How a Tiny Hole Caused Dozens of Air Disasters
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Did you change your microphone? It sounds like sh^t on my hifi.
I love sponsorblock
You are speaking very quickly, which isn't generally a problem, except when you have background music that is so loud it's competing for my ear's focus. I'm sorry, but this is unwatchable for me. (Unlistenable?)
Pitot is not pronounced pa-toe it’s pee-toe Simon. You’d be amazed how many young kids think the pitot probe is a a gun, 😆.
@@tiki_trash😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊😊p😊😊🎉
I earned my private pilot's license in 1989. In training, it was made abundantly clear the critical nature of the pitot/static system - even for a small airplane. Where I learned to fly there are also mud dauber wasps and we were warned that even if you landed en route just long enough to use the bathroom it was enough time for the wasps to do their dirty work - in other words, put the pitot covers on after landing *and* remove the covers and inspect the pitot tubes before starting the engine, no matter how short the time was. It still amazes me that accidents are caused by this problem.
Mud daubers are pretty much everywhere in the southern US and Caribbean. It's been dry this summer, so any sprinkler operating in daylight has mud daubers looking for mud.
My CFI would tear into my ass if I didn't do a proper preflight, as I'm sure yours would've too (CFIs are awesome). The Peru flight he mentioned, there should've been a proper preflight walk around and the airline should've had a policy to place to ensure the tape was very visible. I feel putting the blame on that one worker was a big copout.
The Air France flight OTOH.... that was pure stupidity and that FO had no business being in the cockpit of any aircraft. That crash investigation was difficult for me to read because of the idea that line trainers signed off on that FO.
As a passenger only POY. WTF?
POV😊
You _can_ work around it if you know it's down. On a light aircraft you can simply trim for take-off and rely on the flight dynamics. Airliners have systems to measure the actual angle of attack, which is usually the better way to go about this.
But that assumes you know about it and know to use some other reference. Otherwise, without a functioning ASI you may as well be blind.
Moral to the aviation side of the story: If you're on a takeoff roll and the airspeed indicators don't agree, don't take off.
Does nothing for in flight icing… but yes… you are correct
There’s also a procedure for unreliable airspeed in flight. Something like wings level, 85% power and 3 degrees nose up, while you work the unreliable airspeed checklist.
Sometimes, not taking off can be just as dangerous. Airports are sometimes in less ideal locations, and not taking off can mean falling off a cliff or smashing into a building.
That's only good until you hit the point of no return, where you don't have enough runway left to safely stop. If you notice a problem after that point, you're already committed to take-off.
@@foo219 Most procedures call for cross checking the instruments at 80 knots (depending on the type of aircraft) which is well below V1.
Tube covers exist for a reason. Finding them missing is cause to ground aircraft until inspected.
Tube covers aren't normally used on overnight stays. Most (US at least) airlines use them only for hangar visits or when the aircraft is on the ground for 5+ days. I agree that they should be used more often, but I don't blame the pilot for taking a plane without the covers on because that really is normal.
and there has been at least one flight that had trouble (I forget whether it crashed or not) because the covers weren't removed before takeoff.
@@kenbrown2808 that is why checklists are a thing. they should be done every time and preferably rotating who does it so they don't become complacent from doing it way too often.
@@danilooliveira6580 indeed.
@@AviatorFox May be true for transport-class aircraft. When I park my plane I put on the cover. I only have 1 pitot tube. Most of the former have 4. The exception being if stopping at the self-service fuel. Even if going inside the FBO for lunch, the cover is on, wheels chocked, tiedowns, and intake covers are on. Even then a failure of the system should not be critical to flight safety as I know how the aircraft performs at cruise and approach and I'm not flying in IMC.
The Air France crash was pure stupidity. That FO just froze with the sidestick in nose up pitch. He should've never been in a cockpit. From my understanding the pitot tube design had some issues with draining out the melted ice water and some already replaced as they gradually complied with a service bulletin (should've been an AD). But holding an aircraft in pitch-up attitude is going to bleed off a lot of speed quickly. Every pilot should be aware of their N1/N2 speeds. If engines are nominal then there's his setting. I would risk a barberpole than a flat spin. Time and time again, transport aircraft have proven to be able to take a beating far past their Vne.
The Birgenair crash was extremely avoidable: One single barometric component "failed" (the Captain's pitot tube) and the captain decided to follow it to their death, ignoring the plethora of other indications that were actually correct, the Copilot & STBY airspeed indicators as well as attitude, power setting, climb rate and altitude etc. A backseat trainee apparently tried to call this out but was ignored. Cultural "power-slope" practices effectively reduced this multi-crew operation to a single-arrogant-captain operation.
The lessons learned from this crash saved our skin once: At liftoff it became obvious we had a serious airspeed indication discrepancy, and because this crash had been a case study in one of our recurrent CRM training sessions, we automatically reverted to a default, safe condition: Known climb power setting and attitude until the problem was sorted out. Within a few seconds we discovered a single skipped pre-taxi checklist item; "Pitot Heat ON"! The temperature was around 0°C and the runway wet and with traces of slush. A no-brainer, as it turned out.
As I watched the video, I was thinking "pitch, power, and sort the problem"
was wondering the same thing... isnt there a standard combination of thrust percentage and airplane pitch angle that should keep you at correct speed? that you can go to while cruising until you figure out what to do?
I was thinking this. All the process and redundant equipment to succeed and they failed because of no critical thinking and poor choices.
@@BillyTzENDURO, there certainly is: The most familiar situations are climb and cruise. Soon after takeoff you set climb power and fly a given attitude (always very similar for any given aircraft type). In cruise you set cruise power and maintain altitude. In case of a barometric instrument failure, altitude and airspeed are unreliable, you simply fly 0° attitude.
Once the pilot flying has things stabilized, the non-flying pilot start a systematic troubleshooting process.
@@BigBinky_Gaming, this ended up as a single-pilot flight to the scene of the crash. A sad state of affairs and should never happen in the modern airline industry - actually there are specific parts of the training (MMC & CRM) that are designed to prevent this, but an overblown ego like tis Captain's is hard to control.
When I was learning to fly on an old Navion we had a blockage caused by bugs crawling into the Pitot tube and dying in there, clogging it. We didnt realize it until we were up in the air. Luckily the instructor knew the plane and the airport very well and was able to get us back in the pattern and landed even without the gauges working...
Shouldnt this be checked before every flight? With a cheap endoscopic camera or so
"We didnt realize it until we were up in the air." Precisely the wrong time to find out there's a problem with a critical piece of equipment.
That first disaster is a classic example of doing whatever the boss says despite all the evidence that it's wrong.
So is the second. Look up the Aeroperu crash investigation/report. It was a tragedy, but the CA instruments indicated too fast while the FO said too slow. The FO just accepted whatever the CA said and it ended up killing them. Ignoring the stick shaker though, is by far the most painful thing these kind of crashes have in common. The shaker is your last chance warning, and when it's ignored these terrible things happen. I still cry whenever I read through the Aeroperu accident, because it was so totally avoidable in a dozen different ways. The cleaner should have used a flag on his tape to indicate that it was there, the pilot should have confirmed the static port was open on walk around, the CA should have followed the axiom "speed is life" rather than constantly trying to slow the aircraft down. It's like he thought some magical force was pushing the plane faster and faster and it was his job to dirty the thing up as much as possible to add drag. So many decisions could have turned that into a safe landing, but every way it could have gone wrong did. :'(
it's incredibly bad piloting to stall an airliner and just let it drop to the ground merely because one of two airspeed indicators was reading wrong.
The Air France flight was also from stupidity. That FO did not belong in the cockpit of a C152, let alone a 747.
Yes and Crew Resource Management is supposed to reduce the chances of this. Unfortunately, some pilots are very egotistical and the people who work under them either hesitate to speak up or are ignored if they do and have to deal with the consequences of being reported as "difficult" if it's one of those types of pilots. Same with boat captains. CRM is supposed to utilize everyone and their input on situations to reduce accidents caused by human error or find the best solution to an immediate problem but that doesn't work if one person still believes themselves to be "in charge" no matter what and believe that their input is automatically more valuable than other crew member's.
The junior pilot of Air France 447 in 2009 pulled back on his side stick and had his hand on the stick the whole time as the plane stalled and fell out of the sky it was eventually noticed by the returning captain who couldn’t recover the plane in time, That junior pilot was to blame for the majority of the accident.
Airbus themselves also share blame in that disaster.
To not have some form of feedback on the joysticks to let each pilot know what the other was doing is inexcusable.
I have a pilots license as well as a degree in aerospace engineering and that has always bothered me.
I actually met a pilot who flew both Boeings and Airbuses and he disliked that feature of the Airbus. Even though Boeings are also fly by wire they have servo feed back in the joysticks.
They still don't, there have be several crashes caused by their stupid averaging of the inputs between the sticks. Force feedback has been available in joysticks for 30 years so I don't understand why they haven't been forced to include it. The averaging system also never made sense to me, it seems as though it should always listen to one pilot at a time with a large indicator light to show which side it is responding to at the time. Why would dual inputs ever be needed in a completely fly by wire system? You don't fly by deciding "hey, you work the up and down, I'll work the left and right!" Boeing aircraft sometimes have both pilots holding the yoke if they lose hydraulics and are manually flying using the pulleys and wires, but an Airbus would crash in that scenario.
@@-Bill. Going back to my previous comment where a commercial pilot who flew BOTH Boeing and Airbus.
That conversation was over 20 years ago.
Our son's a private pilot first officer. One of his main duties is the proper covering of the pitot tubes and other safety tags and covers that will need to be removed prior to the plane once again flying which are then inspected by the captain.
I can proudly say he is very good at his job.
Op sec
@@italjahcorntrashrollerdoubtful this falls under op sec 🤣😂
@@italjahcorntrashroller
More like PMs.
Opsec is operational security, loose lips sink ships, check all four tires before you get in the car sort of stuff.
Good job! He knows how to check a small hole for debris! Good job 👏
You cannot be a private pilot first officer - there is NO SUCH thing as there are no ranks among private pilots.
You are either a private pilot or a commercial pilot.
Among commercial pilots there are rankings, like first officer, captain, as well as grades for instructors and positions within a flying organisation.
As a pilot, I have *never* heard of a "pit-OwE" tube. Every pilot I have known has always called it a "PEE-toe" tube.
Pee-tot 😂
He points out that it's named after a French guy. In US English PEE-toe seems to be the way everyone says it but to follow French pronunciation rules I'd expect it to be neither "puh-TOE" nor "PEE-toe". French doesn't use the "schwa" sound as much as English so "pee-TOE" seems most correct for French, to me
I’m not even a pilot and even I always pronounced it that way lol
THANK YOU! As a former aircraft mechanic, this one had me eyeballing 'ol Whistle-boy every time he said it 😂.
As a pilot, what got me was the way at 3:00 Simon pronounced "altar-meter." I got a good chuckle out of that one!
A little aside to your excellent video. In my 20s, I was a Lloyd's Aviation Broker and Birgen Air was one of my clients. I left the brokerage (to study aeronautical engineering) just before Birgen's policy came up for renewal. I'm told that my replacement failed to fully place the risk, but confirmed coverage all the same. The accident happened the next day, effectively uninsured! I believe this led to the largest ever professional indemnity claim in the market - and the end of that brokerage.
You'd think after all this time, someone would've come up with a less accident-prone system than this. I know, now, these are a relatively low number of crashes, but frankly, crashing is one of those scenarios where once is too many.
They're measuring what matters to the wing, dynamic pressure. Aside from the multiple redundancy of these devices built into airliners, there are alternate sources for speed (like GPS), but they don't directly measure the critical dynamic (equivalent) airspeed in the way the pitot-static system does. At the end of the day, in the event of discrepancies between instruments the pilots need to cross-check ALL the airspeed sources to determine which is erroneous - which is what they failed to do in the examples here. And if all else fails, you fly pitch & power - pre-determined settings that are calculated to result in a safe airspeed.
I'm no expert, but I've seen a lot of videos and read articles about various airplane disasters (like MentourPilot and some long form articles posted on engineering and travel sites and such).
In pretty much all of the incidents I've seen, the equipment failures are not novel situations. That is, it is known that they could fail and there are procedures for assessing the situation and figuring out a way to deal with it safely. There is almost always a human component for the disaster. Yes, in a few of the incidents, a series of failures happened so fast that there wasn't enough time for the pilots to fully grasp everything and they basically had to make their best guess and it turned out poorly. But even in those situations, usually the human error occurred earlier with improper maintenance, airline execs trying to save money, or technician making a mistake and trying to cover it up rather than biting the bullet and addressing it properly or something.
The airline industry is so heavily regulated for safety, not just for the procedures of an actual flight, but all of the repeated inspections that must be done, regular maintenance, diagnostics, etc.
The pitot system doesn't seem particularly overly accident prone, at least to me. It's people that are accident prone, and with each new incident, authorities come up with new protocols to attempt to mitigate even the human errors.
I would think this IS the less accident prone system.
When I was a young man I worked several years in Air Traffic Control. At that time (late 1960s) they were phasing out runway caravans (RCVs), which had had a history dating back to the interwar years (I believe). They helped several potential catastrophes from happening. I think it was a cost issue to continue using them, for an occasional benefit. An alert crew of usually two assistant controllers might have spotted the pitot cover on the aircraft. I witnessed from the control tower a C-47 Dakota coming in to land cleared by the controller, when a red Very light was fired near the threshold and the aircraft did a go-around. They had spotted debris on the runway. An RCV might have saved Concorde on that fateful day in 2000.
The problem is that it is not easy to find out the airspeed @MrLunarlander said. You can easily find out the ground speed with radar reflection or GPS, but that does not tell you how quickly the air is flowing over the skin of the aircraft. If you are flying into a headwind, the air is moving more quickly over the aircraft than the ground speed would indicate. If there is a tail wind, the air is moving less quickly over the skin.
This airspeed is critical to understanding how much lift is being generated, which is kind of important since falling out of the sky is generally frowned upon.
I'm only 3 minutes in but had to say that this is a big issue in the tropics. Mud wasps LOVE tiny holes to lay their eggs in and then add food, then cover with mud. If Pitots aren't covered when on the ground, there is a high chance a wasp will find that uncovered Pitot. EDIT: 2 minutes later, Simon's writer gives an example.
Perfect example of why you should wait until the END OF THE FUCKING VIDEO,to make comments lol
@@jeffdroog I hear ya buddy
These insects exists elsewhere too, i frequently find the connector of my garden hoses blocked with their larvae plugs. (Germany)
These mudplugs are surprisingly resilient too, can't just flush them out with water pressure, unless you break them apart first.
To me they're just an annoyance, to an Aircraft they're deadly.
The first cockpit was filled with idiots. We have 2 working detectors and one giving erroneous readings... "Let's operate using the one that we know isn't working." It is a shame those idiots took 160 people with them. 😓
We are all humans... and humans are "faulty" creatures. Its a high workload situation, and combined with confirmation bias, it is much hard to correct such small errors while really being in the situation than sitting on your couch relaxed. To call them idiots is a little to self-satisfied in my eyes. Sometimes pilots save planes with seemingly genious decissions, sometimes they crash with seemingly idiotic decissions, deeper investigation not showing really a difference in experience and past decissionmaking. Judging a person by one time they fail... well, i hope for all of us, that that is not the usual way do judge "faulty" creatures all the time.
I live in Peru, and the moment the video started I remembered about the air crash caused by tape not having been removed from the Pitot tube. Thank you Simon and crew for such educational videos.
A small correction: the island of Guam is in the *North* Pacific, east of the Philippines, north of New Guinea, and southeast of Japan.
Once while I was a pilot during take off, we were getting a low airspeed. Looking out the cockpit we were clearly going fast enough. By then there wasn't enough room left to safety slow back down. Told tower what was happening as we took off, requesting immediate emergency landing. Circled back, and safety landed. During the investigation it was discovered the ground crew left the pitot tube cover on.
I highly doubt this ever happened. It is the duty of the aircrew to do a walkaround of the aircraft and visually confirm the pitot tubes are clear.
The airline industry has a "no blame" culture, where it is imperative to identify faults and learn from them, rather than punish people, but I do not believe any pilot would ever brag about such a blatant failure of duty as this person above.
@@ticijevish it is recorded in at least one incident.
@@ticijevishHe didn’t name an airline or a person, just an incident where they learned the importance of removing the covers. My father was an air traffic controller and a go around after takeoff for FOD like a bird strike in the engine or some other odd behavior of the plane was the exact correct procedure and does occasionally happen. Then the investigation on the ground is done to determine the cause. And since my mom was also a flight instructor and I heard her many times do a flight check after a student have to remind him about the pitot tube covers, yup, I ABSOLUTELY believe it.
Yikes! I hope you yelled at them for a while and they got yelled at by someone else next. Oh and they were retrained on how to do their jobs.
This definitely did not happen. It is the flight crew, not the ground crew, who are responsible for the final check. If this really happened, the pilot would be the party in trouble.
I knew about Pitot tubes from ships, and I just wondered whether they used the same system on airplanes. And of course, redundancy doesn't mean much if you have to guess which one is right.
Well, most new systems use at least 3 air data systems, so you're supposed to go with the two that are saying the same thing rather than the one which is saying something different. The problem comes in when you have poor situational awareness, crew resource management, and/or training. Pitot failures happen all the time in light aircraft, and they aren't unheard of in airliners. Most of the time they cause inconvenience and nothing else, but when human factors come into play these minor failure can become catastrophes.
Airplanes have triple redundancy for critical systems. They can maintain operation if 1 of the circuits fails, and warn the pilots if 2 of them fail and no reliable data can be gathered. But no system can protect against stupid. If your plane stalls and your reaction is to pitch up sharply, you're only going to be alive for as long as nothing ever goes wrong.
They have three of them so if one was blocked, the other two can indicate the erroneous one.
@@TheOtherNeutrino I remember reading that the space shuttle had three identical flight computers each with three gyros and if any gyro disagreed with the others it would be taken out of the control loop by the software and in turn if any one flight computer disagreed with the other two it was taken out of service automatically.
@@atomicskull6405 Not much different for transport-class aircraft. Most have 3 independent inertial reference systems tied into redundant GNSS (GPS) receivers. In additions, Boeing and Airbus have 2 independent autopilot computers. During very low visibility conditions, pilots must use both systems and the systems ensure both agree within a small margin. There's a lot of redundancy that's required and even more redundancy for higher range ETOPS (Extended Range Twin-Engine Operations) which allows a transport aircraft to fly further distances from an enroute alternate airport (i.e. transoceanic). Prior to ETOPS, twin jets couldn't fly those routes and is why there were so many tri-jets.
I remember hearing about an accident on a show called Mayday, according to Wikipedia, which outside of US & Canada is known as Air Crash Investigation. In the case they talked about the end result was also ice in the tubes. But the cause for the water in the tubes was because the plane had been washed without covering the tubes. And when the plane entered high altitude, the water froze.
Actually that was not the Pitot Tubes. It was the angle of attack sensor that froze. It's a mini "wing" on the side of the airplane that tilts up/down as the airflow passes it. On the mentioned accident, they washed the aircraft with high pressure (without following correct procedures) because it had a paint job done to it, and it was delayed.
Water entered inside the system, and on high altitude it made it froze on a specific angle. Therefore both the autopilot and the pilots thought their pitch was quite different from what it actually was.
Are those tubes horizontal for the entire length, or do they have an upward kink along their length which would allow such water to drain out. Should I suspect the former . . . ?
@@djgeorgetsagkadopoulos Possibly that. It's been a while since I actually saw that episode. Simon just talking about a mistake related to washing+freezing reminded me of that one.
@@EllieMaes-Grandad are you talking about Pitot tubes or Angle Of Attack sensors ?
For Pitot tubes it doesn't really matter. They don't block because water gets inside them and freeze (and thus you could drain them to avoid it). They block because of water molecules in the air (humidity) freezing and building up. The same way as a wing can built up ice, despite being a flat surface that naturally drains water, moving at speeds that usually exceed 0.8 Mach.
AFAIK Pitot tubes can be heated to avoid building ice inside on them, as long as someone turns that system on.
For Angle Of Attack sensors, they are sealed, so no water/moisture should get inside them under regular circumstances.
After that accident mentioned above, I'm pretty sure some procedures changed, and possibly future designs will be even better (since no-one thought to throw water on them on REALLY high pressure)
Thank you. I was referring to the washing incident which [allegedly] put water into the tube which stayed after take-off and froze. @@djgeorgetsagkadopoulos
I have a tiny hole that has caused a lot of disasters in my life too.
Surprised I had to scroll this far down to find a comment like this, but still well done
I figured this video was about a flight attendant
Bravo. 🤣🤣🤣
Get any wasps in there though?
@@nekolalia3389Mate!!! Bloody hell, stuff of nightmares!
5:52 Nope! A tiny wasp did not take down a giant airliner - poor maintenance aside, pilot error and poor CRM did the job. There are three Pitot-Probes because there are three airspeed indicators in the instrument panel; one on each of the pilots' Primary Flight Displays and one standby (can be a third electronic display or a pneumatic indicator). Compare the three indicator values and disregard the one that doesn't agree. Aside from that, a pilot should have _some_ idea what speed the aircraft will be doing at a given weight , altitude, attitude, and engine power setting. There was no excuse for this crash.
I calibrated the systems which checked to make sure they worked correctly. They are big, boring test sets. Thank you for explaining why they are so important. Kind of crazy I did this in Germany as well.
Small correction from an aircraft mechanic and pilot: The vertical speed indicator and altimeter do not use any data from the pitot tube. They use static pressure only for their readings. The VSI has a "calibrated leak", and the dial displays the rate of climb or descent as the pressure changes. The altimeter functions similarly, reading static pressure only, but is calibrated with an adjustment knob to the local barometric pressure, or standard sea level pressure of 29.92 inHg/1013.25 mb for all aircraft above 18,000 feet above sea level to display the correct altitude information. Only the airspeed indicator uses data from both systems.
Lets start out with a 1min 45 sec ad.
Why moan, better the start than in the middle
@adamhousden6349 i agree, but why not at the end? Why that freaking long?
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap tap. Problem solved. 5-8 seconds
It sounds like the tubes should be made retractable. In fact, when retracted, they can be tested with an internal air pump to verify operation either before deploying or on demand if there is a question of accuracy mid flight. Yes, I know that more moving parts equals greater potential for failure, but in this case they can be tested internal then deployed before take off, Once deployed, they are no different than fixed units. You also have the option of keeping one retracted in reserve so that it is protected unless needed in an emergency.
You have a pretty decent idea which needs slight refinement: Just add a retractable Pitot to existing systems as a back up for the back up. Adds zero complexity or potential failure to the existing system while improving the reliability of the system as a whole.
You could do the same thing by having a telescoping ram which pushes through the tube on command to clear foreign material or debris, or to clear ice. Mechanisms like that would probably require a lot of extra certification though.
That or we could just remember to remove the pitot tube covers and turn on the pitot heat. (In other words, follow the checklists properly.)
@@-Bill. If it were left in the fully extended position while the plane is parked, it would also keep bugs out.
Oh shit, I used to not be afraid of flying.
I still am, but I used to be too
In the US we pronounce it "Pee-toh." On my certification flight my pitot tube got clogged by a bee and I lost my airspeed indicator. I immediately called an emergency and landed, which made my tester very impressed.
British always got to pronounce it differently from USA
simon always wings it with the pronounciations, pay no attention to that
It's French. The emphasis is on the second syllable. Think "petit".
(And just because I _have_ to make the obvious joke: you lot mispronounce _everything_ in the US, General *_Zed_* ;) )
Pilots in the UK pronounce it pee-toh too.
@@rogeratygc7895 An outrage, since half of their native language is French.
(Yes, redcoats, I'll take the piss out of youse as much as I will the yanks ;) )
Pitot tubes themselves don’t cause disasters, despite what the title says. They’re incredibly important, but blockages in them and covers over them have caused accidents. However, AF447 was not one of those. They could have fairly easily recovered the aircraft, but it wasn’t a pitot issue that brought it down.
Bonin brought it down.
Same goes for the first example in the video. They had 3 airspeed indications with 2 of them being correct and the captain's being incorrect. But the captain chose to rely on his airspeed indicator and the other crew members failed to check and override him.
All the while, a massive a hole caused the crash of a KLM 747 on Tenerife.
As in a massive arsehole with too big an ego?
Regarding the incident in Peru, isn't one of the pilot's pre-flight checks supposed to be checking that the pitot tubes aren't blocked?
yes, they are supposed to be covered and that cover is to be remove before flight.
there was a case however were little time passed and a wasp blocked it.
Pretty sure that's part of it. A walk-around by the captain where anything that is visibly wrong is supposed to be caught. This would include a pitot tube cover, bad tires, whatever
Absolutely. You should look up the actual report. It was a piece of tape that matched the color of the aircraft's paint in that area, so it was tough to see. The pilot should have made positive contact with an OPEN static port, but I can understand why failing to see ANY static port might not rise to conscious awareness. He missed it because the covered port was camouflaged. Were it covered it should have been bright red with a streamer/flag hanging from it stating "REMOVE BEFORE FLIGHT". The cleaner didn't do that, partially because he didn't speak English so likely didn't know what the warnings around that port were saying, and also didn't receive very good training from his company.
Is it the fault of the cleaning company for not training properly? Yes. Is it the cleaner's fault? Yes. Is it the pilot's fault for missing the covered port? Yes. Is it the Captain's fault for his irrational conclusions once they were in the air? Yes. See the "Swiss Cheese Model of Error". Aeroperu is perhaps the single best aviation example I can think of when discussing human factors.
Edit:
I see you said pitot tube not being blocked. Peru wasn't actually the pitot tube, it was the static port. That's a small disc a little larger than a coin with a tiny hole in the middle, placed flush against the side of the aircraft. Unfortunately, that model plane has them well above your head also so you need to carefully look for them otherwise you would just miss it.
@@AviatorFox That makes some sense...easy to miss. Though pitot tubes are always bare metal at the tip, no? So it being the same color as the paint should have been a tip-off...but SO easy to miss, hard to blame the pilots for not catching that. They're looking for the red flag covers, not a bit of matching paint. So sad. :(
@@carmencrincoli Yeah, Simon is a great reader but he really left a lot out regarding Aeroperu. Look up Aeroperú Flight 603 on Wikipedia under "Investigation", it's a good laymen summary. The thing which was covered WAS NOT a pitot tube. It was actually the static port, briefly shown in a diagram on the video at 2:35. The static port is responsible for altitude, vertical speed, and works with the pitot tube to deduce airspeed. The static port being covered disables all three functions whereas the static port only affects airspeed in most instances. The static port on that aircraft is also bare metal, but closely surrounded by white paint. It is my understanding that the tape covering it was also white, and totally covered the unpainted disc of the static port which would then look to somebody on the ground as an unbroken white area (even though the static port is beneath it).
It's amazing to me that someone can try a solution to a problem (pull up and reduce power due to high airspeed indicted) and completely ignore the observation that the problem gets worse instead of better. Then go on to apply the same solution with more vigor. Not only is this bad airmanship it's sheer stupidity in human nature.
Just remember takeoffs are optional but landings are mandatory.
All of these accidents were the result of pilot error, as for AF447 the period for which the airspeed was unreliable was about 10 seconds, after that it was working fine but the crew chose not to believe it, the stick was held at full aft for the duration of the incident (not the way to recover from a stall). The first two incidents required the use of the “unreliable airspeed” checklist, basically reverting to the relationship between power and attitude, the crew again chose not to do this.
He’s still Simon…
He seems a lot happier
What happened?
Is he though?
FactBoy is Omnipresent
@@HimMrMreplaced all his previous writers all at once, an unexpected move 😢
Maybe another video could be on the other frequently involved instrument in crashes, the angle of attack sensors.
I've literally never heard of a crash attributed to an angle of attack sensor. Outside of military aircraft, most planes aren't even equipped with AOA instrumentation. Only very recently have Airbus and Boeing began to install them.
Sounds like an issue that could be solved with a system similar to how ejector pins work on manufacturing molding machines.
It's worth noting that these disasters weren't caused simply by the pitot sensor failures alone. Most disasters of the scale involve multiple factors. I don't know about 50 years ago, but in the modern day and the past few decades, airliners have multiple pieces of equipment relaying all kind of information to the pilots. Pilots are trained to recognize when some sensor may not be reliable due to some fault, and many situations have precise protocols to help pilots diagnose the issue and mitigate it.
It's not like the pitot sensor freezing over == the plane is going down and everyone is dies.
That makes air travel sound way more risky than it actually is.
We have similar wasps in SC. Every ground plug and air compressor fitting is always packed with mud and larvae.
I believe they are also called mud daubers in the Carolina's, but I don't know if they are the same species, a related species, or a two different sub-species.
@@jackturner214 Definitely have those guys building mud tunnels on the walls. These other little guys are insidious and ruin air tools and outlets.
Just had my AC and gas heat replaced with a heat pump. The old refrigerant line was packed with both new and old wasp tubes. The mud dauber is a typical urban wasp in the Houston area. Gotta get more rural to find yellowjacket nests.
A friend of mine lost his dad in the Birkenair.... really a messy incident to say the least
Typically that third pitot tube has a direct air line to a standby airspeed indicator that should be within a certain tolerance of the primary indicators. A quick glance at all three will tell you which one is incorrect.
🤦♂🤦♂🤦♂
Why not build some kind of stick (hook?), that in the pre-flight-preparations PHYSICALLY moves into the tube & checks for blockages?
(or if it can move from inside the tube outwards, it can actually CLEAR the blockages too, if small) Or just blow out air through the tube, before takeoff!!!
The 9:34 ice buildup, could have been prevented by simply heating up the tube (and account for the change in air density of hotter air)
Oh. My. God.
It's pronounced "pee-tow" not "pit-tow."
Simon gave me an aneurysm every time he said "pit-tow."
🤦♂🤦♂🤦♂
Why can't we just program a fault-detection program that simply recognize this kind of faulty behavior.
Then in CLEAR TEXT tells the pilots what is wrong & to switch to a backup system (or automatically switch to a functional backup system, 9:34 if available)
It should be possible to write a program that can at least recognize these situations & provide accurate instructions to the pilots about what to do.
I remember wondering what pitot is as "pitot heater" is in start-up procedure for pretty much anything flying in simulation games. Always assumed its acronym for something.
I normally enjoy these "Today I Found Out" videos, but this one is disappointing. It seems to be an attempt to dramatize the dangers of commercial flying due to the fact that airliners use the pitot-static system for altitude, airspeed and rate-of-climb measurements. Whilst the accidents mentioned DID occur, the full stories are NOT adequately explained here. Human Factors and Crew Resource Management are not even mentioned. If anyone is interested in more balanced and complete accounts of how and why these accidents occurred, I am happy to provide links to the relevant (and vastly superior) "Mentour Pilot" videos. (Here is Air France flight 447 as an example ua-cam.com/video/e5AGHEUxLME/v-deo.html ) If nothing else, please do NOT be put off travelling in a comercial airliner on the basis of this "Today I Found Out" video.
To give you an idea as to how sensative these are the area around the pitot tubes on modern airliners is referred to as the RVSM (Reduced Vertical Separation Minimums) critical area ANY damage in this area including just chipping paint renders the aircraft restricted from operating at RVSM altitudes (29,000-41,000 feet) till repaired as it can throw the readings off by slightly changing the flow of air around the pitot tube.
Fray Bentos is actually a place, wow, I wonder if they developed the pies. Great video. Well it would be, Fact Boy is running it.
I’ve seen many videos about Flight 447. It has even more contributing factors. The plane was flying in weather at night, with no visual references. When the instruments went haywire the crew were truly flying blind. The pilot flying was attempting to climb by pulling all the way back on the stick. Normally in an Airbus the flight computer would not allow excessive control movements but in this instance the aircraft was in “alternate law” which meant the pilot has full control. As the plane dropped through the darkness like a stone in a dead stall the crew struggled to understand what was happening. The pilot repeatedly attempted to climb when he should have pointed the nose down. By the time the crew realized what happened the aircraft was too low to recover.
The hole did not cause disasters. Stupid pilots who don't understand cross checks caused the accidents. This is why you're supposed to be trained to fly. Sadly too many pilots rely on LUCK and not training. And eventually they crash and die.
One critical point to learn is that pitch+power=performance. Pilots who routinely fly should learn the common power settings by heart. If it claims you are over-speed at 50% throttle and 20 degrees pitch up, the instrument is wrong. But wait, what if the engine is really running at full throttle? Then the engine instruments would be showing odd behavior themselves. In the case of the recent ATR crash, for instance, the pilots should have also noticed that the engines were not humming the same song as usual on landing.
Pitot tubes sand static ports must always be checked on pre-flight. It’s unfortunate that something as simple as forgetting to cover before or uncover after washing a plane can bring it down. It’s because of these things that pre flight checks exist in the first place. Also why complacency is one of the dirty dozen of aviation human factors.
Easy test for this, would be to have a single lead to pressure test them prior to each flight...
It is always remarkable how we trust complacency, over simply overengineering something enough to make it truly safe.
Just a heated line, with a compressor could have saved a majority of these people.
The reliability of this system could be increased if they faced aft and measured the ram vacuum.
Furthermore in addition to heaters, a compressed air line hooked up to the system could be implemented to purge a potentially blocked pitot.
Maybe even a hybrid system of ram pressure tubes and ram vacuum tubes?
Bugs, tape, dirt, and ice shouldn't be killing people!
As this aircraft would have two separate airspeed systems for the captain and first officer plus a standby system, why didn’t the pilot cross check with the other two systems, it would only take seconds to confirm the error.
During my time as an aircraft engineer one of my responsibilities was the altitude and airspeed systems. One of the maintenance procedures was to inspect the condition of pitot probes for cleanliness, tip erosion of the pitot probes and cleanliness of the static ports. If any evidence of an obstruction were found a back flush with a clean nitrogen air source would be done to clear the pitot probe or static port. I also carried out calibration checks on airspeed and altitude indicating systems. If I had to blank off pitot drain holes or static ports I always used blanks with an enormous “remove before flight” streamer attached. But of course 20/20 hindsight is a wonderful thing!
400 Euros a MONTH?! Someone better jump outta the screen and teach me *personally* for that!
Can't you make a system that flushes the tubes with high pressure water or something? Or at least detect if the water flows out slower than expected? I know it's an additional complexity, but for a critical component this sensitive it seems justified. For a plane to be taken down by a wasp is insane
you'd think they'd have a system in place that if the multiple redundant tubes gave varying readings a specific alarm would sound
Amusing to have Simon, who is uninterested in learning how to pronounce non-English words or names, advertising a language learning product...
Given the number of failures caused by accidentally leaving covers on Pitot tubes and Static ports, you would think they would make covers for these things that are brightly colored and reflective (so they instantly stand out from the color of the actual plane) and then mandate that cleaners, maintanence guys and anyone else must use the brightly colored covers.
Or maybe that's already a thing, I don't know...
Bright red ribbon-looking tags, labeled "Remove Before Flight"
1:50 Bright red things like flags
I'm not afraid of flying in complex machinery, I'm afraid of human incompetence to maintain machinery. Thanks for unlocking a new reason to be fearful.
Ugh, the way you're saying pitot tube is driving me crazy. That's not how you pronounce it. lol
At my family’s home in Illinois, mud dobbers are a HUGE problem. They get into absolutely everything and create huge mud nests that are as hard as a rock. Literally anything they can get into, they will.
It’s funny how the pitot indicator isn’t cross referenced with GPS to warn pilots of a conflicting reading. This would allow the pilots to switch to a another pitot tube to read from that’s given an matching reading. Anyone with a smart phone can tell the speed of a plane in flight provided you have a signal. For satellite phones this is no problem no matter the altitude.
i'm no engineer but...wouldn't that be fixed by sending pressurised air in reverse down the tubes with an expected back pressure feedback that if too high or low would indicate an issue. if it's mounted on a fork just behind the tube entrance it can even be activated from the cockpit.
All these issues make me wonder why planes don't have a backup pitot tube that is hidden in a closed compartment to keep it clean/from freezing over until it's needed.
I have a tape of the YF-23 dramatically slamming into the runway at high speed when the test pilot did a low pass with military thrust to burn off fuel. The data from the air data sensors (think numerous static ports) exceeded the parameters in the software, causing wild vertical oscillations that were too fast for the pilot to counter - he was behind the curve. Modern inherently unstable aircraft such as fighter planes are now run through numerous simulations to prevent something like that happening. Many modern planes have been tested throughout their flight envelope before they even fly
If you are unshure what your true Airspeed is wouldend make it sence just to put the engienes on full Power? Thereby you could be shure that you defenitly flying fast enougth
...its always wasps
I heard the size of the hole and immediately thought of not mud daubers, but the little guys who take over abandoned wasp nests, line 'em with bits of leaf and petals and do a behbeh house. Pollenator bees.
i'm sure a bunch of people have pointed this out already, but Pitot is a french last name. so its pronounced "pee-dough" in english.
Source: my dad is a pilot and is such a nerd that my childhood kitty was named Pitot.
I'm being picky, but I believe the French pronounce their T's as T's and not as D's. (Like in Petit, said as "pe-tee".) So, Pitot would be, more like "pee-toe."
@@skyhawk_4526 oops, you’re probably more correct then me. me and my dad are uncultured americans
Imagine if they just added a 2nd one that was generally closed, and could be opened in case of an instrument failure on the others.
If someone could invent something better that would be swell thanks.
Am I the only one who thinks all these issues could be solved with a pin and a small motor? If any of these disagree you press a button to "reset" them at which point a pin goes through the hole hopefully unblocking it. Like $50 of hardware to save millions of dollars and lots of lives.
It would take A LOT of pressure to unblock those tubes, if it's even possible. Don't you think engineers at Boeing, Airbus, Lockheed e.t.c. didn't think of that ? :)
$50.00 for a ground based piece of equipment. probably a thousand dollars apiece to get them approved for aircraft use, and another to get them retrofitted.
Thanks to Mayday Air Disasters i knew exactly what that pitot tube in the thumbnail was and the disasters that they have caused
Not sure if British pronounce “pitot” differently or if Simon just got it wrong because mispronunciation is his super power.
I've heard British pilots pronounce it the same way Americans do: "Pee-toe" (with the stress mostly placed on the first syllable). As far as the man it's named after, I suspect Simon might be closer based on typical French pronunciation of similar two syllable words, but I'm speculating there.
@@skyhawk_4526 No, the stress is definitely on the first syllable. Simon has listened to Americans in NY coffee bars too much IMO. We're going to have to pull his passport...
are there pitot/static covers or mechanisms that automatically protect them? or are there alternatives? We have altrasonic meters, could this be used instead?
They’re called whistler tubes!
They’re located in strategic places around the fuselage in modern aircraft for whistling
-Simon Whistlertube
so why don't aircraft use GPS as a backup for these pitot tubes?
Exactly why I have never/nor will I ever fly.
NEVER
I was an aircraft mechanic in the US Army and the importance of attention to detail is drilled into us. With all these advanced systems that are on aircraft today. Military or civilian. Details such as these aren't stressed as much as they should be. This video should be required for any entry level aviator. When people get on the job it is up to the unit or company you work for to cover stuff like this. Thanks for the great video
0:09: 💼 Learn a new language with Lingoda's online classes and get a back-to-school promotion.
2:28: 💥 Failure to catch a blockage in the aircraft's Pitot-static system led to erroneous airspeed readings and ultimately resulted in the crash of Bergen Air flight 301.
5:16: 📚 Three separate aircraft incidents were caused by blockages in the plateaustatic system, resulting in high readings and inaccurate flight instruments.
8:18: 💥 Flight 447's final moments were marked by confusion and terror, resulting in a fatal crash due to bad weather, hardware failure, and poor situational awareness.
10:55: 💔 Aviation disasters caused by issues with the pitostatic system.
Recap by Tammy AI
Not perfect, but impressive.
I didn't expect to laugh as hard as I did at him calling the Altimeter an Alternator. Not sure why that one tickled me the way it did. 😅
Things like this are why I don't fly...if I can't drive there, I don't need to be there...sure, car crashes are a thing, but they're also often survivable, where as surviving a plane crash is far less likely...& falling from 30k feet gives you a long time to think about what's about to happen... I'll take my chances on the highway...
Comparisons of road safety statistics and commercial airline safety statistics do not agree with your logic. You are FAR more likely to be killed in a road traffic collision than a plane crash even if you fly on a very regular basis. From a practical standpoint, just think of all the pilots and flight attendants who fly nearly every day over the course of their decades-long careers. 99.9% of them have completely safe careers and go on to retire without ever experiencing a single accident while on the job.
If you block the end of a peto tube it goes from being a speed sensor to being an altimeter. Basically the blocked end traps air inside. As the plane gets higher instead of measuring dynamic presure it simply measures outside air pressure vs what the air pressure was when the blockage occured. The higher you go the higher the differential and the higher the indicated "speed". How do you slow a plane down? Reduce power and gain a little altitude. But now you are higher so the "speed" is higher so you reduce power and gain altitude. Until you are trying to fly vertically with your engines idling.
0:09: 💼 Learn a new language with Lingoda's online classes and get a back-to-school promotion.
2:28: 💥 Failure to catch a blockage in the aircraft's Pitot-static system led to erroneous airspeed readings and ultimately resulted in the crash of Bergen Air flight 301.
5:16: 📚 Three separate aircraft incidents were caused by blockages in the plateaustatic system, resulting in high readings and inaccurate flight instruments.
8:18: 💥 Flight 447's final moments were marked by confusion and terror, resulting in a fatal crash due to bad weather, hardware failure, and poor situational awareness.
10:55: 💔 Aviation disasters caused by issues with the pitostatic system.
Recap by Tammy AI
I am not sure what systems that commercial aircraft have, but if I were flying and see a whole lot of errors that don't make sense why wouldn't they look at the GPS? That would tell you altitude and ground speed. The UAV I used to fly would also subtract/add the reported wind and give me air speed and so I'm sure theirs would too?
Well done. This is, in fact, part of the training of commercial pilots on how to deal with this failure. It's not as easy as it sounds however. Windspeed needs to factored in and at altitude that can be significant. Also, at higher altitudes the difference between true airspeed and indicated airspeed can be 200 knots. GPS might read 500 or 600 knots while the pilot's airspeed indicator will read 250 knots.
I will never hear it pronounced the correct way again.
Well I'm just all kinds of confused now! Who's truly hosting this channel?
I'm sure that one crash was even caused by an insect of some sort making its home INSIDE a pitot. Ground crew had forgotten to cover them up overnight and the bug got in and made its nest, blocking the tube.
I misread that as "inside a pilot" 💀
Almost seems like when all 3 pitot systems fail your best course of action is to hold whatever speed and altitude you can. If you didn't feel a lurch from losing or gaining a ton of speed, you definitely can safely assume you didn't just jump 100 knots in speed and to start finding a safe spot to land.
When that happens, pilots have a plan to keep flying at safe airspeeds. One method is "pitch and power," where we use known combinations of pitch angle and power setting to get close to a desired airspeed.
On some modern airliners, the plane use the Angle of Attack sensors to extrapolate rough "speed," i.e. "too fast" or "too slow." Too high angle of attack means the airspeed is too slow, and too low angle of attack means airspeed is too fast.
Over a minute worth of advert...
These videos are always good, but if it wasn't for the ability to skip ahead, I don't think I could stand the adverts.
IIRC less troublesome alternatives are being developed using laser light, at least as a backup to the tubes.
Could GPS be a backup for pitot static information?
Yes but no air speed is what is important. Air speed isn't the speed of the aircraft relative to the earth. It's relative to the air around the aircraft. It's important because the wind changes directions if there is heavy tail wind and your airspeed were to match that you will stall regardless of what speed the aircraft is going relative to the earth.
Thanks for the information.@@kyle333halfevil
Not really, no. GPS can tell you ground speed and sometimes altitude. It can't tell you airspeed. Let's say we're in the jet stream chugging along at 600kts ground speed, but our airspeed might be as low as like 350kts. See, the GPS system can't account for your 250kts tailwind to give the pilots airspeed. Airspeed is really the only thing that a plane cares about. Look online and you can find light STOL aircraft flying in complete control backwards because the headwind they have is fast enough for them to remain aloft. No airspeed info means you can''t adequately predict the behavior of an aircraft, and GPS is only capable of giving you ground speed which is darn near worthless in an emergency.
Thanx trying to learn Ukraian.
Is this content declassified?
Be careful of the wasps🐝🐝🐝
watching the air diaster videos has made me highly aware of pitot tubes and just how easily a malfunction or blockage can kill everyone on board
🍿
In response to a lot of these instances, Boeing began incuding an IAS DISAGREE flag in their EICAS system to provide an earlier indication, I think in the reaction to the Birgen Air crash. And, I think, reworked the logic of the pitot/static system to allow the crew to select the best working set of sources rather than just defaulting to the captains set. The EICAS flag throws a mandatory alert and a mandatory memory-item procedure that increases the chance of successfully aborting takeoff if the system is found to be not working, because there’s a much better chance of stopping safely from 80 KIAS than there is from V1.
The problem with a pitot/static fault is that you have a very narrow window to detect it *and* it’s not always easy to tell which instrument is affected .. even with multiple independent instruments. If you don’t get an immediate and unambiguous warning at 80 KIAS, you quickly get to V1 and have to hope you guessed right by rotation speed ..
Did they also make the heater always on or automatic?
I'm a pilot and the "tiny hole," (i.e. the pitot tube) does CAUSE ANY air disasters. Some air disasters have resulted from malfunctions with pitot tubes but the tiny holes NEVER CAUSE an accident.