Pilot Nosedives His Plane Trying To Save it | West Air Sweden Flight 294

over the Skies of Norway a routine cargo flight took an unexpected turn becoming a grip in battle for survival a simple malfunction set off a chain of events leading to a perplexing story of confusion and a harrowing Fight For Life what caused the crew's response to go astray join us as we delve into the captivating accounts that unfolded on that fateful day unraveling the shocking events of West Air Sweden flights 294. on the 7th of January 2016 West Air Sweden Flight 294 a bombardier crj-200 was due on a commercial cargo flight from gardamaen airport to Tromso airport both in Norway the flight was expected to be just under 1 hour 45 minutes and the plan takeoff time was 2300 hours for this cargo flight there were only two crew members on board the pilot in command who was 42 years old he had 3365 total flying hours of which 2208 were on type he was going to be the pilot flying for this trip the co-pilot was 33 years old he had 3232 total flying hours of which 1064 were on time and he was going to be the pilot monitoring for this flight the crew had already flown a route previously on the same aircraft from Tromso airport to Garden Moen Airport via narvik Airport the crew's flight Duty had started at 18 10 hours and they were now preparing for their return flight the crew received a flight planning documentation and this documentation consisted of weather information no Tams operational flight plans and performance data according to the significant weather charts for the weather on Route there was no significant weather which meant that there was no forecast risk of icing turbulence or precipitation the no time which stands for notice to Airman did not indicate any information that prevented or modified the planned flights so from this information it was going to be a fairly clear and simple trip and as we know from the intro to this video this is not how the trip ended up the crew were happy with the information that they had received and they were happy to continue with the trip They carried out a few final checks before them boarding the aircraft before starting the engines the crew quickly got an update on the current weather which stated that the wind was a zero to zero degrees at five knots visibility was more than 10 kilometers in light snow and the temperature was minus 13 degrees Celsius the crew were then cleared start engines and from this point They carried out the relevant checks for the afterstart engine checks and the pre-taxi checks and at this point they then received clearance to taxi to the d-ice ramp after the aircraft had been sufficiently de-iced the crew then carried out and completed the flight controls check happy with everything so far the crew continued to taxi to Runway zero one left and at 2309 hours the crew were cleared for takeoff as they took off they were then cleared to continue up to their cruising altitude of 33 000 feet or flight level 330. once they had reached their cruising level the crew settled into the cruise and engaged a normal conversation as it was a moonless evening over a remote part of Norway it was extremely dark outside the cockpit and the pilots needed to rely on their instruments to fly after wanting the cruise the crew received information from Air Traffic Control to expect an approach to Runway zero one at Tromso with circling with this information the piloting command started to carry out the approach briefing with the co-pilot The Briefing lasted about a minute and all the items for the approach were covered whilst the pilot in command had been briefing the approach the pitch angle on his primary flight display had started to increase it was a small amount at first only moving up about one degree before the increase in the rate of pitch to approximately 6 degrees per second with both Pilots distracted by the approach briefing it was only when the piloting command looked back at his instruments that he noted that the aircraft appeared to be pitching up 15 degrees in his surprise he exclaimed what and very soon after this the autopilot was automatically disconnected the disconnection of the autopilot meant that the autopilot display in the attitude indicators upper left corner shifted from a solid green to a flashing red indication and the audio warning cavalry charge was activated the pitch attitude was now showing that the aircraft was pitching up 30 degrees although the aircraft altitude and speed remained the same confused by the autopilot disconnecting the co-pilot was searching for a reason to wires had occurred his primary threat display on the right hand side was showing that the aircraft was flying straight and level before he had a chance to explore the issue any further the piloting command pushed the elevators forward to pitch the nose down during this maneuver the aircraft nose was pitched down quite heavily and the aircraft and crew experienced a negative G of up to minus one many of the manuals and loose articles were lifted from the floor and hit the roof and the crew were lifted from their seats only held in by their seat belts that were holding them in place at the time with everything pinned to the roof the co-pilot was struggling to reach the controls but after around five seconds the sensation started to reduce and they fell back into their seats all of the loose articles fell all around them and it was at this point they now received a further triple chime from the warning system and both the pilots in command and the co-pilot both stated what they then received an engine oil oral warning with the message L engine oil press this informed them of low engine oil pressure but this was due to the extended negative g-load on the aircraft the piloting command was still trying to reduce the nose High attitude indicating on his primary flight display he had no external reference to determine what position the aircraft was in so he had to rely on his instruments the aircraft was pitching down and now started to indicate that the aircraft was rolling to the left as the angler Bank reached over 40 degrees the crew now received a bank angle audio alert Bank angle the co-pilot now stated come up the aircraft continued to pick up speed and the Second Bank angle audio warning now activated the co-pilot then said turn right and the piloting command now stated come on help me help me with both Pilots struggling to control the aircraft it was now in a near inverted position and it now passed VMO VMO stands for the maximum operating speed of the aircraft which was 315 knots and because of this they now started to receive the overspeed warning still wrestling to get the aircraft under control the piloting command again asked for help from the co-pilot the co-pilot stated yes I am trying Bank angle the issue was that both Pilots were using different information to control the aircraft the piloting command was still seeing a high nose attitude whilst the co-pilot was seeing the nose down attitude with a higher level of bank to the right the co-pilot now told the pilot in command turn left turn left the aircraft was now flying at 364 knots and that corresponds to Mach 0.91 the co-pilots now put out a distress call mayday mayday mayday air Sweden 294 Air Traffic Control acknowledged the call and then the co-pilot stated we'll call you back melee mayday speed was continuing to run away from the aircraft and it had now reached 400 knots as the aircraft passed through 24 000 feet the crew received a further caution of Mac trim with the co-pilot States in trim trim a lot the speed was continuing to rise now reaching nearly 500 knots the piloting command now stated we need to climb we need to climb the co-pilot then responded yeah we need to climb the crew are now starting to get a greater understanding of what was happening in the position of the aircraft although there was still confusion over the roll axis of the aircraft the co-pilot said turn left turn left with the pilot in command saying no continue right continue the co-pilot responds again with I don't know I don't see anything the crew are still struggling to get control of this aircraft the pilot command is still requesting help from the co-pilot but it's too late with the aircraft still in an inverted position and at 508 knots the aircraft continued to spiral to the ground before a zero zero twenty hours the airplane collided with the ground in the crash both Pilots were fatally injured and the aircraft was completely destroyed this is a really tragic event and learning why and how this really happened can only Aid the aviation industry to make it safer for everyone in the future on the face of it it appears pretty simple the piloting command noticed an unusual attitude on his instruments and attempted to correct them without knowing that what he was actually receiving were erroneous information but the truth is as always much more complicated than it first appears as we know the aircraft had an issue with the pitch indicator it was informing the piloting command that the aircraft was pitching up when it was not whilst the co-pilot showed the correct information I'm sure you're thinking didn't the aircraft tell the crew that each display was showing a different pitch attitude well in fact it did but this coincides with another feature that occurs when the aircraft is pitched down or up over 30 degrees when the aircraft registered that the pitch differed four degrees between the left and right primary flight displays the word pit was shown to the crew they should have informed them that there was a difference in the reading however this was only shown to the piloting command for four seconds and was then removed due to the declutter feature on the primary flight display when the pitch goes beyond 30 degrees which it continued to show for the pilot in command the primary flight display will enter the Clutter mode this removes secondary information from the screen and shows the pilot a clear indication using red Chevrons to the Horizon this meant that without looking across the co-pilot's primary fat display or the standby instrument the pilot had nothing on his PFD informing him that there was a miscompare in information also during the early stages of the incident when the pit symbol was active the autopilot was disconnected which caused the green AP symbol to start flashing red at the top left of the screen which would have taken the attention more of the pilots over the yellow indicator of the pit symbol the pilots have learned since basic instrument training to rely on their instruments which may explain the pilot in command's actions the fact that the pitch angle displayed on the left primary flight display was high and increasing rapidly in combination with the display of the red chevron's requesting pitched down inputs probably contributed to the Pilot's instinctive reaction to act accordingly to displayed unusual attitude adding to this was the fear of stalling the aircraft at that height and due to the nature of the design of the aircraft with the engines being set behind the Wings near the Tail it becomes nearly impossible to recover the aircraft if it enters a deep stall as the airflow is blocked from the elevator and the engines by the main wing this might have led to the Palestine command acting so forcefully to the indication that the nose was continuing to rise on his instruments the high pitch rate increase displayed on his primary flight display in combination with the display of the red Chevrons may have created a mental state that led to a cognitive tunnel vision where other Visual and auditory information could not be included or were deliberately ignored this is a phenomenon that occurs in higher stress situations and relates to a human's fight or flight response when danger is perceived what occurs is an evolutionary response which makes a person hyper focused on the threat and the threat in this situation to the piloting command was the continued and unwanted pitch of the aircraft with the only visual indicator being on his screen this causes peripheral vision to diminish and his ability to absorb audible information was affected too he was receiving multiple streams of information from the bank anger warning the cavalry charge the overspeed warning and the co-pilot sent him to come up or turn in a certain direction this information could have been drowned out in favor of the task at hand which was to bring the aircraft pitch on his screen back to the horizon if he could have removed himself from this mindset for just a couple of seconds he and his co-pilot could have slowed things down and observed the other indications to determine what was actually occurring I can't be sure for the exact reason for his actions but I wanted to highlight some of the psychological effects that can occur in these situations that may explain why a person would have acted or not acted in a certain way it's very easy after the fact to judge what should have happened in this incident the best thing they could have done was to do nothing and see how the situation was developing before taking action but this leads to the final effect on the crew which I'm sure the partisan command was aware of and could have played a part in his actions this is something called spatial disorientation now this is a huge subject and I won't go into too much detail as we'll be here all day but if you're interested I'll leave a link in the description to a website that will explain it further so spatial disorientation is a phenomenon where a pilot is unable to determine their orientation due to no outside visual features to reference such as the horizon as the crew were flying at night without the light of the Moon an over remote area of ground and had just completed an approach brief where they were reading charts in the light outside the cockpit was Pitch Black so in those situations Pilots are taught to trust their instruments which is what the piousing command thought he was doing the other phenomenon associated with this is something called somatographic illusions this is where acceleration on the body gets related to climbing and deceleration gives the feeling of descending in this incident because the aircraft was accelerating towards the ground the pilots were pushed back into their seats giving them the same feeling of the aircraft climbing and reinforce what the piloting command was seeing on his primary flight display this only further confirmed his actions in his hyper-focused state so what came from this incident the following safety recommendations were released and these were to ensure a general system of initial standard calls for the handling of abnormal and emergency procedures also for unusual and unexpected situations is implemented throughout the commercial Air transport industry the other main one was to ensure the design criteria for primary flight display units that they are improved in such a way that pertinent cautions are not removed during unusual attitude or declutter modes if you found this video interesting please consider liking the video and join in with the discussion in the comments below it's always good to hear what you have to say thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next one

Channel: Curious Pilot

Views: 42,854

Keywords: air crash investigation, air crash 2023, air crash investigation 2023, curious pilot, aviaiton, pilot

Id: WFPBE4PVcDk

Length: 15min 55sec (955 seconds)

Published: Sun May 14 2023