You don’t see flat spins in commercial aircraft that often……

Hmmmm how long till it's on Air Disasters explaining how they found the pilots cock bitten off in the stews dislocated jaw..... you know pilot error in the third world.
 
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10-20 Boeings fall out of the sky every day and the media has been covering it up as gas main leaks when they blow up a couple blocks of the subdivision.

50-50 chance getting on an airplane nowadays. Pilots vaxxed and boosted to the MAX and pumped full of Starbucks departure gate soy lattes.
Will you please site the 10 to 20 from yesterday? Just to clarify for a friend.
 
10-20 Boeings fall out of the sky every day and the media has been covering it up as gas main leaks when they blow up a couple blocks of the subdivision.

50-50 chance getting on an airplane nowadays. Pilots vaxxed and boosted to the MAX and pumped full of Starbucks departure gate soy lattes.
What?
 
As an airline pilot, although no time in the variety that crashed, I'm actually quite impressed they were able to get it into a flat spin... That takes...talent...
I’ve got a little time in the 72. It’s damn near impossible. As usual. Reserving my comments for the official report. Some speculate icing. I’ll be very curious. A stall is hard enough, but a flat spin, well like you said, raw talent.
 
I’ve got a little time in the 72. It’s damn near impossible. As usual. Reserving my comments for the official report. Some speculate icing. I’ll be very curious. A stall is hard enough, but a flat spin, well like you said, raw talent.
I remember in the 90s (I think, maybe early 2000s?) the ATRs were having icing problems. They used boots instead of bleed air, the boots were too small, and the pilots sometimes operated the boots too often, creating an ice bridge that the boots couldn't clear. As I recall, they actually flew ATRs behind a C-130 spraying water on the plane in freezing temps to study the problem. I believe they changed the design of the boots, and the procedures for deployment as a result of that study, and I haven't heard of another ATR icing accident since, but yeah - they at least have a history of icing problems.

I'm curious about the previous post that says both props were feathered. It has no citation, and that information came out VERY soon after the accident - too soon to trust whether it's true or not (I'm not saying it isn't true, but neither am I willing to accept it at face value just yet).
 
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I remember in the 90s (I think, maybe early 2000s?) the ATRs were having icing problems. They used boots instead of bleed air, the boots were too small, and the pilots sometimes operated the boots too often, creating an ice bridge that the boots couldn't clear. As I recall, they actually flew ATRs behind a C-130 spraying water on the plane in freezing temps to study the problem. I believe they changed the design of the boots, and the procedures for deployment as a result of that study, and I haven't heard of another ATR icing accident since, but yeah - they at least have a history of icing problems.

I'm curious about the previous post that says both props were feathered. It has no citation, and that information came out VERY soon after the accident - too soon to trust whether it's true or not (I'm not saying it isn't true, but neither am I willing to accept it at face value just yet).
Yes, that was after the American Eagle incident over Ohio, but they were actually holding in icing with flaps out, causing a high angle of attack and ice accumulate to the point where the boots couldn’t keep up. After that accident, they moved all of the ATR down to Puerto Rico and no longer flew them in areas where heavy icing could occur. However, the joke is on them because the worst icing I’ve ever experienced. I was going into the Bahamas.
 
If in fact there was reported severe icing in that area....no airplane tolerates severe icing, and airplanes with boots vs. hot wing tolerate it even worse.
I mean, fuck bro we don’t even fly in areas of severe icing even with good anti-icing equipment if we don’t have to. If there was severe this plane for sure had no business taking off or even being near it.
 
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I mean, fuck bro we don’t even fly in areas of severe icing even with good anti-icing equipment if we don’t have to. If there was severe this plane for sure had no business taking off or even being near it.

I always take "severe" reports of anything with a grain of salt until I hear what reported it...

"severe" in a king air might be moderate in a 737+ size aircraft...

If an Airbus or Boeing reports something as severe, ill take heed.
 
I flew in an ATR 72 on Friday morning and then again this morning (Sunday here).

Didn't notice any flat spins either to going to or coming from Palmerston North. Must have happened while I was reading my book, because I would have noticed when I was looking out the window.

But then Air New Zealand are not really known for crashing, except for a big one in 1979.
 
I have zero flying knowledge. Can someone explain to layman’s terms how professional pilots could somehow stall a plane so bad that it loses all lift even with the engines running?
 
I have zero flying knowledge. Can someone explain to layman’s terms how professional pilots could somehow stall a plane so bad that it loses all lift even with the engines running?
Well, if there's enough ice all over the wings and tail surfaces, it will destroy lift, and thus a deep stall/spin. On the other hand, if the strange report about both props being feathered is true, then there was no thrust available. However the plane would not stall without help, but rather glide as if power-off, unless the pilot panicked and hauled back on the yoke and induced the stall/spin. Then there is the situation where the center of gravity is so far aft that it exceeds the design parameters and becomes uncontrollable (highly unlikely in an aircraft already established in flight, this is more of a takeoff crash scenario), and finally, some type of mechanical failure that forced the elevator to full UP and locked it there.
But most of that would just result in a spin, but this looked more like a flat spin, and as @_Windrider_ said, that almost took some real talent.
 
I have zero flying knowledge. Can someone explain to layman’s terms how professional pilots could somehow stall a plane so bad that it loses all lift even with the engines running?
Planes can stall at any speed. I know it seems counterintuitive. A wing need only reach its critical angle of attack to stall. The critical angle of attack is the angle of the relative wind to the wings cord (definition below) becomes too great that the wing looses lift because air flowing over the top of the wing becomes separated from the wing. Wing chord the chord is an imaginary straight line joining the leading edge and trailing edge of a wing.
 
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The above answer is correct. I'm trying to think of an even easier way think about it.
If you are in a car and you take a turn and continue to turn the wheel, eventually the front tires will lose traction and start skidding regardless of speed. If you are slow and you lock out the front tires they'll skid and the faster you are the less of a turn it takes to skid the tires.

With good engines you can continue pulling the wings, usually up or in a turn, to where even with power, the wings "skid" and lose traction and stop creating lift aka flying and you stall.

Add Ice to the wings and that point of where the wings "skid" will change to a place where you wouldn't usually expect wings to stall.
 
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Those of y’all that do this professionally please correct me if I’m wrong here but at a very basic level, recovery from a stall/spin has two main factors, pilot actions and the ability of the aircraft, in terms of the lifting surfaces (elevator/wings etc), to recover from the loss of lift. As I recall, T tail aircraft, where the elevators are located at the top of the tail, like this plane, have a very difficult time recovering from a stall/spin. Again, correct me if I’m remembering incorrectly. Add those factors too icing conditions, and damn, it’s a bad day.
 
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Those of y’all that do this professionally please correct me if I’m wrong here but at a very basic level, recovery from a stall/spin has two main factors, pilot actions and the ability of the aircraft, in terms of the lifting surfaces (elevator/wings etc), to recover from the loss of lift. As I recall, T tail aircraft, where the elevators are located at the top of the tail, like this plane, have a very difficult time recovering from a stall/spin. Again, correct me if I’m remembering incorrectly. Add those factors too icing conditions, and damn, it’s a bad day.
The tail isn’t what recovers, an aircraft stalls at the wing not the tail. Any aircraft can be stalled at any speed. It’s an angle of attack equation. In commercial aircraft, and probably all aircraft, we’ve changed the way we train recovery from a stall. When I first started we would train to power out of a stall. Throw the thrust levers to the fire wall and power out. Now in many cases we just lower the angle of attack to get the wing flying again. Many times we don’t even touch the thrust levers. If icing was the culprit here, there’s very little ability to recover especially at low altitude because to lower angle of attack you almost certainly will give up altitude. Then there’s secondary stalls in a recovery which is usually where a spin occurs.
 
Juan Browne is a good source for aviation news with minimal speculation -



If you watch this video, note the time stamps and speed each twenty seconds or so. There is a moment with the speed beginning to drop and then BAM 45 mph. Note the altitudes. Then he overlays that information on the Google maps, so you can see it in 3D. They lose speed, drop 1000 feet, and the plane then ascends trying to regain that 1000 feet as it drops a little more speed and then, just prior to regaining all of the altitude drops all speed and starts falling out of the air. That plane cannot fly at 45 mph, and climbing was the wrong thing to be doing.

Neat overlay in 3D with Google maps. Neat software.

Video was extremely interesting.

The correct thing to do is nose down, increase airspeed, and get to a lower altitude immediately. The pilot was climbing and reducing airspeed while fighting to stay up n the severe icing condition altitude instead of escaping it. Pity.
 
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