS to me sounds like the engineers used a PI control feedback closed loop system to move the plane to a set point stabilization every time it pitched or de-stabilized. That’s how it corrects overtime until the error difference between the output and setpoint is minuscule.
You are right, it looked like PI control, but odds are there was some derivative action as well. It looks like an interesting (read complicated) control system to design. I know software is relatively cheaper than metal (or fuel or blood), but the multiple design constraints mentioned are familiar - problems, requiring ever better modeling and solutions with smaller allowable difference between setpoint and measured process variable. (a long retired chemical process control engineer). I have noticed that operators tend to err on the side of over-response, like the pilot - we are not very good at estimating overshoot.
I really believe the head and neck injuries from the turbulence. As A teenager I was flying with my parents to the East coast. We hit turbulence over the midwest, and I was in the restroomwhen a particularly bad pocket dropped the plan. In reality, it was most likely only a dozen feet. My head hit the roof of the restroom. The light for seat belts had just gone on as I had been finishing up, and then suddenly, I had a headache (and was on the now wet floor). I don´t think I really pieced together what happened until I got to my seat and found my mother silently panicking in her seat.
You talk a lot about how our heads must be spinning! I absolutely LOVE the level of detail you go into explaining principles like pitch and center of gravity! Almost want more of that level of detail in some of your videos. Love the work you do, keep it up!
I guess over the last year or so he’s done a good job of pounding flight physics into my head and making it stick because not only was I familiar with most of it, but at the “your head might be spinning” segment I vaguely thought. “No, I’m following what you’re saying just fine.” I have used other sources but most of the basics started here with Mentour Pilot.
This is why I never take off my seatbelts, I remember seeing a Soviet movie as a child where passengers were being thrown all over the place during bad turbulence, that really instilled some fear into me.
@@shrimpflea been on 8 9 hour flights didn't need the bathroom on all but 1 of them, i didn't eat on any of them tho... mind you i did had to go to the toilet in the terminal bathrooms
This is a stunning video. The kind of explanation about CG and the pitch characteristics are second to none! Thank you for this amazing piece of content, and for EVERYTHING ELSE that you create.
Another great episode. I always keep my seatbelt fastened when not moving around the cabin. And, why does the turbulence always start during the meal service when I am flying?
This video reminded me of "Airframe", a book by Michael Chrichton I read many years ago, about a plane with such violent oscillations, due to pilot overcorrection after accidental slats deployment at high altitude! Obviously Chrichton used this real incident for inspiration!
The conclusion from the novel, the pilot let his son drove the plane. His son wasn't a pilot and he didn't know that when the plane was porpoising, he should have just let go the plane control.
@@nadines1618 I believe the plot of the novel was an amalgamation of CE583 and another one where a flight crew allowed a family member into the cockpit.
@@h8GW A little bit of Aeroflot 593 for that element, but yes, virtually all of Airframe came from this flight. Things like that list of slats-related incidents are even used almost verbatim in the book.
I remember once being in really bad turbulences (been in bad a few times, but really bad just this once) and it was just before landing at Frankfurt, so probably there was a lot of windshear that made things worse. Not only the plane was shaken to the left and right, but it felt like it dropped like 30 m out of a sudden, as if it had ben BONKed from the top by some gust of wind. Fucking hell, I can still remember my fingers grasping at the seat. I didn't crap myself because I had already pooped during the trip.
I've felt that exact feeling. Like pitch and speed did not change at all, it's like the plane hit a hole in the air and had loads less lift for a split second. I'll bet it's an air pressure / lift thing, but could be downward force from wind I suppose. It was quite unsettling!
In our family we call turbulence "potholes". It's really no more scary or mysterious than that. It's just that when you're travelling at several hundred miles an hour, hitting a pothole can be pretty rough. Wear your seatbelt!
I picked up this book in an airport and read it for the first time during a long haul flight across the atlantic. I didn't do it on purpose but It was quite eerie having the sound of the plane going on while the story unfolded. I like reading paperbacks on longhaul flights...📖✈ and each bit of turbulence an any flight now takes me back to that bit of the story.
Definitely have read it a dozen times easily myself. Love how the author went into the detail of how investigations work, even though that fictional one was much shorter than real-life ones seem to.
Retired MD-11 PIC & Airline EVP (Technics) Years ago, I supervised our aircraft fleet production both at Boeing & Douglas in Long Beach where the MD-11 was designed and produced. I was always impressed by the professionals in management, engineering and especially by the dedicated mechanics who actually built this fine aircraft. It was a joy to fly. Great memories!
1st, I’ve watched every single video Mentour thank you for truly being an amazing teacher I aspire to be a pilot for British airways one day , I have to work hard for it tho nothing good in life comes easy, I’m 16 right now but I’m studying for The Aptitude test for CAE Oxford and will begin going over ATPL topics.
I just happened to experience my first ever flight in my life 2 weeks ago I still even remember what flight i got: AirAsia Flight 8440, Bali-Jogjakarta. From the fast taxi, the very powerful Take-Off roll (A320 btw), the climb to 10k ft, ALL OF IT, its a very exciting moment. One thing to note tho, is that while its a VERY BRIGHT and CLEAR SKY all the way, there is STILL Turbulence. Even tho its a small Turbulence, the feeling it exert still managed to make my body remember the sensation. Its like rolling over soft bumps, over and over again for couple of seconds, sometimes minutes. Me being an enthusiast actually walked down the aisle for rear toilet when it happened. Its a surreal feeling. Anyway, crew is super nice, i even got to talk with them at the back of the cabin for a while. Apparently that flight i got on actually still flies to Singapore after Jogjakarta. Thankfully there is no problem pops up on the flight, and we landed on YIA (Yogyakarta Internasional Airport) apparently *10 minutes* faster than expected. Oh, and the landing is *butter* as well. Sadly i didnt remember who the pilot and FO operating that flight that day. But i made sure to tell the Flight Attendant to send my regards for the butter landing. Its just a short one hour 10 minutes flight, but its a very memorable one. Maybe one day i will pick another flight again, possibly longer and flies somewhere internasional. One day...
How lovely it must be to live in a destination so enjoyed by people from all over the world! I'd love to fly into Bali some day. It's a bit of a "bucket list" destination of mine, although my original purpose of surfing the famous beaches is no longer a possibility for me anymore because of physical limitations. I'd still enjoy watching others surfing and and would like to chat with expats and digital nomads in the area to see if it may be possible for us (I've since re-married) to have an extended visit if I were able to engage in a contract for services locally, or find distance work. Glad to hear your first flight was so enjoyable. Tschuss!
I am riveted by your site and binge on them. wish I would have had them early on in my flying days. Dont stop you are providing a monumental contribution.
Perfect description of how the aircraft finds its stability thanks to the balance of aerodynamic forces between its center of gravity, wings and tail ✈️
In programming, we have a GIT system, which keeps track of the changes made to the repository. I remember one of your videos where there was a challenge to track the changes, I did get 3-4 but surprised to find out there was a lot. Now in this video, you mentioned the replacement of the steam gauges to crt gauges and that's versatile in displaying information. My big question is, why can't the AVB implement such a system or screen that shows major recent changes in a timeline log fashion? Wouldnt it be great to see mistakes and make judgement on the history of changes? In the case of pilot error or cockpit dashboard malfunction, there should be a visible log on those changes, similar to what the FDR does but less detailed
Hello, I am a pilot. I can assure you that flight operations are very different to programming. The way the menus of the Flight Management System are organized leaves very little room for puzzling/hidden bugs. I regularly see values which are unexpected. During flight we often manipulate parameters to extreme values to judge whether, and by how much, we could optimize the flight's performance. But, even if my colleague would make secret changes and leave the cockpit to go to the toilet, I can't think of a possible change, resulting in puzzling outcome, which I wouldn't find within 30 seconds. And even if I couldn't, none of those changes would lead to a loss of control; at worst to a loss of efficiency (flight time or fuel consumption). So, I simply don't see much added value to a 'change log', while such a function could lead to added clutter of the FMC menu structure. Kind regards
What you're describing might be a sort-of live debug feed from the Flight Data Recorder, maybe post-processed by some software. The third member of the crew, the Flight Engineer, might conceivably have the time to look at something like this (I have no idea how their instrumentation looks like). The main point to note here is that the entire upset lasted just 90 seconds. I do not know if that would be enough time for someone to quickly read through the recorded events, understand exactly what sort of input mistake the pilot is making, and give them advice on how to recover.
@@theultramage There is no conceivable way how anything like that would be helpful. Instead, airlines have concentrated on paying attention to training pilots to handle the very different aircraft behaviour at high flight levels, to avoid over controlling. I get such training at least once a year. I believe benny was referring to the puzzling advisory Mach number which was displayed on the PFD, and how to find its origin. This occupied the captain as the inadvertent slat extension occurred but had no direct influence on the resulting outcome.
@@TribusMontibus thanks ey. The good thing most crucial controls can be seen at a glance or at least in the fov. This will make tampering with the "in-flight git" a time waster. And I cant argue that this would replace the checklist and other subconscious instincts from training and feel of the plane... But it might be a good feature as a precautionary measure. It can be set to filter out the noise of inputs, to only flight configuration changes. Im really amazed how the FDR catches these signals, is it some kind of middleware interface or there is a redundant feed of sensors? But my 2 cents as a programmer, such a system, would be beneficial to the aviation community
@@theultramage In a scenario that you have an engine failure, and preparation for landing: that window of event checking will lower drastically. Debug feeds are a nightmare even to us programmers (these days no one on earth will ship a product without a bug or pay attention to non fatal warnings in the logs). We explicitly add a recognisable Tag to what we need to debug, filter the rest or elevate that tag to level error. Since the planes are becoming more morden, the flight engineer's role is no longer needed. I was wondering why in this video he said full crew of 8, with the fourth person being a "radio operator". Now its replaced by the ATC. But one day I cant wait to try the Flight Simulator, I've binged so much on aviation stuff, I literally mouth the problem before the video says "This is when it gets interesting"
Thank you, Mentour pilot, for sharing such valuable information in a way that is easily understandable. Mentour pilot Your explanations are clear and concise, and I truly appreciate your efforts. Keep up the excellent work!
Kudos to all the editors & computer graphic designers/creators supporting the Mentour Pilot channel!! 👏 Their work continues getting more excellent all the time. From the recreation simulations that add so much to the story to the easily-comprehended technical diagrams, and of course the well-paced editing, it's been a pleasure to see these aspects continuing to develop over the channel's history, and they add SO much!
I've built enough planes in KSP to understand that whole balancing situation. Even so far that moving fuel back and forth to keep pitch neutral mid-flight, Concorde style.
The 2nd version of the program is.. I'll leave it there. But the original was based on hard enough science underneath that NASA used it for certain parts of their training. And it is rather surprising at how easily changing the center of gravity or thrust by tiny amounts can make a stable design turn into a miracle to keep in the air.
Same here, but with another game called SimplePlanes. It took me some time but I eventually understood the delicate balance between the centre of mass and centre of lift. I've built many planes that i have tried to make many planes with low static stability and found they are incredibly difficult to fly without any kind of limiter. I cannot imagine what it must have been for the pilots on board this flight, feeling over-correction after over-correction while battling the G-Forces
5:16 Great explanation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't realise this. I always thought they worked in the opposite way to this. Very interesting info. Sounds like this flight was one h3ll of a ride!
As soon as you started talking about all the tweaks to fix potential issues with the way it was designed I thought of what Mr. Scott said in a Star Trek movie that always stuck with me " The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..."
every plane design is a "compromise" hence all planes have "issues".... is closer to what he said: compromise = aerodynamic solutions issues = aerodynamic characteristics all issues are potential problems... but yes Scotty is likely right... i liked that Trek moment too
Fascinating video as always. My takeaway from this is how, even though it appears the pilots made a few minor mistakes in their reactions, they did relatively well to recover the aircraft when the pitch oscillation was at its worst. I could easily see this story having turned into a loss-of-aircraft scenario, and while two deaths is tragic, it's certainly not 255 deaths. The story is a good example of why it's always a good idea to wear your seatbelt when seated, even if the seatbelt light is off at the time.
It is good that training now covers this, but a little time in most PC flight sims or video games will tell you exactly how a plane behaves at high speeds not too far from its maximum flight ceiling. So it does seem like a bit of an oversight for sure. But it also points to the problem of the companies and manufacturers in always trying to squeeze the maximum range and speed out of designs rather than focusing on stability and reliability. You want the center of gravity (just play around with Kerbal Space Proigram a bit) very much near the center of the wings because it's super easy to get sideways otherwise.
@@plektosgaming I have the impression that McDD tended to prioritise economics over safety rather more than other manufacturers. Cargo door latches for example.
I really like the graphics you use, from the simulated cockpit to the planes and the environment, very technical but really visually engaging. Keep it up and thanks!
I have a friend who pilots a Boeing 747 for Air Canada and uses your videos for his students and for his own uses. This is an indication as to just how amazing your videos and explanations truly are. You are such an amazing asset to anyone interested in flying. Please keep it up!
I flew China Eastern from PEK to LAX in 1993 several times, but was not on this flight. The thing I remembered was that smoking was still allowed at that time, usually the last two rows of seats are reserved for "smoking lounge", passengers came here, enjoy a cigarette, then came back to own seat. Before, I read some articles about this incident, written by Chinese passengers, it was first time (large group of) Chinese civilians entering US military air base since Korean War. The passengers all had good impression about the hospitality of US soldiers. But nobody told me this was caused by human error, until I watched this video. Thank you! By the way, at that time, all Chinese commercial airplanes are flew by retired Chinese PLA fighter pilot, they did not learn English until join airlines, so I really doubt about the result of their training.
I have over 2000 hours on the MD11... it's a GREAT airplane, ahead of it's time in many ways.. but it's unforgiving if you don't know what you're doing, especially on landing. the smaller elevator with LSAS could create for a handful during gusty landings.
@@wozja yes, I did... the -30 which also had the middle gear.. frankly if it was light, it too was a bit prone to bouncing, but didn't have the stability issues the 11 had... over all easier to land.. but especially at weights closer to 370-390K..
I really like your channel. You provide enough technical information to explain the problem that was encountered on the flight but not so much that your "fans" would need a degree in aviation. You also explain what the pilots either are doing or should be doing when the problem(s) happen. You're also fair in discussing what went wrong and if anyone or anything was at fault. Please keep these videos coming. Thank you.
I think my scariest flight was a short hop from Helsinki to Tallinn in a teensy plane. The pilots tried to land when a sideways gust of wind swept the plane away from the landing strip. We were pretty close to landing but luckily they managed a go around and managed to land on the 2nd or 3rd attempt.
I recall this one Petter . Well explained. There was also something surrounding that horizontal stabiliser in addition to those slats & flaps that meant the MD11 had a much higher landing speed with the pitch instability. Caused landing accidents at NRT & other places.. Horrendous 😮😮😮
All the managers in every corporate in the world should compulsorily study these cases or at least watch your videos. A toxic workplace environment would have led the blame be directed towards the captain for not being too careful while operating the aircraft while it was completely inadvertent and could have happened with any other pilot. Great video as always ❤
I have been watching you from close to the start of your career on RUclips and the improvement to your diagrams, animations etc is amazing and from the beginning I have enjoyed the level of detail in your reporting. Keep up the excellent work!
As a mechanic that has the pleasure of still working on these; I can tell you that the size of the horizontal stab is massively different from the DC-10, the trim tank as well as the engine on the tail make these A/C incredibly tail heavy. Look at one sitting in a gate, and you will see how low they are.
The MD-11 and a few other designs-like the Airbus 340 use tail fuel management to configure for optimum CG during cruise. This reduces drag by limiting the need for stab trim at cruise. An aft CG tends to limit stabilizer drag. This is true for most fixed wing aircraft.
The horizontal stabilizer reminded me of how cyclists increase their stability on the unicycle. While they apply a force on both pedals with the forward-faced pedal getting a bit more than the rear one, stability increases as the force on the rear pedal increases.
I was going from NY to Texas on a hot August day years ago. Over the Tennessee Valley ,we hit I think was wind sheer. The plane dropped about 10,000 feet , went back up, banked to the left, dropped again ,went back up and banked to the right. The flight attendants had just started to serve lunch and the food and drink went flying. All the attendants hit the deck and one young attendant was at my feet hanging onto the seat floor anchor. I could see the white of the white of the knuckles on her hand. You could hear a pin drop but out of the back of the plane a passenger yelled "ride them cowboy". Everyone started to laugh.
@@justinhamilton8647 no we are all too busy wiping the food and drink from our faces. The cabin was a mess . I did get a dry cleaning voucher for my suit and shirt from Delta.
Earthquake behavior is like this. The tension is high, and laughter results when someone makes a crack like that. There's usually a Karen who gets huffy about it.🙄
I had the privilege of being bumped up to first class in an MD-11 back in 1998. I was in awe at how fast the ground speed reading was, so close to mach 1 by my recollection. I've never had such a smooth flight as that one.
That ground speed reading reflected the effect of wind on your craft, and it sounds like you were flying with the jet stream. Rest assured that is different than mach, since mach is the measure of your speed in a medium v. the speed of sound in that medium...and you weren't traveling thru the dirt. Luckily.
I would like to compliment the team at this channel on the great production quality of these videos. I love the use of the flight simulator software and graphics overlays to really give us a feeling of the plane and how things work. I also like the little touches, like the Mentour Pilot animation on the passenger cabin in-flight movie screen :) It doesn't go un-noticed.
Mandatory complaint about BetterHelp being a garbage sponsor. On principle. We didn’t forget their history. That principle fulfilled, Liked the video, nice one, Petter! 👌🏻
Among hobbyists who fly remote control airplanes there is a saying, “nose heavy planes fly poorly and tail heavy plane once”. The engineers should have kept this in mind 😞
This is probably a case of weak but still positive passive stability (drag and mass closely balanced). More stability means more resistance to control forces as positive stability will push the plane towards 0 degree AoA or fight against control inputs that would create an AoA. Because the pilots no longer have to fight against those forces, the plane has an extreme and unusual amount of control authority. You might expect pulling back the yoke with a certain amount of force to edge you up to a 5 degree AoA, but it actually pulls up quickly to 20 and then you have lost control. Such a plane is probably difficult to fly without proper care, calm, pilot assistance and training - especially if the responsiveness of the flight controls vary greatly in different conditions or phases of flight. Instability or tail heavy would usually mean something else - that those passive forces are instead trying to maneuver the plane into flying backwards. As the center of drag moves behind the center of mass, the direction of the passive stability forces literally flips around and acts in the opposite direction which can be a much greater problem. I doubt that any passenger aircraft would be designed this way (Millitary jets use these aerodynamics intentionally for greater control authority, but they're a rough ride and take pilot controls as more of a suggestion than a command in order to maintain control of the aircraft).
The problem is more of the fact that MD utilized a mechanical manual flight control system in a neutrally stable aircraft design without requiring pilots to go through more extensive training to manually fly the aircraft. Any aircraft with neutral or even negative aerodynamic stability should (and in the latter case, must, if you don't intend on the first flight being the last) use a fly by wire system that controls the control surfaces based on both sensor and pilot inputs instead of a mechanical system in which the pilot directly controls the control surfaces as the flight control computers can allow for stabilizing flight from an upset without allowing the pilot to inadvertently maneuver excessively and/or exceed the safe flight envelope.
This path between East Asia and LAX or SFO is a brutal one. Most airliners use the Boeing 777-ER to do this route and I'm guessing because you can beat the CRAP out of that plane. When you get up near the Arctic Circle turbulence is common. I've flown this route a few times now and it's never been the case that we DIDN'T has some turbulence and really it's a matter of degree. One trip we were bouncing around for about 5 hours with a couple of pretty big jolts. Most times it's about 2 - 3 hours of being bounced around but it's not too bad.
At the time there was no 777ER. And this route is used by pretty much all trans pacific fly between East Asia and North America. I think they used A340 on this route as well.
I am new to the mentour channel, and I really love it. I love the graphics, animation, narration, and best of all the host. Hi love, aviation and the science behind it and you seem like you would be one of those professors that would make their students want to learn. Very well done! Thank you and keep them coming.
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BetterHelp is really awful, please don’t promote them!
Don't sponser BetterHelp they're scammers
As soon as I saw the sponsor I was horrified. Please don’t promote scams that harm vulnerable people. This is wrong and no matter the quality of your content, it made me unsubscribe.
Online shrinks can't really be effective. The problems of the mind are very delicate, and require personal contact as a premise to any resolution...
YIKES better help was exposed not that long ago.
My wife was in management at the Hospital in Anchorage when this happened. It was called a 'CODE External" over the hospital wide speakers. That meant that there were a large number of casualties coming into the hospital from outside the hospital (as opposed to a code internal, casualties from an 'In Hospital' emergency'). The emergency plan was designed for emergencies like a plane crash at the airport in town. The expectation was that employees would rush to the hospital to give help within 20 minutes or so. However, even though Providence Alaska Medical Center was the closest Hospital and because of the distance from the incident over the Aleutian Islands, it was still another 6 hours before the first casualties were expected to arrive at the hospital. There were 150, non-English speaking Chinese nationals who needed medical help.
Great praise should go to not only the hospital personnel who rushed into work and then waited for the emergency to arrive, but to the passengers and crew who dealt with the victims for A LONG F-ING TIME before they could get real medical help. Also, great appreciation should go to all the employees of every Chinese restaurant in town (especially 'Charlies Bakery') who supplied VOLUNTEER translators to the hospital at a moments notice.
Brilliant thinking. 💜
Makes me wonder whether ETOPS should come with better medical support on board. Without it, passengers on an ETOPS flight should be made aware that in case they suffer a medical emergency there may be a delay of up to xx hours or more before medical attention can be provided. Something as routine as appendicitis can become deadly in 6 hours if left untreated.
I was thinking as the video came to a end, and before I read your comment, that there wouldn't be many Chinese speakers for translation in Anchorage, but how great that there was, and they were able to help at short notice.
I've met younger ethnic chinese staff at chinese restaurants who don't even speak any chinese dialects. It's great that the community in Anchorage were able to help in this case, it would have been even more challenging for the hospital staff without translators.
@@petep.2092 I had an experience like this with a flight crew leader -- basically, I was in the middle of a 28-hour journey across the world and was feeling a bit nauseated. I had just boarded my flight, and I asked to use the restroom. The flight crew leader started freaking out and warned me that if I had a medical emergency, I wouldn't be able to get help for likely 8-12 hours. He actually almost kicked me off the plane before I reassured him that I was fine and just a bit tired from the long travel... It turns out, he had just had a flight the previous day in which some experienced appendicitis over the middle of the Pacific Ocean and it was HOURS before the person was able to get proper medical treatment, he was clearly still very shaken up by the whole ordeal.
No better way to start my morning than eating breakfast and watching a mentour video
That’s the spirit!!
Well what about us Indians? Will we be able to watch while having breakfast?😅
Still working on the coffee. Breakfast can wait.
Its almost midnight here
Was just thinking the same thing! It's an extra treat to get the day started right. 😊
This channel is - without a doubt - a piece of masterwork. No BBC or NG Aviation docu can keep up with what Petter is providing.
Thank you for the glowing response friend! Stay tuned! 😎💓
BBC target readers are different from MentorPilot’s audience.
i love both platforms anyway.
Let me know when he gets made a knight by the British crown for his video work 🙂
I've been wanting to design a game where you get an actual college education in your field of choice. VR University, you attend a virtual university with a fully explorable campus. You can meet new people and you must go to your classes like normal. You could also party on the weekend. It would be a huge deal for not only game design but also in public education. For $60-$120 you will get a college education and a virtual social life as well.
I can't wait until we get to the point where this is possible. I mean it's technically possible now, but a lot has to happen and a lot has to change for this idea to fully work as designed.
This is by far my favorite flight channel
20:10 Part of me is just glad to hear a story where the pilot responded to a stall by putting the nose down. It’s insane how many people have lost their lives to pilots pulling up or doing nothing.
Well it's rare for there to be an incident report when there was no loss of life and the plane landed safely, so the number of times a pilot got confused and mishandled a stall is probably overrepresented in documentaries. Remember Petter usually shies away from anything without an official report (in fact he only once did so without a report) so we're not going to hear much about the times a stall was handled correctly. In fact given there was no one dead, I'm surprised there _is_ a report this time since, again, it's usually reserved for incidents with loss of hull or life.
@@alex_zetsuyeah, exactly. As much as I want to learn about airplane accidents, I also fully recognize the hundreds of times safer flying is than other forms of transportation and the fact that accidents are reporting on the times things didn’t go well (usually), not the more common times when something goes wrong but the pilots handle it well. I think this often confuses less educated people in this area into thinking that plane accidents are common and pilots don’t handle emergencies well, when the opposite is the case.
@@alex_zetsu 2 people died.
If they did nothing the plane proably would have corrected itself and they woudl have avoided all this.
@@-SUM1- Oh I missed that. I thought there were only injuries. I guess in the back of my mind once the plane tocuhed down the inccident was over.
I remember this very well. I was a World Airways 31:51 mechanic on the MD-11 and after this incident we had to install a mechanical lock on the flap/slat handle. RIP to the two people who died.
And yet, the whole design of the control mechanism sounds brain-dead. The stable operation should not require permanent tension on the control cables, EVER. Tension is an invitation for things to break, towards the one or another direction.
It was this and other peculiarities that eventually relegated the MD-11 to cargo work only.
Agreed the mechanism is bonkers. The FAA mandate to make the mechanism “fail open” created a problem that was both more likely and more severe than the problem they were trying to fix.
@@DuRoehre90210as someone who uses Floyd Rose bridges on his guitars I agree with this statement wholeheartedly.
MD tried many "New" things to make sales many of their ideas were badly engineered and executed, much of this is due to how the company was organised, Management > bean counters > engineering. Thin push rods to lock baggage doors what could go wrong, those big bolts holding the engines on we can go a size down and save some money, & this one let's make this airliner unstable as to see what happens.
I love watching Mentour Pilot as an adult the way I loved Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Great way to start the weekend.
That’s Exactly what I want to hear!!
@@MentourPilot me too!
@@MentourPilot Is their any paperwork to complete when handing over control in flight?
My favorite was _X-Men: the Animated Series_ .
Sunday was bad, though. The choices were (1) religious programming, like literally watching a preacher read the Bible (boring)
(2) Golf (boring). This was before RUclips or the Internet. I'm old.
@@MentourPilotbrilliant work always
After a 'difficult' flight back from Spain a few years ago, I became something of a nervous flyer. Since discovering your channel, I've got to the point where I actually listen to your videos to go to sleep at night...now THAT'S progress 😂 Thank you Petter, you're a miracle worker 😁
So happy to hear that you find them helpful!! 💕
Please check out my app 👉🏻 app.mentourpilot.com as well. I made it specifically for nervous flyers.
@MentourPilot Thank you Petter, I'll do just that 👍
@@Tcb0835what happened?
@justcommenting4981 Nothing particularly dramatic, to be honest. I'm an infrequent flyer anyway, and we got caught in the tail end of a tropical storm. It just meant lots of prolonged buffeting. They kept us strapped in, and all food/drink services were cancelled. As I say, for a frequent flyer, I'm sure it wouldn't have been half as traumatic, but it did shake me up a bit.
@@Tcb0835why? Aircraft are designed for FAR, FAR FAR more than that.
Back in the 90s when the seatbelt light went off, you heard the clack-clack of hundreds of belts being thrown open and off like it was a shackle. Different times today, as most now know the risk of unexpected turbulence.
Indeed - fortunately.
Still heard to this day as dozens of idiots take their belts off prematurely while the plane is still rolling snd pulling into the stand
I don’t understand why passengers unbuckle their seatbelts when the seatbelt sign is turned off. It’s not uncomfortable to wear your seatbelt at all phases of flight unless you are a plus size person. You can’t even feel it most of the time.😊
A recent study found that air turbulence over the Atlantic had increased by 55% from 1979 to 2000.
And even a few weeks ago, a woman died on a business jet from turbulence. Wearing your seat belt is a must unless you have to be moving around - and you are correct, we HAVE become smarter. Every time I fly into Houston, it's a complete roller coaster due to the constant rain and marine layers mixing in odd ways. It wasn't this bad back in the 80s for sure.
We have very little "bad air" over Africa (where I live and fly over mainly) and I still don't remove my seatbelt unnecessarily and when I must I belt up immediately after.
I was stationed at Ellmendorf AFB, AK (just on the edge of Anchorage, AK) when this happened. Since Shemya was primarily an Air Force base, we were tasked with generating cargo aircraft to ferry passengers from Shemya to Elmendorf, where the passengers were then transported to area hospitals. Everything went smoothly with everyone involved working together admirably. It was later noted that it would have been quicker (it was about a 4 hour flight from Shemya to Ellmendorf or 8 hours round trip) for the passengers to be transported to Japan than to Anchorage since Shemya is actually closer to Japan than to Anchorage. Because of the Aleutian Islands being part of Alaska no one realized this till later.
I live in Juneau, and my family constantly asks me why it's such a big deal for me to have to go to Anchorage to see a medical specialist, and why sometimes I go to Seattle instead. It's just so hard for them to comprehend how big Alaska is, even though they know all the stats about its size. It took me a year to adjust to the distances just between towns in Southeast...Anchorage and Fairbanks are like different worlds lol.
Indeed, with the large number of injured passengers and a stable aircraft, it would have been better to proceed to Anchorage after the incident and get people to hospitals in less time. I say that knowing that hindsight is 20/20 and the people involved made the best decisions they could with the information they had available, of course.
Shemya is about 2600 km from Sapporo and 2300 from Anchorage. (And about 2450 to Kushiro)
On the other hand, only about 1050 km to Petropavlovsk
Been watching Mentour pilot since the beginning. I’m not a pilot, just a curious “nervous” frequent flyer. Mentour’s videos have helped to completely eliminate my fear of flying, greatly appreciated!
Thank you so much for your support!
MD-11F Capt/Instructor- great coverage! Slats went from mechanical control to electronic control and are iinhibited for extension above 280 knots or Mach .55 to avoid a repeat. Even in a stick shaker event, where nornally the outboard panels extend automatically with a "ASE" shown on the PFD lower left.
And there were no more or less events as a result of the change. The change was an appeasement to China and nothing else. I was involved in the change.
Interesting. Always neat hearing how the aviation industry tweaks things in order to improve safety.
@@rashkavar Indeed.
Was it this plane that had to step climb?
I am trying to remember what plane it was in the 80's that freaked me out climbing out of YYZ over Lake Ontario.
@@AmazonAllie73 All large transport airplanes ("heavies") use step climbs on long routes. They initially cruise at one altitude and then increase the cruising altitude in "steps" over time as fuel is burned off and the aircraft becomes lighter and can climb higher. The weight difference between takeoff and landing can be hundreds of thousands of pounds in large aircraft flying long distances, and as a result, the optimal cruising altitude significantly increases as the flight progresses and that fuel weight is reduced. A fully fueled 747 might start with an initial cruising altitude of 32,000 feet and ultimately step climb up to 39,000 feet (or higher) over the course of a 10+ hour flight.
This isn’t related directly to this story, but your channel has gotten me really into aviation. I started off by binge listening to every story and then trying out Microsoft flight sim. After countless hours with my plug-in yoke, I decided to actually go for it. I found a CFI and I’m loving it so far!
Thank you!
Awesome! Best of luck with your training and fly safe!
Try Latecore flying boat sometimes. Such a glorious aircraft...
What's a CFI?
@@mikecpprocertified flight instructor. I would guess 😊
@@honestdeliverythanks 😊
Your content is so accessible (especially to someone like me who is not a pilot, not an engineer or in no other way connected to aviation at all), your narration is on point and I can only imagine the work that goes into every video you make because its such a high quality production. Extra kudos for never sensationalizing any of these stories!
I was working for DynCorp in LAX when this plane stopped overnight to de-cater the plane on it's way to Long Beach McDonnell Douglas Aircraft factory about 25 miles from there. I got inside the plane with the China Airlines rep and we walked through the cabin, I will never ever forget what I saw and I wear my seatbelt at all times on airplanes if I'm seated.
was there lots of blood all over the place? sounds like ridiculously violent affair…
@@XxfishpastexXsounds like it….
I wanna see what you saw.
@@XxfishpastexX
Really?
Another great video Peter.
I always wear a loose seatbelt when flying and this demonstrates why. You just never know if / when it’ll be needed, and can quite literally save one’s life. RIP this two.
Fresh student pilot here and videos like this are so helpful in illustrating the theoretical concepts taught in ground school ❤
proud of your dedication! good luck in your training!
@@hamiltonian4698how can you be proud of someone you don't know? Admiration maybe.
Proud
'feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions or those of someone with whom one is closely associated.
"a proud grandma of three boys"
@@Truth1561 They were trying to offer encouragement, and were offering a compliment. Don't be such an as*hole.
Congratulations on your training. You’re going to love flying. But you will always be in training. The learning never ends. Enjoy.
Ability to master certain academic skills are essential, but I still think the public is best served by a certain personality profile. Being very calm in crisis helps a whole lot. And not too touchy when you run into air traffic controllers who are abrasive. That means a bit more patience than average.
As a Bachelor of Aerospace engineering I got over a dozen of "oh" and "ah" moments during the technical part of this episode due to its extreme correctness. Pleasure to watch such a good content!
I don’t know anything about airplanes except binging this channel and I understood it all perfectly!
@kazikian And this is what makes this channel so awesome. It delights aviation enthusiasts on every level of experience.
As a Ph.D of Aerospace, I didn't. Stability was not explained correctly, which is very typical for pilots. But correct explanation of stability
necessarily involves the concept of derivatives, i.e. the _rates_ of change of forces/moments. At which point most viewers will give up...
Yes, it put me to sleep super fast, as planned last night. Probably why the two died due to boring information nightmares. What percentage would you say are only in it for the $$$ cash? 40% I would say. Book worms, they remember every word on a book, but can't contemplate how to put together a Lego Star Wars spaceship, without a saw and some duct tape!!! 😮 Zero reasons a plane should fail. Look at the sky scapers, how ma y have fallen lately? Not as many as planes and automobiles hit each other or totaling themselves. Having an Auto worker strike should frighten Americans to death. Because they hire people with out care of safety. 😮 Life of my dad a former engineer and my grandfather. They never got rich, paid well, not complained or had a Union. They did their jobs as if they were working on a family home. Concerning life, the dignity of life through safety 1st and quality materials only that saves lives. Money they spent put of pocket to help their customers be safer was termsd pride in America once, not too long ago. Today pride is how fat your banks are and cool cars. 😂 Pilots need to have zero automatic anything in their first 5k hours or 8k. Just plain as day this pilot stalled the aircraft twice or 3 times. I know of some 10-year-olds who knew that was not smart. And during an Emrrgency. I don't think the pilot was professional. He probably lied about his hours of flight before being hired. Well it fly itself his parents taught him!
@@zeus6828I somehow knew that "moment" was a term in physics, e.g. "magnetic moment", but could not for the life of me remember what it was beyond "something with forces". I haven't taken any physics other than in high school, haha. I can only surmise that sometime during my endless hours of internet it had been a thing.
What you described is a wholly accurate, stepwise account of my thinking. I did *want* to understand it, so I googled it. I then started recursing back through those concepts, eventually giving up because it was too much to do while the video continued to play.
I could have pressed "pause", but felt compelled to continue the video. Somewhat ironically, this parallels a common "human factors" problem that many of these videos address.
I mused to myself, "Well, he really must have that doctorate!" Because having such a fine-grained understanding of "known unknowns" vis a vis someone else's reasoning is not something that one develops overnight.
Reading Airframe and Michael Crichton covered this terrifying event so authentically. Thank you for your excellent work on explaining the physics too.
Glad you enjoyed it! 💕💕
When he started talking about inadvertent slat extensions I immediately thought of Airframe. It was released in 1996, so I think we know where he got his inspiration.
ready the book fifteen years ago, interesting that there was a real story...
A very entertaining book but the way he pictured the sole designer of the aircraft as one grumpy old man sitting in a corner of a hangar instead of the more realistic team of hundreds of engineers working hand in hand was truly " romantic" LOL
Airframe was very enlightening reading giving a complete insight of such a complex machine. Thanks to Michael Chrishton and also thanks to Mentour for explaining it in details.
As a recently-graduated aerospace engineering student, you did a great job describing how planes achieve stability!
I would add that the reason the rear stabilizer pushes down instead of helping to lift the plane , is so that the default is always for the plane to want to nose down, which is the more stable position. Nose up = stall = crash. When you build a home made aircraft this is one of the main checks in the air worthiness certification.
make sure you keep a good attitude
@@jypsyjewels2854 you mean positive altitude
@@6root91 hehe
I just want to thank you for your channel. I flew for the first time this week and it went great thanks to all your educational content. I was fully prepared and knew all the noises and what they were and what turbulence was. I owe a successful flight to you @Mentour
I loved Michael Crichton's book, Airframe, which was based on this incident. Despite the fictional nature of the story, Crichton didn't resort to sensationalizing the events of the incident and placing undeserved blame on the aircrew. I'm glad Mentour Pilot upheld those standards in his excellent coverage of this incident.
I was absolutely going to point this out. Would love a Mentour Pilot video discussing the novel 😎
There's never a scenario in which pilot induced oscillation shouldn't be blamed on the pilot.
I was thinking the same thing.
In this case the pilot didn't control more than would normally be needed to correct the problem. The issue is the controls were overly sensitive taking what should have worked and turning it into over controlling. There was some blame for the pilot but the major players were improper training and an unstable design. Unstable designs are great for fighters and acrobatics but for a normal aircraft or commercial aircraft, you should almost be able to take your hands of the wheel and the plane will fly its self. For the DC 11, it needed a computer running all the time to keep it stable.
@Julia-nl3gq yea your right. Thank you. 😊
I posted my comment because that person has been spamming over and over and over but your right, I should have put some thought into my comment.
You have explained the flight specifics without condesention, no extra drama, very educational. I wish more flight docu would talk like this, its usually the same information repeated over and over. I actually learned something! Will be watching more! 😊
@Julia-nl3gq I didn't say it wasn't okay, just that I wish more were formatted like this. I have watched hour.long flight documentaries, where the same phrases are repeated over and over again with more intense music. They also don't provide the same alternative theories or possibilities in the technical way that he does. Yes, I prefer it this way.
and you never mentioned the "tarmac" once
I wonder how Petter finds time to do all the things he does. I miss his pets though.
Mentour sprinkles just the right amount of drama in, with music and animations. But all those media documentaries just have no idea about the actual technicalities behind this. That's the refreshing part here - we really learn in-depth what it's about, instead of the mostly shallow descriptions and 95% dramatizing of media documentaries.
It’s spelled “condescension”. You should really know that.
I finally understand what trimming the aircraft with the help of the horizontal stabilizer means. Thanks!
Glad it helped! That’s what I’m trying to do!
Me too! Thanks to Mentour Pilot!
Same here!! I only have so many flight hours towards a PPL and it finally clicked what trim really handles.
Hah, same here. If you want to learn something about flight physics, just watch a bunch of Mentour Pilot videos. Eventually you’ll find one where he’ll teach you exactly what you want to know.
I always keep my seatbelt on from beginning to end (meaning full stop @ gate!) of every flight I take. Also, I absolutely love roller coasters but I would not have enjoyed this ride! Thanks for thoroughly explaining exactly what happened on this flight. It is sad that there were two deaths and so many injured, mainly due to not wearing seatbelts!
Yeah, I do the same -- keep my seatbelt fastened the whole time -- for exactly this reason.
Same. There's really no reason to not wearing the safety belt, unless going to the WC.
Well, with a 10 hours flight, you usually have to take the chance and go to the toilet at least once. But I also try to minimize the time without having a seat belt on. Pilots as well on these flights, by the way - the relief crews have to get to their rest quarters at some time, or also to the toilet.
What do you do when you have to use the bathroom?
@@PCLHHWC?
Ah yes, I have a flight tomorrow. Nothing beats watching this type of content before a flight. You get to learn so much about how planes work and how the crew operates.
I hope your flight was successful and you get to read mine.. I'm flying this weekend... just assuming European flights are pretty safe these days 😂
As an avid player of Kerbal Space Program I appreciated the stability explanation. I have created many a misshapen flying machine but as long as cl is somewhere behind cg with a little distance in between it flies. :)
Didn't they used to say, an aircraft with cl behind cg flies badly. An aircraft with cl in front of cg flies once.
Kerbal Space Program was the first thing I thought of when Petter started explaining the relationship between Center of Lift and Center of Gravity!
@@Jimorian Cue violent oscillations after slightly grazing the stick...
But those planes are just different. Jebediah doesn’t care about these forces. 6 Gs of positive force? Jebediah is fine. 8 G negative? Jebediah is confident and smiling as always. A minor case of the front stabilizers being burned off? Jebediah is just sheddig weight. He is nothing like those whiny humans.
Fascinating stuff. Petter's videos just continue to get better - well done to the whole Mentor team
What better way to pass my time during a layover than watching a mentour video 😁 always high quality and just insanely good videos, keep it up!!
Watching this on a transatlantic flight right now. Can’t think of a better way to pass 8 hours than to buy the Wi-Fi and just lose myself in air accident videos. Bliss.
I learned as a kid to keep my seat belt fastened -- that if I need to unfasten it for some reason, to fasten it again as soon as practical. In the vast majority of commercial flights, I never adjusted the seat belt at all between takeoff and landing.
Sir. As an aviation and space enthusiast, I just want to say how much I appreciate your videos for your absolutely captivating story-telling and your technical explanations. I have been closely following your channel for many months (including the Mentour Now channel) and I have learned a lot. God bless you sir and I hope you continue to fascinate us with your quality content.
I love these technical videos. I'm a software engineer that works on flight controls and I still learn a lot about aerodynamics from your videos.
Captain, I respect you, your channels, and appreciate the content you produce, as I consider it to be high quality, honest, and intended to improve the safety and lives of your audience. It’s with that in mind I ask that you refuse future sponsorships from BetterHelp, who have demonstrated an utter lack of integrity and all of the qualities I identify with you and your channels. Keep up the good work, and thank you for your hard work.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
POV: you’re trying to get pinned
I raised these points with the company prior to agreeing to the sponsorship and they assured me that the points raised had been sorted.
I then tried the service out myself and found it to be well structured and helpful.
I be er promote a service on my channels that I haven’t used myself and found helpful.
@@MentourPilot Thank you for hearing us, either way. I don’t know that BH has done enough to earn back the damaged trust of patients, but I know how hard it is to earn a living for yourself, and I appreciate your extending the effort!
@@The_ZeroLine Clever, but my concerns extend beyond the atrocious mistakes BH has made, to the detriment of their customers’ health, and into the political trashfire of American politics where the inexcusable failure to guarantee access to basic healthcare to its citizens has created an environment where scam artists and questionable intentions have a head start since so few people have access to local healthcare professionals, and where “gig economy” bullshit has not been meaningfully regulated. This is obviously well beyond the scope of this channel, and I wouldn’t expect anyone here to stake out such strong positions one way or another. I don’t believe that the market of demand for a service like BH should exist in a just world, but I’m also incredibly idealistic.
Michael Crichton wrote a book about a similar occurrence called “Airframe”. But in his version an inadvertent slat extension was nearly impossible in the way it’s presented here. (There was a guard on the handle)
That book is indeed based on this incident
The aircraft involved in this incident continued flying with China Eastern, was eventually sold to China Cargo Airlines, and finally SkyLease Cargo in the US after that. It was scrapped in November 2016.
Fact: China Cargo Airlines is actually a subsidiary to China Eastern. EVA Air Cargo and Singapore Airlines Cargo also hold some minority shares in the company. Not to be confused with China Airlines Cargo (owned by China Airlines).
I have an unopened deck of playing cards from this aircraft given to me by the rep after I walked through it with him on it's way to Long Beach, stopped to get the food off.
Thanks!
Wow, thats REALLY generous! Thank you!
I think the technical/scientific descriptions you give provide a rich and much-needed context to understand these accidents and aviation more broadly and are one of the reasons I enjoy these videos so much.
Wow…..yet another great video! Your channel is seriously the best. You don’t only focus on the accident but give us so much mind blowing background information of the plane construction, operating systems etc….that all help in understanding the true nature of what went on. Kudos xx
Incredibly enlightening. Not a pilot, but my understanding of physics just leveled up bigtime. Great video. Thank you!
Glad it was helpful! 💕💕
Very well done. My dad who was an aero engineer always talked about trim drag. So I new about that, but the discussion on pitch stability by changing the CG to reduce trim drag was was very well done. You do a great job on these videos.
you know about certain airplane trim physics but not the difference between new & knew??
Thanks!
As far as i know, this accident was one of the two, from which Michael Crichton took his inspiration, while he was writing a novel "Airframe". And the other one was Aeroflot flight 593.
YES!
Fantastic book 👍
Looking at the synopsis it seems like the plot is almost exactly what happened with this case. It's surprising he was able to get a novel about such a niche topic published, honestly. It's very interesting for a 30 minute video but I don't know how interesting it would be for the average person to read a whole novel about it!
Its based on two different incidents. The book is incredible. Gripping from start to end.
@@connor3284, the initiating event is really just the introduction to the deeper story about the decline of US airliner production...
In the 80's I was flying in a DC-10 from LAX to Sydney at night. 3 hours into the flight when most people including myself were sleeping at high altitude the plane suddenly ran into some kind of wind shear. I was in the center part of the plane, inner seats about where the wings were, and we suddenly got severe G forces, first positive and then negative. The plane was flexing like crazy and the engines started screaming like they were advanced to full power. At some point we started descending at a steep rate which is when I thought we were going to crash, but a short time later, though it seemed very long, we leveled out. Captain came on intercom about ten minutes after leveling off to tell us we had hit high altitude wind shear and we had to return back to LAX at a lower speed and altitude because the plane may have been damaged. When we got back to LAX 4 hours later we were greeted by many fire trucks and ambulances on the runway as quite a few people had been injured hitting the ceiling during the event and taken out on stretchers. I think it was a Continental DC-10 and I would love to get any information on this incident. Is there a resource Mentour Pilot that I can access to find out what really happened?
Had many a floght on VC-10... never the same problem.
@@blatherskite9601 He said DC-10, not VC-10.
Sounds like a reasonable safety procedure to descend as quickly as possible to a breathable altitude if there's any suspicion of a depressurization. Absolutely no time to make PA's in that case, no matter how scary it can be for the passengers.
And of course divert to nearest reasonable airport.
Sounds like the pilots did exactly what they should have done.
Not sure about engine power. But I would assume that if you're not at max mach or indicated airspeed limit, and anything sudden happens to the airspeed, toga power is always the correct choice while you figure out what's happening.
Interesting. Odd they would take you all the way back to L.A. instead of Denver or Chicago after 3 hours in.
@@justcommenting4981 not strange at all, as there aren’t many airports (... or land at all) between Los Angeles and Sydney. Perhaps Papeete, but it might have been further than LAX at that point (and possibly without the company’s mechanics).
I particularly like the technical interludes. Always crystal clear explanations of the aerodynamics and systems that anyone can understand. Well done.
Thank you! That’s exactly what I’m trying to do
As a chemical engineer who studied process control, the way you described the LSAS to me sounds like the engineers used a PI control feedback closed loop system to move the plane to a set point stabilization every time it pitched or de-stabilized. That’s how it corrects overtime until the error difference between the output and setpoint is minuscule.
You are right, it looked like PI control, but odds are there was some derivative action as well. It looks like an interesting (read complicated) control system to design. I know software is relatively cheaper than metal (or fuel or blood), but the multiple design constraints mentioned are familiar - problems, requiring ever better modeling and solutions with smaller allowable difference between setpoint and measured process variable. (a long retired chemical process control engineer). I have noticed that operators tend to err on the side of over-response, like the pilot - we are not very good at estimating overshoot.
@@davidt5770 I think one second longer stall warning helped the situation went worse.
@@omurolmez0 That is what he said. For that detail I would really need to know a lot more to be sure of, but it is entirely possible.
Mate, I've just discovered your channel and boy! This is good, you're good. I have all your videos to watch now and I'm delighted 😊
I really believe the head and neck injuries from the turbulence. As A teenager I was flying with my parents to the East coast. We hit turbulence over the midwest, and I was in the restroomwhen a particularly bad pocket dropped the plan. In reality, it was most likely only a dozen feet. My head hit the roof of the restroom. The light for seat belts had just gone on as I had been finishing up, and then suddenly, I had a headache (and was on the now wet floor). I don´t think I really pieced together what happened until I got to my seat and found my mother silently panicking in her seat.
Sorry to hear that!
Without a doubt this is the best aviation channel in youtube.... Your way presentation and animations got me interested in becoming a pilot!!
Happy to hear that! 💕💕
You talk a lot about how our heads must be spinning! I absolutely LOVE the level of detail you go into explaining principles like pitch and center of gravity! Almost want more of that level of detail in some of your videos. Love the work you do, keep it up!
I heartily agree!
I guess over the last year or so he’s done a good job of pounding flight physics into my head and making it stick because not only was I familiar with most of it, but at the “your head might be spinning” segment I vaguely thought. “No, I’m following what you’re saying just fine.” I have used other sources but most of the basics started here with Mentour Pilot.
This is why I never take off my seatbelts, I remember seeing a Soviet movie as a child where passengers were being thrown all over the place during bad turbulence, that really instilled some fear into me.
How do you go to the bathroom?
@@shrimpflea90 plus passengers who were hurt in this flight due to not wearing their seat belts weren’t in the “bathroom”
whats that soviet movie name?
@@ajithjoj
I do not remember, I would put the title in, I tried looking it up too but my Russian is poor.
@@shrimpflea been on 8 9 hour flights didn't need the bathroom on all but 1 of them, i didn't eat on any of them tho... mind you i did had to go to the toilet in the terminal bathrooms
This is a stunning video. The kind of explanation about CG and the pitch characteristics are second to none! Thank you for this amazing piece of content, and for EVERYTHING ELSE that you create.
Another great episode. I always keep my seatbelt fastened when not moving around the cabin. And, why does the turbulence always start during the meal service when I am flying?
Es una de las Leyes Principales de Murphy... "Servir café en vuelo provoca turbulencias"
For the same reason a dropped toast always lands on its buttered side :D
Same reason that leaving my car windows open in the driveway causes a thunderstorm.
This video reminded me of "Airframe", a book by Michael Chrichton I read many years ago, about a plane with such violent oscillations, due to pilot overcorrection after accidental slats deployment at high altitude!
Obviously Chrichton used this real incident for inspiration!
Indeed he did
The conclusion from the novel, the pilot let his son drove the plane. His son wasn't a pilot and he didn't know that when the plane was porpoising, he should have just let go the plane control.
@@nadines1618 I believe the plot of the novel was an amalgamation of CE583 and another one where a flight crew allowed a family member into the cockpit.
@@h8GW A little bit of Aeroflot 593 for that element, but yes, virtually all of Airframe came from this flight. Things like that list of slats-related incidents are even used almost verbatim in the book.
@@nadines1618 In the novel the son was a pilot for that airline but was not certified to fly that model of aircraft.
I remember once being in really bad turbulences (been in bad a few times, but really bad just this once) and it was just before landing at Frankfurt, so probably there was a lot of windshear that made things worse. Not only the plane was shaken to the left and right, but it felt like it dropped like 30 m out of a sudden, as if it had ben BONKed from the top by some gust of wind. Fucking hell, I can still remember my fingers grasping at the seat. I didn't crap myself because I had already pooped during the trip.
Same, just a boopp down 50ft
I was once on a high turbulance flight. It was quite enjoyable!
As on that flight, sitting behind you. I thought there was a funny smell.
I've felt that exact feeling. Like pitch and speed did not change at all, it's like the plane hit a hole in the air and had loads less lift for a split second. I'll bet it's an air pressure / lift thing, but could be downward force from wind I suppose. It was quite unsettling!
I've hit turbulence near Frankfurt too.A pretty bouncy ride, probably more so than hitting the edge of a hurricane near Florida.
Mentour coming at the right time again! Just did my ATPL M&B and now POF! A lot of crucial information coming to practice! Thank you!
Fantastic! That’s what we are trying to do!
In our family we call turbulence "potholes". It's really no more scary or mysterious than that. It's just that when you're travelling at several hundred miles an hour, hitting a pothole can be pretty rough. Wear your seatbelt!
Not a pilot, but I just love watching these videos... they're consistently fascinating and intriguing and expertly thorough.
Ohhhh, I remember this one! Michael Chricton wrote the novel Airframe based on this incident.
I've read that book more than a few times.
It’s supposedly a great book!
I picked up this book in an airport and read it for the first time during a long haul flight across the atlantic. I didn't do it on purpose but It was quite eerie having the sound of the plane going on while the story unfolded. I like reading paperbacks on longhaul flights...📖✈ and each bit of turbulence an any flight now takes me back to that bit of the story.
It’s an excellent book and highly recommended!!
@@MentourPilot It is really good. I listen to it on Audible from time to time. One of my favorites.
Definitely have read it a dozen times easily myself. Love how the author went into the detail of how investigations work, even though that fictional one was much shorter than real-life ones seem to.
I work weekends, so I definitely appreciate the upload schedule. These videos make my 12 hour manual labor days so much easier! Thank you, MP!
Love the enthusiasm when telling the story - really helps to keep things interesting and audience on the edge of their sets!
Retired MD-11 PIC & Airline EVP (Technics) Years ago, I supervised our aircraft fleet production both at Boeing & Douglas in Long Beach where the MD-11 was designed and produced. I was always impressed by the professionals in management, engineering and especially by the dedicated mechanics who actually built this fine aircraft. It was a joy to fly. Great memories!
wow, you explained the stability of the ac , pitch control and cg points in a very easy way . bravo capitano
1st, I’ve watched every single video Mentour thank you for truly being an amazing teacher I aspire to be a pilot for British airways one day , I have to work hard for it tho nothing good in life comes easy, I’m 16 right now but I’m studying for The Aptitude test for CAE Oxford and will begin going over ATPL topics.
Awesome! Best of luck!
Best of Luck to you! Be proud that you are following your passion!
I just happened to experience my first ever flight in my life 2 weeks ago
I still even remember what flight i got: AirAsia Flight 8440, Bali-Jogjakarta.
From the fast taxi, the very powerful Take-Off roll (A320 btw), the climb to 10k ft, ALL OF IT, its a very exciting moment. One thing to note tho, is that while its a VERY BRIGHT and CLEAR SKY all the way, there is STILL Turbulence. Even tho its a small Turbulence, the feeling it exert still managed to make my body remember the sensation. Its like rolling over soft bumps, over and over again for couple of seconds, sometimes minutes. Me being an enthusiast actually walked down the aisle for rear toilet when it happened. Its a surreal feeling.
Anyway, crew is super nice, i even got to talk with them at the back of the cabin for a while. Apparently that flight i got on actually still flies to Singapore after Jogjakarta.
Thankfully there is no problem pops up on the flight, and we landed on YIA (Yogyakarta Internasional Airport) apparently *10 minutes* faster than expected. Oh, and the landing is *butter* as well. Sadly i didnt remember who the pilot and FO operating that flight that day. But i made sure to tell the Flight Attendant to send my regards for the butter landing.
Its just a short one hour 10 minutes flight, but its a very memorable one.
Maybe one day i will pick another flight again, possibly longer and flies somewhere internasional.
One day...
Thank you for sharing your experience.
Bless Air Asia but please bring back the Coolangatta -- KUL.....pretty pease?
How lovely it must be to live in a destination so enjoyed by people from all over the world!
I'd love to fly into Bali some day. It's a bit of a "bucket list" destination of mine, although my original purpose of surfing the famous beaches is no longer a possibility for me anymore because of physical limitations.
I'd still enjoy watching others surfing and and would like to chat with expats and digital nomads in the area to see if it may be possible for us (I've since re-married) to have an extended visit if I were able to engage in a contract for services locally, or find distance work.
Glad to hear your first flight was so enjoyable.
Tschuss!
I am riveted by your site and binge on them. wish I would have had them early on in my flying days. Dont stop you are providing a monumental contribution.
Perfect description of how the aircraft finds its stability thanks to the balance of aerodynamic forces between its center of gravity, wings and tail ✈️
Love the amount of detail and depth you go into these plane topics....great work as usual Mentour Pilot!
It’s amazing how well you explain things with the wonderful graphics. I learn so much from your channel, great work❤
In programming, we have a GIT system, which keeps track of the changes made to the repository. I remember one of your videos where there was a challenge to track the changes, I did get 3-4 but surprised to find out there was a lot. Now in this video, you mentioned the replacement of the steam gauges to crt gauges and that's versatile in displaying information. My big question is, why can't the AVB implement such a system or screen that shows major recent changes in a timeline log fashion? Wouldnt it be great to see mistakes and make judgement on the history of changes? In the case of pilot error or cockpit dashboard malfunction, there should be a visible log on those changes, similar to what the FDR does but less detailed
Hello,
I am a pilot. I can assure you that flight operations are very different to programming. The way the menus of the Flight Management System are organized leaves very little room for puzzling/hidden bugs. I regularly see values which are unexpected. During flight we often manipulate parameters to extreme values to judge whether, and by how much, we could optimize the flight's performance. But, even if my colleague would make secret changes and leave the cockpit to go to the toilet, I can't think of a possible change, resulting in puzzling outcome, which I wouldn't find within 30 seconds. And even if I couldn't, none of those changes would lead to a loss of control; at worst to a loss of efficiency (flight time or fuel consumption). So, I simply don't see much added value to a 'change log', while such a function could lead to added clutter of the FMC menu structure.
Kind regards
What you're describing might be a sort-of live debug feed from the Flight Data Recorder, maybe post-processed by some software. The third member of the crew, the Flight Engineer, might conceivably have the time to look at something like this (I have no idea how their instrumentation looks like).
The main point to note here is that the entire upset lasted just 90 seconds. I do not know if that would be enough time for someone to quickly read through the recorded events, understand exactly what sort of input mistake the pilot is making, and give them advice on how to recover.
@@theultramage There is no conceivable way how anything like that would be helpful. Instead, airlines have concentrated on paying attention to training pilots to handle the very different aircraft behaviour at high flight levels, to avoid over controlling. I get such training at least once a year.
I believe benny was referring to the puzzling advisory Mach number which was displayed on the PFD, and how to find its origin. This occupied the captain as the inadvertent slat extension occurred but had no direct influence on the resulting outcome.
@@TribusMontibus thanks ey. The good thing most crucial controls can be seen at a glance or at least in the fov. This will make tampering with the "in-flight git" a time waster. And I cant argue that this would replace the checklist and other subconscious instincts from training and feel of the plane... But it might be a good feature as a precautionary measure. It can be set to filter out the noise of inputs, to only flight configuration changes. Im really amazed how the FDR catches these signals, is it some kind of middleware interface or there is a redundant feed of sensors? But my 2 cents as a programmer, such a system, would be beneficial to the aviation community
@@theultramage In a scenario that you have an engine failure, and preparation for landing: that window of event checking will lower drastically. Debug feeds are a nightmare even to us programmers (these days no one on earth will ship a product without a bug or pay attention to non fatal warnings in the logs). We explicitly add a recognisable Tag to what we need to debug, filter the rest or elevate that tag to level error. Since the planes are becoming more morden, the flight engineer's role is no longer needed. I was wondering why in this video he said full crew of 8, with the fourth person being a "radio operator". Now its replaced by the ATC. But one day I cant wait to try the Flight Simulator, I've binged so much on aviation stuff, I literally mouth the problem before the video says "This is when it gets interesting"
Thank you, Mentour pilot, for sharing such valuable information in a way that is easily understandable. Mentour pilot Your explanations are clear and concise, and I truly appreciate your efforts. Keep up the excellent work!
Kudos to all the editors & computer graphic designers/creators supporting the Mentour Pilot channel!! 👏 Their work continues getting more excellent all the time. From the recreation simulations that add so much to the story to the easily-comprehended technical diagrams, and of course the well-paced editing, it's been a pleasure to see these aspects continuing to develop over the channel's history, and they add SO much!
AYO THIS IS THE FIRST VIDEO YOU POSTED AFTER I FOUND YOUR CHANNEL i was excited waiting for an upload
Hope you enjoyed it! 💕
I've built enough planes in KSP to understand that whole balancing situation. Even so far that moving fuel back and forth to keep pitch neutral mid-flight, Concorde style.
The 2nd version of the program is.. I'll leave it there. But the original was based on hard enough science underneath that NASA used it for certain parts of their training. And it is rather surprising at how easily changing the center of gravity or thrust by tiny amounts can make a stable design turn into a miracle to keep in the air.
@@plektosgaming is it that bad
Same here, but with another game called SimplePlanes. It took me some time but I eventually understood the delicate balance between the centre of mass and centre of lift. I've built many planes that i have tried to make many planes with low static stability and found they are incredibly difficult to fly without any kind of limiter. I cannot imagine what it must have been for the pilots on board this flight, feeling over-correction after over-correction while battling the G-Forces
@@Blox117it’s in early access, and it is getting a lot better. All they really have to fix now is slight optimization and wobbly joints
The book Airframe by Micheal Crichton uses a scenario very similar to this as the basis for it's story. It's a great book!
This was also going through my head.
I've read it
5:16 Great explanation. I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't realise this. I always thought they worked in the opposite way to this. Very interesting info. Sounds like this flight was one h3ll of a ride!
As soon as you started talking about all the tweaks to fix potential issues with the way it was designed I thought of what Mr. Scott said in a Star Trek movie that always stuck with me " The more you overthink the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain..."
every plane design is a "compromise" hence all planes have "issues".... is closer to what he said:
compromise = aerodynamic solutions
issues = aerodynamic characteristics
all issues are potential problems...
but yes Scotty is likely right... i liked that Trek moment too
Fascinating video as always. My takeaway from this is how, even though it appears the pilots made a few minor mistakes in their reactions, they did relatively well to recover the aircraft when the pitch oscillation was at its worst. I could easily see this story having turned into a loss-of-aircraft scenario, and while two deaths is tragic, it's certainly not 255 deaths. The story is a good example of why it's always a good idea to wear your seatbelt when seated, even if the seatbelt light is off at the time.
It is good that training now covers this, but a little time in most PC flight sims or video games will tell you exactly how a plane behaves at high speeds not too far from its maximum flight ceiling. So it does seem like a bit of an oversight for sure. But it also points to the problem of the companies and manufacturers in always trying to squeeze the maximum range and speed out of designs rather than focusing on stability and reliability. You want the center of gravity (just play around with Kerbal Space Proigram a bit) very much near the center of the wings because it's super easy to get sideways otherwise.
@@plektosgaming I have the impression that McDD tended to prioritise economics over safety rather more than other manufacturers. Cargo door latches for example.
I really like the graphics you use, from the simulated cockpit to the planes and the environment, very technical but really visually engaging. Keep it up and thanks!
He is the Brian Cox of the aviation world. Brilliant enough to make a disaster sound comforting.
Yes, nothing says comfort like smashing your head on the plane roof.
@@Doo_Doo_Patrol im talking about the way this is delivered, using hyperbole perhaps.
I have a friend who pilots a Boeing 747 for Air Canada and uses your videos for his students and for his own uses. This is an indication as to just how amazing your videos and explanations truly are. You are such an amazing asset to anyone interested in flying. Please keep it up!
I flew China Eastern from PEK to LAX in 1993 several times, but was not on this flight. The thing I remembered was that smoking was still allowed at that time, usually the last two rows of seats are reserved for "smoking lounge", passengers came here, enjoy a cigarette, then came back to own seat. Before, I read some articles about this incident, written by Chinese passengers, it was first time (large group of) Chinese civilians entering US military air base since Korean War. The passengers all had good impression about the hospitality of US soldiers. But nobody told me this was caused by human error, until I watched this video. Thank you! By the way, at that time, all Chinese commercial airplanes are flew by retired Chinese PLA fighter pilot, they did not learn English until join airlines, so I really doubt about the result of their training.
Another video with some extremely good breakdowns of A-Z points. Thank you!
I have over 2000 hours on the MD11... it's a GREAT airplane, ahead of it's time in many ways.. but it's unforgiving if you don't know what you're doing, especially on landing. the smaller elevator with LSAS could create for a handful during gusty landings.
Yes, it had a quite unique landing technique if I’m not mistaken 😊
Cool did you have any hours on the DC10 ? Are there a lot of flight differences between the two versions ?
@@wozja yes, I did... the -30 which also had the middle gear.. frankly if it was light, it too was a bit prone to bouncing, but didn't have the stability issues the 11 had... over all easier to land.. but especially at weights closer to 370-390K..
You are correct, and we fixed a lot of tail strikes because of it.
the MD 11 was a terrible plane I flew virtually every large airliner but that plane was without a doubt. The worst
KSP taught me everything you said in the first 6-7 minutes. Cool considering it's not even primarily about planes.
I really like your channel. You provide enough technical information to explain the problem that was encountered on the flight but not so much that your "fans" would need a degree in aviation. You also explain what the pilots either are doing or should be doing when the problem(s) happen. You're also fair in discussing what went wrong and if anyone or anything was at fault. Please keep these videos coming. Thank you.
From Spain,
Mentor, I love your videos and how you explain in detail. Been binging these for years, underbart!!
I think my scariest flight was a short hop from Helsinki to Tallinn in a teensy plane. The pilots tried to land when a sideways gust of wind swept the plane away from the landing strip. We were pretty close to landing but luckily they managed a go around and managed to land on the 2nd or 3rd attempt.
I recall this one Petter .
Well explained.
There was also something surrounding that horizontal stabiliser in addition to those slats & flaps that meant the MD11 had a much higher landing speed with the pitch instability.
Caused landing accidents at NRT & other places..
Horrendous 😮😮😮
All the managers in every corporate in the world should compulsorily study these cases or at least watch your videos. A toxic workplace environment would have led the blame be directed towards the captain for not being too careful while operating the aircraft while it was completely inadvertent and could have happened with any other pilot. Great video as always ❤
I have been watching you from close to the start of your career on RUclips and the improvement to your diagrams, animations etc is amazing and from the beginning I have enjoyed the level of detail in your reporting.
Keep up the excellent work!
This is the best flight incident channel bar none. I feel like I've gone to flight school after watching it. Great job explaining what happened!
As a mechanic that has the pleasure of still working on these; I can tell you that the size of the horizontal stab is massively different from the DC-10, the trim tank as well as the engine on the tail make these A/C incredibly tail heavy. Look at one sitting in a gate, and you will see how low they are.
The MD-11 and a few other designs-like the Airbus 340 use tail fuel management to configure for optimum CG during cruise. This reduces drag by limiting the need for stab trim at cruise. An aft CG tends to limit stabilizer drag. This is true for most fixed wing aircraft.
The horizontal stabilizer reminded me of how cyclists increase their stability on the unicycle. While they apply a force on both pedals with the forward-faced pedal getting a bit more than the rear one, stability increases as the force on the rear pedal increases.
I was going from NY to Texas on a hot August day years ago. Over the Tennessee Valley ,we hit I think was wind sheer. The plane dropped about 10,000 feet , went back up, banked to the left, dropped again ,went back up and banked to the right. The flight attendants had just started to serve lunch and the food and drink went flying. All the attendants hit the deck and one young attendant was at my feet hanging onto the seat floor anchor. I could see the white of the white of the knuckles on her hand.
You could hear a pin drop but out of the back of the plane a passenger yelled "ride them cowboy". Everyone started to laugh.
yeah and then everyone clapped
@@justinhamilton8647 no we are all too busy wiping the food and drink from our faces. The cabin was a mess . I did get a dry cleaning voucher for my suit and shirt from Delta.
Earthquake behavior is like this. The tension is high, and laughter results when someone makes a crack like that. There's usually a Karen who gets huffy about it.🙄
I had the privilege of being bumped up to first class in an MD-11 back in 1998. I was in awe at how fast the ground speed reading was, so close to mach 1 by my recollection. I've never had such a smooth flight as that one.
Were you bumped up because of the G-forces?
"bumped up" as in "upgraded" to first class
That ground speed reading reflected the effect of wind on your craft, and it sounds like you were flying with the jet stream. Rest assured that is different than mach, since mach is the measure of your speed in a medium v. the speed of sound in that medium...and you weren't traveling thru the dirt. Luckily.
I would like to compliment the team at this channel on the great production quality of these videos. I love the use of the flight simulator software and graphics overlays to really give us a feeling of the plane and how things work. I also like the little touches, like the Mentour Pilot animation on the passenger cabin in-flight movie screen :) It doesn't go un-noticed.
Mandatory complaint about BetterHelp being a garbage sponsor. On principle. We didn’t forget their history.
That principle fulfilled,
Liked the video, nice one, Petter! 👌🏻
Among hobbyists who fly remote control airplanes there is a saying, “nose heavy planes fly poorly and tail heavy plane once”. The engineers should have kept this in mind 😞
This is probably a case of weak but still positive passive stability (drag and mass closely balanced). More stability means more resistance to control forces as positive stability will push the plane towards 0 degree AoA or fight against control inputs that would create an AoA. Because the pilots no longer have to fight against those forces, the plane has an extreme and unusual amount of control authority. You might expect pulling back the yoke with a certain amount of force to edge you up to a 5 degree AoA, but it actually pulls up quickly to 20 and then you have lost control.
Such a plane is probably difficult to fly without proper care, calm, pilot assistance and training - especially if the responsiveness of the flight controls vary greatly in different conditions or phases of flight.
Instability or tail heavy would usually mean something else - that those passive forces are instead trying to maneuver the plane into flying backwards. As the center of drag moves behind the center of mass, the direction of the passive stability forces literally flips around and acts in the opposite direction which can be a much greater problem. I doubt that any passenger aircraft would be designed this way (Millitary jets use these aerodynamics intentionally for greater control authority, but they're a rough ride and take pilot controls as more of a suggestion than a command in order to maintain control of the aircraft).
The problem is more of the fact that MD utilized a mechanical manual flight control system in a neutrally stable aircraft design without requiring pilots to go through more extensive training to manually fly the aircraft. Any aircraft with neutral or even negative aerodynamic stability should (and in the latter case, must, if you don't intend on the first flight being the last) use a fly by wire system that controls the control surfaces based on both sensor and pilot inputs instead of a mechanical system in which the pilot directly controls the control surfaces as the flight control computers can allow for stabilizing flight from an upset without allowing the pilot to inadvertently maneuver excessively and/or exceed the safe flight envelope.
@@quentagonthornton49 airliners shouldn't have negative stability at all because maneuverability isn't a priority and safety is
I’ve heard this before as a passenger
This path between East Asia and LAX or SFO is a brutal one. Most airliners use the Boeing 777-ER to do this route and I'm guessing because you can beat the CRAP out of that plane.
When you get up near the Arctic Circle turbulence is common. I've flown this route a few times now and it's never been the case that we DIDN'T has some turbulence and really it's a matter of degree. One trip we were bouncing around for about 5 hours with a couple of pretty big jolts. Most times it's about 2 - 3 hours of being bounced around but it's not too bad.
At the time there was no 777ER. And this route is used by pretty much all trans pacific fly between East Asia and North America. I think they used A340 on this route as well.
I am new to the mentour channel, and I really love it. I love the graphics, animation, narration, and best of all the host. Hi love, aviation and the science behind it and you seem like you would be one of those professors that would make their students want to learn. Very well done! Thank you and keep them coming.