Boeing 767 cargo jet crashes near Houston airport with 3 people on board, the FAA says

[yortsed snacilbuper]

A Boeing 767 cargo jet flying en route to Houston from Miami crashed Saturday afternoon, near the city's main airport with three people on board, the Federal Aviation Administration said.

Atlas Air Flight 3591 crashed into Trinity Bay, near Anahuac, Texas, shortly before 12:45 CT, the FAA said. The plane was operating for "Amazon Air," company's cargo airline, according to Flightradar24, an airline tracking site. Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Atlas Air also did not respond to a request for comment. Atlas Air is one of the cargo airlines which Amazon contracted to operate its air cargo line.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/boeing-767-cargo-jet-crashes-near-houston-airport-with-3-people-on-board-the-faa-says/ar-BBTZaug?ocid=spartanntp

[Hassin Bin Sober]

1. Not good. Final vertical speed. 29,000 fpm

[Jeffersons Ghost]

35. READ THIS FOR SURE!

European Union has vowed swift retaliation if Trump follows through on his threat and has prepared tariffs on a total of 20 billion euros in U.S. goods.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100211858588

[USALiberal]

2. Bad deal for everyone. I know shifting cargo can cause issues. NTSB on it I am sure. nt

[defacto7]

3. 340 mph vertical speed...

Looking at the map it looks like they had a problem, changed direction to an ap to the north, saw they wouldn't make it, took a left toward the water for a possible water landing, lost lift and dove strait down. Probably ditched the jet away from population centers. Hard decisions.

[USALiberal]

4. Nosedived into the water. 3000 feet in 20 seconds. nt

[Laffy Kat]

5. So if they knew they were in trouble...

Doesn't it sound mechanical at this point?

[defacto7]

6. It could be a lot of things.

Cargo shifting is a big one but it does seem like they had issues earlier. Cargo could have shifted later... I have no idea. Big cargo shifts tend to be quick and catastrophic. They can pull a jet into a roll in moments. But we won't have any idea until they report something official.

[Laffy Kat]

7. Right. Too soon to even speculate but I do anyway.

I'm a glider pilot and when I hear about these things I automatically go into analysis mode, I can't help it.

[The_jackalope]

14. Another glider pilot here.

I've had a flight where things went very pear-shaped. You think in overdrive. Sometimes you can save it, sometimes you can't.
Rule #1: "No matter what, fly the airplane."

[Laffy Kat]

24. Yes, on my first solo filight, 233, the back door flew open while I was on my crosswind...

Then on final--this was at Turft Soaring in Arizona--I had to dodge a huge dust devil dancing across the runway. I just flew the plane, nothing else to do. It was fine. The dust devil missed me.

[A HERETIC I AM]

9. Fire, I bet.

Last edited Sat Feb 23, 2019, 11:44 PM - Edit history (1)

I'll wager they had a fire onboard.

I mentioned this in another thread on this topic;

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=11857462


Whatever it was, it was catastrophic, debilitating, and required the aircraft to be on the ground NOW.

If they intentionally drove it into the swamp nose first, they knew they were operating an utterly crippled aircraft, they knew they were doomed and did so to keep from crashing into a more populated area and therefore save lives.

If there was a fire and it came up through the floor of the cockpit, the crew literally had no where to go. Full forward on the yoke and end it now, or burn to death and the plane crashes anyway.

Edited to remove erroneous text

[yortsed snacilbuper]

10. Smell smoke,

land!

[Laffy Kat]

12. Not sure why they dive head-first into the swamp.

Last edited Sat Feb 23, 2019, 10:57 PM - Edit history (1)

I do understand if they knew they were going down and wanted to steer away from populated areas, but even at that, it seems like they'd want to try a controlled ditch.

[A HERETIC I AM]

17. I'm by no means a qualified crash investigator...

And all this is absolutely speculation at this point, but articles and reports I’ve read in the past have shown that a fire infiltrating the cockpit only happens when every possible countermeasure has been exhausted. By that point, the pilots are in absolute panic and are doomed.

Again, I am speculating here, but for an aircraft that has all but completed an otherwise uneventful flight and is essentially on final approach in good weather to go down suddenly like this?

Fire. Sudden, rapidly expanding fire.

I’d bet a days pay.

And to reiterate what I said in the other thread, Rest In Peace, good crew. May you forever have clear skies and a gentle tailwind.

Edit to say my use of the words “good weather “ may not be accurate here, as there apparently was storms in the area at the time.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

28. It was a B767, which does have a yoke.

I'm guessing a cargo shift, but who knows at this point?

[A HERETIC I AM]

29. I beg your pardon and stand corrected

For some reason a pic of an Airbus stuck in my head and I obviously neglected to carefully read the reports.

Thanks

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

30. Not that it probably makes a difference in this case,

although the Airbus has automatic stall recovery features (alpha prot/alpha floor) that I don't think the older Boeing planes have. But if there was either a fire or a sudden cargo shift, that might not have made a difference either. Cargo aircraft are exempt from some of the dangerous goods requirements of passenger aircraft but I don't think Amazon ships a lot of that kind of thing. There was an in-flight cargo fire involving dangerous goods in a FedEx DC-10 some years ago, https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR9803.pdf but the cargo fire warning system alerted them in time to get it on the ground.

[A HERETIC I AM]

31. The ValuJet crash I mentioned in the other thread

Was a cargo fire incident. Oxygen generators if memory serves, that were company equipment loaded belowdecks

The Airbus Joystick that most of their models use as a primary control for the pilots are not interconnected. Push the pilot side yoke in and turn right on a Boeing and the right side does the exact same thing.

Not so with an Airbus.
If I recall, one of the issues with Air France 447, the one that crashed in the Atlantic 10 years ago was that the pilot was pushing the stick one direction and the copilot the other and the two actions canceled each other out.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

32. Yes, the ValuJet accident resulted in changed FAA regulations for cargo fire

warning and suppression systems. The O2 generators had not been properly discharged and deactivated, and when activated they get very hot. They set fire to some aircraft tires that were also being shipped as COMAT and the tires blew up; meanwhile the O2 generators were feeding their own fires. It took only about 7 minutes to take that airplane down. Even so, the crew was able to tell ATC they had a fire. Same with the SwissAir accident (entertainment system set fire to mylar insulation).

[Hassin Bin Sober]

8. Some ATC

[defacto7]

11. That was quick. No warning.

Major cargo shift?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

16. The speculation I've been reading from pilots is not likely.

Amazon ships lots of bulk but not lots of weight. Lots of peanuts and air. Also the flight reached 40,000 plus which wouldn’t be typical for a heavy plane.

My guess is weather, severe turbulence and maybe exacerbated by a 26 year old airplane.

[defacto7]

18. That makes sense.

There's a video of a 747 cargo going down after a cargo shift and it went down about that fast. It keeps coming to mind. But the lighter load point you make is convincing.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

19. Other speculation was that this accidents usually happen earlier in the flight.

Like that Afghanistan accident.

[defacto7]

23. My unprofessional analysis keeps asking..

what about being a cargo carrier could have caused this incident because if it was sudden fire in the cockpit, weather, a 26 year old plane, that puts it into the catagory of being just any plane even a passenger aircraft. It could have been much worse.

BTW, my 16 year old is flying to London as we speak, on an A350?. Yeah, I know there's a one in a million chance in an aircraft every two million miles and the same in an auto every 50 miles. I was a small aircraft pilot in the 80's and 90's so I have no excessive concerns... but 'sigh' anyway.

[Laffy Kat]

25. I never worry when I fly but I do worry (silently) when one of my kids are flying.

It's part of parenting. I guess it never leaves you. I still worry when they're on the road, too.

[jmowreader]

37. That 747 had five nine-ton MRAPs on it

...and one of them broke free of its tiedowns, went straight through the aft pressure bulkhead, and tore out two hydraulic systems.

As someone else on this thread put it, Amazon deals in bulk and not weight.

[A HERETIC I AM]

20. After watchiing that.....

I'm sticking with fire. Either that or an explosion or some sort. No distress call at all. Something big, something major happened very quickly.

This type of aircraft just doesn't do that sort of thing without an extraordinary external force acting on it or a massive internal incident.

[Hassin Bin Sober]

21. I'm thinking weather

[A HERETIC I AM]

22. Certainly possible, but if you look at the vid.....

if the weather system on the vid is accurate to time of day, it looks as if they were some distance away from that line of T-Storms.

They were still pretty high when the rapid descent began. If it was weather, they flew it right into a major wind shear.

Just tragic, any way it happened.

[Laffy Kat]

27. I know. No emergency declared, no distress call. Nothing.

It was immediate and catastrophic.

[yortsed snacilbuper]

34. Probably have to wait until they find the black box,

to find out what happened?

[The_jackalope]

13. They may have been trying for RWJ Airpark, just across Trinity Bay.

Whatever it was, that was some descent rate.

[Laffy Kat]

26. So hopefully they passed out from the Gs early.

It would spare them the terror. Horrible.

[littlemissmartypants]

15. .

[Recursion]

33. Who flies cargo during daylight hours?

Is this a new Amazon thing?

[Hassin Bin Sober]

36. Companies who promise goods in 24 hours