Copa Airlines Flight 201
The crash of Copa Airlines Flight 201, left investigators mystified. It was difficult to
unpack how a passenger plane simply dissapeared and investigators investigated numerous
possibilities, always seeming to come up short of a solid explanation. Data from the plane’s black
box continued to puzzle investigators further, the flight recorder plotted data that would seem
to indicate the plane performing an impossible maneuver shortly before it crashed. Lets delve
deeper into that mystery today as we look at the events of Copa Airlines Flight 201
Copa Airlines is the national air carrier of the country of Panama. Panama, nestled at the
meeting point between Central and South America is perhaps known internationally for its
shipping logistics. The country’s Capital, Panama City is also home to one of the
busiest airports in this region of the world.
time, Copa operated with a fleet of Boeing 737-200
aircraft. Its one of the older models of the 737. This plane inparticular was first delivered
in 1980 to an airline in the United Kingdom by the name of Britannia Airways.
A leasing agreement between Britannia and Copa had been met that saw this plane being leased
out and so it was subsequently transferred to Copa Airlines just two months before this incident.
The 737 was therefore decorated in a hybrid livery baring COPA titles and Panamanian registration
but largely retaining the Britannia style Livery.
Flying the plane that evening was a crew of two
pilots. Captain Rafael Carlos Chial, aged 53 is one of Copa’s most experienced pilots.
On this flight he was to be monitoring the First Officer who was flying the plane. The
much younger Cesareo Tejada was just 25 years old. In the cabin were 5 flight attendants and 40
passengers for a total of 47 occupants on board.
Flight 201 taxied out to the runway that
evening and left Tocumen Airport at 8:37pm. Their initially planned route would
have taken them over the Pacific Ocean. The weather that night though
was not exactly pleasant. Thunderstorms in the area called for a detour just
10 minutes into the flight. The plane was equipped with weather radar and so the pilots could see
when Thunderstorms layed ahead even at night.
At 8:47 The Captain radioed a request to
deviate left of their flight plan. This would take the plane East a little bit. One
minute later he radioed out another routine transmission announcing to local air traffic
control that they had reached their cruising altitude of 25,000 feet. They were expected
to reach Cali in about an hours’ time.
The deviated route for the flight would take the
plane over a very sparsely populated geographical area known as the Darien Gap. Very few people
live here. It consists of a dense rain forest with very little in the way of access for
people. No towns, no roads, nothing but a sea of trees for hundreds of kilometers.
Following their deviation, the pilots sought to return to their original planned route once
passing the thunderstorm. Just moments later another radio call went out, this time saying that
there was some kind of problem with the plane, and they needed to turn back to Panama. Soon
after, the plane dissapeared from Radar screens.
So lets back up and try to understand
what went wrong on the flight. For investigators, a few
theories were put forward, everything from the weather to sabotage.
However here are a couple of the more interesting ideas that were put forward.
Initially, some investigators thought this crash may be relate to an accident that occurred
the previous year in Colorado Springs. United Airlines Flight 585. The ongoing investigation
in that accident lead to focus being highlighted on the 737s Rudder Mechanics. The component in
question would have been the Power Control Unit. The hydraulic mechanism which physically moves
the plane’s large rudder. The United Airlines crash in Colorado Springs was the start of a
chain of incidents involving the 737s Rudder. A failure of this Hydraulic Mechanism could have
explained why the plane suddenly crashed. However, the rudder was not the cause of this crash, and
that discussion is best saved for another day.
Another theory was that the plane may have
collided with a covert drug air plane. Such aircraft that fly in radio silence and away
from the reach of air traffic control have been known to traverse this area, going in and out
of Colombia. Analysis of the wreckage though, revealed that no collision took place. Though
these theories are compelling, the concluded scenario by the investigation is more in relation
to one specific instrument in the cockpit.
The recovered data from the flight data recorder
showed the plane beginning a massive nose dive and picking up a large amount of speed while inverted
leading to an inflight breakup. So the key focus is what happened in those final seconds before
this sudden dive. The recorded data suggested the plane rolled over quickly. Investigators
however couldn’t believe that the plane could perform this kind of maneuver, deemed the data to
be invalid because this would seem impossible.
But lets look closer at the 737 cockpit. There are
many instruments scattered across the flight deck. Some are duplicated so both pilots can have one
each. Perhaps one of the most easily recognizable and most important flight instrument is of
discussion when looking at this accident.
It goes by a number of names but is often referred
to as the Attitude Direction Indicator, or ADI for short. It simply indicates the pitching and roll
position of the aircraft. The background moves while a stationary icon fixed to the front of
the display represents the aircraft. Because of its relativity to the horizon, it has also
earned the name of the “Artificial horizon”. The instrument is essential, especially so in
scenarios of poor visibility or nighttime flying.
For the ADI to receive its information, it is
connected to a gyroscope. The two pilots’ ADIs have their own gyros. It is possible however for
the two separate instruments to be fed from the same or an auxiliary gyro. This can be useful in
the case of incongruence of the two instruments. Perhaps if one of the Gyros broke,
the others can serve as a backup. Pilots are alerted of this with an
indicating warning on the instrument itself.
The switch to do this is located on the overhead
panel on the Captain’s side. We don’t know if it was Captain specifically did this
for sure, the cockpit voice recorder failed to record the accident flight. But the
pilot’s flicked this switch to the left, indicating that there was a problem with
the Captain’s ADI and Gyro. Specifically they thought they were switching it so it would
receive information from the auxiliary Gyro.
What actually happened is that on this particular
plane, the switch made it so both ADIs would get their information from the Captain side gyro,
which was faulty. Meaning the First Officer’s ADI was now also unreliable. The pilots likely did
not think much of the switch when they did it. We’ll come back to why that might be later.
The Gyro on that side was itself functional, but once investigators ran tests on the recovered
instrument, it would periodically fail. This was deduced to be down to a single connecting wire
that runs between the Gyro and the Captain’s ADI, the wire had been worn down to a point that
it would sometimes provide a connection, another times not.
So in the flights final moment, once the gyro setting was switched, the autopilot
disconnected as it was programmed to do. The First Officer, the pilot flying jumped
in with manual control and banked the plane initially to its left to level out from a bank.
It was here that the ADI became stuck. Naturally, the pilots wanted to bring the plane back level so
logically began banking to the right, but the ADI failed to respond. The plane though was banking
over to its right. In the night sky and without a functioning reference or horizon, they
weren’t able to see that. Without knowing it, the pilots had banked their plane far beyond
a critical angle to the point of inversion, therefore instigating the rapid descent.
This explains the impossible data from the flight recorder as it also receives attitude
information from the same Gyro. Once connection in the wire was re-established, correct information
was once again received. To the pilots, it would look as if the plane snapped into an inverted
position. Which meant, this wasn’t sudden at all.
The pilots would find the plane unrecoverable as
its speed approach the sound barrier. Having gone beyond its design limits, the plane broke apart at
an altitude of around 10,000 feet, leading to the deaths of 47 people. It is believed that extreme
Gravitational forces may have left passengers and crew incapacitated before the crash.
Some of the very few locals to the area, noted the plane coming down in flames. Likely the result
of the fuel tanks rupturing from overstress.
The one question that remains though
is why the pilots, seeing that the Captain’s instrument was faulty, switched it
so both ADIs would feed off the faulty gyro. To understand this we need to understand that the
pilots probably didn’t think they were doing that. According to how the pilots were trained, flicking
this switch is supposed to move the Captain’s ADI to the auxiliary independent gyro. On the accident
plane, it switches both ADIs onto the same gyro.
This may also be related to the fact
that the plane was leased from another airline half a world away. With different
maintenance and a different source of parts.
The final thing to mention is that as
previously stated, the pilots thought they were switching to an auxiliary gyro. This
suggests the existence of an auxiliary ADI. Which did exist on the accident plane, in fact
it is standard for all passenger planes to have some kind of backup indicator. Most modern planes
have one or more backup Attitude indicators, but this backup could have been as simple as a
spirit level. From that, they pilots could have deduced which instrument was faulty.
Copa 201, became the deadliest air disaster to involve the country of Panama. It was a great
loss of life for the country. Lessons learned from the crash were brought into reality.
Copa Airlines standardized the layout of its entire fleet. The airline continued to take the
initiative and overhauled its pilot training.
Copa clearly still believes in the Boeing 737.
It is the only airplane type in its entire fleet. They have operated with the plane’s multiple
variants for decades and continue to place orders, to this day.
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