Something Is Wrong With These Planes

Brace For Impact

British Airways crash at Heathrow in 2008

Some time back in the 1980’s, a Delta Airlines flight bound to Los Angeles from Fort Lauderdale experienced inexplicably weird turbulence while it was descending to land at Dallas(a stopover). The plane couldn’t hold on and crashed just a few metres from the runway at Fortworth Airport. The mystery of its crash remained unsolved for a long time until a meteorologist made a remarkable discovery. He proposed the theory of microburst which is an unpredictable and the most poorly understood weather phenomenon even to this day. High temperature and humidity is a perfect recipe for thunderstorms which may give rise to a microburst. However, the microburst cannot be seen on weather radars or convection current monitors. Unlike other phenomena, it is a very narrow region of extreme gusts of wind pushing vertically downwards and remains active only for a few seconds. Delta Airlines flight just happened to be too unfortunate to have encountered the fury of a microburst in its path.

In 1989, a British Midland flight from London to Belfast ended up crashing on a motorway in Kegworth, killing 47 people and injuring several others on board. When the engines were operated at full thrust, the fan blades of left engine fractured due to a design flaw by Boeing 737 engineers. The pilots diagnosed the malfunctioning engine incorrectly and disengaged the properly working right engine instead of switching off the left one. After ten minutes, the left engine ignited and stopped altogether. Now the pilots believed that they were out of both engines and couldn’t save their rapidly falling plane. Had the pilots diagnosed the problem engine correctly either by reading the Engine Instrument System properly or by having a quick talk with any of the crew members who had seen the left engine on fire, the disaster could have been averted.  

Ice also plays a major role in bringing down huge passenger planes. In 2009, petot sensors on an Air France flight from Rio De Janeiro to Paris froze and started narrating misleading flight information to the autopilot computers. The plane being an Airbus A380 that is designed to fly almost on its own left the pilots all confused. At last, the plane stalled and fell from the sky into the Atlantic Ocean 300 miles east off the coast of Brazil. No pilot actually flies an Airbus A380 except while taking off and landing which is close to two minutes of flight. It was concluded after investigation that the pilots were not properly trained to handle emergencies on board the Airbus, accustomed as they were to routine automated flying. After this horrendous accident, Airbus came to be known as the “Scarebus” as the pilots in an Airbus have little say even at the time of crisis.

In another incident, a British Airways flight from Beijing to London crashed as a result of fuel starvation due to ice. The Fuel Oil Heat Exchanger (FOHE) was clogged by ice crystals, disrupting the flow of liquid fuel into the engines and turning the state of the art Boeing 777 into a noiseless glider devoid of any forward thrust. There was little the pilots could do in such a situation.

 In 2009, a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul to Amsterdam slammed to ground from 1500 feet just when it was about to land at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. The culprit this time was a faulty Radio Altimeter that was stuck at -8 feet. When the flight was about to land, the plane lost its airspeed too quickly as it entered the Retard Mode with its nose pulled up. This configuration is attained when the airplane is just moments from touchdown but in this case the plane was 1500 feet above the ground. The pilots didn’t respond to the diminishing airspeed until the plane stalled and fell onto the ground. There was a technical fault in Radio Altimeter which was reported by many other airline operators afterwards. Sadly, it took a fatal catastrophe for Boeing to ground the 737 fleet and rectify the fault.

The jury is still out on the debate regarding the extent of automation that must be allowed in an airplane. Boeing believes that the pilots should be kept busy and involved during the entire flight so that they are well versed with all nuances of their plane and are able to better handle emergencies. On the other hand, Airbus thinks that most of the active decision making should be left to autopilot computers. There is however no denying the fact that as the planes are getting more complex and automated, pilots are forgetting the real art of maneuvering the plane in manual mode. As a result, pilots are frightened out of their wits whenever they are faced with situations a little different from what they consider routine. 

As to what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 would be clear once the blackbox and flight data recorder are recovered from the depths of the Indian Ocean. In the meantime, we shall continue to pray for the passengers and crew on board MH370. After all, hope is the fuel on which our world is running.