BREAKING: FAA: UPS jet crashes in Birmingham, Ala.

CBS 12 News ^ | August 14, 2013 | Michele Wright

[The Working Man]

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A federal aviation official says a large UPS cargo plane has crashed near an airport in Birmingham, Ala.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen tells The Associated Press that the A300 plane crashed on approach to the airport before dawn Wednesday. [snip]

[Yosemitest]

I think you're way off target.
When you're upo to you @ss in electrical problems (think lightening strike and both engines flamed out)
and you're trying to restart the engines before you smack the ground,
a radio call is the least of your concerns.

I didn't see anything abnormal about the altitude data for the Airbus 300, except that it stops at 1,500 feet MSL and the Birmingham Airport is at 650 feet MSL.
There's 850 feet of data missing.
Now, the question might lead to "Did the pilot RESET the aircraft Altimeter to Birmingham's LOCAL ALTIMETER SETTING when he was handed off from Atlanta Center to Birmingham Approach Control ?
Did the pilot report the current Birmingham ATIS Code and fail to RESET his Altimeter ?
But the Birmingham METAR reports the Altimeter at 29.99 at the time of the crash.
Since Center runs all traffic on a standard day Altimeter of 29.92, that's a difference of 700 feet, and a pilot can have an Altimeter difference of 250 feet without correction.
Normally a noticed difference of 75 feet from the field elevation when the aircraft is parked on the airport would be reported by the pilot.
But there could have been an uncorrected altimeter that needed replacing, or failure to change the altimeter setting to the Birmingham airport setting.

[machogirl]

there is a reason i don’t work for the ntsb.
thanks for the analysis so my brain doesn’t go way off track.

so sad.

i have a kid working on boeing stuff. since i’m not an electrical engineer, but i was trained in another engineering discipline, i asked him last year about the redundancy in the systems (hoping it’s redunant by a factor of 2 or 3, i was thinking of the souix city crash). he says it is, but darn, if it’s all controlled by computers and the electronics fry, and there is no safety net of altitude?

[topher]

One report had the UPS plane on fire before it crashed. MANPAD?

[Yosemitest]

"Why would they lose lift while landing?"

How much do you know about micro-burst?

What makes microbursts so dangerous?
Many things, not the least of which is that they have the potential to swat airplanes out of the sky.
Piston-powered airplanes seem to have a slight advantage since they do not experience a power-lag or spin-up time on the engines as do turbine-powered machines, but they usually also have less power and less inertia to start with than does turbine equipment.

One of the sneaky things about microbursts is that
if you're a little short on situational awareness, the apparent performance increase that can be the first sign of a microburst in progress
is sometimes ignored and the flight presses on to further danger.

Take a look at the graphic to the right.
This is the classic microburst diagram we've all seen.
Notice the airplane at position A.
It's just beginning to feel the effects of the outflow from the microburst.
This sudden increase in headwind will cause an apparent increase in performance.
The airspeed will increase, the rate of descent will decrease and the almost overwhelming urge of a pilot at this point is to pull the throttles back and push the nose over.
Bad mistake.
This is the time to get out of Dodge.
Microbursts are like everything else associated with thunderstorms —
there's no way to judge how bad they are from looking at them
and by the time you find out just how bad it is, it's too late.
The proper action at this point is to push up the power and abandon the approach.

If you press on, you will find yourself at position B in the graphic.
You will fly out of the headwind and into the tailwind.
The suddenly decreasing headwind and increasing tailwind will cause degradation in performance equal in magnitude to the increase experienced at point A.
You can see that if the headwind portion of the microburst caused a 30-knot jump in airspeed you're now going to lose 30 knots.
If you pulled the throttles back in response to the headwind increase, you'll be in real trouble now.
This is quickly becoming an unrecoverable situation.

When all the talk about wind shear started in the late 70s, I had a real problem understanding how this happens.
After all, we've all had it drilled into our heads since that first hour of dual that
airplanes only "feel" wind on the ground
and that once you're airborne the airplane moves in concert with the air mass it's in.
We've been taught to apply windspeed to airspeed to arrive at a groundspeed figure.
The thought that wind could have an effect on airspeed was a hard one to swallow — and still is for many.

[topher]

One report had the UPS plane on fire before it crashed. MANPAD?

Report was from CNN from someone at the crash scene.

Quote from CNN article:

Witness Peter Torres, a Civil Air Patrol member who said he is a former airline mechanic, said he thought he heard what sounded like a backfire from the jet's engines as the plane passed overhead. He rushed to his window.

"I saw the flash," of an apparent explosion, he said, followed by a "boom" that shook his home.

I guess the flash and 'boom' were the plane crashing (impact)...

[machogirl]

I know about microbursts. I also looked at several playbacks of the radar and airport warnings. Didn’t see anything on the radar indicative of that, but I remember the wind shear in (Dallas?) crash. That’s a lot of good info to digest.

Pilot identified. Godspeed.

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/23133265/pilot-copilot-dead-in-birmingham-ups-cargo-plane-crash

[zipper]

But the Birmingham METAR reports the Altimeter at 29.99 at the time of the crash. Since Center runs all traffic on a standard day Altimeter of 29.92, that's a difference of 700 feet

29.99 minus 29.92 equals 70 feet, not 700 feet. Even if they neglected to reset the altimeter, it's not enough to have made a difference in this case.

That notam closing runway 18 was issued after the crash.

As for the cause, of course this is speculation, but it appears weather was not a factor. The glideslope was out but the visibility was good enough, and there is a PAPI on runway 18 that should have been visible at that range, so I don't think they were following a false ILS glideslope.

So far it seems there must have been a mechanical issue that at least contributed to the accident.

[Yosemitest]

Then

!BHM 08/035 BHM RWY 18/36 CLSD

means that it was the 35th NOTAM for August for KBHM, and not the 5th NOTAM issued on August the 3rd?

[zipper]

People living near the airfield reported seeing flames coming from the plane and hearing its engines struggle in the final moments before impact.

"It was on fire before it hit," said Jerome Sanders, who lives directly across from the runway.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/faa-ups-jet-crashes-birmingham-ala-19954797

[Yosemitest]

My sympathies and prayers for the healing of the families.

[Yosemitest]

Striking tree tops before it crashed might contribute to that.

UPS Flight 1354 missed Birmingham couple's home by a matter of feet (video)

[zipper]

Yes, each NOTAM has a number, which is nearly meaningless clutter to the end users. The missing NOTAMs in the sequence were no longer valid, thus the gaps in the numbers. Only effective NOTAMs are shown.

---

http://ourairports.mobi/airports/KBHM/notams.html

[Yosemitest]

"Moments before Flight 1354 crashed into a hillside less than a quarter mile away, it clipped two trees in Cornelius and Barbara Benson's yard.
Splinters of pine tree tops and scraps of aluminum scattered across the yard.

The Benson's home at the intersection of Tarrant Huffman Road and Treadwell Road is the last house a plane passes over before it reaches the airport."



UPS plane crash: Aerial photos, video of crash site

[Yosemitest]

Okay, thanks.
The further I get away from my retirement as an air traffic controller, the more I forget.

[zipper]

NOTAM BHM 08/035

!BHM 08/035 BHM RWY 18/36 CLSD
CREATED: 14 Aug 2013 10:56:00
SOURCE: KANBYFYX

---

10:56:00 is in zulu time, which was an hour or so after the crash. They’re on zulu minus five hours, so 5:56 a.m.

[RckyRaCoCo]

FedEx uses a similar aircraft for KSNA, it’s runway(19R)is more than 1500ft shorter than KBHM(RWY18)...of course landing weight has to be figured into the mix.

[zipper]

I think you may be on to something there — a former airplane mechanic reported hearing sputtering (compressor stalls) just before the impact. Could have been due to damage from the trees, unless they were already experiencing compressor stalls that caused them to lose altitude. 1/4 mile at probably 130 knots (over 2 miles/min) is not long, probably 60 sec divided by 8, or about 7 seconds before impact.

Thanks for your service, those guys in the tower had a really tough job this morning.

[Yosemitest]

Okay, thanks.
This means the Airbus 300 was probably on approach to RWY 18.