The captain should have been put into prison for quite a long time. And never behind the stick any more. Just consider the fuel would not have lasted that long. The passengers and the crew would have had their last flight. And only he didn't follow true airmenship.
They should have returned when they noticed the gear problem, or, if they didn't want to be stranded in Crete, fly to Athens. Or, if they continued, land in Zagreb. Or, if even that wasn't good enough for them and the situation became critical, they could have used suitable airports on the way to Vienna like Maribor (2500 m runway) some 100-120 km from Zagreb, or in Graz (~3000 m runway) some 60 km further. A completely unnecessary crash.
I agree, but with cheapo and small airlines, the pilots are under intense pressure from the management etc to only do such things when absolutely absolutely necessary. Often when looking into these matters when crashes come from pilots attempting to land at an airport when its unsafe instead of diverting etc, the main cause is policies from the upper management that instill a culture where pilots are afraid for their jobs if they waste money doing these kinds of diversions unnecessarily. It causes pilots to second guess whether the situation is truly unsafe or if they are just panicking.
When I got my cat in Belgium (I live in The Netherlands ), we were on our way back and I had the gas on the first line. I thought I’d make it to the next gasstation when a sign came up at that point. Normally about 25-50km in between. But no gasstation ever came and my gas went into the red. More and more nervous I decided not to continue on the highway but take an exit and drive into a village as usually there is always one there. There was, I had to ask for the way but was close enough. I felt so relieved to have found a gasstation in time! I never did that after that anymore, always filled up at the first line. I had just adopted a scared little kitty, it would have been so sad if she had to be in the car on the side of the highway 😞
I am a 71 year old American who got his driver's license at age 16 in 1966. I admit that as a typical Stupid Teenager I ran out of gas a few times. But I certainly Smartened Up by the time I was 18, and It NEVER Happened Again !!! Stupid Teenagers and Mentally Challenged people not withstanding, I have NO Idea how someone can "run out of gas" per se even in an automobile, much less an airliner. You don't need a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering to figure out that an extended landing gear will cause you to use more fuel. My question is whether they did a Drug Test on this pilot after this incident. This pilot must have been high on drugs to do what he did.
Reminds me when I forgot to refuel my car in the evening although it was already on reserve. At the time, I had to drive to work the next morning, all nearby petrol stations would still be closed. My car`s board computer told me that there would be just enough fuel to make it to the place, where I worked. If possible, I didn`t want any trouble at work, so I took the risk and drove. I entered the company`s parking place with the board computer only showing 2 km left until empty. There was a gas station nearby, arround 1,5 km. But after work I decided to not take a gamble again. Instead a working collegue drove me to the petrol station to fuel a reserve canister. Damn was he making fun of me. And right he was xD.
Hello Airspace. Interesting video. I did some work regarding this accident. There are several other dimensions about this flight. Operational Control/Flight Dispatch regulations, policies and procedures and the crew assuming an improper airspeed for gear down operations as a result of how the information about the airspeed is displayed. You do mention the crew talking to the airline later in the flight about the continuation of the flight and deciding initially on Munich as the planned stopping point, then changing to Vienna, even as they were abeam Zagreb, with the low fuel warning light illuminated. The Airbus A300-A310 series had a history of gear down problems. The airline that I worked at in the US as a flight dispatcher flew A300s. Same gear system. I had an A300 flight that departed from LGA airport, New York, to Atlanta. Similar to this flight, it could not retract the gear and it remained down. The crew contacted me on the radio, and we discussed the situation. In the flight manual there was a graph for gear down fuel consumption. I calculated it and discussed the the situation with the Captain, and we determined that if we eliminated the holding fuel of 20 minutes, and flew the airplane appropriately, that the flight should arrive in Atlanta, while still having enough for an alternate as well as reserve. But that we would check at about the halfway point, abeam Charlotte, North Carolina. So the Captain calls me back as they are abeam Charlotte and advises that they are burning more fuel than we had estimated with the gear down, as well as that the airplane was "very noisy". So I checked the flight manual again and asked what speed they were operating at? They said "270K Indicated". But checking the flight manual, it showed 240K as recommended. I advised tha Captain and they reduced speed to 240K. It imediately significantly reduced fuel consumption and also the noise level. (The Captainsaid "That's better". The problem was that the gear down handle was placarded as 270K because that was the "maximum" gear down speed (VLE). But it was not the recommended for cruising with the gear down. With the additional fuel that the airplane had burned because of the previous higher speed, we recalculated and determined that the flight could still continue to Atlanta and land with reserve, but we would eliminate the alternate airport. This was legal as the weather was good and there were no ATC delays, and the aircraft continued and landed without further event in Atlanta. But the crew had the right information. I later spoke with the accident investigator for the Hapag-Lloyd flight and relayed what I knew. decision making,
Always a pleasure to hear about accidents that I've never heard about. Crazy problems, but great outcome for all involved. Keep up the great work, sir. These videos are honestly the best of their kind.... Hands down. Loyal fan right here.
Dear Lorenzo Alba: What I like about this channel is that many of the incidents reported here, although critical, often resulted in no deaths. This video is an example of that. Almost all other such channels focus on the most horrendous airliner incidents that always result in many death. This channel renews my faith in the airline industry at least a little bit. It has shown me several instances where many deaths could've occurred but didn't because of systems that were in place and the basic professional competence of the people involved. Even the Patently STUPID Pilot in this report was competent enough to avoid killing everyone onboard, although that could've easily happened.
In the end eveyone is smarter. This accident was such a great opportunity to learn. Noone died...even better. I am thankful that every airline- pilot could learn from this accident that did not claim a single life.
They were so close to making it! Had they landed, we'd hear them contacting ground asking for a tug for taxi due to a landing gear malfunction and that they would be 'shutting down'. :P
FMC Fuel predictions cannot be used under a non-normal configuration. e.g. one engine inoperative, landing gear extended, etc. (I don’t know Airbus, but actually this is written on Boeing’s QRH). The Captain should have known this. Unbelievable.
This is similar to the United Airlines flight from 1978. Landing gear wouldn’t go down and the pilot fiddled with this issue at length until they ran out of gas and crashed near Portland, Or airport.
There is one (@ least) instance of a landing gear indicator light having burned out and the crew flying the aircraft into the ground while attempting to troubleshoot the issue :(
Fam, wth! How did they not realise that with the landing gear extended, the FMS would never give them correct estimations...it's one of the basics that i learned while first starting off in flight school. Now it's pretty easy thing to remember, that with the gear in an extended position, the drag would be much higher than normal, which inturn will burn more fuel, and even then, the pilot's calculations were all over the place. Btw, this video came up in my recommended videos part, and i have to say, very well done "Airspace".
But here's the thing: shouldn't the flight management system know [1] how much fuel is remaining, and [2] how fast the plane is currently burning it? Regardless of what the manufacturer's engineers programmed into the system for various scenarios, surely the system knows what the current burn rate is? Then it's just a simple calculation to see how much time (and distance) you have left. Not that the pilots weren't negligent, but their system should have easily been able to tell them how much time and distance they had left at any given moment.
@@AirspaceVideos : Thanks for the quick reply. 🙂 I must say, being such a simple calculation, it boggles my mind that Airbus's sophisticated FMS can't do a simple math calculation that any elementary school student could do! WTF!?
To me the most impressive part of this accident is how the landing gear down on just one side increased the fuel consumption by 60%. It's pretty small compared to the rest of the plane, and yet "only" adding this amount of drag destroyed its fuel efficiency. It really shows how well the plane cuts through the air in the first place.
I'm now, near the end of the video, seriously considering the Captain must have suffered a mild stroke. Not serious enough to alarm the First Officer or anyone else, but his actions are hard to explain rationally and become even harder to explain the further they got. Also note how this company never trained their crews according to crew resource management. I wonder if they even informed the passengers about the problems they were having?
This video should be used as a training tool for trainee airline pilots..... as a lesson for "What NOT to do when you know that you can't get the landing gear up and you have a fuel issue." I think that if you have ANY issue that has the potential to cause an aircraft crash...... YOU GET THE AIRCRAFT ON THE GROUND, ASAP, AT THE CLOSEST AIRPORT AVAILABLE!!!!
Actually, I recognise hapag-lloyd quite well. You see it on cargo containers everywhere, even here in India on freight trains. Logistically huge company.
I'm just starting flight training and even I know you don't get that landing gear up you're having incredible drag I would have turned around and landed it safe fix his thing
I am late with this comment. I "started" my flight training 45 years ago and have been in the industry (flying) ever since. Do not EVER forget what you learn in your primary flight training experience. Those fundamental lessons STILL APPLY whatever you end up flying later.
Excellent video. This case is bizarre. So many questions still lingering for me. 1. Why press on in the first place? Seems like company wouldn't want to waste all the extra $ on fuel. 2. After determining that a diversion was necessary, why not divert to an airport at the halfway point? 3. Once you have to divert a second time, why not just land somewhere close and sort things out? What's the point of getting to Vienna? 4. After realizing that fuel was critically low, why not retract the gear that is working? Seems like shedding 2 gear's worth of drag would have gotten them to the threshold. You can always put it down again once the runway is made. This isn't a typical case of get-there-itis. They knew they weren't getting to the destination early on. I just can't understand what was going through the captain's head that lead to these decisions.
Thanks :) I'll try to answer as best as I can... 1.) good question. One reason might be that it is easier to pick up passengers closer to the home base. Still, that's a weak explanation. 2.) See 1, but yeah, that would've been very reasonable. 3.) I can't explain that, it's beyond me. I would have returned to chania of not overweight and maintenance was present there, or otherwise divert to a major airport with good maintenance capacity (athens, zagreb, belgrade...) 4.) good idea. but they probably were overwhelmed by the workload. And yeah, this is a severe case of mission focus. It is really curious that they continued on for so long.
@@AirspaceVideos Thanks for the reply! And for confirming my suspicions that their ADM doesn't make sense from the perspective of airline operations either. As a GA pilot, I can't figure out where the pressure came from to go as far as they could on their available fuel. I've made fuel diversions enroute before, and I just picked the cheapest FBO on my route with an approach that wasn't going to add 20 minutes. Not because I was deliberately trying to be safe, I just didn't feel any pressure to use every last drop once getting to my destination was no longer viable. Great work as always. Keep it up! I've watched all your videos and have been anxiously awaiting each new one for the last few weeks. I've shared your channel with a couple of my pilot friends.
@@AirspaceVideos only answer is, they must have been very sure what they were doing was safe...(why? that is beyond me) as for halfway point, they probably did want to land inside of Germany and it's efficient rail network... Zagreb is pretty hard to get out of except by airplane, maybe they were hoping some passengers would just use rail to continue to their destination... Vienna may have thesame perks, but its much more vague to me why they wanted to continue to Vienna.
Being someone myself who has run out of gas, I will at least say that it was when pulling into the gas station every time in the car. On my motorcycle, there was no fuel gauge but there was a half gallon of back-up fuel and all you had to do was switch a lever over to access it and then I'd go to the nearly gas station after that. I will say that I switched it over on the freeway a couple of times, which was incredibly dangerous but it always happened when I was in the fast lane and it was also unsafe to try to move to the shoulder without power considering how fast the other cars were going and the fact that there was no way for them to know my engine had stopped. However, nothing is more dangerous than not having enough gas while one is flying through the air and it's not like there aren't airports all over the place, even if they aren't ideal. Some of the gas stations I had to stop at in fuel emergencies had expensive prices but that's what you get for getting to the point that you run out of gas.
The airbus manuals state that the fuel predictions in the FMC cannot be relied upon when flying with the gear down. This is pretty basic stuff as the drag the gear produces is pretty dramatic.
Is this sort of thing common in Europe? I just watched Mentour Pilots discussion about the crew that had an engine fail right after takeoff, and proceeded to similarly fly for hours, never declaring an emergency, and similarly screwing up fuel calculations. Why would this crew attempt to fly on to their destination with the landing gear stuck down? On top of the excess drag and fuel burn, they are limited in speed and altitude. Because flying too fast will damage the undercarriage. Isn't normal procedure in this sort of gear failure to immediately contact ATC, then find a safe space to slowly circle to burn off fuel until you can get down to a safe landing weight, and then land, typically at the airport you took off from?
How could a pilot continue flying towards the destination if he knows that there is a problem with the landing gear??? This is nuts!!!! You can't effectively fly with landing gear extended!!!
There’s something to be said about the old adage that men more frequently run out of gas, thinking they can eek out the last little bit and make it to the next stop. Women are purportedly much more cautious, and will fill up well before necessary. As a male, I can admit that I have cut it close before lol. But coasting to the side of the road is one thing. Falling out of the sky is entirely another!
I do not fly the Airbus. Only late in my career was flying an Airbus even a possibility when eventually the airline I fly for introduced the model into our fleet. By that time in my career it did not make sense for me to change types (my age, schedules, domiciles and seniority issues). it's a bit of a shame as I think I would have liked the opportunity to learn and fly the Airbus. In the Boeing 737 Quick Reference Handbook (current aircraft flown) there are multiple warnings informing the flight crew not to rely on FMC (Flight Management Computer) fuel prediction when dealing with abnormal drag configurations (flap, slat or gear abnormalities). Not to understand that fuel prediction values derived from an FMC/FMS are based on known drag profiles is a fundamental error. Anything that alters the drag profile introduces an error into the fuel predictions. You (Airspace) of course PERFECTLY pointed this out in your video. It is shocking that the commander based his decisions on faulty assumptions and the First Officer was unable to convince him of the folly of pressing on. Fortunately everybody survived when the jet arrived meters short of the runway instead of someplace else less suitable. In aviation; "what I do not know, do not understand or cannot do CAN hurt me!" "No brains-no headaches" is a funny saying, but it doesn't really apply. I am not implying the commander "has no brains" or is stupid, I am certain he is not. However his not understanding the limitations of the "magic boxes" had tragic consequences. -Respectfully
In the old days, the gear could be manually retracted (usually by a sweaty engineer in the cockpit/hole) using a simple ratchet tool and muscle. Was that not an option on the A310?
One question, please. What would have been the company punishment for returning immediately to the departure airport when the gear failed to retract? Excellent presentation of facts, thank-you.
Probably nothing, as major mechanical malfunction is generally not held against the pilot. But they would probably have had to spend an hour or two circling the airport burning off fuel to get down to a safe landing weight. The big problem with "gear stuck down" is you don't know what's going on there. Is it a bad sensor? A minor malfunction? Is the gear in a locked position? Can you in fact land on it? It's the kind of thing you want to be talking about with both ATC and your ground people. They may not insist you return to your airport of origin, but probably want to put you down at the best alternative. Possibly wanting longer runways and more advanced emergency services.
Amazing video as always! But you properly butchered Chania. It’s pronounced like Hania . It’s a Ha sound. Hope this helps in the future. Cheers from Greece
If my car ran out of gas, the worst case scenario would be to walk to a gas station, fill a small canister with enough gas so I can drive the car there and fill it up all the way. A friend of mine who owns a Tesla did not have this luxurious convenience when his battery on wheels ran out of electricity. He had to call a tow truck and had to bring the car to the 'watering hole', also he had to pay the tow truck out of his own pocket, which is more expensive than a canister. Anyways, I wonder if the captain was coming down hard on himself after the entire ordeal when he reconsidered his options. Obviously, the first one would have been to turn around after the landing gear failure, or, at the latest having diverted to Zagreb to refuel and not total the plane in Vienna and after a few fixes the plane would have been back in service in no time. Also, if airplanes were to go electric in the future - God forbid - imagine if an airplane ran out of electricity over the Pacific and had to divert to a small airport on a small island that would have no electric charging station, imagine the logistics involved in getting the plane going again. Great video once again, keep 'em coming!
interesting questions indeed! I've always wondered how one runs out of gas in a tesla. I mean, doesn't it even consider where your next charging station is along your route?
The future of flying is electric. But it is still a long way to go. :) also, if the tiny island has an airport, they most certainly have electricity. If they do not have electricity, why would they have jet fuel?
My mic has an integrated one, and I have purchased another one to put in front of it as well (its in use since 2 vids now). I suspect it's because my mic is a USB-mic...
Insane, never heard such a crazy story about pilot decisions. Also, I thought it wasn’t allowed in general to continue flight with extended gear? They should return back to their origin airport right?
Continuing flight with extended landing gear … certainly is part of normal operations (as is reaching normal cruising altitude) if you fly a Ju52/3m or a Cessna 172 or any other fixed landing gear plane. Not many big jet airliners amongst the list, though.
There are tables given under the " gear down " section for all phases of flight..dunno if this was in their manuals way back then..in either case it's good to know roughly how much EXTRA fuel you're burning with the gear(s) hanging out and figure out if you ll make it to your intended airport.
As I remember, the press glorified the pilots for bringing their passengers safely to the ground, no word on the pilots screwing it up in the first place. I learned from that, not to believe a word on an airplane incident in the press.
How can a pilot be so extremely stupid and think that the FMS will take into account the extended gear? Every idiot would assume that such a special case is not modeled in the software. Good video!
The after story is , that the crew sat in the seats to be quiet thinking that the cockpit voice recording still was running. They didn’t move a switch and did not say a word. Obviously the cabin was evacuated.
Lucky nobody died! Hadn`t heard of this accident so subscribed to channel, but, PLEASE show simulations rather than stock videos of aircraft - I live 5 miles from LHR so if i were so inclined I could see `planes landing/taking off every day - I don`t!
So they continued the flight after having known that landing gear couldn't be retracted they were also guessing wether FMS is going to include landing gear abnormality or not
what speed were they flying... because if I remember correctly the extended gear Vmax on an A310 is 240knots, way bellow the cruising speed, especially at 31000ft
When exactly did they notice the landing gear wasn't coming up? I'd have done a fly by the tower of the departure airport, to get a visual inspection. But I'm no pilot 😅😆
no, they had a valid indication confirmed by two indepenent sources (both landing gear control systems). A flyby would have brought no new information.
I think but im not sure airliners are coated or painted with a special substance to aid fuel efficiency these days. Not sure on that but I did hear that somewhere.
Hapag-Lloyd? As in "the second largest container shipping company in the world"? They have an airline? Didn't they use to be the biggest, before MSC, before Maersk?
Striking behavior from the crew, specially captain. Unbelievable. FL310 (beyond what the ref hand book graphs could show even) with the gear down and excess fuel burn. Endangered the rest of the crew and passengers. They passed over so many airports they could have landed at. Again I wish the FO had asserted himself earlier, declared an emergency, taken control and diverted the airplane. This issue of the FO not asserting is an ongoing human factors issue I feel. How much time is spent addressing this during airline pilot training? If only they'd dumped fuel and landed back in Greece.
Nah, I think they needed a good ALT+F4... as in those who would not think of drag due to the landing gear being out causing the extra gas usage probably shouldn't be flying...
When I’ve run out of gas on the road I park on the shoulder, set my flashers, and walk to the nearest filling station with my jerrycan. Obviously the pilot should have parked on the shoulder and .........
08:45 "...increases fuel consumption by a whopping 180%..." The plane burns almost three times as much fuel with the gear extended? The 100 it would burn in clean flight PLUS ("increases") the 180 MORE with gear down? It's inconceivable that the pilots would not notice or fret about fuel being consumed at nearly triple the rate. And wouldn't the power settings v the aircraft's performance have been so odd as to be a constant reminder of the situation? I'd look for a financial or personal reason why the captain was so reluctant to face the enormity of the situation until it was too late. What was his or her punishment for causing this loss?
unbelievable, but true, yes. The captain's license was revoked and he was sentenced to 6 months on parole due to "dangerous interference with commerical aviation"
The captain got what he deserved. He could have killed everyone on board through his reckless negligence and lack of cognitive function. Hope he is not still flying commercial aircraft. A toy drone should be his limit.
Look at your fuel burn first hour and take a wild guess.. what it will be on hour 2. I would think you would want to go back and stay on one of the Greek Islands another day... maybe not.
Congratulations to that pilot. plane written off, got 6 months jail. Luckily nobody die,only several got slightly injury if not maybe got 60 months in jail
Just a tip; I really like your videos, but the soundtrack makes it hard to watch. This is not a Sam Harris motivational speech, but still my existential crisis kicks in. Just a suggestion, as stated I really enjoy all other aspects of your videos!
Not sure what purpose is served by charging the captain with a criminal offence. It's not as if this pilot intentionally crashed his plane. He clearly displayed a lack of competence, and exercised poor judgement, but the threat of prison is not going to make pilots more competent or better able to make decisions. Clearly, he had to lose his licence, and he did. That should have been the end of it as far as he was concerned.
they could have just returned to chania itself quick why continue i guess because weight and time and the convenience of a airport on route it burns more fuel on way decrease planning etc
Great video - until stock footage strikes again :) The pilot was prosecuted in Hannover, showing a US court is quite strange ... IMHO there is no need to have footage for absolutely everything, landing planes of the same type are just fine, and never too much :)
I'm constantly trying to improve the stock footage, but it is hard to come by. And I get the same amount of people asking for less planes, more relevant planes, only airlines that matter, only sim footage... you get the idea, and I cant make it right for everyone :) If you have a good idea as to where I could get better stock footage, let me know!
@@AirspaceVideos I'd prefer fewer clips of random planes landing, but your animations, maps, and other stock footage keep that from being distracting. I really enjoy your videos!
@@AirspaceVideos I’d definitely return. Waiting a week in a Greek island hotel while engineering get the parts out and fix it....sounds good to me. In all’s seriousness, I’d have thought Athens a good bet too.
I am a mere glider pilot but my friends who would like to fly with me keep bugging me to get a tandem licence. Me: nope, in case I make and idiotic mistake I should be the only one bearing the consequences... 😃
This one is mystifying, because shouldn't the flight management system know [1] how much fuel is remaining, and [2] how fast the plane is currently burning it? Regardless of what the manufacturer's engineers programmed into the system for various scenarios, surely the system knows what the current burn rate is? Then it's just a simple calculation to see how much time (and distance) you have left. Not that the pilots weren't grossly negligent, but their system should have easily been able to tell them how much time and distance they had left at any given moment.
depending on the structure, many FMC use a constant pre-written model for fuel-burn rather than having access to the ACTUAL data... remember, the fuel-burn data on these planes is still done via mechanical dials, all values are totally analog (in a format directly unusable by computers)... at any one time, they know via a dial the fuel FLOW RATE to each engine, often no digital or automatic recording of the data exists, & the overall fuel burn is calculated manually from someone reading the mechanically shown numbers... I am not sure they could yet do live calculations in a cockpit computer size converting fuel-flow to fuel-burn is a significant operation for the onboard system, given the size of the "box" it takes a fair amount of calculation-capacity in technologies of the time...
@@stanislavkostarnov2157 : Well, I'm no expert, but this airplane -- an Airbus A310 -- was built in 1989, and Airbuses are known for being pretty advanced and high-tech and computerized. "Fly by wire" and all that. I think it's a safe bet that the actual fuel consumption rate on this aircraft was indeed recorded in digital form and used by the Flight Management Computer.
TLDR;
First officer: I am not sure we have enough fuel to reach the target airport.
Captain: We fly!
one bad decision after another, it's amazing they made it as close as they did!
Seems to be a recurring theme in aviation incidents; a chain of poor decisions that makes a bad situation worse.
The captain should have been put into prison for quite a long time.
And never behind the stick any more.
Just consider the fuel would not have lasted that long.
The passengers and the crew would have had their last flight.
And only he didn't follow true airmenship.
They should have returned when they noticed the gear problem, or, if they didn't want to be stranded in Crete, fly to Athens. Or, if they continued, land in Zagreb. Or, if even that wasn't good enough for them and the situation became critical, they could have used suitable airports on the way to Vienna like Maribor (2500 m runway) some 100-120 km from Zagreb, or in Graz (~3000 m runway) some 60 km further. A completely unnecessary crash.
Agreed, 100%
Yeah, the pilots had _plenty_ of opportunities to avoid this crash.
I agree, but with cheapo and small airlines, the pilots are under intense pressure from the management etc to only do such things when absolutely absolutely necessary. Often when looking into these matters when crashes come from pilots attempting to land at an airport when its unsafe instead of diverting etc, the main cause is policies from the upper management that instill a culture where pilots are afraid for their jobs if they waste money doing these kinds of diversions unnecessarily. It causes pilots to second guess whether the situation is truly unsafe or if they are just panicking.
When I got my cat in Belgium (I live in The Netherlands ), we were on our way back and I had the gas on the first line. I thought I’d make it to the next gasstation when a sign came up at that point. Normally about 25-50km in between.
But no gasstation ever came and my gas went into the red. More and more nervous I decided not to continue on the highway but take an exit and drive into a village as usually there is always one there. There was, I had to ask for the way but was close enough.
I felt so relieved to have found a gasstation in time! I never did that after that anymore, always filled up at the first line. I had just adopted a scared little kitty, it would have been so sad if she had to be in the car on the side of the highway 😞
aww 😺
U could maybe get a cat in the same country next time! Good luck for the future!
I am a 71 year old American who got his driver's license at age 16 in 1966. I admit that as a typical Stupid Teenager I ran out of gas a few times. But I certainly Smartened Up by the time I was 18, and It NEVER Happened Again !!! Stupid Teenagers and Mentally Challenged people not withstanding, I have NO Idea how someone can "run out of gas" per se even in an automobile, much less an airliner. You don't need a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering to figure out that an extended landing gear will cause you to use more fuel. My question is whether they did a Drug Test on this pilot after this incident. This pilot must have been high on drugs to do what he did.
Reminds me when I forgot to refuel my car in the evening although it was already on reserve. At the time, I had to drive to work the next morning, all nearby petrol stations would still be closed. My car`s board computer told me that there would be just enough fuel to make it to the place, where I worked. If possible, I didn`t want any trouble at work, so I took the risk and drove. I entered the company`s parking place with the board computer only showing 2 km left until empty. There was a gas station nearby, arround 1,5 km. But after work I decided to not take a gamble again. Instead a working collegue drove me to the petrol station to fuel a reserve canister. Damn was he making fun of me. And right he was xD.
Hello Airspace. Interesting video. I did some work regarding this accident. There are several other dimensions about this flight. Operational Control/Flight Dispatch regulations, policies and procedures and the crew assuming an improper airspeed for gear down operations as a result of how the information about the airspeed is displayed. You do mention the crew talking to the airline later in the flight about the continuation of the flight and deciding initially on Munich as the planned stopping point, then changing to Vienna, even as they were abeam Zagreb, with the low fuel warning light illuminated.
The Airbus A300-A310 series had a history of gear down problems. The airline that I worked at in the US as a flight dispatcher flew A300s. Same gear system. I had an A300 flight that departed from LGA airport, New York, to Atlanta. Similar to this flight, it could not retract the gear and it remained down. The crew contacted me on the radio, and we discussed the situation. In the flight manual there was a graph for gear down fuel consumption. I calculated it and discussed the the situation with the Captain, and we determined that if we eliminated the holding fuel of 20 minutes, and flew the airplane appropriately, that the flight should arrive in Atlanta, while still having enough for an alternate as well as reserve. But that we would check at about the halfway point, abeam Charlotte, North Carolina.
So the Captain calls me back as they are abeam Charlotte and advises that they are burning more fuel than we had estimated with the gear down, as well as that the airplane was "very noisy". So I checked the flight manual again and asked what speed they were operating at? They said "270K Indicated". But checking the flight manual, it showed 240K as recommended. I advised tha Captain and they reduced speed to 240K. It imediately significantly reduced fuel consumption and also the noise level. (The Captainsaid "That's better". The problem was that the gear down handle was placarded as 270K because that was the "maximum" gear down speed (VLE). But it was not the recommended for cruising with the gear down. With the additional fuel that the airplane had burned because of the previous higher speed, we recalculated and determined that the flight could still continue to Atlanta and land with reserve, but we would eliminate the alternate airport. This was legal as the weather was good and there were no ATC delays, and the aircraft continued and landed without further event in Atlanta. But the crew had the right information.
I later spoke with the accident investigator for the Hapag-Lloyd flight and relayed what I knew. decision making,
Thanks for the interesting read! Still, I think that doesn't change the fact that the decision making of these two was terrible.
@@AirspaceVideos : Oh, it was _definitely_ terrible! One bad decision after another.
Always a pleasure to hear about accidents that I've never heard about. Crazy problems, but great outcome for all involved. Keep up the great work, sir. These videos are honestly the best of their kind.... Hands down. Loyal fan right here.
thanks a lot :)
Not a great outcome for the captain!
Dear Lorenzo Alba: What I like about this channel is that many of the incidents reported here, although critical, often resulted in no deaths. This video is an example of that. Almost all other such channels focus on the most horrendous airliner incidents that always result in many death. This channel renews my faith in the airline industry at least a little bit. It has shown me several instances where many deaths could've occurred but didn't because of systems that were in place and the basic professional competence of the people involved. Even the Patently STUPID Pilot in this report was competent enough to avoid killing everyone onboard, although that could've easily happened.
At timestamp 0:36, Hapag-Lloyd is a known cargo shipping company.
The 5th largest in the world currently, to be exact.
And is the origins of TUI Holiday company
In the end eveyone is smarter. This accident was such a great opportunity to learn. Noone died...even better. I am thankful that every airline- pilot could learn from this accident that did not claim a single life.
Imagine wrecking a whole plane just to learn that tho
They were so close to making it! Had they landed, we'd hear them contacting ground asking for a tug for taxi due to a landing gear malfunction and that they would be 'shutting down'. :P
haha - that would be one royal cover up!
FMC Fuel predictions cannot be used under a non-normal configuration. e.g. one engine inoperative, landing gear extended, etc. (I don’t know Airbus, but actually this is written on Boeing’s QRH). The Captain should have known this. Unbelievable.
This is similar to the United Airlines flight from 1978. Landing gear wouldn’t go down and the pilot fiddled with this issue at length until they ran out of gas and crashed near Portland, Or airport.
There is one (@ least) instance of a landing gear indicator light having burned out and the crew flying the aircraft into the ground while attempting to troubleshoot the issue :(
I was living there when that happened.
Fam, wth! How did they not realise that with the landing gear extended, the FMS would never give them correct estimations...it's one of the basics that i learned while first starting off in flight school. Now it's pretty easy thing to remember, that with the gear in an extended position, the drag would be much higher than normal, which inturn will burn more fuel, and even then, the pilot's calculations were all over the place.
Btw, this video came up in my recommended videos part, and i have to say, very well done "Airspace".
who knows :) maybe we learned it because of this accident? but yeah, it's a weird one. thanks for your kind words!
Very much possible mate
But here's the thing: shouldn't the flight management system know [1] how much fuel is remaining, and [2] how fast the plane is currently burning it? Regardless of what the manufacturer's engineers programmed into the system for various scenarios, surely the system knows what the current burn rate is? Then it's just a simple calculation to see how much time (and distance) you have left.
Not that the pilots weren't negligent, but their system should have easily been able to tell them how much time and distance they had left at any given moment.
that'd be nice, yes. Unfortunately, that's not the case.
@@AirspaceVideos : Thanks for the quick reply. 🙂 I must say, being such a simple calculation, it boggles my mind that Airbus's sophisticated FMS can't do a simple math calculation that any elementary school student could do! WTF!?
Get-there-itis struck once again!
Glad no one died for it....
The landing gear is actually pretty big compare to fighters' speed brakes.
To me the most impressive part of this accident is how the landing gear down on just one side increased the fuel consumption by 60%. It's pretty small compared to the rest of the plane, and yet "only" adding this amount of drag destroyed its fuel efficiency. It really shows how well the plane cuts through the air in the first place.
I think not only the drag, it also caused a yaw, so the plane is constantly trimming just to fly straight.
I feel like the fo reading off that gear down list was him saying "dude! We have to do something!"
possible yes!
I'm now, near the end of the video, seriously considering the Captain must have suffered a mild stroke.
Not serious enough to alarm the First Officer or anyone else, but his actions are hard to explain rationally and become even harder to explain the further they got.
Also note how this company never trained their crews according to crew resource management.
I wonder if they even informed the passengers about the problems they were having?
I could've been a mild stroke,
but my money says that the pilot was high on drugs.
This video should be used as a training tool for trainee airline pilots..... as a lesson for "What NOT to do when you know that you can't get the landing gear up and you have a fuel issue."
I think that if you have ANY issue that has the potential to cause an aircraft crash...... YOU GET THE AIRCRAFT ON THE GROUND, ASAP, AT THE CLOSEST AIRPORT AVAILABLE!!!!
Ive been waiting for this!
Love the new intro animation :) cheers buddy!
You're the first to notice it 😄 thank you!
Actually, I recognise hapag-lloyd quite well. You see it on cargo containers everywhere, even here in India on freight trains. Logistically huge company.
I'm just starting flight training and even I know you don't get that landing gear up you're having incredible drag I would have turned around and landed it safe fix his thing
Experienced pilots in the actual incident: "Nah, it's fine."
I am late with this comment. I "started" my flight training 45 years ago and have been in the industry (flying) ever since. Do not EVER forget what you learn in your primary flight training experience. Those fundamental lessons STILL APPLY whatever you end up flying later.
I think it is incredible that they managed to fly that big bird like a glider and somehow still land at the airport.
Excellent video. This case is bizarre. So many questions still lingering for me.
1. Why press on in the first place? Seems like company wouldn't want to waste all the extra $ on fuel.
2. After determining that a diversion was necessary, why not divert to an airport at the halfway point?
3. Once you have to divert a second time, why not just land somewhere close and sort things out? What's the point of getting to Vienna?
4. After realizing that fuel was critically low, why not retract the gear that is working? Seems like shedding 2 gear's worth of drag would have gotten them to the threshold. You can always put it down again once the runway is made.
This isn't a typical case of get-there-itis. They knew they weren't getting to the destination early on. I just can't understand what was going through the captain's head that lead to these decisions.
Thanks :) I'll try to answer as best as I can...
1.) good question. One reason might be that it is easier to pick up passengers closer to the home base. Still, that's a weak explanation.
2.) See 1, but yeah, that would've been very reasonable.
3.) I can't explain that, it's beyond me. I would have returned to chania of not overweight and maintenance was present there, or otherwise divert to a major airport with good maintenance capacity (athens, zagreb, belgrade...)
4.) good idea. but they probably were overwhelmed by the workload.
And yeah, this is a severe case of mission focus. It is really curious that they continued on for so long.
@@AirspaceVideos Thanks for the reply! And for confirming my suspicions that their ADM doesn't make sense from the perspective of airline operations either. As a GA pilot, I can't figure out where the pressure came from to go as far as they could on their available fuel. I've made fuel diversions enroute before, and I just picked the cheapest FBO on my route with an approach that wasn't going to add 20 minutes. Not because I was deliberately trying to be safe, I just didn't feel any pressure to use every last drop once getting to my destination was no longer viable.
Great work as always. Keep it up! I've watched all your videos and have been anxiously awaiting each new one for the last few weeks. I've shared your channel with a couple of my pilot friends.
True, and the good old phrase "better safe than sorry" would have applied here, too. Thanks, I'm glad you like my content :)
@@AirspaceVideos only answer is, they must have been very sure what they were doing was safe...(why? that is beyond me) as for halfway point, they probably did want to land inside of Germany and it's efficient rail network... Zagreb is pretty hard to get out of except by airplane, maybe they were hoping some passengers would just use rail to continue to their destination... Vienna may have thesame perks, but its much more vague to me why they wanted to continue to Vienna.
Being someone myself who has run out of gas, I will at least say that it was when pulling into the gas station every time in the car. On my motorcycle, there was no fuel gauge but there was a half gallon of back-up fuel and all you had to do was switch a lever over to access it and then I'd go to the nearly gas station after that. I will say that I switched it over on the freeway a couple of times, which was incredibly dangerous but it always happened when I was in the fast lane and it was also unsafe to try to move to the shoulder without power considering how fast the other cars were going and the fact that there was no way for them to know my engine had stopped. However, nothing is more dangerous than not having enough gas while one is flying through the air and it's not like there aren't airports all over the place, even if they aren't ideal. Some of the gas stations I had to stop at in fuel emergencies had expensive prices but that's what you get for getting to the point that you run out of gas.
The only channel I listen to.
that's too bad, there are many good channels out there
@@IndianaDiecastRacing ok
The airbus manuals state that the fuel predictions in the FMC cannot be relied upon when flying with the gear down. This is pretty basic stuff as the drag the gear produces is pretty dramatic.
True, but was that the case already before this accident? I agree, it's basic knowledge, but just to play devil's advocate?
Is this sort of thing common in Europe? I just watched Mentour Pilots discussion about the crew that had an engine fail right after takeoff, and proceeded to similarly fly for hours, never declaring an emergency, and similarly screwing up fuel calculations. Why would this crew attempt to fly on to their destination with the landing gear stuck down? On top of the excess drag and fuel burn, they are limited in speed and altitude. Because flying too fast will damage the undercarriage. Isn't normal procedure in this sort of gear failure to immediately contact ATC, then find a safe space to slowly circle to burn off fuel until you can get down to a safe landing weight, and then land, typically at the airport you took off from?
it is not, the pilots in question have been suspended.
avherald.com/h?article=4cbe8434
This is a very informative video. Thank you for sharing!
How could a pilot continue flying towards the destination if he knows that there is a problem with the landing gear??? This is nuts!!!! You can't effectively fly with landing gear extended!!!
You can, provided you account for the fuel.
@@peteconrad2077 don’t landing gear ‘never exceed speed limits’ that would force pilots to fly excessively slow compared to normal cruise flight?
@@jonasbaine3538 yes. In most aircraft you’d have to fly slower and lower.
There’s something to be said about the old adage that men more frequently run out of gas, thinking they can eek out the last little bit and make it to the next stop. Women are purportedly much more cautious, and will fill up well before necessary. As a male, I can admit that I have cut it close before lol. But coasting to the side of the road is one thing. Falling out of the sky is entirely another!
Wouldn't say so. I personally saw more instances of women's getting of gas than men
I do not fly the Airbus. Only late in my career was flying an Airbus even a possibility when eventually the airline I fly for introduced the model into our fleet. By that time in my career it did not make sense for me to change types (my age, schedules, domiciles and seniority issues). it's a bit of a shame as I think I would have liked the opportunity to learn and fly the Airbus. In the Boeing 737 Quick Reference Handbook (current aircraft flown) there are multiple warnings informing the flight crew not to rely on FMC (Flight Management Computer) fuel prediction when dealing with abnormal drag configurations (flap, slat or gear abnormalities). Not to understand that fuel prediction values derived from an FMC/FMS are based on known drag profiles is a fundamental error. Anything that alters the drag profile introduces an error into the fuel predictions. You (Airspace) of course PERFECTLY pointed this out in your video. It is shocking that the commander based his decisions on faulty assumptions and the First Officer was unable to convince him of the folly of pressing on. Fortunately everybody survived when the jet arrived meters short of the runway instead of someplace else less suitable. In aviation; "what I do not know, do not understand or cannot do CAN hurt me!" "No brains-no headaches" is a funny saying, but it doesn't really apply. I am not implying the commander "has no brains" or is stupid, I am certain he is not. However his not understanding the limitations of the "magic boxes" had tragic consequences.
-Respectfully
In the old days, the gear could be manually retracted (usually by a sweaty engineer in the cockpit/hole) using a simple ratchet tool and muscle. Was that not an option on the A310?
definitely not!
At least the court made better decisions than the pilots.
What happened to the First Officer?
So they flew with the landing gear extended? Wow 😯
That’s fine.....provided they recalculate the fuel requirement using the increased consumption from the performance manual.
Thank you!😀
you're welcome!
One question, please.
What would have been the company punishment for returning immediately
to the departure airport when the gear failed to retract?
Excellent presentation of facts, thank-you.
none at all! That is always possible.
Probably nothing, as major mechanical malfunction is generally not held against the pilot. But they would probably have had to spend an hour or two circling the airport burning off fuel to get down to a safe landing weight. The big problem with "gear stuck down" is you don't know what's going on there. Is it a bad sensor? A minor malfunction? Is the gear in a locked position? Can you in fact land on it? It's the kind of thing you want to be talking about with both ATC and your ground people. They may not insist you return to your airport of origin, but probably want to put you down at the best alternative. Possibly wanting longer runways and more advanced emergency services.
Definitely one of the most bizarre crashes I’ve even heard off
I love your accent Airspace, where are you from!
haha thanks :) Switzerland!
Amazing video as always! But you properly butchered Chania. It’s pronounced like Hania . It’s a Ha sound. Hope this helps in the future. Cheers from Greece
my goodness, sorry 😄 I'll have myself some nice tsatsiki soon to make uf for it!
@@AirspaceVideos don't forget, plenty of garlic!!
for sure 😁
Excellent 👌 video ..
As you stated they did not use common sense regarding fuel consumption it is only sheer luck that they managed to land.
Music is too soothing.
I feel like sleeping.
Btw the captain is always right !!! 😊
If my car ran out of gas, the worst case scenario would be to walk to a gas station, fill a small canister with enough gas so I can drive the car there and fill it up all the way. A friend of mine who owns a Tesla did not have this luxurious convenience when his battery on wheels ran out of electricity. He had to call a tow truck and had to bring the car to the 'watering hole', also he had to pay the tow truck out of his own pocket, which is more expensive than a canister.
Anyways, I wonder if the captain was coming down hard on himself after the entire ordeal when he reconsidered his options. Obviously, the first one would have been to turn around after the landing gear failure, or, at the latest having diverted to Zagreb to refuel and not total the plane in Vienna and after a few fixes the plane would have been back in service in no time. Also, if airplanes were to go electric in the future - God forbid - imagine if an airplane ran out of electricity over the Pacific and had to divert to a small airport on a small island that would have no electric charging station, imagine the logistics involved in getting the plane going again. Great video once again, keep 'em coming!
interesting questions indeed! I've always wondered how one runs out of gas in a tesla. I mean, doesn't it even consider where your next charging station is along your route?
The future of flying is electric. But it is still a long way to go. :) also, if the tiny island has an airport, they most certainly have electricity. If they do not have electricity, why would they have jet fuel?
I'm glad I've bought myself a bag of crisps
enjoy!
@@AirspaceVideos i definitely did
The popping is less prevalent, but still there. Do u have a pop filter?
My mic has an integrated one, and I have purchased another one to put in front of it as well (its in use since 2 vids now). I suspect it's because my mic is a USB-mic...
Did I hear this correctly? The gear didn’t come up after take off and they said “fuck it, it’s not far”. 😆
pretty much, yes
Insane, never heard such a crazy story about pilot decisions. Also, I thought it wasn’t allowed in general to continue flight with extended gear? They should return back to their origin airport right?
Well not exactly. There's no rule against flight with extended landing gear per se. It's just not very wise 99.9% of the time!
@@AirspaceVideos but you can’t reach cruising altitude with extended gear right?
exactly, they could omly reach 31000ft instead of the normal ~39000
Continuing flight with extended landing gear … certainly is part of normal operations (as is reaching normal cruising altitude) if you fly a Ju52/3m or a Cessna 172 or any other fixed landing gear plane. Not many big jet airliners amongst the list, though.
There are tables given under the " gear down " section for all phases of flight..dunno if this was in their manuals way back then..in either case it's good to know roughly how much EXTRA fuel you're burning with the gear(s) hanging out and figure out if you ll make it to your intended airport.
Thanks for including the punishment of the captain.
As I remember, the press glorified the pilots for bringing their passengers safely to the ground, no word on the pilots screwing it up in the first place. I learned from that, not to believe a word on an airplane incident in the press.
They not make next gas station... and no option to make stop on shoulder. Priceless.
How can a pilot be so extremely stupid and think that the FMS will take into account the extended gear? Every idiot would assume that such a special case is not modeled in the software. Good video!
Great technical report, but why do you show footage of random aircraft/airlines?
The after story is , that the crew sat in the seats to be quiet thinking that the cockpit voice recording still was running.
They didn’t move a switch and did not say a word. Obviously the cabin was evacuated.
They always hit the localizer antenna
Well it sits relight in front of the runway so no surprise. Actually the one in front of the runway is the one for the other end.
Lucky nobody died! Hadn`t heard of this accident so subscribed to channel, but, PLEASE show simulations rather than stock videos of aircraft - I live 5 miles from LHR so if i were so inclined I could see `planes landing/taking off every day - I don`t!
Wish they said the # passengers and # of survivors.
I remember Hapag-Lloyd
Nice music background, interesting documentary. But profesional voice narrator would make the video even better.
working on it 🙃
So they continued the flight after having known that landing gear couldn't be retracted
they were also guessing wether FMS is going to include landing gear abnormality or not
what speed were they flying... because if I remember correctly the extended gear Vmax on an A310 is 240knots, way bellow the cruising speed, especially at 31000ft
When exactly did they notice the landing gear wasn't coming up?
I'd have done a fly by the tower of the departure airport, to get a visual inspection.
But I'm no pilot 😅😆
immediately after take off
@@AirspaceVideos
Then it seems that a fly by would've been very useful, wouldn't you agree?
no, they had a valid indication confirmed by two indepenent sources (both landing gear control systems). A flyby would have brought no new information.
@@AirspaceVideos
Ooooooh, I see
Thanks for explaining!! ^^
I think but im not sure airliners are coated or painted with a special substance to aid fuel efficiency these days. Not sure on that but I did hear that somewhere.
Captain was a total bozo! This guy shouldn't be allowed to drive a bicycle!
Hapag-Lloyd? As in "the second largest container shipping company in the world"? They have an airline? Didn't they use to be the biggest, before MSC, before Maersk?
Not too bright of a move.
Pilot to 1st officer,
Put the landing gear chapter away, she still runs jus fine....
Striking behavior from the crew, specially captain. Unbelievable. FL310 (beyond what the ref hand book graphs could show even) with the gear down and excess fuel burn. Endangered the rest of the crew and passengers. They passed over so many airports they could have landed at. Again I wish the FO had asserted himself earlier, declared an emergency, taken control and diverted the airplane. This issue of the FO not asserting is an ongoing human factors issue I feel. How much time is spent addressing this during airline pilot training? If only they'd dumped fuel and landed back in Greece.
Well just press the "F" key on the keyboard. Just kidding!
Nah, I think they needed a good ALT+F4... as in those who would not think of drag due to the landing gear being out causing the extra gas usage probably shouldn't be flying...
I wonder what’s the ratio of over reliance in aircraft systems between Airbus and Boeing
So, it is ok to actually commit to flying to your destination with a hanging landing gear? How can that be?
no, it's most certainly not, usually!
@@AirspaceVideos Then it is a case of get-home-itis it seems. Holy crap, those people were lucky it didn't end up a lot, lot worse.
When I’ve run out of gas on the road I park on the shoulder, set my flashers, and walk to the nearest filling station with my jerrycan. Obviously the pilot should have parked on the shoulder and .........
and yeah :)
Why would they continue on to their destination if the landing gear wouldn't freaking retract?
🤷🏼♂️
08:45 "...increases fuel consumption by a whopping 180%..." The plane burns almost three times as much fuel with the gear extended? The 100 it would burn in clean flight PLUS ("increases") the 180 MORE with gear down? It's inconceivable that the pilots would not notice or fret about fuel being consumed at nearly triple the rate. And wouldn't the power settings v the aircraft's performance have been so odd as to be a constant reminder of the situation? I'd look for a financial or personal reason why the captain was so reluctant to face the enormity of the situation until it was too late. What was his or her punishment for causing this loss?
unbelievable, but true, yes.
The captain's license was revoked and he was sentenced to 6 months on parole due to "dangerous interference with commerical aviation"
@@AirspaceVideos Thank you for the reply.
Sooo, pull up left and front gear, and minimize drag.
Why they did not started the APU when 800KGs of fuel was left?
The technical reason why the landing gear wouldn't come up: it was stuck.
wow!
The captain got what he deserved. He could have killed everyone on board through his reckless negligence and lack of cognitive function. Hope he is not still flying commercial aircraft. A toy drone should be his limit.
Look at your fuel burn first hour and take a wild guess.. what it will be on hour 2. I would think you would want to go back and stay on one of the Greek Islands another day... maybe not.
I hope these pilots are no longer flying ?
How come the gear did not tear off in cruise?
Congratulations to that pilot. plane written off, got 6 months jail. Luckily nobody die,only several got slightly injury if not maybe got 60 months in jail
Just a tip; I really like your videos, but the soundtrack makes it hard to watch. This is not a Sam Harris motivational speech, but still my existential crisis kicks in.
Just a suggestion, as stated I really enjoy all other aspects of your videos!
Thanks, I am continuously trying to improve thr audio. Newer videos have different and more subdued tracks in the background
Fuel flow is 180% more while gears deployed than normal
Get there-itis!
Not sure what purpose is served by charging the captain with a criminal offence. It's not as if this pilot intentionally crashed his plane. He clearly displayed a lack of competence, and exercised poor judgement, but the threat of prison is not going to make pilots more competent or better able to make decisions. Clearly, he had to lose his licence, and he did. That should have been the end of it as far as he was concerned.
they could have just returned to chania itself quick why continue i guess because weight and time and the convenience of a airport on route it burns more fuel on way decrease planning etc
Great video - until stock footage strikes again :) The pilot was prosecuted in Hannover, showing a US court is quite strange ... IMHO there is no need to have footage for absolutely everything, landing planes of the same type are just fine, and never too much :)
I'm constantly trying to improve the stock footage, but it is hard to come by. And I get the same amount of people asking for less planes, more relevant planes, only airlines that matter, only sim footage... you get the idea, and I cant make it right for everyone :) If you have a good idea as to where I could get better stock footage, let me know!
@@AirspaceVideos Asking for less planes ? What's wrong with those people ? :) :)
who knows 😄
@@AirspaceVideos I'd prefer fewer clips of random planes landing, but your animations, maps, and other stock footage keep that from being distracting. I really enjoy your videos!
what would you rather have, then? Just wondering how I can improve.
I suspect the better decision would have been to dump fuel and return to Chania. Any airline pilots out there want to comment?
me, yes - chania may not be the best choice (small airport, maybe limited engineering?). But going to athens for example might have been a great idea!
@@AirspaceVideos I’d definitely return. Waiting a week in a Greek island hotel while engineering get the parts out and fix it....sounds good to me. In all’s seriousness, I’d have thought Athens a good bet too.
I thought I was watching the Gimli glider
almost!
No, those guys knew how to fly.
@@maxart3392 : True, but they made some bad decisions early on, not the least of which was to takeoff without _any_ functioning fuel gauges!
Remind me the guys that continued in one engine for two hours. If your gonna to do wrong, do it all the way.
right, another strange case!
@@AirspaceVideos Captain: I dont trust EASA or FAA, I was checking the ETOPS rating myself LOL.
"and clearly they have no idea how good those little engines are" ;)
Oh yeah, smartwings, samos-prague. That was the D.F.O. too as captain and i believe he is still flying. Corrupt fuckers!
Didn’t they also have a cargo company
Ha-NYA! :)
What they did was CRIMINAL
The Captain is now a baggage handler
I am a mere glider pilot but my friends who would like to fly with me keep bugging me to get a tandem licence. Me: nope, in case I make and idiotic mistake I should be the only one bearing the consequences... 😃
No miracle on the Hudson here
Why do you say that ? No one was killed in this incident.
@@Hugh1966 I was referring to the pilot.
This one is mystifying, because shouldn't the flight management system know [1] how much fuel is remaining, and [2] how fast the plane is currently burning it?
Regardless of what the manufacturer's engineers programmed into the system for various scenarios, surely the system knows what the current burn rate is? Then it's just a simple calculation to see how much time (and distance) you have left.
Not that the pilots weren't grossly negligent, but their system should have easily been able to tell them how much time and distance they had left at any given moment.
depending on the structure,
many FMC use a constant pre-written model for fuel-burn rather than having access to the ACTUAL data... remember, the fuel-burn data on these planes is still done via mechanical dials, all values are totally analog (in a format directly unusable by computers)... at any one time, they know via a dial the fuel FLOW RATE to each engine, often no digital or automatic recording of the data exists, & the overall fuel burn is calculated manually from someone reading the mechanically shown numbers...
I am not sure they could yet do live calculations in a cockpit computer size
converting fuel-flow to fuel-burn is a significant operation for the onboard system, given the size of the "box" it takes a fair amount of calculation-capacity in technologies of the time...
@@stanislavkostarnov2157 : Well, I'm no expert, but this airplane -- an Airbus A310 -- was built in 1989, and Airbuses are known for being pretty advanced and high-tech and computerized. "Fly by wire" and all that. I think it's a safe bet that the actual fuel consumption rate on this aircraft was indeed recorded in digital form and used by the Flight Management Computer.
@@Milesco 1989 sounds new for an A310.... maybe so
That's Air Bus👹👹👹
Exceptionally poor airmanship.