Rapidly Losing Pressure | The Incredible Landing Of American Airlines 1572

air pressure you can sometimes feel it changing when you're driving through a tunnel or down a hill but you wouldn't think that it's something that could bring an airliner down but as it turns out if you combine some minor deviations from procedures with rapidly changing pressure well then really bad things could happen stay tuned the 11th of November 1995 was a gray and rainy day over Northeastern United States an intense low pressure was situated over Quebec in Canada and from its Center extended an uded front down over Eastern New York state where it connected with another low pressure over New York City this front brought with it moderate rain and strong Gusty winds over New England a typical November day in other words but keep these low pressures in mind because they will play quite an important role in this story at around 1600 in Denver a flight crew from American Airlines were getting ready to leave their hotel in order to start their evening Duty the two pilots and their three cabin crew colleagues had started a three-day trip together on the day before where they had landed quite late around 03:10 in the morning due to some unexpected delays this meant that their rest had been reduced down to 13 hours and 35 minutes but it was still well within the due to time limitations and the crew were feeling rested and ready to start their second day the captain was 39 years old and had about 8,000 hours of Total time 5,000 of those had been flown on civilian airliners and 2,300 came from his time in the military his colleague the first officer was 38 years old and had very similar experience he had flown around 5,100 hours 2,500 in the military and 2,600 on civilian an aircraft and they both really enjoyed each other's company when the crew arrived to the airport in Denver they were advised that the inbound aircraft was going to be slightly late so they sat down together and started looking through their flight plans and briefing material they were scheduled to fly from Denver to Chicago O'Hare and then from there onwards to Hartford Bradley International Airport North of New York when they started looking at the weather they quickly noticed that it wasn't going to be particularly Pleasant on this days especially around the Hartford area but it wasn't going to be outside of the planning limits either the forecast for Bradley airport said that they could expect an overcast Cloud layer at around 1500 ft three miles of visibility in moderate rain and winds coming from 170 degrees at 25 knots gusting up to 40 knots on top of that there were also some warnings about on Route and lowlevel turbulence in the whole area which is to be expected around these type of intense low pressures with wind this strong now meteorology forms a big part of the theoretical pilot training and I have always found it to be fascinating it's it's one of those things that really makes you understand the world around you better one of the things that we learn is that the general wind will always flow towards a low pressure trying to equal the pressure out and in the northern hemisphere because of the earth rotation this will cause the air to move counterclockwise around the low pressure and clockwise around the high pressure which is why the winds were coming from the south in the Harare area now how quickly the air will move meaning how strong the winds will be is partially decided by how fast the pressure changes over a geographical area where a faster change means higher winds basically you can think of high pressures as mountains of air and low pressures as valleys and if the mountain or Valley side is very steep well then the wind will also move very fast there now how steep those pressure changes are is shown to us Pilots by lines on a map representing areas connected by the same pressure this is often shown in milars and when those lines are drawn very tight together well then we know that we are likely in for a bit of a ride and that's exactly what the two pilots saw when they were now looking through their pre-flight weather material the pressure was expected to change quickly over Northern New York State during the evening and that corresponded well with the forecasted strong winds at Bradley Airport once the pilots were happy with their pre-flight and they had briefed their cabin crew they eventually got a message from the dispatch that the aircraft that were going to operate had now finally arrived it was a NIC looking McDonald Douglas md-83 with its two pretam Whitney jt8 Delta 219 turbo fan engines mounted on the rear close to its teail EMP the inbound crewp who had flown it into Denver reported that it had been behaving well during their Duty and that it was a fine aircraft and this was also confirmed when the captain looked through the log book where there were no snags of any importance written up given the challenging weather they were expecting later on the first officer was elected as pilot flying for the first leg so he started setting up the aircraft according to the American Airlines procedures which included a full test of the aircraft's weather radar systems as well as a lot of other systems and everything was working fine when all briefings were completed the pilots asked for push back and subsequently departed from Denver slightly late time 1809 the flight up toward Chicago went on without any problems and they landed there at time 2047 only 23 minutes behind schedule but as the passengers were disembarking and the cabin crew started doing their security checks the pilots were told that a big group of passengers for the outgoing trip had been delayed on inbound flights due to the poor weather this meant that flight 1572 which was originally scheduled to depart at 2125 was now going to be substantially delayed now I'm quite sure that that caused some muttered bad words from the crew since that meant that they were now once again going to have to work into the early morning but this is unfortunately part of the job especially when the weather is bad as they were sitting in the cockpit waiting they had time to once again check through the weather for the destination which had not improved at all since they left Denver the winds were if anything getting stronger with moderate rain and during those kind of conditions they would likely have to land on Runway one which was the only one where the crosswind would be within limits now Runway 15 was one of the only runways at Bradley Airport which lacked an ILS Precision approach and instead used what's known as a non-precision VR approach I will explain a bit later what that meant operationally but on a planning stage it meant that they needed a slightly higher Cloud base and visibility in order to fulfill the planning requirements you see we Pilots never depart unless the weather fulfills certain minimum criteria at both our Plan Destination and alternate airports these criteria are decided by the facilities at the airport so with less precise navat well then the weather also needs to be a little bit better now we can depart towards a destination where the weather is below minimum but in that case we need at least two alternates with good weather and also of course enough fuel to reach the furthest one of those but in this case the weather was challenging but not below the limit so the pilots were reasonably happy with it they had also received detailed turbulence and icing information through an American Airlines specific system known as sigc it indicated that they could expect occasional moderate turbulence below 8,000 ft together with lowlevel wind shear and that they could also encounter lights to moderate icing in the area between 10 to 18,000 ft now none of those things came as news for the crew and even though it might sound a bit dramatic these type of forecasts are not uncommon during the Autumn and it wouldn't deter the pilot it's good to know because it can help the cabin crew plan their service and keep the pilots watching the weather radar closely but it wouldn't be a showstopper but on this occasion the weather would play an important role and I will tell you all about why after this whenever you find yourself in a challenging situation like the passengers on this flight definitely did but which can also happen in everyday situations like economical issues or problems at work it can cause anxiety and background stress to start building up that's when you need an easily accessible professional to talk to someone who can provide you with effective mental tools to use as well as just a listening ear and today's sponsor betterhelp will do exactly that betterhelp offers accessible online Mental Health Services tailored specifically to your needs either via phone calls messaging or video sessions to get started simply fill out a brief questionnaire and you will then be matched with a licensed therapist from better helps extensive n Network most of the time within 48 hours in my case better help helped me improve my productivity reconnect and appreciate all friends and just generally dstress when running two channels flying and being a good dad just started feeling a bit too much so if you want to become the best version of yourself or just want to work on your mental well-being well then use the link here below which is betterhelp.com Mentor pilot that will give you 10% off your first month of therapy and it will also help support my channel thank you better help now back to the story around 2245 all of the connecting passengers had finally arrived so the crew could finally start setting up and getting ready for departure given the challenging weather expected the captain decided to be pilot flying on this leg so the first officer took up the role of pilot monitoring they finished up the last part of the cockpit preparation and then asked for push and start so at the time 2305 American Airlines flight 1572 departed Chicago and started tracking East toward Hartford and Bradley Airport they were eventually cleared to their cruising altitude of flight level 330 which is about 33,000 ft and during their climb the American Airlines Dispatch Center sent an updated weather report to the crew via the automatic communication and recording system acars this message provided a more upto-date weather observation from Bradley Airport which was still as windy and rainy as ever but it also included an additional remark saying Presser this is short for pressure falling rapidly and is inserted to alert the crew to be extra vigilant when setting up their ultimet as those settings might change very quickly so here it's probably a good idea to talk a little bit about how aircraft measur their altitude because it can be quite complicated there are several redundant altimeters fitted in the cockpit of a modern airliner and they all work in slightly different ways in most cases the outside static air pressure is measured by several different independent probes and those values are then fed into a computer system which reduces temperature error among other things and then translate those values into the correct altitude which is then fed to the Pilot's instruments there are also radar altimeters who works by bouncing radio signals against the ground below but we will focus on the pressure altimeters here air pressure is used because it decreases as the altitude increases and is there or quite suitable as a reference the decrease is near linear for the first 5 km above the ground and then becomes more exponential but since it affects all aircraft in the same way it can effectively be used but like I mentioned in the beginning of the video the pressure on the ground is not constant everywhere it changes over time and between places depending on how the atmosphere moves and therefore in order for an aircraft to show the correct altitude the altimeter reference pressure have to be updated now obviously it would require a lot of work to be constantly updating that pressure all the time so to avoid that and to make sure that all commercial aircraft at higher altitudes are all using the same reference something known as q& or standard pressure has been introduced this value is 29.92 in of mercury used in the United States or 13.25 hectopascals in Europe and when an aircraft is cleared to clim above the transitional altitude which is 18,000 ft in the United States but varies in Europe and the rest of the world an aircraft will set this standard pressure and are therea flying on something known as flight levels now as long as the aircraft is flying on that same pressure if the pressure changes in the area they're flying over this will mean that the true altitude of the aircraft will actually also change if it's flying toward a high pressure the true altitude will increase and if it's flying towards a low pressure the true altitude will decrease but it's never really an issue at higher levels since there are no obstacles there but it is an issue at lower altitudes and that's very important to remember now unfortunately it gets even more complicated than that because below the transition level there are also two other settings that can be used known as q& and qf Q andh is the pressure setting that when used will show the aircraft altitude over the mean sea level and it's used by a large majority of commercial aircraft today the benefit of this is that it will give a clear reference to the heights of obstacles like mountains and masts which are always given in height over the sea but it also means that the aircraft altimeters will show different altitudes on every approach flown since all airports will be situated at different altitudes qf on the other hand is a pressure setting that gives the aircraft height over a specific airport and if that's setting is used the altimeters will always show zero after the aircraft has landed Now using qf has the benefit of always showing how high the aircraft is over the airport it will actually land on meaning that all instrument approaches will show very similar values during different phases of the approach no matter which airport the pilot is flying into now back in 1995 American Airlines standard operating procedure stipulated that the aircraft should be flown on standard q&e pressure above 18,000 ft at least in the US below that all three altimeters should be temporarily set to q& altitude Over the Sea until the aircraft descended through 10,000 ft below that altitude the two primary altimeters should be set to qf height of the airport and the standby ultimeter should remain on q& for terrain separation now when that final change over was done an altimeter setting check should also be performed where the pilot should cross check that the difference between the primary altimeters and the the standby equaled the airport altitude since that should be the difference between the two settings that check served as a gross error check which would highlight if they had misidentified the pressure settings received from Air Traffic Control and that's also worth remembering anyway the pilots now looked through the new weather which confirmed that they would likely have to fly that non-precision VR approach into Runway 15 but apart from that and the note about the rapidly dropping pressure there was really nothing more noteworthy in this new report so the aircraft continued on its Eastward journey and apart from having to request a climb to flight level 350 in order to avoid some turbulence the flight was completely routine about 300 nautical miles from their destination the flight was cleared to proceed straight towards the Bradley VR Beacon this shortened the flight a bit so the pilot started looking through their chart to prepare for the instrument approach that they had ahead of them like I me mentioned earlier this would likely be a non-precision approach and those are generally a bit trickier to fly than a standard Precision ILS approach the reason they're called non-precision approaches is as the name suggests that they have a lower Precision than an ILS but in the case of a VR approach it also means that it completely lacks vertical guidance this approach works by the aircraft aligning itself with an inbound radial towards the VR Beacon and then once established on that radial the aircraft can start descending down toward certain predetermined Heights or altitudes at defined distances from that Beacon these Heights have been selected to keep the aircraft free of any terrain and this type of a procedure is known as a step down procedure now the very last height or altitude that the aircraft is allowed to descend to is known as the minimum descend altitude or MDA and the aircraft is not allowed to descend below that until the pilots have the runway in sight if the clouds of visibility would be so low that it doesn't allow the pilots to see the runway from the MDA well then the aircraft can continue flying at that altitude until they reach the missed approach point which is normally defined as a distance from the VR when they reach that they will then initiate the missed approach procedure and that's the latest point they can do that now as you can see this type of procedure involves a lot more situational awareness from the pilots and nowadays these procedures are almost always flown as constant descent approaches meaning that they're flown exactly like a Precision approach observing the same stabilized criteria and continuous descend but back in 1995 they could still be flown as a dive and drive style meaning that the pilots could descend down to the MDA and then fly level there with full Landing configuration until either the runway was seen or the Mis approach point was reached but already back then something known as a visual descent point or VDP had been started to be calculated and this was a point where the aircraft should be VIs with the runway in order to continue to fly as stabilize descent path basically enabling the constant agle approach that I explained before flying the approach this way would also keep the aircraft slightly higher further out and this will soon become important now American Airlines had stipulated in their manuals that the calculation and usage of a visual descent point was the preferred way of flying these approach it but it wasn't always being followed anyway at 32 minutes past mid night now on the 12th of November the air Route traffic control center cleared the aircraft to start ascending down to Flat 1 n0 the first officer read this back and during the initial descent the crew received two more acars messages with updated weather and information about their destination the first message included a new qf setting of 2923 in of mercury and a q& setting of 2942 the second message informed the pilots that aircraft had been landing at Bradley during the preceding hour but that they had experienced turbulence and wind shears on final now those of you who are loyal followers of this channel you know what a wind share is but if you're new here well then take this chance to subscribe below a wind share means that the wind can suddenly change abruptly both in intensity and Direction and this can cause issues with the controllability of the aircraft in extreme cases when those changes exceed certain limit values the pilots would have to execute a wind shear Escape Escape maneuver and that's normally also accompanied by a windshire warning from the weather radar or ground proximity warning system now these Maneuvers are a bit tricky to fly and it's therefore great to get these type of early warnings of the existence of these conditions so the pilots can breathe and prepare properly in this case though the pilots were well aware of the issues and the kind of turbulence that they would likly encounter the captain called up the cabin crew early on in The Descent and told them about the turbulence and to finish the service and S securing the cabin early he also made a PA to the passengers letting them know about the poor weather ahead and all of this indicated that the crew was just well aware and prepared for what's about to come this was all done perfectly according to standard operating procedures and good airmanship and up until this point these two pilots were acting exactly as you would expect from a pair of proper professionals as the descend continued the first officer also keyed in the frequency for the automatic terminal information service a and started copying information Victor but he quickly realized that this information was more than 1 hour old and therefore gave a q& ag value of 2950 much higher than it now was so why was the 8S information so all then well it turns out that this was because down on the ground the weather was now really making itself known and in the control tower the wind was howling so loud that it was hard for the controllers to hear anything happening outside side of their headsets a shift change had now happened and since the outgoing controller had not yet updated the80s when he left and the incoming controller didn't see or hear that a new me message had been received from the meteorology office he simply just forgot to update the 80s at time 33 minutes past midnight the controller cleared flight 1572 to continue to descend to maintain 11,000 ft and he also read out the Bradley altimer setting of Q AG 29 40 which they first off to read back as The Descent continued the crew now started working through their before landing checklist and as part of that the first officer prompted altimeters to which the captain responded 2950 referring to that old q& age from the80s the first officer responded uh they called 2947 on the way down which was a bit closer to the True Value but none of these figures were actually correct in fact they had received an even lower setting remember 2940 from the controller and it's not clear where the first officers figure of 2947 actually came from in any case the captain now also started briefing the VR approach and as part of that briefing he stated um 174 is the elevation so 2923 set and cross checked this meant that the correct qf setting had now at least been entered on both their primary altimeters and that's of course a setting that would give them the height over the runway the first officer respond responded in a quite low voice that this gave them a 70t difference unclear here if he was referring to the difference between the two primary altimeters or between them and the standby which should have been showing a difference of 170 ft which was the field elevation and the cross check at 10,000 ft to confirm these values could never be picked up on the cockpit voice recorder so it probably wasn't done at time 43 minutes and 41 seconds past midnight the crew were handed over to the Bradley approach controller and advised that they could indeed expect the VR approach they were then told to descend to 4,000 ft but without getting an updated q& and qf value instead the approach controller told the pilots that the wind was 170° at 29 knots gusting 39 which is quite a lot of wind over 70 km/ hours in the gust and it is possible that the pressure update was omitted just because the wind information was so extreme and that the controller wanted to get to that part we don't really know but since the pressure was now falling rapidly and their last updated pressure was over 30 minutes old this meant that the crew would now be flying with a setting that would show them being about 76 ft higher than they actually were not a lot but significant as it will soon turn out meanwhile on the ground the Wind and Rain had now become so strong that water had started being pushed in under one of the windows in the tower this was happening close to loads of electrical equipment so the tower controller decided that it wasn't safe and that the tower needed to be closed until repairs could be done this meant that flight 1572 would now have to land with a closed Tower which was fine according to regulation but would reduce yet another safety barrier anyway the approach controller now started vectoring the aircraft to intercept the inbound radial for the VR approach r with 15 and the pilot started extending slats and flaps to slow the aircraft down at this point the cabin was Secure and the aircraft was experiencing occasional moderate turbulence at times 0049 and 41 seconds the approach controller cleared the pilots for approach told them to maintain 3,500 ft until passing Point Mis and he also informed them that the tower had been temporarily closed due to that window problem the crew read this back and then continued concentrating on intercepting the final course which they soon did at an altitude of 3,500 ft and at around 15 nautical away from the runway now in order to intercept and follow the radio the captain was using the outer pilet in a mode known as vlock and this mode is used to capture and unfollow either an ILS localizer or a VR radial this is a very handy mode to use when flying this type of approach since once the inbound radial is captured the pilot only needs to really concentrate on following the vertical profile the aircraft will track that radial by itself the flaps were extended to 11° as the aircraft past 10 miles and since the weather radar was not showing any significant activity ahead of the aircraft the captain then switched it off now I don't fully understand why he did that the weather radar is certainly quite helpful to have in this type of Gusty situations with precipitation but maybe the radar on the MD 83 is a bit different I don't know when they passed Mister everything was looking relatively fine but the wind from the right was now very very strong so strong in fact that the Warlock mode tried to keep a 30° crab angle into the wind to continue flying straight ahead and this was more than the autopilot would accept that meant that the aircraft now started drifting to the left downwind of the center line which the approach controller noticed and call out to the crew the captain reacted by deselecting vlock and instead start using heading select to manually recapture the radial and then try to keep the wind correction that way at the same time as he was doing that he also called for the gear to be extended and for the flaps to be selected down to 15° and on top of that he also now needed to start descending so he selected 2,000 ft and pushed the vertical speed mode and 2,000 ft was of course the lowest altitude to keep until the Final Approach fix and after that he would be able to then continue to descend down to the MDA what this all meant was that there were a lot of things happening at the same time here so that heading that he had selected to to re intercept the Final Approach course he held that a little bit too long which meant that the aircraft now got back onto the center line and then slowly started deviating out to the right instead at the same time they were shaken by continuous moderate turbulence and the rain was whipping against the windshield as they descended downward through the clouds the aircraft soon leveled off at 200,000 ft which was maintained until they passed 5 miles from the runway at the Final Approach Point called Dylan and after that the captain asked for the first officer to set 3,000 ft in the flight guidance control panel now the reason this was done was to prepare the aircraft for a potential missed approach and this would also arm vertical speed and allow the aircraft to start to descend again but since 3,000 ft was Now set and not the MDA it meant that they would not automatically level off at the minimum so this would now have to be monitored by the pilots themselves now the American Airlines procedures stipulated that the pet monitoring had to call when the aircraft passed 1,000 ft above ground 100 ft before the MDA and at the MDA but in this case since the MDA was set as high as 98 ft it meant that those first two calls would have to come very close to each other and you might be wondering why was the MDA that high then more than 700 ft above the runway well this was because the terrain on the Final Approach was not even about 2 and 1 half miles prior to the runway there was a three- fill Ridge called Peak Mountain Ridge and the MDA had been selected to give adequate terrain clearance to that Ridge of the D the captain initiated the final descent with a vertical speed of around 1,000 ft per minute now generally a descent rate of around 750 ft per minute is enough to follow a virtual 3° constant descent angle but the captain was now going well below that which was still allowed provided that the aircraft leveled off at the MDA the turbulence kept shaking the aircraft and at time 0052 and 24 seconds even though it was officially still closed a Tron supervisor had still climbed up into the control tower so the approach controller told the crew that the Tron Supervisor was up there and then handed them over to that tower frequency just for some informal info when they called up the traon controller told them to land on their own discretion that the winds were now at one 70° at 25 gusting 40 and that the runway appeared clear but again no mentioning of the correct air pressure the crew read back this information and now things started happening very quickly the first officer pointed out that the aircraft appeared to be flying to the right of the correct course and he Then followed up by asking the tower for another wind check the tower controller reported that the wind was just very similar as he has judg reported before and the captain started correcting slightly back back towards the left and also asked for the landing flaps flaps 40 to be selected the first officer did as he was asked and then finished off what was left of the landing checklist as he was doing that the tower controller also came back and informed the crew that there was a windshire alert active on the Airfield the first officer acknowledged this and only a couple of seconds later he also called out uh there's a thousand ft you got 40 40 clear to land the captain responded okay and the next thing the first officer called out was now 98 is your um referring to the MDA to which the captain again agreed but there was no 100 above call at this point the first officer had noticed that he could Glimpse terrain below him and therefore started looking straight ahead outside of the cockpit to see if he could establish visual contact with the runway a strong bout of turbulence now started shaking the aircraft which might have distracted the captain because when the first officer looked back into his instruments again he realized that the aircraft had descended below the MDA and was now still descending he called out uh your bug you're going below your but was interrupted by the gpws system calling out gank ra the captain immediately pushed the altitude hold button which caused the aircraft to start leveling off but since it was still heading downwards with around 1,100 ft per minute at this point it continued to descend slightly even after he had pushed the button now this the combination of going below the MDA and the delayed level offs combined with the fact that the altimeters was set to an incorrect High a pressure caused the aircraft to descend far too much enough to cause what now happened 4 seconds after the first officer's call out loud sounds of impact could be heard as the aircraft now plowed into several trees at the very top of the ridge the trees smashed into the wings lower part of the belly and the landing gear damaging both the leading and trailing Edge flaps flight controls and wings hydraulic lines inside of the wheel well were torn off together with a landing gear door which was later found on the ground in the area below the flight path but worst of all the trees now also impacted both engines inside the cabin the impact likely just felt like more abrupt and severe turbulence but both Pilots immediately understood that something had now gone terribly wrong as they were feeling the impacts multiple windshield warnings were now also blared out together with several other warning signals the captain called out we're going going going around going around and then Fireball both engine trust levs forward he started pitching up and when he did so landing gear warning was also started to sound and this must have been a truly terrifying experience now the windshire warnings kept going on even though later investigations show that the aircra was actually not subject to any particular Shear at this point so those warnings were likely caused by the sudden impacts and therefore changes by the aircraft's relative position to the wind from now on though the situation would just keep getting progressively worse but here is also where we can see the skill and cool from both of these Pilots starting to show as the aircraft started climbing away from the trees the captain called for FP 15 and gear up which was quickly responded to by the first officer still with a landing gear warning blaring in the background and in the back of the aircraft both engines now sustained severe damage due to several impacts and ingestion of all sorts of branches and sticks so about 20 seconds after the initiation of the go around the captain realized that the left engine had now completely failed he call this out and this loss of engine number one together with all of the other damages now caused the aircraft to start slowing down and therefore forced the captain to pitch forward in order to maintain the air speed this meant that they now started descending again and suddenly as from a miracle the rain just suddenly stopped and they exited the clouds and could see the runway straight ahead of them at this point the number two engine was now also starting to fail so both Pilots quickly understood that they only really had one choice left they needed to get this aircraft down to that Runway the captain told the first officer to call Air Traffic Control and tell them we're going down which the first officer also immediately did at the same time down in the tower the controller was looking at the window repairs being done and was completely unaware of the drama that was now unfolding the tower was equipped with a warning system designed to send out warnings if an aircraft on approach was descending too low but that system was dependent on the aircraft's transponder and because of the ridge the signal from that transponder had been completely blocked so there were no warnings when the call came from the first officer the controller immediately alerted the rescue teams now started getting ready for whatever was to come meanwhile the captain was struggling to maintain control of the aircraft as several compressor plates inside of engine number two had now given up rendering this the only remaining engine completely useless the first officer saw that the captain was overwhelmed by trying to get the aircraft down toward the runway so his Pilot monitoring support instincts now kicked into full gear he asked the captain um do you want the gear back down to which the captain confirmed yeah yeah take it down the gear was then lowered and then the first office just kept calling out calming and encouraging words like you're going to make it and all the time as he was doing this the gpws system was continuously calling out syn rate syn rate in the background as they were getting closer to the airport it started to become apparent that they would struggle to extend the Glide long enough to actually reach the runway the first officer asked what they should do with the flaps and the captain realized that if if they could get the flaps out in the exact right moment well then the flaps could possibly provide a ballooning effect that might be enough to get them into the runway area at time 0056 and 11 seconds the captain called put it out and the first officer selected flaps 40 which luckily had exactly the expected effect the tower controller could now see the aircraft and called out the current wind of 170° of 22 knots to which the first officer just responded uh we need emergency equipment the gpws warnings now shifted [Music] to whil the first officer continued to share the captain on as much as he possibly could at time 0056 and 40 seconds the aircraft clipped the top of another tree just outside of the airport boundary and then touchdown just short around the 15 where it impacted and destroyed the ILS localizer aray for Runway 33 now this caused some further minor damage to the aircraft but it still continued virtually intact up until R 15 and then finally came to a complete stop just beyond the intersection with the crossing Runway 0624 everyone was alive and everyone were safe the captain now ordered an immediate evacuation where one of the slides at first didn't inflate due to an incorrect mounting but apart from that everything else worked well the subsequent investigation came to the conclusion that the accident was caused by the Pilot's failure to level off at the minimum the altitude before seeing the runway it was also found that if the approach controller would have given the crew the latest ultimeter setting on First Contact they would have likely cleared the trees with a margin of a few feet there were several recommendations made from this accident the most important of which was that non-precision approaches should be flown with a constant descend rather than the dive and drive technique others included more regular pressure updates and more restrictive design criteria for non-precision approaches were high rain was present but something that I want to highlight here is even though the crew made a mistake which caused this accident their airmanship and skills was what ultimately saved everyone [Music]

Channel: Mentour Pilot

Views: 1,021,919

Keywords: mentour pilot, airbus, boeing, aviation, viral video, plane, aeroplane, pilot, story, full episode, aircraft incident, plane crashes, chicago, bradley, denver, md-83, md83, windshear, american airlines, vor approach

Id: UFKBmlUPkG0

Length: 38min 17sec (2297 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 27 2024