BOEING 767F crash near Houston in the bay Atlas cargo

flyingcheesehead said:
Word is that the third person aboard was a Mesa pilot jumpseating. ****ty luck. :(
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Yeah I read that up in APC. Indeed. Man, call me peculiar, but when it comes to hurling across the earth at fatal speeds, I want to go at the helm, not riding shotgun. I don't even ride backseat on GA for that reason. Nothing personal against other pilots. I always prefer flying with my favorite Captain.

My wife thinks I sound like a terminal cancer patient but I tell her all the time, we gotta pack in moments to cherish right now, cuz this life ain't slowing down for anyone. I got a couple bucket list trips I want to accomplish and it's itching my hands every time I lose folks close to me. I am fortunate to have an understanding spouse considering my unhealthy vocational choices LOL, plus we've dealt with feelings of close mortality as youngish people due to some medical stuff of hers. Carpe diem is not a foreign subject in our marriage.

We often get stuck in a cycle of groundhog days, but it really pays to put a little relish in your proverbial hot dog every now and again, cuz you just never know in this life. Again, condolences to the three surviving families.
 
RyanShort1 said:
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/n...unty/287-261b1d72-4a65-4bf1-b31e-6ed2ee75fc50

Pretty strange stuff from the eyewitnesses. The one video purporting to be of the plane shortly before the crash it seems low and slow but nearly level. Odd.
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I didn't see that video. But, the weatherman's thing with the gust front, you can see that it would have hit them right about the time they crashed. Could that cause a crash? How? It would have been a sudden headwind, so I wouldn't think so.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
I didn't see that video. But, the weatherman's thing with the gust front, you can see that it would have hit them right about the time they crashed. Could that cause a crash? How? It would have been a sudden headwind, so I wouldn't think so.
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That video wasn’t of the plane, it was of one of the rescue helicopters. Sorry. The kid who they had on as an eyewitness talked about it just going down at a 45° angle.
 
Apparently the Captain and First Officer were also former Mesa pilots. Some of the new hires at my airline knew them.
 
Stickman said:
Apparently the Captain and First Officer were also former Mesa pilots. Some of the new hires at my airline knew them.
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I read on APC the Capt was ex-XJT, but I'll take your word for it. They weren't new to the 121 game.
 
Does these airplanes have "Black boxes" like the passenger planes do?
 
Groundpounder said:
Lithium battery fire. Wouldn't be the first freighter to crash because of that.
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Anymouse said:
Google "Valujet"
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KaiGywer said:
Just speculating here, but based on the descent rate and heading straight for the airport off to the right of the track. Cargo fire? Something serious enough to get down NOW
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The absence of any crew communications or witness reports mentioning cockpit smoke, fire, a smoke trail, or explosion before or after the actual impact makes this scenario improbable.
 
3393RP said:
The absence of any crew communications or witness reports mentioning cockpit smoke, fire, a smoke trail, or explosion before or after the actual impact makes this scenario improbable.
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That's the problem. There is no likely scenario. So what we'll eventually learn is that one of a gazillion unlikely scenarios actually happened.
 
kyleb said:
That's the problem. There is no likely scenario. So what we'll eventually learn is that one of a gazillion unlikely scenarios actually happened.
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You're right about that. I can't imagine a cause other than structural failure, yet reports indicate the aircraft was whole as it descended into the ground.

I suppose a failure similar to that which occurred on Alaska Airlines Flight 261 could have happened, but the lack of radio communication is puzzling.
 
3393RP said:
You're right about that. I can't imagine a cause other than structural failure, yet reports indicate the aircraft was whole as it descended into the ground.

I suppose a failure similar to that which occurred on Alaska Airlines Flight 261 could have happened, but the lack of radio communication is puzzling.
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Yup, an alaska 261 type case study is where my initial inclination is at. The fact it's an ACMI carrier may contribute to the reverse halo effect wrt their MX, but at least I'm honest enough to recognize that bias. I want to be clear I have no knowledge to judge either way the MX practices of Atlas. I just hope it's not what I think it could be, as that would mean they're continuing to endanger crews without the benefit of full transparency. I dealt with a similar situation myself a year or so ago, and let me tell you, it's no way to strap into a jet and pretend it's not a distraction. For that reason alone I hope the NTSB shows a sense of urgency and gets out safety related answers before a full report can be compiled. This isn't about the deceased anymore, this is about people flying the line presently.
 
I had a fellow box hauler pilot postulate that maybe there was a mid air collision.

It sounded far fetched, but it does pretty much explain everything.

In reality it is far too early to be speculating anyway.
 
Mid-air with who? It seems a single plane accident so far.

Most if the time the pilots get out a distress call. The weather seemed like just normal stuff, go around the worst of it. I haven’t a clue, see what the data recorders show, when found.
 
This is the latest on the AvHerald:

Two bodies were recovered from the crash site.

In the late evening (local time) of Feb 23rd 2019 the Sheriff's office reported one body was recovered. Joint efforts by the Sheriff's office, the FBI and NTSB continue to recover the victims and the black boxes. The crash scene extends over a distance of 3 miles in shallow waters up to 5 feet deep. Multiple dive teams from the Baytown police, Houston police and Texas Department of Public Safety are working at the crash site.

On Feb 24th 2019 the NTSB reported in a press conference, that the aircraft was on a standard arrival route from the southeast, the crew checked in with Houston Approach at about 18,000 feet about 76nm southeast of Houston Intercontinental Airport at about 12:30L, ATC advised there was light to heavy rain ahead and offered vectors around the weather. At about 12:36L the aircraft was cleared to descend to 3000 feet. At 12:41L radio and radar contact was lost when the aircraft was at 240 KIAS at about 6000 feet. A surveillance video was located by the NTSB from the Chambers County Jail about 1.4nm from the impact area showing the aircraft in a steep descent in a steep nose down attitude, the video shows the aircraft for about 5 seconds. There was no distress call. The main wreckage location is oriented in a northwesterly direction and is about 200 yards long and 100 yards wide. Wings and landing gear are further to the northwest. The NTSB is still searching for the back boxes. No hazmat was on board. The fuel load is not yet known, it is anticipated however that the fuel tanks were breached at impact and all fuel was released. There is no information available yet how long it took from entering the steep descent until impact. There were no attempts, according to the surveillance video, to turn or pull up during the last moments of flight. The pingers attached to the black boxes can not be heard, possibly because of being buried in the mud and effectiveness being reduced. The surveillance video will be placed into the NTSB docket and will be released to public when the docket is going to become public. Two bodies were recovered from the crash site so far. Within the NTSB conference the Sheriff stated that they did not find the crash site due to fuel but due to debris. There was very little if any fuel around.
 
For those who follow this sort of thing. A paste from another site:


Tim Vasquez, meteorologist in Texas here... weather data analysis is what I do for a living, and some of you may remember me from the Air France 447 study about 10 years ago.

Regarding the 767 crash in Houston, a lot of images seem to be floating around that use default radar mosaics. These are problematic as they're focused on higher intensity levels, they are not very granular, they often carry an ambiguous scan time, and they're often built from composite products which are the result of multiple scans rather than a single scan. This makes it very difficult to use such data except to define the basic environment. In fact, I initially didn't think much of weather being a factor based on the preliminary images I saw. However I went ahead and accessed the raw WSR-88D base data files, which are for a single level and accurate to within about 1 minute, and I found some interesting stuff.

First of all, one caveat with these images: the ones I've posted here are built from 0.5-deg scans, which were underneath the 767 at a beam center altitude of about 2000-2500 ft and a beam width of about 2000 ft. I used these because there are usually a lack of scatterers at the higher tilts, and most of the convective circulations we see above 5000+ ft are initially generated near the surface. So there are indeed some assumptions about what is going on up at 5000 ft, where the problem presumably started. Time stamps are based on the FlightAware track log, which comes straight from the ASDI feed. My assumption is these times are accurate. Sorry for the watermarks, I got burned back in 2009 by the media reprinting my diagrams commercially without permission.

A couple of conclusions:

* A textbook gust front is clearly shown within 3 nm of the crash site. This correlation is definite and is striking.

* There were no thunderstorms within 5 nm of the crash site. There may have virga or weak showers though.

* It appears some sort of gust surge developed over northern Trinity Bay, lasting about 10 minutes, originating from the storms further west near Baytown, and it reinforced the gust front. This developed ground-relative motion of 50-60 kt along a band 6 nm long oriented NE-SW.

* Velocity product showed a transitory divergent couplet with 65 kt of shear within a 1 nm volume, slightly below and left of the track. This could be a piece of the northern edge of the gust surge. This is probably associated with turbulent motion, as the result of shear & friction along the frontal boundary.

* Velocity at higher levels (4000+ ft) and along the forward edge of the gust front are typically difficult to determine in these situations because a lack of scatterers.

* I don't think a gust front like this is anything that looks particularly dangerous. That said, it's impossible to directly measure turbulence, and in between the turbulence and cloud scales there are often strong circulations that can go undetected. Typically when we see small-scale patterns on radar imagery with strong gradients and circulation, we consider the possibility that strong motions can extrapolate down to the smaller scales. It's certainly possible that this gust surge rolled up into a vortex like I've shown in the cross-section below.. this can certainly be a hazardous area to fly in.

In short I'm skeptical weather caused a direct effect, but I do see enormous potential for a sudden, rough ride here, and that could have been the first event in a chain that led to something like a CG shift or loss of a control surface (from fatigue, improper maintenance, design issue, something like the 737 in Colorado Springs, etc).

It would be interesting to see what the TDWR radars showed, unfortunately as I have to attend to my other work I probably won't have time to look at this.

Anyway this is just an armchair analysis and I'm sure the investigators have more information at this point than we do, but it's nice to have quantitative data to work from.
r_1835_track_wm_be454b5f9ca2755e26fee69bcac909ed46ca4f92.jpg


r_1838_track_wm_197d280902b162e216484444fd987a8eaf05a485.jpg


v_1835_track2_wm_ccd570c5648262d795ad49ef75261858831f4826.jpg


vortex_vertical_2941d7eb3f5f9337be3bf550f3b9f1701b58a3c1.jpg

Conceptual vertical cross section of air flow along a gust front ahead of a microburst.
 
What’s odd to me is the no communication part of it. That in itself lies a clue IMO. Not sure what it is though.
I never read about the Alaska air 261 until previously posted- hope it’s nothing near that!!
 
benyflyguy said:
What’s odd to me is the no communication part of it. That in itself lies a clue IMO. Not sure what it is though.
I never read about the Alaska air 261 until previously posted- hope it’s nothing near that!!
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Aviate, navigate, communicate. You don’t talk to anyone if you’re busy with #1. ATC can’t always help.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Capt. was ex-XJT guy and a solid guy from what I hear. I was at IAH at the time of the crash and the mood was somber.
 
kyleb said:
That's the problem. There is no likely scenario.
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Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.

Here's a 737 doing just that with 44 passengers and 6 crew onboard because captain was a little tired:


No hazardous cargo, thunderstorm, vulture strike, or any mechanical problems were involved into that one.
 
zaitcev said:
Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.

Here's a 737 doing just that with 44 passengers and 6 crew onboard because captain was a little tired:


No hazardous cargo, thunderstorm, vulture strike, or any mechanical problems were involved into that one.
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Hell of an acquisition to be making about a crew and situation you know nothing about...
 
zaitcev said:
Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.

Here's a 737 doing just that with 44 passengers and 6 crew onboard because captain was a little tired:
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That one was a botched night go-around, with the crash attributed to a poorly trained crew. I'd suggest spatial disorientation may have contributed.

Very different than what seemed to happen in Houston, which happened in daylight and <seemingly> with decent visibility.
 
zaitcev said:
Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.
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"Most" likely? That's a rather odious accusation to make, considering it has no basis in known facts.

Being that you, as far as I can determine, have zero PIC time in transport category aircraft in general nor the Boeing 767 specifically, and therefore no knowledge whatsoever regarding what conditions or circumstances might have caused Atlas Air Flight 3591 to depart controlled flight in the manner observed, making such a comment is irresponsible and unwarranted.

But it does fit right in with typical internet forum inanity, so you have that going for you. :rolleyes:

As for the Tartarstan crash, perhaps you should read the conclusions reached by the safety authorities, instead of repeating what some guy you know from back home said. The cause of the accident is translated from Russian on this ASN webpage, and there's a link to a PDF file of the complete report.

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20131117-0
 
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Given the distances and altitudes, would that be near the point where flaps and gear would be called for?
 
Lantraxco said:
Given the distances and altitudes, would that be near the point where flaps and gear would be called for?
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No. They'd be configuring substantially closer to the airport than where they seem to have began the fatal dive.
 
It's my understanding the crew names were released this morning. It is also said the jumper seater was was a Mesa pilot and on his way home to start his dream job at United.
 
zaitcev said:
Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.

Here's a 737 doing just that with 44 passengers and 6 crew onboard because captain was a little tired:


No hazardous cargo, thunderstorm, vulture strike, or any mechanical problems were involved into that one.
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You've got to be the most insensitive person on this forum, to insinuate that it's a suicide mission. They haven't even found the CVR/FDR and captain moron over here is declaring it a pilot suicide. If that's the case, why wait to crash into a shallow bay, versus the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
 
I was flying all over the eastern half of the country on Saturday. The prog charts were some of the worst I'd ever seen. There were a lot of people flying, actually surprisingly so to me, although the clouds weren't all that low.

As I was looking at the SXM weather download going from CXO up to BAF (where I had to cross through the major system for the first time that day), I was thinking "Someone, somewhere is going to crash today" given the amount of weather and the severity of it. I'm always an advocate of letting the NTSB do their job, and I think that Pete's thought above is ill-informed, inappropriate, and insensitive. It's also not productive discussion.

For me, I encountered severe turbulence for the first time in years while going between a couple of cells over Illinois on my last leg of the day heading home. The RDR 2000 and the SXM download both showed me as being clear of any precip, and then all of a sudden it felt like I ran over a 172. Dog crates went flying in the plane, and instant +/- 300 ft altitude changes. It only lasted a few minutes but it was very unpleasant. With 55 lb/sqft wing loading, the MU-2 handles turbulence exceptionally well. This was by far the worst I'd had in the plane, and really haven't experienced turbulence that bad since some of my flights in the 310 or Aztec years ago. Actually, I can remember the last time, it's been 8 years since I had similarly bad turbulence, almost exactly.

The first thing that comes to my mind is a microburst or some kind of turbulence similar to/worse than what I encountered.
 
Ted DuPuis said:
With 55 lb/sqft wing loading, the MU-2 handles turbulence exceptionally well
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I was going to ask.. how does the MU2 handle turbulence..? But you already answered it. I would imagine those relatively small-ish looking wings have a high wing loading and ride it well. Do you need to do any inspection after encountering something like that?

Even if the plane was witnessed to be intact when it nose dived.. perhaps something with the horizontal stabilizer or control surfaces were damaged from some kind of extreme turbulence event resulting in loss of control and subsequent nose dive? Or, as someone indicated above, cargo on board was jostled loose and screwed up the CG or damaged something else.. there was a case of that happening at least once before, National Airlines Flight 102, the 747 that crashed on departure, had an improperly secured vehicle roll back, hit and damage the bulkhead, which damaged hydraulics and made the airplane uncontrollable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102
 
KSCessnaDriver said:
You've got to be the most insensitive person on this forum, to insinuate that it's a suicide mission. They haven't even found the CVR/FDR and captain moron over here is declaring it a pilot suicide. If that's the case, why wait to crash into a shallow bay, versus the middle of the Gulf of Mexico.
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I didn't take his post as suggesting suicide, but rather pilot error, as in the example he gave.
 
Having some local knowledge of where the airplane crashed its a place we call Jacks Pocket on Trinity Bay shallow water 2-3 feet on a high tide and deep mud bottom where you sink to your knee's type mud if you get off the boat...good fishing the flats in summer and duck hunting in the winter and I have done both in there...I hope they find the black boxes I was told the locater beacons are either inop or to deep in the mud to hear....I am sure they will keep looking till they find them probably the only way to solve this tragedy.
 
Tantalum said:
I was going to ask.. how does the MU2 handle turbulence..? But you already answered it. I would imagine those relatively small-ish looking wings have a high wing loading and ride it well. Do you need to do any inspection after encountering something like that?
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I am not aware of any inspection required and wouldn't anticipate anything, but it will be something I mention to the shop.

Even if the plane was witnessed to be intact when it nose dived.. perhaps something with the horizontal stabilizer or control surfaces were damaged from some kind of extreme turbulence event resulting in loss of control and subsequent nose dive? Or, as someone indicated above, cargo on board was jostled loose and screwed up the CG or damaged something else.. there was a case of that happening at least once before, National Airlines Flight 102, the 747 that crashed on departure, had an improperly secured vehicle roll back, hit and damage the bulkhead, which damaged hydraulics and made the airplane uncontrollable: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Airlines_Flight_102
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Cargo coming loose normally causes issues on takeoff, so that is improbable. Typically it's either secured properly or it isn't. Mechanical issues are always possible, and it was an old bird. But given the amount of weather around that day, that remains my first guess.
 
zaitcev said:
Yes there is. The PF just drove it into the ground, most likely.

Here's a 737 doing just that with 44 passengers and 6 crew onboard because captain was a little tired:


No hazardous cargo, thunderstorm, vulture strike, or any mechanical problems were involved into that one.
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STFU
 
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