I have seen this sort of thing numerous times in past aircraft crash reports. One thing that stands out to me as an engineer (non-pilot) is that instruments that show faulty readings NEVER fix themselves. They just don't. If there is a clear fault with one of the redundant systems, and acknowledged by the crew, then that system should NEVER be trusted again until it is serviced, regardless of whether it "springs into life" again. This fact should be drilled into all pilots.
Agreed. In my opinion, humans operating complex machines like airplanes should first and foremost be experts at the technical systems and then learn their operating procedures. Pilot training these days seems to aim for that but back in those days, it seems like a different type of personality was mostly chosen for pilot roles
It IS drilled into all of us. These guys just did absolutely everything incorrectly, and in direct opposition to that training. Regardless of the new procedures implemented after this crash, these guys were trained well enough for something so basic. Don't forget, they noticed on the ground and then just played make-believe plane pilot until they killed everyone. And there were THREE of them! Not one person just said "fly it straight and level". Brutal incompetence.
I agree. Once data is incorrect the sensor is done. The end. I believe computer should do "INOP" automatically. Like speed going up 100knots a seconds is not possible.
Not an engineer but sounds like a great point. Also, even if 'u nsafe to fly' is subjective, one would think that a pilot would have mentally decided at some point if a faulty airspeed indication would meet his 'unsafe to fly' criteria. Rather than just wing it and decide in 2 seconds when it actually happens.
@@bluecoffee8414in this case they did decide that they had sufficient airspeed, and sufficient indication of airspeed to rotate and fix it in the air. They then proceeded to not acknowledge the problem in any coherent way. The aircraft was safe to fly, that is the reason for triple redundancy of systems such as Indicated Airspeed. Now, they may have wanted to return and land to get the problem fixed, but it appears they were intending to complete a very long flight in this partially-compromised condition. The failure of three pilots to recognize the symptoms of a blocked pilot tube is inconceivable, and unforgivable. You would fail any written or flight test if you botched that diagnosis.
Is there always a handbook response to computers either defaulting to less computer input into flight OR, what is no doubt worse; the computer USING incorrect data inputs; so driving the aircraft into instability?
Hi Peter this story really resonates with me I was onboard a ATR42 that slammed on the brakes in an aborted takeoff approaching V1 during take off when the co-pilot read zero airspeed. After we taxied back to airport, engineers where called in and we watched the aircraft thunder up and down the runway in tests... Eventually engineer arrived and the fault turned out to be a mud wasp nest blocking the pitot tubes
You know you have been watching a lot of his videos when you hear "the airplane had been sitting on the ground for a while" and you exclaim "the pitots!!!" :)
When he explained the pitot tubes and said we don't know if the covers were installed, I already knew that it was at least a hull loss and very likely no survivors because otherwise he would have said "the investigators couldn't find out because XYZ" or something like that... 😔
I find it incredible that with that much experience in the cockpit, and the stick shaker going, that one of the other pilots didn't demand the Captain perform a stall recovery.
Thank you for covering this accident! I am from the Dominican Republic, I was born a month after this accident, but my family told me the story about this accident. My parents used to live by Cabarete, very close to where this accident happened
Three pilots, two functioning airpeed indicators, and nobody looked at the artificial horizon? Never noticed the nose-up attitude? This is infuriating, and terrifying.
These air speed emergencies have always puzzled me in why the captain then does not respond within his knowledge of the aircraft and his airmanship. When his airspeed is erratic and cannot be trusted, then level off in thick air, say 120, set thrust at a level you know is safe to maintain a reasonable airspeed, then work the problem for a bit and call in - then without resolution, turn back. This, air france, other incidents seem like a good airman could easily escape out of.
I remember the extensive media coverage in German media at the time. I've heard a bit about this accident now and again over the intervening years, but the conclusion was usually along the lines of "pitot tubes were blocked, mechanics on the ground didn't do what they should have, that's why the plane went down". This video is the first one I can remember that clearly presents the entire accident sequence with comments not only about what happened and why, but also which indicators the pilots could have used to find out what is going on or what they could have done to recover. We could discuss endlessly what should have been done when and by whom, but for me the takeaway from this video is a much clearer understanding of what actually went on, what constraints the pilots were under, and why in the end a lot of relatively minor mistakes were made that sent this plane into the ocean. That starts with the first signs during the takeoff roll, but as you explained and I've heard elsewhere, I guess the captain wasn't too keen on facing passengers and his employer if he decided to stop takeoff and declare the plane unsafe to fly. I can very well understand why someone in that situation might be focussed on every detail that might enable the flight to continue, and downplay everything that wouldn't. Added to that that he was called in at the end of the day and after a week and a half off, to take over a flight whose passengers were already on edge because of the delays and waiting, plus then being confronted with a situation that he was never trained for and that wasn't, as you said, very well understood at the time, and it gets much easier to understand why the pilots more or less panicked - which then made a better outcome even more unlikely. Thanks a lot for your work and that of your team, I appreciate your insights into those accidents very much!
@@AnetaMihaylova-d6f Every time I call my grandmother and tell her about this type of history of how aviation changed because of these plane crashes, she guesses some right as human error! Have you listened to the CVR recording of Birgenair 301? It’s not the full recording but it’s the final moments of the flight.
Petter, I have been a fan of your videos for over a year now. I have watched almost every video on your channel and I have been greatly challenged by them. Your thoroughness and diligence in your videos has inspired me to do same in my career. Since I started learning from your videos, I have received a lot of great feedback about how people have been impressed about my work. And sometimes in my mind i just say “mentor pilot taught me how to be diligent and thorough in my work”. Just wanted to let you know that your videos on aviation are also causing an impact in the career paths of some of us who aren’t working in the aviation industry. We are learning and applying the principles you teach us into what we do. Please keep up the good work and keep mentoring us.
I was taught all about pitot tube blockages in flight school way back in 1978.Yet several serious accidents have happened in the last 30 years from pitot issues. Had the industry forgotten all about the blocked pitot problems since my day?
Also, I commented already many times, why not have a separate GPS unit as backup? The pilot can compare their readings with those and figure out if something wrong, and what is wrong. Also, even a phone has magnetometer, can measure direction and angles compared to ground. So just a phone sized stand alone device could provide tons of backup safety info when all fails.
@@Sonnellthey had groundspeed indications, they just never considered using them to help work the problem. The problem they had was simple, basic, and understood by 100% of pilots. They were just very, very incompetent.
Apparently these three just forgot every single lesson they'd ever learned. The jumpseat pilot said "ADI" a couple times but never said "push the nose down"? This was one of the most brutal displays of incompetence I've ever seen. And I used to read NTSB reports for entertainment
The air in the pitot tube was not expanding, because its volume was constrained by the blockage. What was happening was that the pressure in the static tube was reducing, and the combined device responds to the difference in pressure.
At the level of experience the captain had, he should have noticed by just the pitch angle that something was off. If you have unreliable airspeed, just fly a pitch and power setting that you know works!
Once when flying over the Tora Bora mountains, my aircraft while flying at 75 kn had a ground speed of -25 kn… Quite odd to fly backwards in a fixed wing plane…
You just know that when the stick shaker goes, the pilots will pull back even further. Even I, with my 40 year old, out of date PPL, know how diametrically wrong this is. So tragic.
Just from the thumbnail, I think I can figure it out, and yeah I dislike those particular insects quite a bit. They build those things on my car annoyingly frequently.
Question: The Central Autopilot takes info from captain's instrument so it was affected by the faulty speed. However, the rudder ratio is based on BOTH indicators, thus noticing the difference between them. Why can't the Central Autopilot rely on both indicators as well in order for the system to notice such problems?
On Airbus aircraft the autopilot does take input from all sensors. Boeing aircraft don’t. This is because of what happens if two sensors disagree. On the Airbus the computer is connected to 3 sensors and if one disagrees with the other two the odd result is discarded. On Boeing’s older designs the 3rd system is either not computerised or just not present (737 AoA indicator for instance). This means that adding a second sensor input just raises the chance of failure rather than improving safety much as that 3rd sensor isn’t available. That was fine when autopilots were something helpful not flight critical, as they were in the 1950’s when systems just held controls steady in cruise or steady climb/descent. But wasn’t corrected as autopilots became more and more flight critical.
The quick-thinking necessary for the pilot’s job (if they want to keep passengers and crew alive) is among the many reasons why it’s up near the top of my list of jobs I could never ever do.
One of those videos that really make you wonder why you would get in an airplane. Maintenance, training, procedures, and design all failed something that is not at all something I would consider an unexpected occurrence. Failure by people on so many levels.
Blasting high pressure air into a pitot tube would give the very sensitive air pressure measuring transducers a rough time, possibly upsetting their calibration or destroying them.
I love watching your videos! I very much appreciate the level of detail you go into and I learn a lot by watching them. I called the stall risk very early on!! :)
There are pilots like Captain Carlos Dárdano and there are also pilots like this flight. It's all about luck which type of pilot you encounter on your flight. 🤕
Good morning, On the Puerto Plata boardwalk there is a memorial with all the names of the passengers. I was two years old when that terrible accident happened off the coast of a small town called Cabarete. According to what my parents told me, the entire town went to the beach to see what was happening and saw the rescue helicopters and boats.
I've always been amazed at how some pilots just don't have an understanding of how the aircraft they are flying works. In the '80's I was working for a company that had a lot of former military working there. I was talking to a former A4 Skyhawk pilot that thought reverse thrust was created by the vanes inside the engine reversing like a prop does! Even I, as a kid (21), knew that this wasn't possible.
That is basically, what "Triple modular redundancy" is - having three systems, so in case one goes wrong, you can tell not only that one of them is faulty (as with "Dual modular redundancy", with two duplicated systems), but also, _which_ one is wrong, and therefore - what is the correct value. Safety-critical computer systems often follow this principles - in some cases, if CPU can be restarted, two cores working in lockstep (like some Arm designs) are sufficient, but for things like space missions, triple redundancy was also used. In the past sailors, needing to keep time for navigation, used to say to take either one chronometer (clock) or three, never two.
Its a sad history, it happened at my country. I think, to date, this is the worst aviation accident here. I still remember the news on this, right after it happen.
They should add one more probe that doesn't need covers but it gets covered up automatically and that gets uncovered automatically for if the other ones are still covered.
But now you have another mechanical system that must be tested, certified, trained, and maintained. Then you end up with a Mentour Pilot video about a tragic case where the automatic pitot cover failed in some unexpected way that lined up with the rest of the Swiss cheese to bring down an otherwise perfectly good airplane.
You know, my grandfather always said, "We don't know what to do in life, but we just know what not to do." Every accident seems to be a "what not to do" lesson
I never understand why they dont modify the Pitot tubes with a purge option (only need 2 solenoid valves : one to isolate the instruments to purge and other to let high pressure heated gas to be injected to clear the pitot ) its peanuts in price and could help save lives ...
It's often crazy when you realize how fast these things go from no issue to fatal incident. This flight only lasted 5 minutes while it takes 40 minutes to explain the entire thing.
Hi Petter, another classic to cherish. Please start a series on Celebrity crashes like the Kennedy's or any legendary players or actors who have perished during avaiation disasters. Thanks,
In theory the AP could have been designed that way, yes. Boeing didn’t do it that way though. The right AP uses the copilot instrument (I think) and they could’ve selected it at any time. They didn’t. They used the left and center APs but never tried the third one.
We have those damn mud daubers all around our homestead. They can clog up ANYTHING! Even our dryer vent. Their mud houses aren’t that big, but somehow they figured out that the heat and humidity coming out of our dryer is a great location for a condominium complex, resulting in numerous golf ball sized hardened mud globs inside our 4” vent tube.
Easy to see the fault in retrospect, but that they mentioned that the third instrument was correct then ignored that insight, seems an unacceptable level of incompetence.
Excellent coverage of this accident, Petter! Thanks again. At the time -- or perhaps now -- can the pilot choose where the automation systems pick their air speed information from?? (
There are some galling ones but this is horrible for a,crew to handle. Better training yes is now there admittedly but with aeromex a cautionary tale can still happen. Sobering and well put together
I honestly think the "high speed" "low speed" regime for takeoff is problematic. It seems like a lot of incidents involve pilots knowingly taking off in the "high speed" regime before V1 while trying to diagnose an issue. Below V1 safe stopping of the plane is possible as long as brakes are properly applied. Also, while I can get why in the "high speed" regime the captain took off with a defective instrument because he probably had less than 20 seconds to decide to reject it and in this regime he was biased towards trying to diagnose instead of reject, given he had plenty of time in the air why didn't he just use the first officer's airspeed indicator? It was his own that was faulty on takeoff so he should be predisposed towards trusting the latter on a speed mismatch. And the flight engineer helpfully pointed out that given the attitude, they were probably too slow not too fast "ADI"
32:36 I am because i have been following your channel since mid-2022. I know this case from the famous Air Crash Investigation 3 years ago and yes it is sad that we don't know the reason for the unrealistic airspeed predicament happen, because the most important evidence were never found. This is still the deadliest aviation accident involving the Boeing 757. If the captain rejected the takeoff roll, this video would've never existed on your channel. Overall, this video is awesome🔥. Well done👍
Great video. I just cannot understand how can an experienced pilot not push the control yoke forward when they see their vibrating stick shaker. I understand the high stress situation. But if that was the first warning, what is distracting all three pilots from taking the right action. I thought the procedure for recognizing and recovery from stalling is straight forward for experienced pilots.
Thank you Petter Sir for making this video. Sir, this video has raised a question in me and here it goes. When an aircraft pitches up more than normal, don't the pilots feel that they are being pulled back on their seats. Also, when the aircraft is diving down, don't the pilots feel that they are being pulled away from their seats and towards the control panel, even though, they are wearing the seat belts. This could also be an indicator that the aircraft has pitched up more than normal or the aircraft is diving down more than normal especially during a Stall and they should first take the appropriate steps to level up the nose, rather than getting distracted with the faulty instruments. Sir, please help me understand through your reply. Thank you Sir, once again. Have a Great Day and Take Care.
I know it's easier said than done, but do remember your mathematics teacher telling you to do a "sanity check" to make sure your solution appeared reasonable given the question asked? Well, that reminds me of the situation here that by very basic deduction, it was clearly the case that the Captain's indicated airspeed should have been completely ignored. Extremely sad course of events.
It’s seems like a lot of these accidents involve ignoring the stick shaker while a bunch of other stuff is going on in the cockpit. To me, a stick shaker is the last gasp of the aircraft trying to tell you what to do. Why doesn’t this cause a total reset in behavior to ignore all else, rely on basic aviation training, get the nose down and stabilize the aircraft?
Did the upload schedule switch from once every fortnight to once every week after the Patreon goal was met? Really awesome and impressive for that level of quality!
This video hit all the right (pitot) tubes! Amazing breakdown of Birgenair Flight 301 - you really made the nuances of faulty instrument readings and the tragic implications of a blocked pitot tube crystal clear. The cascading effects from a single erroneous speed indication blew my mind. I couldn't help but wonder, with the advancements in flight data monitoring and redundancy systems today, how differently would modern systems handle such an anomaly? Thanks for another deep dive, Mentour! Your attention to technical detail really helps aviation geeks like us grasp the real gravity of these incidents.
Has this channel covered Air NZ's Mount Erebus disaster (flight 901) before? I think the investigation that happened after would be just as interesting as the crash itself.
To me it seems, most of the time, the pilots are confused, and that leads to disasters. Doing anything routinely for too long, and not being regularly subjected to confusing situations, means, when it finally happens, the pilots will default back to some habits or simply freeze. I think, the industry must do tons of trainings regularly, where pilots are subjected to all sorts of unexpected situations, otherwise this will keep happening.
Having watched many of your explanations plus reading the Max investigations directly, it strikes me how often the pilots are not even alerted to mismatched instruments even recently. I understand having a separation between sides allows for considerable redundancy, but that redundancy is useless if there's no tiebreaker or the pilots don't know how to choose. It doesn't feel like this basic problem is solved even now.
I just watched flight MAS134 and intriguingly, not covering the probes on ground you won't get accurate speed/none and not removing the probe covers before departure is still the same outcome to the aircraft
32:40 This one was really hard to understand the thoughts of the pilots as a layman, even accepting that it's easy to criticise when you're in posession of all the information after the fact: With 15 degrees of pitch up and their understanding that they couldn't rely on their airspeed instrumentation (even though they could've relied on two of them, but that's besides the point here), why would your first instinct not be to level off whilst investigating the problem? Why continue climbing?
It’s interesting to see that whenever pilots encounter an extreme situation, they invariably pull back on the stick, even if the aircraft is stalling. Perhaps in their panic state they forget all their training and simply try to gain more altitude and stay away from the ground. But their panic must be extreme to forget the basic lessons of airmanship.
My take is like having two compasses. If two point north reliably, never doubt your compass. If two speed indicators nearly agree 99% and a 3rd is way off....just ignore it. I myself have walked by compass 🧭 and sometimes thought my direction of travel was wrong...then i would pull out my second compass and sure enough, both agreed and my sense of direction was wrong. Thankfully i have never gotten lost in my life. It would drive my wife crazy that i could drive by my compass 🧭 in our vehicle and get real close or right on to a destination. A compass is a deadly precise instrument.
Did slow flight to power off stall with a strong headwind. we flew backwards and couldnt get the stall to break. The instructor just laughed and said "i guess ... uh just recover" haha
Getting a sticker shaker shortly after an overspeed warning in the middle of the night with little to visual reference is as disorientating as it gets. Very frustrating incident.
I feel like if i was a pilot(of course i dont know how the stress of the situation feels like), i would be extremely paranoid after my airspeed indicator didnt work during takeoff and i would constantly be checking the standby airspeed indicator instead of
I'm confused that the pilots seemed *_not_* to be confused that their pitch was so high. It feels like it would be obvious to someone who had flown that much that, regardless of anything else, no plane they'd ever flown before had ever been pitched that high during takeoff.
❓I don’t understand why should each pilot have their “own” Pitot tube? If it all goes thru the computer anyway, why not let the computer combine the data from all tubes, if there are indications that one may be unreliable disregard it, and show the resulting airspeed to both pilots?
![[LIVE] : ONE ลุมพินี 84 วันนี้!! คู่เอก "ก้องศึก vs เมืองไทย"](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/3kuzsAIDf1c/mqdefault.jpg)
I have seen this sort of thing numerous times in past aircraft crash reports.
One thing that stands out to me as an engineer (non-pilot) is that instruments that show faulty readings NEVER fix themselves. They just don't.
If there is a clear fault with one of the redundant systems, and acknowledged by the crew, then that system should NEVER be trusted again until it is serviced, regardless of whether it "springs into life" again. This fact should be drilled into all pilots.
Agreed. In my opinion, humans operating complex machines like airplanes should first and foremost be experts at the technical systems and then learn their operating procedures. Pilot training these days seems to aim for that but back in those days, it seems like a different type of personality was mostly chosen for pilot roles
It IS drilled into all of us. These guys just did absolutely everything incorrectly, and in direct opposition to that training. Regardless of the new procedures implemented after this crash, these guys were trained well enough for something so basic. Don't forget, they noticed on the ground and then just played make-believe plane pilot until they killed everyone. And there were THREE of them! Not one person just said "fly it straight and level". Brutal incompetence.
I agree. Once data is incorrect the sensor is done. The end. I believe computer should do "INOP" automatically. Like speed going up 100knots a seconds is not possible.
Not an engineer but sounds like a great point. Also, even if 'u nsafe to fly' is subjective, one would think that a pilot would have mentally decided at some point if a faulty airspeed indication would meet his 'unsafe to fly' criteria. Rather than just wing it and decide in 2 seconds when it actually happens.
@@bluecoffee8414in this case they did decide that they had sufficient airspeed, and sufficient indication of airspeed to rotate and fix it in the air. They then proceeded to not acknowledge the problem in any coherent way. The aircraft was safe to fly, that is the reason for triple redundancy of systems such as Indicated Airspeed. Now, they may have wanted to return and land to get the problem fixed, but it appears they were intending to complete a very long flight in this partially-compromised condition. The failure of three pilots to recognize the symptoms of a blocked pilot tube is inconceivable, and unforgivable. You would fail any written or flight test if you botched that diagnosis.
Remember this. Blocked pitot tubes do not cause crashes, the pilots reaction and response to the loss of airspeed is what causes the crash
Is there always a handbook response to computers either defaulting to less computer input into flight OR, what is no doubt worse; the computer USING incorrect data inputs; so driving the aircraft into instability?
Yes, that’s correct
We can look at another episode, Malaysia Airlines flight 134, for comparison.
@@keithalderson100 Petter touched on that around 43:00. But of course that was only implemented after this and other accidents
"unreliable airspeed checklist"
My CFA asked why I’m so focused on the details as a new pilot student. I told him about your discord and videos, he is also apart of the community!
Excellent!! That’s what I want to hear 💕
Each of mentour pilot videos is getting better and better everytime.
We try to deliver as good quality as we possibly can, glad you think it’s showing
@@MentourPilot
Yet, I miss the days when he would talk about the more technical aspects of flight and discuss topics like turbulence for nervous fliers.
Hi Peter this story really resonates with me I was onboard a ATR42 that slammed on the brakes in an aborted takeoff approaching V1 during take off when the co-pilot read zero airspeed. After we taxied back to airport, engineers where called in and we watched the aircraft thunder up and down the runway in tests... Eventually engineer arrived and the fault turned out to be a mud wasp nest blocking the pitot tubes
It is so sad to have reached the point as a Mentour Pilot fan where you just _know_ halfway through the video how it's gonna end 😢
from the thumbnail alone, few seconds in, my guess, frozen and blocked tubes.
I will have to step it up a bit..
It's called a "tragic" for a reason.
You know you have been watching a lot of his videos when you hear "the airplane had been sitting on the ground for a while" and you exclaim "the pitots!!!" :)
When he explained the pitot tubes and said we don't know if the covers were installed, I already knew that it was at least a hull loss and very likely no survivors because otherwise he would have said "the investigators couldn't find out because XYZ" or something like that... 😔
Aviation is the most inspiring industry because it learns from every disaster and adapts. Kudos for your team to show it us with every episode.
Wow, a 25k experience level pilot didn't feel a stall coming. That's hard to process.
MENA pilots
I find it incredible that with that much experience in the cockpit, and the stick shaker going, that one of the other pilots didn't demand the Captain perform a stall recovery.
Thank you for covering this accident! I am from the Dominican Republic, I was born a month after this accident, but my family told me the story about this accident. My parents used to live by Cabarete, very close to where this accident happened
Three pilots, two functioning airpeed indicators, and nobody looked at the artificial horizon? Never noticed the nose-up attitude? This is infuriating, and terrifying.
40:09 is the scariest thing to see on a primary flight display. As Kelsey always says: Keep the blue side up!
Wasn't scary for these clowns. They never looked at it.
These air speed emergencies have always puzzled me in why the captain then does not respond within his knowledge of the aircraft and his airmanship. When his airspeed is erratic and cannot be trusted, then level off in thick air, say 120, set thrust at a level you know is safe to maintain a reasonable airspeed, then work the problem for a bit and call in - then without resolution, turn back. This, air france, other incidents seem like a good airman could easily escape out of.
Well, Air France had all their pitot tubes unreliable.
Sounds like an unreliable air speed checklist 🤣
This sounds like a reasonable QRH checklist. I haven’t read the 757 book but your steps seem very reasonable.
I remember the extensive media coverage in German media at the time. I've heard a bit about this accident now and again over the intervening years, but the conclusion was usually along the lines of "pitot tubes were blocked, mechanics on the ground didn't do what they should have, that's why the plane went down". This video is the first one I can remember that clearly presents the entire accident sequence with comments not only about what happened and why, but also which indicators the pilots could have used to find out what is going on or what they could have done to recover. We could discuss endlessly what should have been done when and by whom, but for me the takeaway from this video is a much clearer understanding of what actually went on, what constraints the pilots were under, and why in the end a lot of relatively minor mistakes were made that sent this plane into the ocean.
That starts with the first signs during the takeoff roll, but as you explained and I've heard elsewhere, I guess the captain wasn't too keen on facing passengers and his employer if he decided to stop takeoff and declare the plane unsafe to fly. I can very well understand why someone in that situation might be focussed on every detail that might enable the flight to continue, and downplay everything that wouldn't. Added to that that he was called in at the end of the day and after a week and a half off, to take over a flight whose passengers were already on edge because of the delays and waiting, plus then being confronted with a situation that he was never trained for and that wasn't, as you said, very well understood at the time, and it gets much easier to understand why the pilots more or less panicked - which then made a better outcome even more unlikely.
Thanks a lot for your work and that of your team, I appreciate your insights into those accidents very much!
RIP
To the passengers and crew of Birgenair Flight 301
Indeed 😔
@@StephenLukeit was stupid pilot mistake.
@@AnetaMihaylova-d6f Every time I call my grandmother and tell her about this type of history of how aviation changed because of these plane crashes, she guesses some right as human error!
Have you listened to the CVR recording of Birgenair 301? It’s not the full recording but it’s the final moments of the flight.
@@StephenLuke no ,but the plane shouldn't havevtaken off at all with faulty instruments. I don't know what the pilots were thinking....
It's incredibly minor, but at 34:10 the wind vane moves the wrong direction. It should move clockwise, not counterclockwise.
Retard
Petter, I have been a fan of your videos for over a year now. I have watched almost every video on your channel and I have been greatly challenged by them. Your thoroughness and diligence in your videos has inspired me to do same in my career. Since I started learning from your videos, I have received a lot of great feedback about how people have been impressed about my work. And sometimes in my mind i just say “mentor pilot taught me how to be diligent and thorough in my work”.
Just wanted to let you know that your videos on aviation are also causing an impact in the career paths of some of us who aren’t working in the aviation industry. We are learning and applying the principles you teach us into what we do.
Please keep up the good work and keep mentoring us.
I was taught all about pitot tube blockages in flight school way back in 1978.Yet several serious accidents have happened in the last 30 years from pitot issues. Had the industry forgotten all about the blocked pitot problems since my day?
Also, I commented already many times, why not have a separate GPS unit as backup?
The pilot can compare their readings with those and figure out if something wrong, and what is wrong. Also, even a phone has magnetometer, can measure direction and angles compared to ground.
So just a phone sized stand alone device could provide tons of backup safety info when all fails.
@@Sonnellthey had groundspeed indications, they just never considered using them to help work the problem. The problem they had was simple, basic, and understood by 100% of pilots. They were just very, very incompetent.
Apparently these three just forgot every single lesson they'd ever learned. The jumpseat pilot said "ADI" a couple times but never said "push the nose down"? This was one of the most brutal displays of incompetence I've ever seen. And I used to read NTSB reports for entertainment
The air in the pitot tube was not expanding, because its volume was constrained by the blockage. What was happening was that the pressure in the static tube was reducing, and the combined device responds to the difference in pressure.
Came looking for this comment. This is a much more accurate explanation of what was actually happening than the explanation that Petter gave.
I had so many plans for what to do this morning. Then I see a Mentour Pilot video in my feed.
Right! I have a snowblower I should be getting ready for winter
At the level of experience the captain had, he should have noticed by just the pitch angle that something was off. If you have unreliable airspeed, just fly a pitch and power setting that you know works!
Yes, and that’s how we teach this to pilots today.. but back then it was not as much emphasised, sadly
Once when flying over the Tora Bora mountains, my aircraft while flying at 75 kn had a ground speed of -25 kn… Quite odd to fly backwards in a fixed wing plane…
Yep, but that’s physics for you!
At the time I was remote operating from FOB Fenty (Jalalabad). The aircraft was a RQ7B.
Thank you. Was waiting for this video from you as I was affected back then. Great job! Thanks Petter.
I hope it will explain it well for you! Thanks for watching
Oh I remember this story so well. I was wondering when you would cover it. It is today - many thanks!
You just know that when the stick shaker goes, the pilots will pull back even further. Even I, with my 40 year old, out of date PPL, know how diametrically wrong this is. So tragic.
It's interesting how most planes that crash seem to have rather inexperienced crews or very experienced crews.
Just from the thumbnail, I think I can figure it out, and yeah I dislike those particular insects quite a bit. They build those things on my car annoyingly frequently.
Yeah, they have a strange affinity for pitot-probes
Just insects doing their insect thing.
Thank you very much for this video!
I swear if I ever hear the Stall and my stick starts to shake, I'm pushing it. You can wake me up at night and yell "STALL" and I will push you. 😅
Sounds like a whole lotta pushing going on in your bed...🤣 cheers! / CS
happy sunday with a mentour vid🎉
love the videos man ❤
Question:
The Central Autopilot takes info from captain's instrument so it was affected by the faulty speed. However, the rudder ratio is based on BOTH indicators, thus noticing the difference between them.
Why can't the Central Autopilot rely on both indicators as well in order for the system to notice such problems?
On Airbus aircraft the autopilot does take input from all sensors. Boeing aircraft don’t. This is because of what happens if two sensors disagree. On the Airbus the computer is connected to 3 sensors and if one disagrees with the other two the odd result is discarded. On Boeing’s older designs the 3rd system is either not computerised or just not present (737 AoA indicator for instance). This means that adding a second sensor input just raises the chance of failure rather than improving safety much as that 3rd sensor isn’t available. That was fine when autopilots were something helpful not flight critical, as they were in the 1950’s when systems just held controls steady in cruise or steady climb/descent. But wasn’t corrected as autopilots became more and more flight critical.
This incident reminds me of the story where the team forgot to remove the covers on the tubes. 😮😮😮
It would be great if you included a real-time recreation at the end of your analysis so we can see truly how fast a lot of these situations develop.
I was just now studying instrumentation for my ATPL exams. I get on TH-cam and i get a study lesson about the ASI by Peter!!
I hope it will be helpful! Best of luck with your exams.
@@MentourPilot thank you!
I want to thank the Mentour team for including subtitles! It's very convenient and helps me not misunderstand the technical terms!
The quick-thinking necessary for the pilot’s job (if they want to keep passengers and crew alive) is among the many reasons why it’s up near the top of my list of jobs I could never ever do.
You're not allowed to think in Turkey
One of those videos that really make you wonder why you would get in an airplane. Maintenance, training, procedures, and design all failed something that is not at all something I would consider an unexpected occurrence. Failure by people on so many levels.
Very similar to Aeroperu 603. Same 757 type, blocked pitot static, flying over water late at night, same inflight warnings
I’m surprised the pitot tubes do not have a facility (such as high pressure air) to blow outwards so the tubes are cleared of any obstructions.
Blasting high pressure air into a pitot tube would give the very sensitive air pressure measuring transducers a rough time, possibly upsetting their calibration or destroying them.
@@Vincent_Sullivan thanks for the insight.
I love watching your videos! I very much appreciate the level of detail you go into and I learn a lot by watching them. I called the stall risk very early on!! :)
Thanks!
There are pilots like Captain Carlos Dárdano and there are also pilots like this flight. It's all about luck which type of pilot you encounter on your flight. 🤕
Good morning, On the Puerto Plata boardwalk there is a memorial with all the names of the passengers. I was two years old when that terrible accident happened off the coast of a small town called Cabarete. According to what my parents told me, the entire town went to the beach to see what was happening and saw the rescue helicopters and boats.
I've always been amazed at how some pilots just don't have an understanding of how the aircraft they are flying works. In the '80's I was working for a company that had a lot of former military working there. I was talking to a former A4 Skyhawk pilot that thought reverse thrust was created by the vanes inside the engine reversing like a prop does! Even I, as a kid (21), knew that this wasn't possible.
That is basically, what "Triple modular redundancy" is - having three systems, so in case one goes wrong, you can tell not only that one of them is faulty (as with "Dual modular redundancy", with two duplicated systems), but also, _which_ one is wrong, and therefore - what is the correct value.
Safety-critical computer systems often follow this principles - in some cases, if CPU can be restarted, two cores working in lockstep (like some Arm designs) are sufficient, but for things like space missions, triple redundancy was also used.
In the past sailors, needing to keep time for navigation, used to say to take either one chronometer (clock) or three, never two.
I'm never getting in a plane again
Its a sad history, it happened at my country. I think, to date, this is the worst aviation accident here. I still remember the news on this, right after it happen.
They should add one more probe that doesn't need covers but it gets covered up automatically and that gets uncovered automatically for if the other ones are still covered.
But now you have another mechanical system that must be tested, certified, trained, and maintained. Then you end up with a Mentour Pilot video about a tragic case where the automatic pitot cover failed in some unexpected way that lined up with the rest of the Swiss cheese to bring down an otherwise perfectly good airplane.
@@RobertBDC yes that is true, ofc it would only be used when really needed like in cases like this.
Wait uploaded an hour ago!!?? Did i binge all the others already!?
You know, my grandfather always said, "We don't know what to do in life, but we just know what not to do." Every accident seems to be a "what not to do" lesson
I never understand why they dont modify the Pitot tubes with a purge option (only need 2 solenoid valves : one to isolate the instruments to purge and other to let high pressure heated gas to be injected to clear the pitot ) its peanuts in price and could help save lives ...
It's often crazy when you realize how fast these things go from no issue to fatal incident. This flight only lasted 5 minutes while it takes 40 minutes to explain the entire thing.
Sad fact: After this accident Airline went bankrupt and little after owner of the airline suicided...
That’s terrible to hear
Hi Petter, another classic to cherish. Please start a series on Celebrity crashes like the Kennedy's or any legendary players or actors who have perished during avaiation disasters. Thanks,
I finally understood airspeed vs groundspeed 😳
This acident is horendus and outrageous no propper training and improper maintance😢 This video is great one💯
What a skilled captain.
Shouldn’t the auto pilot have noticed that the right and standby indicators showed the same value and therefore disregard the left indicator?
In theory the AP could have been designed that way, yes. Boeing didn’t do it that way though. The right AP uses the copilot instrument (I think) and they could’ve selected it at any time. They didn’t. They used the left and center APs but never tried the third one.
New video a week!? 😁 Great content
We have those damn mud daubers all around our homestead. They can clog up ANYTHING! Even our dryer vent. Their mud houses aren’t that big, but somehow they figured out that the heat and humidity coming out of our dryer is a great location for a condominium complex, resulting in numerous golf ball sized hardened mud globs inside our 4” vent tube.
Easy to see the fault in retrospect, but that they mentioned that the third instrument was correct then ignored that insight, seems an unacceptable level of incompetence.
Excellent coverage of this accident, Petter! Thanks again.
At the time -- or perhaps now -- can the pilot choose where the automation systems pick their air speed information from?? (
There are some galling ones but this is horrible for a,crew to handle. Better training yes is now there admittedly but with aeromex a cautionary tale can still happen. Sobering and well put together
Pretty sure this was your fault, Petter.
He can’t keep getting away with it
🤔🤔😅
Shots fired🤣
@@c6m These sneaky Swedes! Their delicious red fish aren’t fooling me!
This has been happening too long, it’s time we take action! 😆
Why can't pitot tubes contain a retractable cleaner to push obstructions like mud or snow out in this situation?
I honestly think the "high speed" "low speed" regime for takeoff is problematic. It seems like a lot of incidents involve pilots knowingly taking off in the "high speed" regime before V1 while trying to diagnose an issue. Below V1 safe stopping of the plane is possible as long as brakes are properly applied. Also, while I can get why in the "high speed" regime the captain took off with a defective instrument because he probably had less than 20 seconds to decide to reject it and in this regime he was biased towards trying to diagnose instead of reject, given he had plenty of time in the air why didn't he just use the first officer's airspeed indicator? It was his own that was faulty on takeoff so he should be predisposed towards trusting the latter on a speed mismatch. And the flight engineer helpfully pointed out that given the attitude, they were probably too slow not too fast "ADI"
Nothing traumatizes me more than the accidents where "pitot probe tubes" and "jackscrew assemblies" have to be explained by Petter int he first half.
I watched the Air Crash Investigation episode of this accident this morning 😅 watching anyway as you cover them better
Mentour Approved.
32:36 I am because i have been following your channel since mid-2022. I know this case from the famous Air Crash Investigation 3 years ago and yes it is sad that we don't know the reason for the unrealistic airspeed predicament happen, because the most important evidence were never found. This is still the deadliest aviation accident involving the Boeing 757. If the captain rejected the takeoff roll, this video would've never existed on your channel. Overall, this video is awesome🔥. Well done👍
Great video. I just cannot understand how can an experienced pilot not push the control yoke forward when they see their vibrating stick shaker. I understand the high stress situation. But if that was the first warning, what is distracting all three pilots from taking the right action. I thought the procedure for recognizing and recovery from stalling is straight forward for experienced pilots.
This could have been avoided soo easily... I'm not a pilot, but this one has been so uncomfortable and annoying to watch 😢 RIP to everyone
Thank you Petter Sir for making this video. Sir, this video has raised a question in me and here it goes.
When an aircraft pitches up more than normal, don't the pilots feel that they are being pulled back on their seats. Also, when the aircraft is diving down, don't the pilots feel that they are being pulled away from their seats and towards the control panel, even though, they are wearing the seat belts. This could also be an indicator that the aircraft has pitched up more than normal or the aircraft is diving down more than normal especially during a Stall and they should first take the appropriate steps to level up the nose, rather than getting distracted with the faulty instruments.
Sir, please help me understand through your reply. Thank you Sir, once again. Have a Great Day and Take Care.
These pilots, specifically the captains that don't heed warnings and co-pilots that are not assertive, are a major problem...🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️
I know it's easier said than done, but do remember your mathematics teacher telling you to do a "sanity check" to make sure your solution appeared reasonable given the question asked?
Well, that reminds me of the situation here that by very basic deduction, it was clearly the case that the Captain's indicated airspeed should have been completely ignored. Extremely sad course of events.
It’s seems like a lot of these accidents involve ignoring the stick shaker while a bunch of other stuff is going on in the cockpit. To me, a stick shaker is the last gasp of the aircraft trying to tell you what to do. Why doesn’t this cause a total reset in behavior to ignore all else, rely on basic aviation training, get the nose down and stabilize the aircraft?
Its sad their inedquate training was one of the main factors in the crash, not to mention how they forgot to increase thrust again and recover
Did the upload schedule switch from once every fortnight to once every week after the Patreon goal was met? Really awesome and impressive for that level of quality!
We have switched from 2 to 3 releases per month. Do next week will be a test week.
But yes, the Patreon goal being met has made this possible 💕
This video hit all the right (pitot) tubes! Amazing breakdown of Birgenair Flight 301 - you really made the nuances of faulty instrument readings and the tragic implications of a blocked pitot tube crystal clear. The cascading effects from a single erroneous speed indication blew my mind. I couldn't help but wonder, with the advancements in flight data monitoring and redundancy systems today, how differently would modern systems handle such an anomaly? Thanks for another deep dive, Mentour! Your attention to technical detail really helps aviation geeks like us grasp the real gravity of these incidents.
5:10 why does this shot go so hard 😂
Impressive with 3 pilots
Has this channel covered Air NZ's Mount Erebus disaster (flight 901) before? I think the investigation that happened after would be just as interesting as the crash itself.
Beautyful video as always Petter. Please dub it to spanish. Much more people should enjoy this content.
To me it seems, most of the time, the pilots are confused, and that leads to disasters.
Doing anything routinely for too long, and not being regularly subjected to confusing situations, means, when it finally happens, the pilots will default back to some habits or simply freeze.
I think, the industry must do tons of trainings regularly, where pilots are subjected to all sorts of unexpected situations, otherwise this will keep happening.
We DO tons of training regularly.
Remember that for each deadly accident, there are around 6 million safe and efficient ones.
thank you for this great video. But man, you really should think about upgrading the hardware of your rig running the flight simulator. =)
Great video. Hopefully you can cover the accident of Indonesia Airasia flight 8501 in the future.
I will see what I can do
@@MentourPilot Thank you. There's no need to rush it. Take your time.
I remember this one from Air Crash Investigation but this version is a lot better, of course.
Having watched many of your explanations plus reading the Max investigations directly, it strikes me how often the pilots are not even alerted to mismatched instruments even recently. I understand having a separation between sides allows for considerable redundancy, but that redundancy is useless if there's no tiebreaker or the pilots don't know how to choose. It doesn't feel like this basic problem is solved even now.
It's no surprise why your channel has grown so large. Quality content.
Thank you! That’s nice to hear
I just watched flight MAS134 and intriguingly, not covering the probes on ground you won't get accurate speed/none and not removing the probe covers before departure is still the same outcome to the aircraft
Suddenly my speedometer loses all function while entering a freeway, I immediately slam on the brakes, and swerve left and right.
32:40 This one was really hard to understand the thoughts of the pilots as a layman, even accepting that it's easy to criticise when you're in posession of all the information after the fact: With 15 degrees of pitch up and their understanding that they couldn't rely on their airspeed instrumentation (even though they could've relied on two of them, but that's besides the point here), why would your first instinct not be to level off whilst investigating the problem?
Why continue climbing?
It’s interesting to see that whenever pilots encounter an extreme situation, they invariably pull back on the stick, even if the aircraft is stalling. Perhaps in their panic state they forget all their training and simply try to gain more altitude and stay away from the ground. But their panic must be extreme to forget the basic lessons of airmanship.
My take is like having two compasses. If two point north reliably, never doubt your compass. If two speed indicators nearly agree 99% and a 3rd is way off....just ignore it. I myself have walked by compass 🧭 and sometimes thought my direction of travel was wrong...then i would pull out my second compass and sure enough, both agreed and my sense of direction was wrong. Thankfully i have never gotten lost in my life. It would drive my wife crazy that i could drive by my compass 🧭 in our vehicle and get real close or right on to a destination. A compass is a deadly precise instrument.
Did slow flight to power off stall with a strong headwind. we flew backwards and couldnt get the stall to break. The instructor just laughed and said "i guess ... uh just recover" haha
Getting a sticker shaker shortly after an overspeed warning in the middle of the night with little to visual reference is as disorientating as it gets.
Very frustrating incident.
I feel like if i was a pilot(of course i dont know how the stress of the situation feels like), i would be extremely paranoid after my airspeed indicator didnt work during takeoff and i would constantly be checking the standby airspeed indicator instead of
I'm confused that the pilots seemed *_not_* to be confused that their pitch was so high. It feels like it would be obvious to someone who had flown that much that, regardless of anything else, no plane they'd ever flown before had ever been pitched that high during takeoff.
Handing things off to the co-pilot makes sense if that were done. But why not alert the tower about this issue with speed?
❓I don’t understand why should each pilot have their “own” Pitot tube? If it all goes thru the computer anyway, why not let the computer combine the data from all tubes, if there are indications that one may be unreliable disregard it, and show the resulting airspeed to both pilots?