WHY did this plane DIVE just before landing? | Icelandair 315

an Iceland Air Boeing 757 carrying 82 passengers and crew is on Final Approach to Oslo in Norway suddenly the plane pitches down and begins diving straight to the ground pandemonium erupts on board as the engines Roar and the passengers are lifted out of their seats the pilots are panicking they have no idea what is happening their aircraft will they be able to pull it out of its terrifying plunge Before Time Runs Out this is the story of Icelandair Flight 315. [Music] on the morning of January 22nd 2002 75 passengers and seven crew boarded an Iceland Air Boeing 757 at Reykjavik airport in Iceland they were Bound for Oslo the capital city of Norway about two hours away the flight should have been just like any other from the country's National Airline the two pilots were experienced and there was nothing particularly odd about the route the weather or the aircraft but while the aircraft and the weather did play a role in the events to follow at bottom this is not a story about either of them really Iceland Air flight 315 is a fascinating case study on human psychology and on how people make decisions under stress it's a story about how minor inconveniences disguised as blessings can lead people down a path which they never intended to go down the captain of this flight was 43 years old and had been flying for Iceland there since 1986. in this time he had built up just over 8 000 flying hours many of which were on this aircraft the Boeing 757 the first officer was less experienced at 26 years old he had been flying for Icelander for the previous three years image time he'd accumulated just under two and a half thousand flying hours after this flight serious questions would be raised about how these Pilots work together as the pressure mounted we'll take a closer look at this as the flight progresses the aircraft they were flying was a three-year-old Boeing 757 in 2002 this was still a relatively modern aircraft with a high level of safety and redundancy in its onboard systems Pilots especially love the plane as it was one of the most powerful passenger aircraft ever built it was affectionately known by many as the pocket rocket owing to the sheer level of performance that Pilots could get out of its engines but on this flight the pilots will be helped on by more than just their engines on Route a significant Tailwind would shed minutes after planned flight time but as the crew neared Oslo this would turn out not to be the blessing that it first appeared to be at around 20 past 7 that morning flight 315 pushed back from the gate at Reykjavik and began taxiing out to the runway the passengers settled in for the journey they would be in Norway in just about two hours at 25-8 the captain lined the aircraft up with the runway and pushed the powerful Rolls-Royce engines to take off thrust within seconds the plane was rocketing skywards leaving the cold climbs of Iceland behind for the cold climbs of Norway on Route the flight progressed as normal passengers sitting by the windows got a stunning view of the sunrise as the plane cruised eastwards the pilots too retreated to this View however they knew that the weather conditions would not be so nice as they neared Oslo at 20 past 10 that morning when the flight was 200 nautical miles from Oslo the pilots listened in to the weather information at the airport Runway zero one right was in use the right-hand Northerly Runway it was going to be a foggy approach in landing typical for Oslo in the winter time there were scattered clouds as low as 200 feet above the ground and an overcast cloud ceiling at 500 feet visibility was just a thousand meters and importantly there was a Tailwind of 20 knots or nearly 40 kilometers an hour all the way down to just 200 feet above the runway in other words this approach would require the crew's full attention they wouldn't be able to see the runway until the final seconds before landing the pilots set up their instrument to navigation AIDS and They carried out an approach briefing for a landing on Runway zero one right at Oslo at this point in the flight the pilots were calm and in control they were still a few minutes from beginning The Descent and they were getting the aircraft set up nice and early so that their workload would not be too heavy as they near the airport ten minutes later Air Traffic Control cleared them to fly one of the standard arrivals into the airport the pilots programmed this into their flight management computer and began descending as they descended the crew were aware that a Tailwind had been forecast for the majority of their approach from a passenger's point of view it's almost always a positive thing when Pilots mention a Tailwind it means that they'll be arriving ahead of schedule but the reality is that while a Tailwind is enormously helpful on route it can become a problem as the plane nears the airport The Descent and approach is a busy time for Pilots a lot has to be accomplished to set the aircraft up for a successful Landing especially in poor visibility a Tailwind means that the plane will approach the airport faster than usual this means that all of the tasks which the pilots have to do before landing including the very active descending are now compressed into a much smaller amount of time and for the pilots of flight 315 the Tailwinds were much stronger than forecast they were as high as 75 knots or about 140 kilometers per hour while the pilots were aware of the Tailwind initially the events which followed would soon push this awareness out of their minds as they descended the pilots received a shortcut from Air Traffic Control they were cleared directly to one of the waypoints further along their arrival route again shortcuts are often thought of as a good thing by pilots and passengers alike but unbeknownst to the crew of flight 315 this shortcut would end up having a profound effect on their ability to get the aircraft down safely then air traffic control radioed the pilots with some bad news the runway they were due to land on was covered in snow trucks had been dispatched to clear it but they wouldn't be finished by the time flight 315 reached the runway so the controller told the pilots that they would now need to land under parallel Runway Runway zero one left this last minute change of plans increased the workload for the already busy Pilots they had to set up their flight management computer for the arrival to Runway zero one left tune in the ILS frequency for the new Runway and then brief the approach together this whole time the plane was being carried along in the current of air much stronger than that which had been forecast in the rush to set the aircraft up for its new approach the pilots didn't notice how strong this Tailwind had gotten this combined with the shortcuts the pilots had received earlier had meant that they were now getting high on their descent profile for the pilots of flight 315 the situation looks something like this at the start of The Descent they were on profile not too high and not too low however there was a Tailwind which effectively shortened their route to The Runway making their ideal descent profile steeper this meant that if they descended at their usual rate they wouldn't make it down to the runway in time so to match the steepness of their new descent profile the pilots would have to descend at a faster rate and initially they did this but as they knew the airport they received yet another shortcut which further reduced the distance between them and the airport now they're ideal descent profile had gotten even steeper it was basically inevitable flight 315 began to drift Above The Descent profile but here's the interesting thing about this flight and it's the key to the events which followed no plane has ever crashed from getting too high on its descent profile it's the ground that Pilots have to worry about not the air the solution to the cruise predicament couldn't have been more straightforward all they had to do was to tell the controller that they needed a few extra miles to lose altitude but under the self-imposed pressure to make the runway something known in aviation as get their writers the pilots never did this they sped on towards Oslo too high and too fast to the passengers in the back of the aircraft this seemed like any other descent but in the cockpit the pressure was on the captain extended the speed Brakes in an attempt to make the plane descend faster their effect was limited the plane was still too high in moments like this all it would have taken to fix the situation was for One Pilot to take a step back analyze the situation and tell the other pilot that there was a much better option available to them that was to Simply extend their path to the runway by a few miles this kind of cooperation is known as crew resource management and it saved thousands of lives on passenger aircraft since being introduced to Pilot training in the 1980s and 1990s but the very pressure the pilots had put themselves under led to a breakdown in this vital safeguard it was a vicious cycle pressure to get to the airport quickly caused a breakdown in crew resource management and this breakdown in Cruise Source management created more pressure which led to worse Cruise Source management and so on each pilot was now going about his tasks in his own world they were no longer working as a team in a few short minutes there's lack of teamwork would have dire consequences threatening the lives of everyone on board at a quarter to 11 that morning Air Traffic Control cleared fight 315 to intercept the ILS for Runway zero one left ILS stands for instrument Landing system and it's what Pilots use to navigate accurately towards the runway in low visibility the ILS consists of two beams which are shot out from the surface of the runway creating a virtual path for planes to follow one of these beams is the vertical component called the Glide slope and the other is the horizontal component called the localizer on the Boeing 757 each of these is represented by purple symbols on the Pilot's attitude Direction indicator here this purple symbol represents the Glide slope and this rectangle represents the plane right now the plane is above the Glide slope similarly this purple symbol is the localizer and right now it's showing that the plane here is to the left of it by pitching the plane up and down and turning it left and right the captain would be able to keep the purple ILS symbols lined up with the aircraft by doing this all the way down to the ground he would burst out of the clouds at 200 feet perfectly lined up with the runway but this is where the pressure the pilots have put themselves under earlier really started to take its toll they were still high on The Descent profile and they're much faster than normal due to the massive Tailwind this meant that when the plane intercepted the localizer the autopilot wasn't able to turn quickly enough to line up with the runway as a result the aircraft overshot the center line and had to turn back towards it and reintercept it from the opposite side finally the plane was lined up with the runway and the controller cleared the flight down to 2500 feet the pilots continue descending and lowered the landing gear but they were still high the Tailwind was pushing them towards the runway so fast that the autopilot was struggling to get the plane down onto the Glide slope at this point you might be thinking that it would have been wise for the pilots to abort the approach and land in the opposite direction after all planes are supposed to land into the wind but the Earth's atmosphere is peculiar in this way and that the wind varies by altitude flight 315 was at about 3000 feet where there was a 45 knot Tailwind but on the runway there was a light headwind and when it comes to takeoff and Landing the only wind that matters is the wind on the runway so the pilots continued their approach but now the captain was beginning to doubt the autopilot's ability to get the plane down onto the Glide slope it just wasn't being aggressive enough so he disengaged it and began flying the plane manually he pushed the nose down trying to get his aircraft level with the purple Glide soap symbol which remained obstinently beneath him he was resting the aircraft down his left hand on the control column and his right hand under throttles his full concentration was on getting the aircraft onto the Glide slope but then something strange happened something which would throw the captain off balance for the rest of the flight the symbols representing the ILS on the captain's display simply vanished the captain now had no idea where he was in relation to the runway as a precaution he pulled up slightly on his control column not wanting to descend too much this close to the ground [Music] seconds later the symbols reappeared the plane was still high but the captain pressed on pushing the nose back down in an attempt to do what's known as a slam dunk approach which is to intercept the Glide sub from above this went on for a few seconds before again the captain's iOS symbols disappeared he told the first officer the first officer reported that his instruments were working normally at this point it would have been a good idea for the captain to hand over control to the first officer as his instruments appeared to be reliable but instead he continued the aircraft was now just over a minute from Landing the ILS indications again reappeared but the plane was still high and fast as it descended below one thousand feet neither pilot said a word standard procedure dictated that at this altitude the pilot not flying in this case the first officer should State whether the aircraft is stabilized on the approach that is whether it is fully on the ILS and set up for landing if the aircraft is not stabilized on the approach by 1000 feet the pilots have to abort the approach put cooperation between the two pilots had broken down during their Rush descent and the first officer never made this announcement the plane was high and fast the flaps were still not set for landing and the landing checklist had not been carried out this was the definition of an unstabilized approach and it was about to have serious consequences for everybody on board the pilots pressed on but just 600 feet above the ground the captain had had enough he still couldn't get the plane onto the Glide slope he announced that he was going around he pulled the nose of the plane up and pushed the go-around switches on the throttles the engine spooled up and the plane began to climb the first officer raised the gear and the captain continued pitching the nose up until it was 20 degrees above the horizon so far this go around was normal but now the Pilot's haphazard approach would come back to bite them in a terrifying way because they had never completed the before landing checklist they had never set the missed approach altitude on the autopilot this meant that rather than having four thousand feet set they had 2500 feet set which was the last altitude provided to them by the controller as they were in a rapid climb they quickly blew past this altitude and when they did the autopilot reduced the thrust output of the engines now rather than providing go around thrust which was needed for the plane's climb it was aiming for the speed the pilots had previously selected for their approach which was just 150 knots the speed was rapidly decreasing if the captain didn't do something the plane would stall and drop from the sky seeing this he quickly pushed the nose of the plane down to level it off this sudden dramatic movement nearly lifted everyone on board out of their seats but inexplicably rather than stopping once he had leveled the plane the captain continued pushing the nose down one passenger who had not been wearing his seatbelt was lifted up out of his seat as the plane entered near weightlessness passengers who were strapped in had their glasses and mobile phones lifted out of their shirt pockets newspapers and magazines were thrown out of their racks as the plane dipped and water inside the toilets splashed up into the bathroom ceiling in the cockpit Charleston briefcases became airborne the aircraft's nose was now pointed more than 40 degrees below the horizon the plane was building up tremendous speed its engines roaring as it powered towards the ground the passengers screamed in horror the captain was completely disoriented even though his instruments were telling him exactly what was happening he couldn't quite make sense of them the automated voice of the aircraft boomed in the cockpit terrain terrain too low to rain if neither pilot did something their aircraft traveling at over 450 kilometers per hour would Karine into the ground in a matter of seconds the first officer shouted what are you doing pull up pull up both Pilots yanked back hard in their control columns in a desperate bid to pull the aircraft out of its terrifying dive the plane groaned under the g-forces straining as it pulled out of its rapid descent everyone on board was pushed into their seats with a force of 3.5 G's this is so strong that anybody who normally weighs 80 kilograms would feel themselves to be 280 kilograms both Pilots too were being pushed into their seats by the incredible g-forces as they pulled with all of their might on the controls just over 300 feet from Impact the plane's dive finally bottomed out and it began climbing but this was no ordinary climb with the pilot still reeling from the dive and still struggling to catch up with their aircraft they allowed the pitch of the plane to reach a full 40 degrees nose up the auto throttle slammed the thrust levers fully forwards straining to maintain AirSpeed during the rapid climb within seconds the plane had rocketed up to 3000 feet where the captain finally managed to stabilize it but he was still shaken his aircraft had gotten out ahead of him like a wild horse the captain coaxed the aircraft up to four thousand feet and leveled off back in the cabin the passengers were in shock some were crying and others were praying nobody had any idea what had just happened the cockpit like the passenger cabin was a mess with straight papers charts and manuals scattered everywhere for the pilots there was little time to process what had happened or why the first officer informed air traffic control that they were carrying out a missed approach but told them nothing of the extreme maneuver which had just occurred or how close they had come to crashing the controller gave the pilots vectors back for another approach meanwhile the captain gave a short announcement to the passengers telling them that the approach had not been successful and that they were going back to land within 10 minutes the pilots circled around and once again lined up with the runway this time their approach was stabilized they were on the Glide slope and everything appeared to have returned to normal but then once again the captain's ILS readings disappeared from his instruments he wasn't taking any chances this time he immediately handed Over Control to the first officer who guided the aircraft down to the runway everyone on board was in shock the pilots included the maneuver had been so violent that many passengers near the front of the aircraft would later find their mobile phones and reading glasses at the back of the plane strangely the pilots didn't provide any debriefing to the passengers about what had just occurred the passengers simply disembarked once the plane had parked up at the gate the pilots cleaned up the cockpit and then spoke to the flight attendants explaining what had happened but they still couldn't determine what had caused the violent maneuver to begin with and when investigators caught wind of the incident and began probing into the strange series of events they couldn't make head nor Tales of it either why on Earth would an experienced pilot voluntarily push the nose of his plane so far down during a go round one possible explanation for the captain's actions is a powerful psychological phenomenon known as the somatographic illusion this illusion occurs because the brain is unable to tell the difference between acceleration and the body being oriented up you can think of it this way when you accelerate in a car you get pushed back into your seat but you can also get pushed back into your seat when you go uphill it's an almost identical sensation in a car it's easy to tell which one is happening because you can see out the window but in a plane in the clouds the only way you can tell whether you're accelerating or climbing is by checking your instruments in particular the attitude Direction indicator so we might be able to answer the question of why the captain pushed the nose down by finding out what the plane was doing just before he did as it turns out he pushed the nose down just after leveling off the plane when it began to accelerate in the clouds the captain may have misinterpreted this acceleration as the plane beginning to pitch up in response to which he pushed the nose down he was so disoriented from the strong g-forces and from how quickly everything had happened that he couldn't make sense of what his instruments were telling him which was that he was now diving straight for the ground it has never been determined whether the somatographic illusion caused the captain to act in this way but it would be far from the first time this effect has caused the pilot to do something like this phenomenon has been responsible for hundreds of Passenger fatalities over the years in this case the first officers saved the day at the last moment but the truth is that it should never have gotten to this point in the first place all of this was Downstream of some poor decisions made by the crew earlier on in the flight which happened because of a total breakdown in crew resource management what's frightening about this incident is how quickly and easily it developed and therefore How likely it was to happen again all that had occurred was that a qualified crew had made some very human mistakes which put them in a situation where they were vulnerable to making even more mistakes with this in mind investigators recommended that the aviation Community as well as ice and air itself should review the procedures for discontinued approaches it also recommended that the civil aviation authority of Norway should consider the effect of air traffic control shortening approaches and low visibility conditions especially for airline crew with possible limited experience of Oslo on that morning in January 2002 fight 315 came way too close to crashing but the lessons learned from this near catastrophe about crew resource management and approach planning have been incorporated into pilot training making the sky that much safer if you found this video interesting you can also join the patreon to support the channel and get early access to new videos I'm really grateful for the support that the patrons provide because they make it possible for my team and I to continue putting in the work to research and produce these videos so check out these links on screen and I'll see you soon for the next episode

Channel: Green Dot Aviation

Views: 257,844

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Id: 3SyIZdkHj6s

Length: 25min 9sec (1509 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 07 2023