FZ981 -- 61 die; plane explodes after crashing at high speed on landing

[KL-666]

Here is an interesting question. If the nose light is on the gear, then they must have had their gear out. Why would they have had that, if they were already in a go around for minutes (alledged 2500 ft climb)?

Kind regards, Vincent

[legoboyvdlp]

Interesting... but how about the wing landing lights? Personally, I thought it was strobes, wing landing lights, and tail light or strobe.

[HJ1an]

I thought it might be the wing lights too, seeing that it's just going straight down.

Although if the plane stalled and flipped over, G-forces might force the gears out (one wonders if the landing lights were on by default, if the gears were forced out would they come on?). Any such G force would probably also severe the engine mounts and possible start a fire. Personally I don't think there was any fire to begin with during the descent

[legoboyvdlp]

Pilots were supposedly overworked; rostov is a 'difficult airport to land at'.

[legoboyvdlp]

Pilots had flown to rostov before.

[legoboyvdlp]

The crew was warned by the ATC about the "severe turbulence and moderate wind shear" for the final approach.[16][17] The wind speed was 14 m/s (31 mph), gusting to 18 m/s (40 mph) m/s, with wind direction 230 degrees, according to the ATC-crew communications published online.

[legoboyvdlp]

Debris field


Impact was at -60 degrees amd at over 400 km/h

[legoboyvdlp]

Media are idiots when it comes to planes. Rostov is a difficult airport to land at because flightstats reports an average 27 minute delay.

[KL-666]

Russian state television seems to have some information from a source in the investigation team.

http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/world/pull-up-russian-tv-airs/2638914.html

If this is genuine, than one interesting fact can be obtained from this: The horizontal stabilizer was trimmed full down, while the pilots tried to correct the down force with elevators only. The stall scenario becomes highly unlikely now.

For the rest it is just speculation about how the down trim could have occurred. In that area i think i can make a more plausible speculation. If the plane was in a high energy climb in autopilot (light, toga, fast climb), the autopilot would need strong trim down to level off. If at that instance the pilots do not like the rough autopilot behaviour and decide to take over, they find themselves in a full trim down situation. Startled by the weird nose down behaviour of the plane, they do not necessarily need to realize the full trim down immediately, and correct only with elevators. Which unfortunately is not enough.

Kind regards, Vincent

[HJ1an]

I'm curious if there are any such lessons for pilots to NOT take over the AP during such scenarios, - the classic "Don't touch the dog or it'd bite hard" joke. Or if they can do so with a ton of conditions, increasing the workload tenfold, in which case they won't be touching anything anyway..

I'm also curious if TOGA is used all the time or they can be manually handled. Obviously, as someone who just does silly things in flight sims, I do everything manually and don't even think about automation except for basic AP to maintain straight & level while I go off to make a cup of coffee