Boeing 737 Cargo Plane Ditches off Honolulu

[berkeman]

The latest news I saw was from about 10 days ago saying that a salvage company was being contracted with to do the recovery of the two boxes from the tail. Nothing since then.

The NTSB website's latest update was way back on July 5th...

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/mr20210705.aspx

Well, apparently there was a media briefing on October 9th, but I can't find what was presented anywhere. Here is the announcement about the briefing, and it looks like they are at sea right now actively engaged in the salvage operation:

https://www.ntsb.gov/news/press-releases/Pages/MA20211007b.aspx

 

[Tom.G]

The media briefing can be viewed at:
The delay for recovery was because the wreckage is around 400ft underwater, too deep for divers; and the largest piece weighs 97 000lbs.

The FAA will be implementing a 'Caution' or No-Fly zone in the area because of the large crane needed for the lift.

The aircraft owners insurance company is paying for the recovery and issued an RFQ (Request For Quotes) for salvage operations. Then the recovery ships had to be selected, staffed, outfitted with the needed equipment, and travel to Hawaii.

The video is somewhat entertaining in spots; outdoors on an airport tarmac, on a windy day blowing the script off the podium, with the sounds of planes taking off and/or landing, even a helicopter at one point.

 

[berkeman]

The media briefing can be viewed at:

How were you able to find that video? I searched a fair amount after I found the link I posted that there was a briefing that had been held...

 

[Tom.G]

IIRC, I read the links you provided, one of which mentioned a phrase that stuck with me, along with the date the press conference was scheduled. I did a Google search for the phrase and the date and found the video.

(sorry for the late reply, I was one of 25 residences that lost internet connection about 4:30AM Saturday. It came back at 4:12PM today (Thursday).
a double equipment failure. a part had to be FedEx-ed Priority from Tennessee to Southern California, but there was a weather delay somewhere that slowed things down.)

Cheers,
Tom

(did get a bit more reading done though! by the 3rd day, overall less stressful.)

 

[berkeman]

Finally! It looks like they were able to recover the plane and the two flight recorders in early November. They say the investigation will take 2 years, but hopefully they release some preliminary findings sooner...

https://www.ainonline.com/aviation-...ws-recover-ditched-transair-boeing-737-hawaii

https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/l...-that-crashed-into-the-ocean-off-oahu-in-july

 

[anorlunda]

It's strange. The black boxes were found November 3, 2021. No news since then. Not even to say that they could, or could not, recover the data.

The NTSB preliminary report was dated 7/2/2021, long before the black boxes were found.

 

[mfb]

The final report was released in June (PDF). Corrosion and possibly prior damage caused two turbine blades to break in the right engine, leading to lower thrust. One of the pilots thought he heard something on the left side and incorrectly assumed they lost the left engine and it looks like both pilots never questioned that. They reduced its thrust to idle, flying only with the damaged right engine - which didn't provide enough thrust. They crashed an aircraft that would have had no problem flying with the left engine.

The captain experienced an engine failure 4 months before the accident. He chose to fly back to the airport immediately at that time, against company procedures, and was told to follow procedures next time. He had also aborted takeoffs in the past when he saw unusually high engine temperatures and was told to ignore them. He saw unusually high engine temperatures again, and followed the order to ignore it.

Video discussing the flight:

 

[russ_watters]

Missed this before:

The final report was released in June (PDF). Corrosion and possibly prior damage caused two turbine blades to break in the right engine, leading to lower thrust. One of the pilots thought he heard something on the left side and incorrectly assumed they lost the left engine and it looks like both pilots never questioned that. They reduced its thrust to idle, flying only with the damaged right engine - which didn't provide enough thrust. They crashed an aircraft that would have had no problem flying with the left engine.

The captain experienced an engine failure 4 months before the accident. He chose to fly back to the airport immediately at that time, against company procedures, and was told to follow procedures next time. He had also aborted takeoffs in the past when he saw unusually high engine temperatures and was told to ignore them. He saw unusually high engine temperatures again, and followed the order to ignore it.

This is very, very rare.... This has happened, as far as I can tell, five times with the 737. Two were double-flameouts in thunderstorms (one as the plane was about to touch down). One was running out of fuel. One was a famous double bird strike (US1549) and one was pilot error: one engine failed and the crew shut down the other one by mistake.

Ding, ding. They didn't shut it down in this case, but rather reduced it to idle and left it there. It's a mind-boggling error. It comes down to performance in emergency situations. The first officer's errors were obviously critical and I think it's likely that due to prior incidents being in his head, the captain made less than optimal choices.

I am surprised by the guidance suggesting being 15 miles out at 2,000 feet and 210 kts was ok. Low and slow with an engine out doesn't provide a lot of margin for error, which they needed here.

 

[DaveE]

It comes down to performance in emergency situations.

More about company policies about safety, training, and procedures, I think. Shutting down the wrong engine is a well known problem that is easily fixed with training, quick reference handbooks, and good crew resource management. A simple engine failure in a 737 is a minor emergency that should be handled reliably with well trained crew.

This would be a very unlikely occurrence at a major part 121 air carrier. This scenario is tested regularly in recurrent training (simulators) at major carriers. You get what you pay for, and this outfit simply didn't care enough to do it right. You can only perform well on the flight deck in emergencies if you have been trained and tested for it.

Of course there's a similar story about maintenance at this carrier.

 

[russ_watters]

More about company policies about safety, training, and procedures, I think. Shutting down the wrong engine is a well known problem that is easily fixed with training, quick reference handbooks, and good crew resource management. A simple engine failure in a 737 is a minor emergency that should be handled reliably with well trained crew.

I didn't intend that to be exclusive of training and prior experience (which is why I mentioned/quoted them), but rather more a 1+1=2 situation. I agree it should be a recoverable error.

 

[DaveE]

I didn't intend that to be exclusive of training and prior experience (which is why I mentioned/quoted them), but rather more a 1+1=2 situation. I agree it should be a recoverable error.

Yes, and I wouldn't necessarily blame the pilots if they weren't properly trained or didn't have good working conditions. Although I don't really think you were. Many pilots go through a phase of working for sketchy carriers. There's a reason it's hard to get hired by a major carrier, and there's a reason they spend a lot of money on training once you do get that job. It might not be a recoverable error if you don't know how work in that situation.

 

[Vanadium 50]

That'll buff right out.

 

[Vanadium 50]

So the two YouTube videos have been highly critical of the pilots. While I wouldn't say they did everything perfectly, I do think they are being unfair.

1. Everybody survived.
2. The f`light was what, 12 minutes? So they had maybe 6 or 7 minutes to diagnose and rectify the problem? If it takes the YouTube videos half an hour to explain, is it really realistic to expect the pilots to be 5x faster? Had they had more time, they would have reached the point on the checklist where they would have verified which engine was bad.
3. A partial engine failure? Do they even train for that?
4. The engines were so old that the captain had experienced multiple failures in his time at TransAir. He was even counseled on what to do next time. Next time? Seriously? If you want a root cause, I would look here - you have an ancient plane with ancient engines, and you are cycling them like crazy.
5. Did the captain spend too much time on the radio? He cleared the airspace he needed, and he alerted the Coast Guard. Had he not done that and had both pilots drowned, would we be saying "Gosh, why didn't he let ATC know he was going down and needed the coast guard?"

In my view, the biggest mistake they made was switching who was the Pilot Flying rather than sticking to their roles and working the problem. Would that have actually made a difference? Probably not.

 

[Flyboy]

4. The engines were so old that the captain had experienced multiple failures in his time at TransAir. He was even counseled on what to do next time. Next time? Seriously? If you want a root cause, I would look here - you have an ancient plane with ancient engines, and you are cycling them like crazy.

dingdingding. You've hit the nail on the head here. These kinds of fly-by-night freight operators are looked at by more... hmmm... conscientious... personnel with a great degree of concern and skepticism. They run on the ragged edge of profitability as it is, so upper management has a (misplaced) incentive to cut costs wherever they can. Instead of saying "Hey, we've got a systemic issue here, maybe we should do a root cause assessment", they just find a way to cheaply bandaid the problem and stick their heads in the sand.

JT8Ds are great engines... if you take good care of them. If you don't, they're just as prone to failure as any other gas turbine engine of their age. And a tropical salt-spray environment is a very harsh place for an airplane, or its engines. Throw in the aforementioned high cycle counts and rates, and it's a textbook environment for accelerated fatigue failures, imo. Just look at the Aloha flight a while back where they lost the whole upper fuselage skin and structure while at cruise. Salt spray environment, high cycle rate and count on the airframe, pressure from management to turn it around fast and cheap. And it cost people their lives when that caught up to them.

 

[Vanadium 50]

fly-by-night freight operators

Literally in this case.

 

[russ_watters]

Literally in this case.

Fly? Yes. Land? No.

 

[Vanadium 50]

The number of landings is strictly equal to the number of takeoffs. The quality of those landings, however, can vary.

Anyone know what became of the pilots? Are they still flying somewhere?

 

[OCR]

Anyone know what became of the pilots?

I believe they decided to switch over to submarines. . . .
.