© Guillermo Granja / Reuters
The Flydubai FZ981 crash in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, could have followed the
pilots' failure to manage the landing after taking control of the system, media reveal citing flight data. The final minutes are said to have been
full of arguments and screams of terror.Now that decoding of the flight data recorders of the crashed Boeing is complete, an unnamed source told Russian daily
Kommersant that
pilot error is now dominating the investigation as the probable cause. It appears that
while trying to gain altitude after an unsuccessful landing attempt in bad weather, one of the pilots pulled the control stick up too much, causing a stall break and an uncontrollable nosedive.The Interstate Aviation Committee believes that the official results of the decoding will be made public within a week or two. Meanwhile, according to Kommersant's sources, the recorder revealed that
flight FZ981 had made two attempts to land in automatic mode, and since a veering squall wind hampered the second attempt, the pilot decided to make a third approach for landing in manual mode. One of the pilots pressed the TOGA (Take off. Go around) button and turned off the autopilot, writes the daily.
Anonymous experts
Kommersant talked to believe the pilot
did not manage the diving rudder and horizontal stabilizer, which steer the plane in opposite directions - down and up, respectively. When the pilot pulled up, he
put both the rudder and stabilizer in a sharp climb mode, somewhat fighter-jet style, plus enacted the TOGA regime's retracted flaps, decreasing ascending force. As a result, the
aircraft lost speed and got into the beyond-stall angle of approach. All this led to an uncontrollable dive, the experts believe.
At that moment, t
he voice recorder is said to have registered a conflict between pilots. The pilot that tried to force the aircraft to gain altitude apparently turned the engines to powerful take-off mode, forcing the aircraft to continue its climb. The other pilot believed the situation was dangerous and apparently did the opposite: he pushed his own control over to bring the Boeing's nose down and prevent the sweeping up, while yelling at his colleague to stop doing it that way.
The pilots' contrary actions caused the controls of the aircraft to 'split': the Boeing 737's onboard computer was receiving mutually-exclusive commands from the two controls, which are usually operated synchronously. This rendered the plane out of control.When they felt the plummeting sensation, the crew coordinated their actions, but it was already too late. The Boeing 737-800 was roaring at
325kph downwards at an angle of about 45 degrees. It burst into flames upon collision with the ground, killing all 62 people on board. During the last seconds before the collision both pilots were
screaming with terror,
Kommersant reports.
On March 20,
Russia's Investigative Committee named pilot error or technical failure as the prime theories as to the cause of the Flydubai's Boeing 737-800 crash in Rostov-on-Don on March 19.
It is unclear from the recording which pilot was doing what,
Kommersant notes. At first the investigators even believed that only one man was speaking the whole time. Now, to identify the voices of the deceased pilots, the expertise of their former colleagues and even relatives may be needed.
You got to be kidding me ! Flying airliners was my very first choice as a profession, unfortunately I developed myopia in my teens and there was no chance of being accepted to flying school. But the passion remained. I closely examine every airliner crash case and I've also been on a simulator and the explanation above is THE MOST ABSURD STORY I'VE EVER HEARD !
#1 : The aircraft had 2 hours of fuel left and instead of diverting to another airport they insisted on a dangerous landing ? What kind of logic is that ? Keep in mind that airline pilots are usually cool minded people and streamline everything to get the job done.
#2 : To avoid fatigue crews change every 8 hours of flying. That was not the case here either.
#3 : Also in order to avoid fatigue, pilots usually do only the take-offs and landings and yes the landing phase is the most dangerous.
#4 : We are talking about professional pilots here. The story above describes them as a couple of teenagers arguing about some ridiculous matter.
#5 : Under such conditions you DO NOT, REPEAT DO NOT ATTEMPT LANDINGS on automatic mode. Automations were generally developed in order to correct mistakes the mind can make. Manual control is always preferable but the human mind has its limitations.
#6 : So correctly, they attempted a MANUAL 3d approach and ONE PILOT DID EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE OTHER WAS DOING ?
Fine, sell that story to anybody you like but not to me.