Glo-Air Flight 73
On November 28, 2004 at about 10:00 a.m. mountain standard time, a Canadair (now Bombardier) CL-600-2A12 (Challenger 600), tail number N873G, crashed into the ground during takeoff at Montrose Regional Airport (MJT), Montrose, Colorado. The aircraft was registered to Hop-a-Jet, Inc., and operated by Air Castle Corporation doing business as Global Aviation. (Insert Here)The flight was operating under Part 135 Code of Federal Regulations. The captain filed the flight under an IFR Flight plan. Of the six passengers on board, three died from fatal injuries and the other three sustained major injuries. The aircraft was totaled due to the impact with the ground and a post-crash fire.
The flight had come in from Van Nuys Airport (VNY), Van Nuys, California. Witnesses recall that the plane had landed and parked at the FBO to receive some fuel. The plane had sat on the ramp for approximately 45 minutes before it took off again. While on the ramp, numerous witnesses recalled snow falling and “contaminating” the wings of the planes. Before the plane had taken off, witnesses said that they did not see either of the pilots inspect the wings for icing conditions and snow buildup. The METAR for the airport was, “wind calm, visibility 1 ¼ miles in light snow and mist, few clouds at 500 feet, overcast at 900 feet, temperature 1°C and dew point -2°C.”(Insert here) The cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the captain asking the pilot, “How do you see the wings.” The first officer replied, “Good.” And the captain said back, “Looks clear to me”.(Insert here) The captain turned on the engine bleeds which help keep icing conditions down. A downfall with engine bleeds is that they reduce the take off distance. The captain then proc...
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...e ultimately saved that flight. Before getting back into the plane, he could have taken a moment to walk around and look at how the snow was affecting the wings. He would have seen that snow was collecting on the surface and could have made a decision to have the plane de-iced and had a coat of anti-ice on. They could have been more patient with the plow truck. Gave the plow truck more time to clear the runway then get off. Then he would have never had to turn off the engine bleeds to obtain a shorter take off distance. The pilot could have made a decision to hold off on the departure till the weather got better. With the ceiling at 900 feet and visibility at 1 ¼ doesn’t offer much room for error. I feel as if the pilots had made a decision to change at least one of these things, the plane would have never crashed. It is a good learning experience for other pilots.
The 25th of September proved to be a tragic day in the legacy of Big Island Air. The final report from the NTSB included that the likely cause of the accident was the pilot’s poor decision to fly into known instrument meteorological conditions of the cloud covered terrain. The final report also concluded that the pilot’s failure to navigate properly and a direct disregard for standard operation procedures were all contributing factors. The pilot’s blatant disregard for flying into instrument meteorological conditions while operating under VFR rules and failing to ever obtain a weather brief all played a major role in this tragic disaster.
’[16] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Guterson, David, Snow Falling on Cedars, 1994, pp 367. [2] Ibid. , pp. 107.
Terrorism – This is a word that many people are terrified of. When a terrorist attack occurs, people’s daily routines are shattered. Things change instantaneously the moment the bomb goes of. When we think about a terrorist attack that really impacted the world, we immediately think about 9/11. On that day many people were hurt directly and indirectly. People were disorientated and scared. The moment there is change, the world panics. Unfortunately, 9/11 was not the only day where people panicked. On 1988, the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 occurred. This terrorist attack was not as massive as 9/11; but, it did leave scares especially to the Syracuse University community.
This tragic accident was preventable by not only the flight crew, but maintenance and air traffic control personnel as well. On December 29, 1972, ninety-nine of the one hundred and seventy-six people onboard lost their lives needlessly. As is the case with most accidents, this one was certainly preventable. This accident is unique because of the different people that could have prevented it from happening. The NTSB determined that “the probable cause of this accident was the failure of the flightcrew.” This is true; the flight crew did fail, however, others share the responsibility for this accident. Equally responsible where maintenance personnel, an Air Traffic Controllers, the system, and a twenty cent light bulb. What continues is a discussion on, what happened, why it happened, what to do about it and what was done about it.
Flight 93, the flight that crashed near some fields in the outskirts of Pennsylvania. But what was it doing there? What caused the plane to miss its target and crash? These answers may soon be revealed when detectives can finally examine the planes black box, found just recently. Many answers however can be found through other pieces of info that have come up along the way during the investigations.
The Colgan Air Flight 3407 was a very interesting case to look at. On February 12, 2009, at 10:17 pm, flight 3407 crashed at a house in New York after the pilots experience a stall. Flight 3407 was scheduled to fly from Newark, New Jersey to Buffalo, New York. The NTSB reported the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) revealed some discrepancies both pilots were experience. The first officer did not have any experience with icing condition but icing was one of the reasons the plane went into a stall. On the other hand, the captain had some experience flying in icing condition. The captain was experiencing fatigue, which indeed, made him unfit to recover from a stall. With that in mind, the Human Factor Analysis Classification System (HFACS) will give insight of some errors both pilots made.
On April 11, 1950, at 9:38 PM, a B-29 took off from Kirtland Air Force Base (AFB) in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The aircraft was on a mission to deliver a Mark 4 nuclear weapon to the 509th Bomb Wing at Walker AFB in Roswell. The aircraft and its crew of 13 were only in flight for approximately three minutes when the plane crashed into a mountain on Monzano Base, Kirtland AFB. All 13 personnel were killed in the crash. Neither the bomb, nor the high explosive material, exploded from the impact. Some of the explosive material was scattered and burned in the gasoline fire that resulted from the impact. The bomb cas...
“At 12:42 p.m. the air was perfectly calm for about one minute; the next minute the sky was completely overcast by heavy black clouds which, for a few minutes previous, had hung along the western and northwestern horizon, and the wind veered to the west and blew with such violence as to render the position of the observer on the roof unsafe. The air was immediately filled with snow as fine as sifted flour” (Potter). No one expected the blizzard that would soon come rolling over to create some of the unfortunate deaths. Now, the questions are what exactly happened during the storm, how are snowstorms created, and what damages it caused.
They took off without any problems. The weather was pleasant and they were fully equipped and ready. Until 3:45 p.m., the tower operators in Fort Lauderdale received a bizarre message from the flight leader, Lt. Charles Taylor. Lt. Taylor reported that they could not see land and that they were off-course. He also reported that they were lost. Baffled, the tower operators told Lieutenant Taylor to go westward, but he answered that they did not know which way west was.
This report is on the Crossair flight 3597 crash which happens at Zurich airport on 24th November 2001. Analysis of Crossair flight 3597 will be covered, which includes details such as facts of Crossair flight 3597 crash, and the three contributing factors involved in the air accident. The three contributing factors are mainly Crossair, pilot error and communications with air traffic controllers.
On February 24, 1989, United Airlines flight 811 was en route to Sydney, Australia from Honolulu, Hawaii. They later experienced decompression due to the cargo door failure in front aft during flight. Flight 811 made successful emergency landing at Honolulu with nine passengers missing out of 337 passenger aboard. The cargo door that was ejected on Flight 811 damaged engines 3 and 4, which led to crew to turn back to Honolulu.
Travelling at a speed twice that of sound might seem to be something futuristic; however, this feat has already been achieved almost 40 years ago by the world’s only supersonic passenger aircraft-The Concorde. Concorde brought a revolution in the aviation industry by operating transatlantic flights in less than four hours. The slick and elegant aircraft with one of the most sophisticated engineering was one of the most coveted aircrafts of its time. However, this was all destined to end when Air France Flight 4590 was involved in a tragic disaster just outside the city of Paris on July 25, 2000. The crash killed 113 people, but more disastrous was its impact. The belief and confidence people had with Concorde gradually started to fade, and finally Concorde was grounded after two and a half years of the crash. Official reports state that the main cause of the crash was a piece of metal dropped by a Continental aircraft that flew moments before Concorde, but, over the last decade, the report has met a lot of criticism, and many alternative hypotheses have thus been proposed.
Flight 370 was an international passenger flight that went missing on March 8, 2014. The flight was scheduled in route to Beijing, but it went missing throughout the second day after the plane took off from Kuala National Airport. At approximately 1:21 p.m., the communications and transponder signal were functioning no longer. There were no emergency calls at the time the plane had its last checkpoint. On March 24 at approximately 10p.m.Malaysia Standard Time, officials ceased the search as radio signals picked up debris found throughout a remote Indian Ocean. It is believed that all of the 239 passengers on the plane died (Preimesberger). From protests and outcries, to mourning and fallouts, it is still a distraught event that shocked the world.
When I stepped into the large neatly organized white polished plane, I never though something would go wrong. I woke up and found myself on an extremely hot bright sunny desert island filled with shiny soft bright green palm trees containing rough bright yellow hard felt juicy apples. The simple strong plane I was in earlier shattered into little pieces of broken glass and metal when crashing onto the wet slimy coffee colored sand and burning with red orange colored flames. After my realization to this heart throbbing incident I began to run pressing my eight inch footsteps into the wet squishy slimy light brown sand looking in every direction with my wide open eyes filled with confusion in search of other survivors. After finding four other survivors we began moving our small petite weak legs fifty inches from the painful incident. Reaching our destination which was a tiny space filled with dark shade blocking the extreme heat coming from the bright blue sky, I felt my eyelids slowly moving down my light colored hazel eyes and found myself in a dream. I was awakened the next day from a grumbling noise coming from my empty stomach.
The year was 1992; a cold December arctic wind had brought a chance of snow to the area. It was the weekend and time to relax after a long hard week at work. The weather service had predicted several inches of snow to blanket the region by the next day. Not to worry: it was the weekend and traveling was not a necessity.