Autopilot turned on just prior to beginning of Alaska Airs fatal plunge

Pilots knew of problems from outset, data shows

Wednesday, February 09, 2000

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR and ERIC MALNIC LOS ANGELES TIMES

WASHINGTON - The mechanical problem aboard Alaska Airlines Flight 261 apparently festered for most of its two-hour, 43-minute journey, but the pilots may have thought the problem was more of an irritant than a threat and they postponed a decision to attempt an emergency landing, new data released yesterday indicate.

In the most comprehensive account yet of the ill-fated flight on Jan. 31, National Transportation Safety Board Chairman James Hall said the pilots turned off the autopilot soon after departure from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. They then flew manually for an hour and 53 minutes.

In radio conversations with the ground, the pilots indicated their problem was with the planes horizontal stabilizer, the winglike portion of the tail that controls the up-and-down pitch of the aircrafts nose. Aaronson said the pilots probably chose to fly manually because that would make it easier to control the pitch.

However, the problem worsened, and after almost two hours, the cockpit crew requested clearance for an emergency landing in Los Angeles. They never made it.

The twin-engine MD-83 jetliner crashed into the sea near Port Hueneme, Calif., killing all 88 people aboard.

Yesterday, Hall provided sobering details of the planes final plunge from 17,900 feet, which lasted just over a minute. In the initial moments of the dive, occupants were thrust toward the cabin roof with forces three times the pull of gravity. The aircraft then rolled to the left and turned upside down as it fell.

The planes cockpit voice recorder picked up a loud noise just before the dive began. Radar suggests that a piece of the plane broke away at about the time of the noise, falling into the sea about four miles from the main debris field.

As the cockpit voice recorder tape begins, some 31 minutes before the crash, the pilots were discussing their problem with the stabilizer.

About 20 minutes later, with the plane still cruising at 31,000 feet, the pilots turned on the autopilot again.

Then - virtually simultaneously - the autopilot was turned off again and the stabilizer moved into the full nose-down position, Hall said. At that point, the crew was no longer dealing with anything that could be termed a routine stabilizer problem.

The plane began to dive at a rate of 7,000 feet per minute, more than three times the normal descent rate from from cruising altitude. On the voice recorder, the crew could be heard trying to arrest the dive. The planes speed brakes - flaps on the wings - were deployed, and after about a minute Flight 261 leveled off at 24,300 feet.

For the next nine minutes or so, the plane apparently was under control.

"Then things began to happen very quickly," Hall said.

Suddenly, at about the same time the loud noise was heard, the plane pitched down, ultimately reaching a nose-down angle of 70 degrees.

"At this point, they had no pitch control at all," Aaronson said. "They are turning left, right, pulling, pushing, trying every combination to find something that will give them control. But its too late - at this point, there is nothing they can do."

)2000 THE PLAIN DEALER. Used with permission.

link

www.cleveland.com/news

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 09, 2000

Answers

Excellent work Carl! This proves that there was definitely a corrupted digital transmission being relayed between the main autopilot computer on the flight deck and the digital drive unit for the stabilizer servos. Once that microprocessor malfunctioned, there was no hope of getting the stabilizers to release from the stuck position.

-- Hawk (flyin@high.again), February 09, 2000.

trolling again, hawk?

-- (4@5.6), February 09, 2000.

Give it up, Hawk. You've found a catchword and you've ridden it as far as you can. It's obvious you don't know Jack Sh*t about the subject.

But if you truly want to prove your knowledge or ignorance, what method of data transmission is used for those digital signals you claim are there: 1553B, 1760A, RS-232 or ARINC?

Inquiring minds do want to know.

WW

-- Wildweasel (vtmldm@epix.net), February 09, 2000.

Good grief Hawk...formerly known as aa@aa, can you please provide us with a summary of your background that qualfies you to make such extraordinary "diagnosis"? ROFLMAO!

-- FactFinder (FactFinder@bzn.com), February 09, 2000.

Question for everyone, including Hawk:

Do these series of events in any one way resemble what happened to Egypt Air's flight ?

Take care

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), February 09, 2000.

Man, the polly trolls are out in force today.

-- (brett@miklos.org), February 09, 2000.

The stabilizer moved to the stop after the autopilot DISENGAGED, and required SIX SECONDS to move to the stop. Hardly "virtually simultaneously". Read the NTSB press release carefully.

Total flight time 2 hours and 43 minutes (163 minutes). Aircraft climbed to 7500 feet (time unspecified) autopilot engaged for 13 minutes, then disengaged for 1 hour and 53 minutes (113 minutes). It was then reengaged and disconnected 12 minutes before the tragic end. Subtracting (13+113+12) from the total flight time of 163 minutes leaves 25 minutes for the climb to 7500 feet and the period of autopilot engagement just prior to the final disengagement. Since it doesn't take that long to climb to 7500 feet, the autopilot had been engaged for some time prior to the final disengagement.

So what't the point? (1) The LA Times reporters got it wrong -- they should have just printed the press release rather than rewriting it. And another point -- the trim actuator moved AFTER the autopilot was disengaged and after not moving with the autopilot been engaged for several minutes. The autopilot didn't move the actuator.

George, only two similarities come to mind: they're both airplanes, and they both crashed into water.

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), February 09, 2000.

Hey Mickey, Maybe you should do a little research before attacking other posters. There a lot more than the two crashes just being planes that crashed into the water. This quote is from the latest report below which is posted as a thread above:

Some U.S. sources have speculated the plane's co-pilot, who died in the crash, deliberately brought the jet down. Egyptian authorities hotly dispute that theory. They say the most likely cause is an unexplained problem in the plane's tail section.

February 08, 2000 NTSB To Interview EgyptAir Pilot

ASSOCIATED PRESS WASHINGTON (AP) -- An EgyptAir pilot seeking asylum in England who says he has information about October's deadly crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 will be interviewed by U.S. accident investigators.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jim Hall, whose agency is investigating the crash that killed 217 people off the coast of Massachusetts, announced the decision Tuesday to send two staffers to London. He did not elaborate.

EgyptAir pilot Hamdi Hanafi Taha sought asylum last week after landing a plane at London's Heathrow Airport.

Airline officials say Taha has no special knowledge about the cause of the Oct. 31 crash near the island of Nantucket.

Neither American nor Egyptian investigators have released any official findings on the cause of the crash of the Boeing 767.

Some U.S. sources have speculated the plane's co-pilot, who died in the crash, deliberately brought the jet down. Egyptian authorities hotly dispute that theory. They say the most likely cause is an unexplained problem in the plane's tail section.

Link:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw- other/2000/feb/08/020800710.html

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 09, 2000.

Thanks Carl!! You and Hawk are really digging out the truth! I admire your tenacity, especially in the face of all the drivel coming from the stupid pollies. Keep it comin'.

-- (brett@miklos.org), February 09, 2000.

Egyptian Authorities say Egypt Air Crash caused by unexplained problem in tail section. Also, do you remember all the speculation about why the Egypt Air Pilot turned off the autopilot? The fatal plunge of the Alaska Air Jet Began in exactly the same way. In addition, the Egypt Air Flight was reported to have plunged and then come up once before plummetting into the ocean. The parallels between the two crashes are startling.

-- Carl Jenkins (Somewherepress@aol.com), February 09, 2000.

Hey Carl, who's Mickey and who are other posters whom he attacked and how did he attack them. And no research either, huh?

Looks like we have another thing in common between the two incidents: the Egyptians state the likely cause is an unexplained problem in the tail section, and Chicken-not-a-hawk states that the MD-83 crashed to to an unexplained Y2k problem. They're unexplained problems, with self-serving speculation surrounding them. Oh, yeah -- one more thing: they both happened on the last day of a month. That'll give Chicken-not-a-hawk something to peck on for awhile.

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), February 09, 2000.

Yeah, keep swingin' Mikey. You might hit something someday, LOL!!

The crashes ARE amazingly similar. I'd never even realized it, but Carl provided some great evidence.

-- (brett@miklos.org), February 09, 2000.

There's a report today of Navy finding a stripped jackscrew identified as coming from the horizontal stabilizer. Question for you aero types: Is an actuator motor torquey enough to strip a jackscrew? Plus, Boeing immediately requested that all MD80 series users check their jackscrews NOW.

-- Carlos (riffraff1@cybertime.net), February 09, 2000.

In 1968 I lived in a boardinghouse in Denver for a few months. Some of the others there were AF and Marine pilots (helicopters and fighters) who had come back from Vietnam. These guys were in training with one of the major airlines (United?, working toward licensing as commercial passenger pilots. In conversation they mentioned that they had to memorize all the electrical, hydraulic and mechanical systems throughout the aircraft. I asked one of them, "Why?"

He said, "I have to know where everything is, what everything does, how everything works, and what I can do to either fix it or work around it if something goes wrong."

What do the pilots of the MD80 series have to say about its horizontal stabilizer system?

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), February 10, 2000.

Mikey2k, or Mickey or Mikey or what the hell...

I guess I'm the poster you "attacked" because of your sarcastic answer to my question about similarities with Egypt Air's crash. Quite frankly I didn't feel 'attacked' by you in any way but, in view of the above post by hard-working and efficient Carl Jenkins (thank God we have him) it seems to me that you could have answered my question more to the point.

As a matter of fact your answer now seems quite out of focus, or rather, out of place. I sure hope that you have opposed (attacked?) Hawk and others on grounds stronger than your answer to my Egypt Air question. Otherwise your posts and comments shouldn't be considered to be reliable or trustworthy, would they?

-- George (jvilches@sminter.com.ar), February 10, 2000.

Well so have I opposed Hawk's theories? A minimal amount of research should reveal the answer to that question.

-- Mikey2k (mikey2k@he.wont.eat.it), February 10, 2000.