What stopped this plane from flying? | Ameristar Air cargo flight 9363

This video has been presented together with Nord VPN. Use the link in the description below to get your special offer. An Ameristar Air Cargo MD-83 aircraft is accelerating down 2-3 left at Willow Run Airport Michigan, USA, in the back. The local college basketball team, the Wolverines, are preparing for a tournament in Washington DC, but it's very windy outside, so windy, in fact, that the local air traffic control tower had to be evacuated. Is there a situation where takeoff is rejected after the decision speed? of v1 is a good option and

what

would happen if you do it?

Pay attention. The extraordinary story about Ameristar Air Cargo Flight

9363

took place on March 8, 2017. Now the aircraft being used is an MD-83, which is a variant of the old DC-9 aircraft with a T-tail and two engines. rear-mounted jets The

plane

had been parked for two days before the accident Flights at Wileron Airport in Michigan were awaiting the local sports team the Wolverines for a shorter

flight

to Washington DC During those two days the

plane

had been parked looking north next to a large hangar and the way

this

plane was parked is going to have quite significant importance later during the night and morning before the accident

flight

a low pressure had passed over Michigan causing some really strong and gusty winds, in fact at some point the wind became so strong that it knocked out the power supply to the local air traffic control tower, causing the tower to be evacuated and that meant that when the crew arrived From the flight to the plane there was no way for them to communicate with the tower and also the automatic weather update at the airport had

stopped

working according to FVA rules.

It is perfectly fine to operate a commercial flight from an airport that is not air conditioned. traffic control tower, however, some rules apply to it and among those routes is being able to obtain air traffic control clearance and also updated weather, now the weather is very important, especially during strong and strong winds like

this

. To do some proper performance calculations, the crew did exactly this: they simply used their mobile phones and called the nearest air traffic control center to get their clearance and also to get continuous weather updates that are now in the cabin on day of the accident. senior pilots the acting captain is 54 years old he has 15,518 hours of total time and just under 8,500 hours in the dc9 however on this day he is going to fly the md 83 which is a variant of the dc-9 and since he has almost no experience not at all with the md83.

He needs to do something called differential training, which is when you fly with a Czech aviator or a line training captain so they can point out

what

the differences are between the different variants. He now does this differential training. He is a 41 year old Czech aviator, he has 9660 hours of total time, of which 2462 have been flown in the DC-9 and MD-83. Now, when you have two captains

flying

together, there is always a chance that problems will arise with crm and that is because those two pilots Those two captains are trained to make crucial decisions when there is very little time available.

An example of that is the case of an aborted takeoff when there is no time to discuss, so it is really very important in a situation like that that both pilots have a talk beforehand about who is going to do what during certain situations and in the case From differential training like this, the acting captain is being trained in his role as captain, which means he will be the one making those decisions now. The Czech aviator, on the other hand, is designated as pilot commander for this flight because he is the instructor, but he will have to play the role of first officer because otherwise the captain's training will not be realistic and also if you start to step on your toes too much.

In the decision-making process, other CRM issues may arise, so it's very, very important that a crew like this, two veteran captains who fly together, have this figured out and can fill these roles and we know what to do. and when all the time, around 12:40 Eastern Standard Time, the pilots enter the cockpit for the first time and start discussing the weather outside, it's obviously still very windy and when it's windy we have some special procedures that we now have. Keep in mind that part of our performance calculation is to calculate our v1 speed, that is what we call decision speed, it is the last moment we can safely refuse takeoff and it is also the first speed at which we can continue with the plane and fly it. safely in an engine if we had an engine failure, but we also have to calculate our rotation speed and our safe climb speed, our v2 speed, okay, when it's windy, there's a chance, especially in gusty winds, that the wind is the wind against which we are. calculating our performance it could dissipate correctly, it could disappear and if that happens effectively, the amount of air that flows over our wings and helps us fly will be reduced and because there is a possibility that there is a gust of wind that is dissipating.

Right during the rotation stage we sometimes choose to continue beyond double rotation speed, let the plane accelerate a little more before calling rotate to make sure we have enough speed for the plane to fly safely Czech aviator what's it gonna be. Monitoring paddles for this first leg, an acting first officer suggests that they delay the rotation call until they reach v2 speed. The acting captain agrees, it seems like a very reasonable idea and they set the speed at v1 139 knots and the rotation at 142 knots. and v2 the safe climb speed of 150 knots now, before the crew does their final preparation on the flight deck, the acting pilot who flies, who is the captain, also has to walk, so he goes out and looks at all the different parts of the plane. and when it comes to the tail, look up, the thing to understand on the MD-83 is that since it is a T-tail aircraft, it means the horizontal stabilizer and elevator are about 30 feet away. above the ground, that is, about 9 meters high now. he looks at them and sees that they look completely normal at this stage.

You also have to understand a little bit about the way the elevators work on the MD83, the elevator, which are the flight controls, which primarily control the pitch of the plane. They are not directly connected to the flight controls in the cockpit, ok on the 737, when you pull the yoke back the elevators will deflect upwards directly, but on the md83 that is not the case, rather the flight controls in the cabin they are connected. to something called a control tab which is a smaller rudder surface at the rear of the elevator and the way these control tabs work is that if the pilot, for example, backs up to turn the airplane nicely, then what he wants do is I want the elevators to tilt up, thus giving a downward force on the tail, causing the nose of the plane to lift and the plane to move away and with the control tabs, the control tabs move in the direction opposite so that they move downward for true downforce. the elevator to go up and thus make the plane turn, that may seem like something a little complicated, but in fact, many airplanes, especially older ones, did things this way because there is considerably less force involved in being able to use them.

These control tabs move the entire rudder surface, especially when the rudder surface is very large, above these control tabs which are directly connected to the cockpit controls, there is also something called gear tab, it is also called servo tab on other planes now. This gear tab is located next to the control tab on the elevator and its job is to further enhance the movement of the elevator, so when the pilots move the control tab to move the elevator, this gear tab engages to the elevator to Help that movement even more, that also makes it easier to control the aircraft because now you just need to move the control tab, the movement will start to move the elevator and the gear tab will further improve that aerodynamic movement.

Well, there is also another tab. Outside of that it's called the anti-float tab, which I'm not going to go into too much because it has no bearing on what's happening on this flight, so the captain is now during his walk looking towards these elevators and these elevators don't They are connected to each other, so this means one elevator can point down, another elevator can point up. Well, this is completely normal. He doesn't see anything out of the ordinary, so he just continues, completes his tour, enters and joins. His colleague continues preparing the cockpit for the flight now, before moving on to the actual accident sequence of this flight.

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Plus an extra gift, go down, click the link and start protecting yourself online today. The pilots now tell the cabin crew to start boarding passengers and gluttons together, where their cheerleaders and some family members board at the same time around 2pm. EST In total there are 110 passengers on board and six crew members Once boarding is complete the pilots start their engines and begin taxiing for takeoff and runway two three left during the cardiac taxiing procedure The Czech aviator who is sitting in the first officer's chair is doing all the first officer's duties and that includes checking the flight controls all checks are done without the pilots noticing anything out of the ordinary at time 14 51 and 12 seconds the captain gains confidence and his md83 begins to accelerate down the runway during the first 40 seconds of the takeoff run, everything is normal, there are no indications that anything is out of the ordinary, the Czech aviator calls v1 and then, as They had previously commented, they delay the rotation a bit.

So, six seconds after calling v1, he calls rotate, the captain starts trying to rotate the plane, but after about three seconds he recognizes that something is very wrong, so he says what's going on and then aborts. The Czech aviator looks at him and says. no no up and do not reject after v1 like this and initially reach the flight controls also the captain responds that he was not

flying

and executes the rejected takeoff maneuver now when they start the rejected takeoff about 12 seconds have passed since the first call v1 remember the speed v1 When the airplane reaches that speed, that is the last point at which it can normally refuse takeoff to stay safely within the paved runway.

It is now 12 seconds later, which means the plane has accelerated. at a speed of about 173 knots and while accelerating he is also consuming the precious runway necessary to stop, so when the captain is beginning his rejected takeoff maneuver, the Czech aviator realizes that the maneuver has already begun and although initially was trying to reach the flight controls now continues to do its part for the aborted takeoff the aborted takeoff maneuver includes things like closing the thrust levels disengaging the outboard throttle making sure you simultaneously have maximum braking by manually lifting the speed brake levers to making sure your flight spoilers go up on the wing and you lower your weight on the gear and then select reverse, you trust that the Czech aviator is indicating speeds, making sure that all of these elements have been executed correctly, the fact that you have the maximum braking and performance. everything he's supposed to do in his role as first officer, but of course with the kind of speed this plane is maintaining now and you know as late as this is happening there's no way they can stop it.

This plane is inside the runways, so at time 14 52 and 20 seconds the plane leaves the runway.paved track and enters a runway safety area which is a grass field without any obstacles. This safety area has actually been expanded recently and it used to be a smaller area, but due to some improvements in the early 2000s, the FAA decided to try to increase this area, so they go through that area that is still breaking down. , now they go through a perimeter fence and then come to a slightly elevated paved road outside the airport perimeter when they crash, that probably shears the plane's landing gear and the plane eventually comes to a complete stop.

As soon as the plane comes to a complete stop, the Czech aviator approaches the public address microphone and the evacuation begins. command which is evacuate evacuate evacuate when the cabin crew hears this they start the evacuation immediately. They are doing it in a very professional way. They have some teething problems with the right front door where the slide does not inflate and also the rear evacuation door. which is in the tail cone of the MD-83 was initially stuck, but after a few seconds the cabin crew managed to open it. Furthermore, in total, 110 passengers and six crew members were successfully evacuated from the plane, there is only one passenger who suffers a small laceration in one of the legs, the evacuation is a total success both due to the professionalism of the cabin crew and also because the passengers, the gluttons, acted in a very professional manner.

They followed the cabin crew's orders from the beginning. No one tried to take any of their personal belongings and they evacuated as if nothing had happened. The professionals did it, but what really happened well in the interviews with the pilots when the captain was asked why he chose to reject the takeoff, far beyond the v1 call, he said that when he heard the call turn, he started turning normally now on both the dc-9 which I had a lot of experience with and the md-83 there is a delay of approximately three seconds from when you start entering data into the flight controls until the nose starts to leave the runway, so during those first three seconds he wasn't that worried, but almost immediately he realized that nothing was happening, the nose was not leaving the ground and when he noticed that he continued to pull more and more, not until the cock was in his stomach, but enough to realize that something was very wrong and when he realized that he immediately realized the situation they were in, that he would not be able to control the plane in pitch even if he managed to get it off the ground, so What decided to reject the takeoff, the Czech aviator when asked about his actions, said that his kind of initial reaction was to reach for the controls when he realized that the plane was about to be rejected above v1, which is something that is known to be unsafe, but obviously I couldn't feel the plane, I had no idea. because the captain was doing what he was doing, but since he saw that the captain had already started the aborted takeoff, he realized that there was nothing he could do, so the best thing to do in that situation is to continue with the takeoff. aborted trying to make that as successful as possible, so that's what he did, but this doesn't explain why the plane wasn't rotating when the accident investigation team arrived at the crash site, they looked at the back of the plane and what anyone could What they saw at the crash site if they looked at the horizontal stabilizer on the elevators was that the left elevator was in the trailing edge position all the way up, which is what you would expect from an aircraft that is trying to turn but the right elevator was in the full trailing edge down position when the investigators approached and began trying to move the elevator, they realized very quickly that the right elevator was completely stuck and when they looked at it they realized that the gear tab remember that that is the flight control that is next to it. the control tab on the back of the elevator, the control bar that normally controls the movement that is connected to the elevator had moved beyond its maximum position and had become stuck in an overcooked position and because it was in that position, effectively jamming the motion stabilizer, the investigation team quickly began to focus on the very strong winds that had been present on the plane during the previous night because they knew that Boeing had placed restrictions on the MD-83 and any other DC-9 and boeing 717 that if the airplane was subject to winds strong enough above 60 knots, the nose of the airplane had to be parked into the wind and if at any time the winds exceeded 65 knots over the tail, then there was a procedure maintenance that needed to be done to be at the location where the engineers needed to physically go up and move the elevators to make sure they weren't stuck, but the interesting thing here is that at no time during the night or in the hours leading up to this accident flight had there been wind. about 60 knots, the highest wind recorded was 55 knots with average wind gusts around 48 knots, so why was the elevator stuck well?

To discover this, they actually used some extraordinary research methods that mapped out using drones where exactly the plane had been. Parked and the drones also marked the entire area, including the large hangar they were standing next to, and because these strong gusty winds had come from the west and the new direction of the winds, they were able to use computer models to show exactly where those winds had been moving and how they had been moving and what they discovered was that as the wind had been passing over this hangar, not only had the hangar accelerated the wind, but it had also created these vortices and those vortices would have hit exactly Where is this plane? was parked now the way these vortices would have moved, the elevators that didn't have any gust lock would have gone up and down hard and when they contacted Boeing to see how they had determined this maximum wind speed of 65 knots, Boeing said they had been calculating with a straight wind without any acceleration in any kind of direction, so if you had this very strong wind with vortices that could actually move the elevator to its maximum deflection both up and down, that could have caused enough force. to put this gear tab in the overcooked position and effectively lock the elevator at a much lower wind speed and the research team actually tested this with actual flight controls and found that around 58 knots or so then that elevator could actually crash, so what? about the pilot's actions and all this so well, this is something really interesting because in any normal circumstance rejecting a takeoff above speed v1 is not recommended by Boeing or by the company manual or by anyone because you know that there are There is a great risk of the plane going off the runway if that happens;

However, there is a note from Boeing in the flight crew operations manual that says it is not recommended to refuse a takeoff above v1 unless the captain deems the airplane incapable of flight. and in this case this is exactly what happened, so we get to an extraordinary situation where the flight crew has been doing everything right, they've done all the procedures correctly, they've done the tour correctly, they've done the flight test. flight correctly, of course, when they were doing the flight test, the only thing they could feel was the control tab moving, but since the flight controls were not directly connected to the elevator, the fact that the elevator was stuck did not it could be detected with the flight control check, so they initiated their takeoff function without any indication that anything was wrong with their plane.

The first time these pilots would have noticed something was wrong was when they started turning the plane and discovered that the elevator was stuck at that point, which was fine. beyond v1, so the accident investigation team congratulated the captain for his wise and timely decision to refuse takeoff even though he had passed v1 when he realized that the plane could not fly and also ordered the Czech aviator who fought his impulse to be kind. of dominating the captain even though he was the pilot in command on the flight, rather than following standard operating procedures, helped make the rejected takeoff as successful as possible.

The way these two pilots work together to reject the takeoff and get the plane to stop in a relatively safe manner is truly commendable. The accident investigation team came up with the next two causes of accident number one: a stuck right elevator caused due to very dynamic winds where plane number two was parked, the lack of means for the technical flight crew to identify this jam before the start of takeoff, they also added that the captain's timely decision to reject takeoff contributed to the survival of the event. once it was realized that the aircraft could not fly the extremely efficient CRM and compliance with Standard Operating Procedures displayed by both flight crew members and the airport's expanded runway security area.

Now there were a couple of recommendations that came out of this accident. The first was for Boeing to change the design of the MD-80 DC9 and Boeing. 717 to ensure that strong winds could not cause this type of elevator jam. Boeing subsequently followed suit by introducing an additional stop on the geared balance tab to ensure that it could not enter this overcooked position effectively. Elevator jam number two was having new procedures implemented in the cabin to ensure that while the pilots were doing their flight control check there was some sort of means to effectively monitor the movement of the elevator, as well as to ensure that there were no If there were jams at any of the flight controls before the flight, there was also a recommendation to the FAA to determine liability, who needed to check and verify when an airplane was subject to high winds while parked on a platform, guys, I really hope that I like these types of videos and if you do, you have subscribed to the channel and highlighted the notification bell.

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