They Tried To Fly A Broken Plane | Air Tindi Flight 503

this is the story of air attending flight 503 on the 30th of january 2019 an airtindie beachcraft 200 was on the ground at yellowknife airport in canada for the pilots of the beechcraft the day would be hectic as they had six legs planned for that day they'd leave yellowknife and first head to wadi from there to weak wedi airport and from there to ecadi aerodrome after that they'd fly the route in reverse to get back to yellowknife smaller communities in canada depended on small beach crafts like this one for all that they needed from milk to mail flights like these are quite literally one of their biggest lifelines to the outside world by 7 45 am the plane was wheeled out of the hangar and it was fueled with 3200 pounds of fuel for the day's flights with fueling done the pilots entered the cockpit and began the pre-departure checklist on the right-hand side the first officer noted that the right-hand side attitude indicator was not erect pilots make use of the attitude indicator to make sure that the plane is level and stable when external horizons are not available in short it's a pretty important piece of kit but the plane had two so the pilots were not that concerned the captain assured his first officer that the attitude indicator would sort itself out soon enough when they were in the air as the pilots went through their checklist the first officer had an eye on the attitude indicator just checking in on it to see if it was back up and running even when the captain was reading off the takeoff briefing the attitude indicator was still broken the pilots discussed their flight and their airplane they talked about how on that day they could expect some moderate icing above 4 000 feet but other than that it was a great day for flying the captain talked about how he wanted to leave the gear down for a bit after takeoff to blow off some of the snow that had accumulated on the gear finally the captain asked the first officer if he had any questions the first officer had none as the first officer finished the lineup checklist flight 503 lined up on the runway at 8 51 am takeoff power was applied and flight 503 started its takeoff roll as the plane picked up speed the captain wanted to know if the right hand attitude indicator was working the first officer replied that it wasn't as flight 503 climbed away from yellowknife the captain started with the after takeoff checklist even after takeoff the attitude indicator was not working the captain suggested that the first officer give it a few taps to see if that would fix the problem but as the beechcraft climbed any hopes of the attitude indicator coming back to life fell soon they were at 12 000 feet their cruising altitude the captain turned on the autopilot so that they could troubleshoot the right-hand side attitude indicator throughout their cruise the pilots tried to fix it but it didn't work by 905 am it was time for them to start their descent they would first be making an r nav approach to runway 208 and then they would circle and land on runway 1-0 as they finished their descent checklist the pilots got a transmission from another plane that had landed at wadi from this other plane they were able to get runway and weather conditions by 9 10 am the plane was descending through 10 800 feet they would be on the ground soon the pilots made the necessary radio calls announcing their position as they approached the airport then at 9 11 am the captain's attitude indicator showed a red gyro flag it had failed it took the autopilot with it as well the captain started to fly the plane on partial instruments and he arrested their descent at first they started to climb but that didn't last too long the beachcraft started to lose altitude at first the plane was turning to the right within about 38 seconds the turn to the right was replaced by a turn to the left the left turn got steeper and steeper within seconds flight 503 was spiraling there was no coming back for flight 503 in the cockpit the pilots were getting pull-up warnings but they couldn't at 9 12 and 24 seconds flight 503 impacted terrain a satellite orbiting overhead picked up flight 503's emergency locator transmitter within an hour a c-130 hercules was dispatched from winnipeg to search for the missing plane by 2 pm the c-130 had found the crash site of the beachcraft none of the two pilots on board had survived with the airplane completely destroyed the investigators started to scour through the wreckage to recover parts of the plane that would help them solve the crash of flight 503 the right-hand attitude indicator was found in three pieces and the pieces were all sent to a transport safety bureau lab in ottawa for exhaustive analysis the lab analysis showed the investigators that the indicator was not functioning at the time of impact they looked at the ball bearings and the springs inside to see if they could figure out the cause of the failure of the right hand side indicator but unfortunately the damage was too severe for them to find out what had caused it to fail but looking back at the history of the failed attitude indicator they found out that the part had been on multiple airplanes in the air attendee fleet in addition to that it had been pulled from service multiple times 15 times to be specific talking to other air attendee pilots they found out that sometimes the attitude indicator would take its time to calibrate pilots found that it would work fine once the plane had cooled to the ambient operating temperatures maybe this is why the captain told the first officer to give it some time in fact he had prior experiences with this problem of the attitude indicator on the very same airplane but this time the problems did not solve themselves it took the whole plane down with it but was that right though was it okay for the captain to push ahead with the flight when he knew that one of the attitude indicators was not functioning as usual to find out all you have to do is look at the mel or the minimum equipment list as the name suggests the mel is a list of things that you absolutely must have before you fly if you don't have something on that list you cannot fly it's as simple as that the mal said that the plane can be dispatched with one attitude indicator if the other remaining indicator is a pneumatic attitude indicator but in this case the remaining indicator the one on the left was an electric gyro one and so by the rules of the mal the plane was broken and should not have taken off but the thing is that the pilots did not see the indicator as being actually broken they saw it as having a temporary issue the pilots and the captain especially fully expected the indicators start working at some point in the flight so they took off into the cloudy skies of yellowknife banking on the other indicator to work once they had taken off the pilots did not stop to consider what they would do if the attitude indicator did not stop working throughout the flight they were concerned about the weather and winds at wadi their destination but not about turning back before things got any worse with the indicator so when the other indicator failed for an unknown reason the pilots were flying blind on that cloudy day the first officer was a bit new to the airplane and he was still in the process of getting all his practical training at the airline this is probably why the additional workload of the emergency was not equally distributed between the two pilots the additional work made it hard for the captain to fly the plane once both indicators had failed the captain was relying on the partial panel technique to fly the airplane this is a special technique that can be used to keep your plane relatively stable when you don't have an attitude indicator but looking at the captain's service history it looked like he wasn't too good at it the captain had been trained in the partial panel technique and he had not practiced it in very many years in fact he was not required to demonstrate partial panel techniques in any of the tests that he took over the years in short partial panel is a skill and if you don't practice the skill you'll start to lose it so when on that day both his indicators failed he needed a skill that he had not practiced in years maybe even decades thus he allowed the plane to slip from him when he took off that day he knew that he couldn't rely on the right-hand side indicator but when the left-hand one failed him that startled him now he had to take control of the plane without a full mental picture of what the plane was doing this slowed down how quickly he could process information and that made his reactions slower the captain could have also fallen victim to an illusion known as the vestibular illusion where pilots feel that the plane is level even if it's in a hard bank without an external horizon or an attitude indicator the plane would stay in the bank even when the pilot thought that the plane was level once spatial disorientation had set in they were done for but these pilots had one final trick up their sleeve their electronic flight back the flight back was provided to the pilots by air tindi and it had an ipad mini loaded with maps and charts and an app called for flight that could have saved them forflight could have given the pilots information about their pitch and roll ground speed a horizontal situation indicator and a synthetic view of the terrain the app would have given them more than enough information to keep the plane generally stable the app's horizontal indicator would have definitely told the pilots that they were in a left-hand turn but unfortunately none of the pilots thought to use the app i can understand why they didn't though in the high-stress environment of the cockpit they might have just forgotten about the ipads that were just right there ready for the taking did you know that ford flight could do so much and if you do fly do you use for flight oh and by the way this video wasn't sponsored by four flight or anything the report specifically calls out for flight by name so let me know if you use the app also remember the next time you're in emergency there's an app for that thank you for watching this episode of mini air crash investigation if you like the videos that i make do consider liking and subscribing it will really help the channel grow i will catch you guys next time stay safe you

Channel: Mini Air Crash Investigation

Views: 49,599

Keywords: air crash investigation, canada air crash, why planes crash, aviation safety, mini air crash investigation, air tindi, air tindi flight 503, beechcraft, beechcraft crash, theres an app to save your life, planes crash, microsoft flight simulator 2020, mentour pilot, aviation crash, aviation history, aviation education, aviation documentary, plane crash, plane safety, avgeek, aviation, planes, canada, canada aviation

Id: D1mbB7P8SBY

Length: 11min 45sec (705 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 09 2022