TURKISH AIRLINES FLIGHT 1951: CRASH IN AMSTERDAM On the morning of February 25th, 2009. Turkish Airlines flight 1951, a Boeing 737-800, crashes in a field near Amsterdam Schiphols runway 18R. Its the first crash for Schiphol in more than ten years. At the controls was Captain Hasan Tashin Arisan. He was a former ‘Squadron Commander’ in the Turkish Air Force. His first-officer is the less experienced, Murat Sezer. More experienced co-pilot Olgay Özgür is serving as a safety pilot to monitor the instruments. As for Sezer, this is a training flight. As the crash is very close to the airport, emergency services arrive quickly. Most of the passengers did survive the crash, but they are badly injured. It doesnt take long before images are shown to the world and besides, its the third crash involving a passenger airliner in less than six weeks. Just a few minutes after the crash, the Dutch Transportation Safety Board arrives at the scene of the accident. But as the plane is an American made plane, the US sends the NTSB (National Transport Safety Board) to the scene as well. They send Joseph Sadore to investigate. He is a senior investigator when it comes to plane crashes. Sadore wants to have results quickly. The crash involves a Boeing 737-800, the most popular plane in the world and carries more than 1.5 million passengers every day. If there is a problem with the structure or the engines of the 737, they must know before this horror strikes again. What investigators know so far, is that the plane was travelling from Istanbul to Amsterdam. There were 128 passengers aboard this early morning flight, including four engineers from Boeing. In the cockpit, nothing was indicating any sign of trouble. Investigators turn their attention to the survivors first. The passengers told them that the landing had been a routine one, but that suddenly the plane just dropped like a rock and never recovered from its fall. The fact that the plane is mostly intact and that the pieces practicly lay next to each other, tells the investigators that the plane hit the ground at low speed. The number one suspect for the investigators are the engines. They want to know if they stopped working. If this is the case, then that would explain why the plane crashed before landing. Just a few years earlier, a British Airways Boeing 777 crashed next to the runway at London Heahtrow. The pilots had stated that their engines had stopped delivering power on final approach. Very important is that they find no fire marks on the planes fuselage. Normally when a plane hits the ground, the fuel ignites and explodes. Does this mean that the engines stopped simply because flight 1951 had ran out of fuel? Investigators find the engines of the plane far away from the wreck. This means that they were in fact still running when the plane hit the ground. Because of the thrust they delivered, the engines powered themselves into the field that lies next to the wreck. An engine failure is ruled out. But to be really sure, they have to find out what the Flight Data Recorder has to say. It will tell them for sure if the engines were really running when the plane crashed. If the engines were running as investigators think, it will tell them how much thrust the pilots had set, and if the engines were providing the desired thrust. It doesn’t take long before they find out that there was more than enough fuel in the plane’s fuel tanks. Investigators continue asking questions to the survivors and what they have to say stuns them. According to the passengers, flight 1951 came into turbulence just before landing. This points to one very well known culprit: a microburst. A microburst is a very powerful column of air. It actually is much like a tornado but with opposite effects. A tornado sucks everything up in the sky. A microburst is first of all invisible, and instead of sucking things up, it pushes them down. So when a low flying plane flies thru one, the plane will be slammed to the ground. Now investigators have to find out if there was a microburst. They find that heavy wind was present at the time of the crash. They will have to study the black box even more in order to prove if there was a microburst or not. In the meantime, rescue workers find a third pilot in the cockpit. Since none of three pilots survived the crash they can’t be questioned. They want to know why there was a third pilot. The Cockpit Voice Recorder might give them the answer. They are in luck. On the black box, it becomes all clear why there was a third pilot. Co-pilot Sezer was new to flying and especially to Amsterdam. Because of that Captain Arisan was running double duty. He was the Captain of the flight, but he was also training First-Officer Sezer. The third pilot, First-Officer Özgür, was there to monitor the instruments. But they pick up an unsual sound. The Master Warning keeps sounding throughout the cockpit and the Captain keeps ignoring it. It is the ‘Landing Gear Configuration Warning’. The warning makes no sense because they are still at 10,000 feet. No pilot deploys the gear at this height. But the investigators don’t see how that warning has contributed to the crash. They turn their attention to the Flight Data Recorder again. The wind analyses has been completed. It becomes clear that the winds were not powerful enough to bring down a Boeing 737-800. A microburst is erased from the possibilities. But they make a breaking discovery. The plane was at 10,000 feet but one of the altitude meters had the plane already on the ground and automatically sounded the gear warning. This would indicate that one of the altitude indicators was broken, in this case the Captain’s one. On the Cockpit Voice Recorder, they clearly hear that the Captain knew about the problem. He knew that the problem is the radio altimeter which is broken, but he took no action. Then the controllers cleared the plane for approach. They told them to descend to 2,000 feet and turn to line up with Runway 18R. This runway is equipped with an ILS (Instrument Landing System) system telling the autopilot what to do. When at 100m above the ground, the pilot flying has to take over and land the plane. The pilots start configuration their plane. At ten kilometers out of the Runway, the plane captures the ILS frequency and the autopilot brings the plane down automatically. But there is one problem: the autopilot is set to the Captain’s altimeter, the one that is broken. The first-officer keeps telling the Captain that his altimeter is broken but the Captain keeps ignoring everything and continues his approach. They are running right into a death trap. But the investigators don’t believe that the faulty altimeter is the only reason to the crash. An experienced crew could easily sort this kind of problem out, and still land safely. Next, the investigators want to know if the flight crew of flight 1951 was given proper guidance for their approach. They now turn their attention to the communication exchanges between the pilots and the Air Traffic Controllers. They listen to every detail that has been said. They find that the pilots were cleared for their approach just before they could intercept the ILS. They were instructed to descent to an altitude of 2,000 feet. But in fact, the controller should have given them the clearance way before so that the pilots wouldn’t have to make any drastic changes in altitude in order to get at the Runway at the right altitude at the right moment. The late clearance meant that the pilots had to perform a so called ‘slam dunk’ approach. This means that the pilot has to slow the plane down while making a steep descent in order to catch the glide slope. It is not technically illegal, but controllers are requested not to do that as it is hard to perform and makes the workload for the pilots bigger than necessary. Back in the cockpit, the pilots are set for their approach. Flaps are down, landing gear is down and locked and the speed brakes are armed. At 500 feet it suddenly goes terribly wrong, the plane stalls. Their plane loses speed at a stunning rate. Normally, the young First-Officer who was still learning was supposed to perform the landing. But as things went really out of hand, the Captain said ‘I have control!’ He pushes the throttles full forward and puts his control yoke to neutral position. Normally when a plane stalls, the pilot pushes down on the controls in order to gain lift again and stop the stall. But as the plane was already at 500 feet, this would mean that they would crash their plane into the houses below them. Because they were not able to push it down, and because of the low altitude and speed, the plane smashes down in a field thirty seconds after the crisis started. The crash kills claims the lives of nine people, including the three pilots in the cockpit and the three Boeing engineers. The investigators say that the pilots are the ones at fault. But not only the pilots, also the controller had a part in it. The pilots should’ve started their landing preparation way before they did it. Also the Captain had ignored the warning from the safety pilot and should never have engaged the Approach Autopilot but fly the plane by himself to the runway. Because of the broken altimeter, the approach autopilot thought that the plane was already on the ground and brought the nose up, making it losing speed. And the controller should’ve cleared them for approach way earlier. The fact that they had to start their approach so late meant that the workload and stress in the cockpit was much higher than normally expected. This lead to many errors from the flight crew causing to the crash of Turkish Airlines flight 1951 as well as the death of nine people.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Nov 2014 19:06:48 +0000
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