Plastic Pilot

Several sources are reporting an aircraft taking fire after landing in Khartoum, Sudan. The initial reports mention 100 passengers killed, on a total of 200 (both figures being approximative). The flight was coming from Amman, Jordan.

The available videos show massive fire, making hard to even guess the aircraft type (not reported yet, but likely to be an Airbus 310). The flight was operated by Sudan Airways. The weather reports for the time of the accidents include thunderstorms with rain. There are also mentions of a sandstorm.

As always under such circumstances, my thoughts go the the victims and their relatives. After the facts reporting phase, several rumors and hypothesis will start to spread from various sources, including media looking for super scoops. Let’s wait until information becomes available from the investigations before commenting further on.

I will report additional facts here when they’ll become available. You can find more coverage with the following links, several include videos:

CNN report - Reuters report - MSNBC report - BBC report - Sudan Tribune (in english) - Al Jazeera English

We all make mistakes, even me. Usually these mistakes are somehow caught and corrected by the system, and everything runs well. This applies not only to flying, but to all human activities. But sometimes… shit happens - there’s simply no other way to say it.

Even the best organization can make mistakes. Last week, the FAA’s NOTAM database crashed. I’m an IT guy, so I know this can happen. That was not an exactly glorious time for FAA, but there’s more to come.

After the crash of the Boeing 747 in Brussels last sunday, the FAA published an information report, because it’s a US-registered plane. Unfortunately, neither the bulletin author nor its reviewer were good at European geography, and locate the crash in Liège… Yes, Liège is in Belgium, but I confirm this crash occurred in Brussels.

Enough finger-pointing towards FAA ? Right. So what about NTSB ? I have high respect for accident investigation teams. They do a tough job, under pressure from various origins, and they carry important responsibilities.

I don’t know if it’s a jet-lag thing, or if all spotters, airport neighbors, were wrong, but all sources mentioned that the plane departed from runway 20. So what does the NTSB mentions in its first information report ? Brussels Airport (well done)… runway 25 Left (oops).

It’s always surprising when governing bodies does such mistakes, but all in all, it demonstrates that they’re human, after all. Oh, and if you want to comment about the post I published by mistake on the 10th, or any other thing… feel free.

The UK Aircraft Accident Investigation Branch (AAIB) published today an update about the crash-landing of the Boeing 777 flying from Beijing to Heathrow as BA038 on 17th of January.

This new update confirms that all systems operated as expected, but both engine’s high pressure pumps experiences a low fuel pressure condition. Quoting the report:

“The high pressure (HP) fuel pumps from both engines have unusual and fresh cavitation damage to the outlet ports consistent with operation at low inlet pressure. The evidence to date indicates that both engines had low fuel pressure at the inlet to the HP pump. Restrictions in the fuel system between the aircraft fuel tanks and each of the engine HP pumps, resulting in reduced fuel flows, is suspected.”

The investigation goes on with a two-fold approach: engine testing by Boeing and Rolls Royce, trying to reproduce the extreme cold conditions encoutered during the flight, and development of a better undesrtanding of fuel’s dynamics while it flows from tanks to engines.

I wrote earlier that the causes of this accident are mysterious, and that investigation will require a long time. Even if the focus of investigation seems to get closer, this case where a perfectly functional aircraft flowing under normal conditions but failling to land properly is by far not closed.

Only time will tell…

Links:
New update from the AAIB
Initial post about the accident
First post on initial report
Post on initial report update
Post on the second report update