Near vertical plane crash in Russia. (video)

[Enigma]

Near vertical crash.

KAZAN, Russia (AP) — The passenger jet went down in a steep dive and exploded in a giant fireball on the tarmac in a chilling video broadcast Monday by Russian television stations.

The Boeing 737 plane belonging to Tatarstan Airlines crashed Sunday night at its home port of Kazan, 720 kilometers (520 miles) east of Moscow, killing all 50 people aboard.

It was making its second attempt at a landing, according to Alexander Poltinin, head of the local branch of Russia's Investigative Committee, who said investigators are looking into possible pilot error or equipment failure.

The traffic controller at the Kazan airport who contacted the plane before the crash said the crew told him they weren't ready to land as it was approaching but didn't specify the problem.

The brief video taken by an airport security camera showed the plane going down at high speed at a nearly vertical angle and then hitting the ground and exploding. It was confirmed as authentic to The Associated Press by the emergency press service at Kazan airport and other Russian officials.

Fragments of the plane littered the tarmac and fire crews spent hours extinguishing the blaze. Poltinin said it could take weeks to identify the remains.

The investigators have found both of the plane's black boxes but said they were damaged. The boxes contain the recording of its systems performance and crew conversations and are essential for the crash probe.

Magomed Tolboyev, a highly decorated Russian test pilot, said on Rossiya television that it wasn't immediately clear why the crew was unable to land on their first try in good weather, saying it could be linked to a failure of some of the plane's systems or a crew error.

Investigators on Monday started looking through the company's records as part of the crash probe. The plane was built 23 years ago and had seen service with seven other carriers prior to being commissioned by Tatarstan Airlines.

In 2001, it was damaged in a landing accident in Brazil that injured no one. The aircraft has been in service with Tatarstan Airlines since 2008.

The company insisted that the aircraft was in good condition for the flight.

The carrier has had a good safety record, but appears to have run into financial problems recently. Its personnel went on strike in September over back wages, and the Kazan airport authority has gone to arbitration to claim what it said was Tatarstan Airlines' debt for servicing its planes.

Industry experts have blamed some recent plane crashes in Russia on a cost-cutting mentality at some of its carriers, with safety sometimes neglected in the chase for profits. Insufficient pilot training and lax government controls over industry also have been cited as factors affecting flight safety.

Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the government should tighten its oversight of carriers and subsidize the upgrading of their fleets to improve flight safety, according to remarks Monday on the Prime news agency.

The son of the provincial governor and the chief of the local branch of Russia's main security agency were among the victims, as was a British national, Donna Bull.

Russia's last deadly airliner crash was in December, when a Russian-made Tupolev belonging to Red Wings airline careered off the runway at Moscow's Vnukovo airport. It rolled across a snowy field and slammed into the slope of a highway, killing five of its eight crew onboard.

A 2011 crash in Yaroslavl killed 44 people including a professional hockey team and was blamed on pilot error.

___

Isachenkov reported from Moscow.

My thoughts is that it was human error. Near vertical crash on a second landing attempt in clear weather?

[Broomstick]

That would be one hell of an error. It's unusual for airplanes to crash in that manner, and to do so hard enough to damage the black boxes? Extraordinary.

I'm just now hearing about this crash, as yesterday everyone in my local area was a bit preoccupied by a tornado outbreak. I'm curious and expect we'll learn more about this crash in the near future. It's quite tragic, but I expect the end was relatively quick for those aboard. Terrifying those last few seconds, but no one lingered in the wreckage before expiring. That's cold comfort at best.

The crew communications - that they weren't ready to land - makes me think there was some mechanical issue at work but no one knows at this point.

[Thanas]

Let's hope there is not another Egypt Air controversy afoot.

[CaptHawkeye]

I *want* to say controlled flight into terrain, but at that angle of descent? No. Had to be mechanical, maybe a control failure.

[Broomstick]

Either that, or a stall-spin. A stall-spin caused either by mechanical failure, pilot error, or a combination of both.

[Zaune]

I *want* to say controlled flight into terrain, but at that angle of descent? No. Had to be mechanical, maybe a control failure.

Or massive structural failure. I saw an episode of Air Crash Investigation a while ago where something broadly similar happened, an airliner just nosedived straight into the ocean mid-flight with no warning; the cause was eventually traced to a shoddy repair job from a tail-strike a few years earlier, and the fatigue cracks eventually reached the point where the whole tail section snapped off.

[Broomstick]

Was that the one where the tailplane jackscrew failed, or the one in NYC where the vertical stabilizer snapped off?

[Zaune]

Neither; the whole rear fuselage tore off from what I remember. I don't recall the exact details, but I think it was either an Indonesian or Malaysian airline and the failure happened over the Pacific ocean. The episode's up on YouTube, I'll try and find it again.

EDIT: Found it. I remembered some details wrong, it was actually a China Airlines flight. Wikipedia.

[Sea Skimmer]

You probably mean China Airlines Flight 611, though it lasted some two decades after the improper repair. With Russian maintenance anything is possible here.

[Mr Bean]

Looked at the footage a view times, yeah that plane lawn darted into the ground. Someone else at a blog did the angle analysis based on the wing lights and came up with a 86* degree impact angle directly into the ground.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

The initial investigation is pointing to some sort of pilot error. They apparently blew their first landing attempt and started to climb for another go-around. Only they climbed too steeply and their airspeed dropped to 125 knots (at an altitude of 2200 ft,) which was when they decided to push the nose over into a dive to try to gain airspeed. Although from what little I can gather from the webs, the stall speed of a 737 is rather higher than 125 knots.

BBC news
Fox News

[Enigma]

The plane hit the runway at speeds of 450kmh or 280mph.

MOSCOW (AP) — The pilots of a Boeing 737 that plunged into the ground at Kazan airport lost speed in a steep climb then overcompensated and sent the plane into a near-vertical dive, according to a preliminary report released Tuesday by Russian aviation experts. All 50 people aboard were killed.

The Moscow-based Interstate Aviation Committee, which oversees civil flights in much of the former Soviet Union, said the plane's engines and other systems were working fine until the moment the plane crashed Sunday night.

The Tatarstan Airlines plane was flying from Moscow to the central city of Kazan, 720 kilometers (450 miles) to the east. The Russian aviation experts said the plane's two pilots had failed to make a proper landing approach on their first attempt, so they began a second try.

The report did not specify why the pilots aborted the first landing.

To get the plane ready for the second try, the pilots put the plane's engines on maximum power and raised the plane's nose up to an angle of about 25 degrees, the report said. That caused a loss of speed.

The normal procedure during an aborted landing is to apply near-maximum power and assume about a 5-to-7 degree nose-up attitude, said Kevin Hiatt, a former Delta Air Lines chief pilot and president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

"Twenty-five degrees nose-up is excessive. There's no question about that whatsoever," Hiatt said. "Why they determined they needed to go to that high an angle will be part of the investigation."

At an altitude of about 700 meters (2,200 feet), the crew tried to gain speed and avert a stall by putting the nose of the plane down. The report said the plane then went into a dive of about 75 degrees and smashed into the ground.

Airplanes can sometimes recover from steep dives but they must be at a sufficiently high altitude.

The plane's climb and its subsequent plunge lasted only about one minute and it struck the ground going about 450 kilometers per hour (280 mph), the report said.

The report drew its conclusions from data retrieved from one of the plane's two onboard black box recorders. A commission statement said the voice-recording tape that captures the crew's conversations had not been found, even though its container had been recovered.

Such "loss of control" accidents are responsible for more deaths than any other type of plane crash because they are rarely survivable, according to the Flight Safety Foundation, an industry-supported global aviation safety nonprofit based in Alexandria, Virginia.

The head of Tartarstan Airlines, Aksan Giniyatullin, told a news conference Tuesday in Kazan that the two pilots had plenty of flying experience — ranging from 1,900 to 2,500 hours — and had undergone all the necessary instruction. However, he said the crew apparently had no experience with attempting a second landing.

He also said the plane had undergone regularly scheduled maintenance on Nov. 15 — two days before the crash.

Tartarstan Airlines records showed that the plane was built 23 years ago and had been used by seven other carriers prior to being picked up by them in 2008. The company has insisted that the aircraft was in good condition.

The plane did suffer a loss of cabin pressure in November 2012, Giniyatullin told reporters, but he could not explain why, according to the RIA-Novosti news agency.

In 2001, the plane was damaged in a landing accident in Brazil that injured no one.

The carrier has had a good safety record but appears to have run into financial problems recently. Its personnel went on strike in September over back wages, and the Kazan airport authority has gone to arbitration to claim Tatarstan Airlines' alleged debt for servicing its planes.

Flight safety is a problem in Russia. Industry experts have blamed some recent Russian crashes on a cost-cutting mentality that neglects safety in the chase for profits. Insufficient pilot training and lax government controls over the industry have also been cited.

__

Associated Press writer Joan Lowy in Washington, DC, contributed to this report.

[Broomstick]

The initial investigation is pointing to some sort of pilot error. They apparently blew their first landing attempt and started to climb for another go-around. Only they climbed too steeply and their airspeed dropped to 125 knots (at an altitude of 2200 ft,) which was when they decided to push the nose over into a dive to try to gain airspeed. Although from what little I can gather from the webs, the stall speed of a 737 is rather higher than 125 knots

Stall and speed isn't as tightly linked as most people think. Stalls occur due to the angle of attack exceeding a critical point regardless of speed. However, since there is a relationship between angle of attack and airspeed this can get confusing.

It gets further confused when you start adding things like flaps and slats and such, which are common in landing configurations. The lowest stall speed I've found on line for a B737 is 123 knots (228 kph), that's for a nearly empty airplane in full landing configuration with all the lift-assist devices like flaps and slats fully deployed. If the Tartarstan airplane was flying at 125 knots that is perilously close to a stall in any B737 in any condition, loading, or configuration. Flight at low level at such an airspeed should never be attempted if those figures are correct. Why? Because if you make a mistake you are dead. It is not possible to recover from that at such a low altitude.

Alright, maybe they were, in fact, flying at 125 knots when the did the go around. It's stupid/insane dangerous but at full power it is possible if conditions are right. If, however, the airspeed drops, the angle of attack increases, the engine falters, or you retract the flaps and slats you are going to die because the stall speed of a B737 in “clean” configuration, that is, with all those lift-assist devices retracted, is 172 knots (319 kph). Retract those bits at 125 knots and it's one of the rare situations where you actually can fall out of the sky. As might have been recently demonstrated. At that point lowering the nose/angle of attack isn't going to save your ass because of inertia/momentum. A B737 weighs tons, it's not going to change direction instantly.

The Tatarstan Airlines plane was flying from Moscow to the central city of Kazan, 720 kilometers (450 miles) to the east. The Russian aviation experts said the plane's two pilots had failed to make a proper landing approach on their first attempt, so they began a second try.

The report did not specify why the pilots aborted the first landing.

Aborting a landing usually isn't a big deal. It's not something you want pilots to do all the time, but doing so can actually be a sign of intelligence. It could be for an animal or vehicle on the runway, miscalculation of cross-wind correction, or just not quite lining up right the first time. One go-around is not indicative of a problem, though you wouldn't always guess that from the media.

To get the plane ready for the second try, the pilots put the plane's engines on maximum power and raised the plane's nose up to an angle of about 25 degrees, the report said. That caused a loss of speed.

Finding information on the stalling angle of attack (AoA) on a B737 is a bit tricky as it can be affected by all those flaps and slats I keep mentioning, but as a general rule civilian airplanes of all sorts have wings that stall somewhere between 16 and 20 degrees AoA, and the higher end of that range is the more specialized wings. The B737 is probably closer to 16 degrees for a stalling AoA.

Now, 25 degrees with respect to the horizon is not necessarily the important thing, it's the relationship between the wing and the direction of flight. That's the critical angle. This news report doesn't really tell you if they pulled up 25 degrees to the horizon or if they had an AoA of 25 degrees. At full power, in a climb, the AoA is going to be less than the angle with respect to the horizon. Even so, 25 degrees to the horizon is very nose-up for a passenger airline. It's worse at a slow airspeed, which implies you're already at a high AoA.

The normal procedure during an aborted landing is to apply near-maximum power and assume about a 5-to-7 degree nose-up attitude, said Kevin Hiatt, a former Delta Air Lines chief pilot and president of the Flight Safety Foundation, a U.S.-based nonprofit.

"Twenty-five degrees nose-up is excessive. There's no question about that whatsoever," Hiatt said. "Why they determined they needed to go to that high an angle will be part of the investigation."

^ What he said.

At an altitude of about 700 meters (2,200 feet), the crew tried to gain speed and avert a stall by putting the nose of the plane down. The report said the plane then went into a dive of about 75 degrees and smashed into the ground.

Airplanes can sometimes recover from steep dives but they must be at a sufficiently high altitude.

Did they put the nose down or did it drop? Airplanes, by and large, are designed to drop the nose automatically if they stall, to immediately reduce AoA. This “design”, by the way, is based on physics, not something automated or mechanical, it can not fail. That sudden drop of the nose followed by the reported angles (75 or 85 with respect to the ground) are very, very much the signature of a stall/spin-entry. Lowering the nose manually, even if it's too much and results in a crash, should give a shallower angle to the ground.

I'm wondering if they just out-and-out stalled the airplane. Which is very, very bad in a swept-wing design because they have unfriendly stall characteristics. It takes thousands of feet to recover from the tamest of stalls in a swept-wing Boeing airliner (my source is an airline pilot who flew in the days before modern simulators when pilots took such airplanes up tens of thousands of feet and actually practiced stall recovery as part of their recurrent training) At stall – ANY stall – at their reported altitude in a B7x7 is NOT survivable.

The head of Tartarstan Airlines, Aksan Giniyatullin, told a news conference Tuesday in Kazan that the two pilots had plenty of flying experience — ranging from 1,900 to 2,500 hours — and had undergone all the necessary instruction. However, he said the crew apparently had no experience with attempting a second landing.

This doesn't really make sense. Really, NO experience with a second landing attempt? What the fuck were they doing during instruction time, and during those thousands of hours of experience they had? I would have though go-around procedures were a routine part of recurrent training.

Yeah, it's starting to look like pilot error, but again, we are likely to learn more in the near future.