Air Illinois, 1983

[3WE]

http://amelia.db.erau.edu/reports/ntsb/aar/AAR85-03.pdf

I've been saving this report since AD.com, but haven't posted it, thinking folks may not be interested in old crashes.

But, it is an interesting read, and since traffic is so slow, maybe some folks might find this one interesting.

One has to wonder if several things might have made the difference.

1) Descening to 2000 ft and hopefully breaking out while you had instruments

(yes dangerous, but given that GA flies down there on clear days, you risk of smacking the radio tower might have been acceptible, even though hindsight is 20 20 here).

2) Having a flashlight available

3) (The biggie) Landing when they had fully charged batteries and an aiport 10 min away.

This crash "has happened many other times" (i.e. dead battery = no instruments = crash) but it's somewhat unusual for a professional flight crew to do such a thing.

There's some implications in there that the Captain put comleting the flight first and being ultra safe second. While I can see that, it also takes some confidence to take off on a nasty, awfully-IMC night with embedded thunderstorms when your enroute altitude is going to be between 5,000 and 9,000 feet.

It's also interesting to dissect the crash: 33-degree bank and 8-degrees nose down, and a 1/2 mile debris path. It doesn't sound like it spun in, but on the other hand, those attitudes seem just a bit too extreme to call in "under control" (at least in terms of normal airliner operations). I did not see indications that it broke up in flight from this write up.

Then again, why are you flying so so low, unless it was pitch dark outside/no lights on the ground?

Anyway- this crash makes for some good swiss cheese analysis.

[RadarContactLost]

I think they had a flashlight. The flight instruments were run off the engine generators and when they went, it was down to battery. I think this accident brought about the "standby horizon" with it's own power source. At least on the Dart Convairs, in an emergency you could get "wild" AC off the AC generators to the flight instruments and if the engine was at a cruise speed, it would keep the gyros going. I don't think the 748 had that option. Anything with Darts is going to be an electric nightmare due to the props and I'd bet this thing had rotary inverters. Doesn't seem like they understood NiCad batteries. But it all comes down the Captain pressing on when they should have turned around while they still had electric power.

[3WE]

I think they had a flashlight.

Apologies, there's some independent, yet woven thoughts here, so this may not make sense if you read it "linearly".

If they had a flashlight, shouldn't they have been able to maintain control of the aircraft then? ASI, VSI, Altimiter and Wet compass require no power at all.

However, I guess you are saying that a turn indicator, AI, a "gyrocompass" or anything that would provide halfway useable "turn/wings-level" information (or inferred bank information) was dead.

Am I unreasonable to expect a professional flight crew to be able to keep the plane upright without an AI, but WITH a turn coordinator? Maybe not, since it is proven so often that folks can not keep upright, even though they are trained to do so. (And I recognize that I may be oversimplifying that this is't the classic light plane with a mixture of suction- and electrical-powered instruments AND oversimplifying that "partial panel" in the real world is a lot harder than "partial panel" in a training environment)

If they HAD a flashlight, I would say that they crashed out of control and NOT CFIT since a flashlight + an altimiter should "theoretically" prevent that.

I also assume they must have been in a patch of "worser" weather, since you'd THINK that 2000 ft and 2 miles ought to be good enough to see a few cars on the road, homesteads, etc and keep upright.

[RadarContactLost]

On the next to last page of the transcript there's the question, "You got a flashlight?" and the response "Yeah." which is why I say they've got a flashlight. Realistically, using the wet compass for heading information is impossible. It's going to swing in turbulence, it'll swing for speed changes, it'll swing the wrong way during some turns and too fast during others. I've got no idea what their panel looked like but here's an old 748 cockpit -

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Mount-Co ... 0033745/M/

[J]

As we're now on a new site, it might be helpful to repost the following link to older US accident reports from 1934 to 1965. You can read about the Boeing 377's that ditched at sea (or landed in the Amazon Jungle) after throwing a propellor, or collisions over Staten Island(or the Grand Canyon, etc etc.

The site has a handy search feature as well.

From the following link, select, Historical Aircraft Accident Reports (1934-1965)http://dotlibrary.specialcollection.net/

[3WE]

On the next to last page of the transcript there's the question, "You got a flashlight?" and the response "Yeah." which is why I say they've got a flashlight. Realistically, using the wet compass for heading information is impossible. It's going to swing in turbulence, it'll swing for speed changes, it'll swing the wrong way during some turns and too fast during others. I've got no idea what their panel looked like but here's an old 748 cockpit -

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Mount-Co ... 0033745/M/

Thanks for answering RCL. I read the text about ASKING for a flashlight, but still struggle as to why they crashed, why they couldn't descend ~800 feet and make contact with the ground (highway and homestad lights), and whether their 8-degree "dive" and 33-degree bank" and mile-long debris path was an "out-of-control" spiral dive or CFIT....maybe it's neither, maybe it's both .....

I guess I'm a little surprised that there was no, zero, none, nada, "bank instrumentation" without electricity. I didn't mean to imply that the compass was viable for bank information, but a gyro"compass"/HI might give indirect bank information...i.e. constant heading = wings level, increasing heading = right bank, decreasing = left bank?

And most certainly a turn indicator/coordinator is supposed to help you with that, but something has to power that instrument.

So, even though a single Cessna has two power systems for critical flight instruments, an Hawker twin turboprop does not (ok, two generators and a battery is redundant) but I guess I'm amazed that in 1983 there wasn't some sort of backup SYSTEM.....i.e. you loose the electrical SYSTEM you are screwed, but not in the ole 172!

Sort of makes you wonder what good the flashlight is! (emphasis on sort of).

Of course, the new glass cockpit debate is interesting- there's a few pure, 110% glass cockpits out there, and a few that retain the bare minimum genuine steam gauges too.

[RadarContactLost]

Like I said, I think this accident brought about the standby horizons with their own power source or a gyro that's supposed to be good for 30 minutes after it looses power. I know mid 80's we were installing little horizons with their own battery packs in our Convairs. The wreckage sort of supports that they were some what under control, it wasn't just a nose dive into the ground. Could have been trying to get lower and saw the ground at the last minute, could have come out of the cloud base out of control and almost recovered. They had a redunant system but for some reason could not get a working generator on line. So their backup went with the initial problem. Then they had a battery that could have gotten them to VFR conditions or to a couple of airports they passed. A NiCad battery doesn't die at constant rate. It'll put out close to rated voltage to the end and then die rapidly. They keep talking about the battery voltage but it's pretty meaningless which makes me think they didn't understand the limitations.