[JYO] Just Before Dying, a Thrill at 41,000 Feet

 
Just Before Dying, a Thrill at 41,000  Feet

By MATTHEW L. WALD, The  New York Times
 

WASHINGTON, June 13 - Alone in their 50-seat commercial  jet, the two young 
pilots decided to see what it could do.
According to documents released Monday by the National  Transportation Safety 
Board, they climbed so fast that they were pushed down  into their seats with 
2.3 times the normal force of gravity, zooming toward  41,000 feet, the limit 
of their Bombardier CRJ200.
"Ooh, look at that," said the second-in-command, Peter R.  Cesarz, 23, 
apparently referring to cockpit readings. "Pretty cool."
"Man, we can do it," said the captain, Jesse Rhodes, 31.  "Forty-one it," he 
said, referring to the maximum altitude.
A few minutes later, though, both engines were dead, and  the pilots were 
struggling to glide to an emergency landing at an airport in  Jefferson City, 
Mo. 
"We're going to hit houses, dude," one of them said.
The plane crashed two and a half miles from the runway,  missing the houses 
but killing the pilots.
On Monday, the safety board opened three days of hearings  into the crash, 
which occurred last Oct. 14 on a night flight from Little Rock,  Ark., to 
Minneapolis, to reposition the plane for the next day's schedule.
Among the questions at issue is whether the plane's two  engines, which are 
designed to be capable of restarting in flight, may have  seized up, resisting 
four efforts to get them running. Another is whether the  airline, Pinnacle, 
which is rapidly growing and moving young pilots from  turboprops into jets, 
provided appropriate training.
Some investigators say the pilots flew the plane far  harder than an airline 
would fly with passengers on board, and in testimony on  Monday, Terry 
Mefford, Pinnacle's chief pilot, agreed.
"If there's people in the airplane," he said, "you can  count that the crew 
members are pretty much going by the book."
 
Mr. Mefford also said that since the accident, he had  heard talk of a "410 
club," whose members had flown the Bombardier to Flight  Level 410, or 41,000 
feet. Investigators for the safety board apparently heard  similar talk. 
"Investigators formed the impression," a board report said, "that  there was a 
sense 
of allure to some pilots to cruise at FL 410 just to say they  had 'been 
there and done that.' "
The two pilots had set the autopilot to take the plane to  its 41,000-foot 
limit, but instead of specifying the speed at which it should  fly while 
climbing, they specified the rate of climb. When the jet reached the  assigned 
altitude, it was flying relatively slowly.
The transcript of their conversation as captured by the  cockpit voice 
recorder suggests exhilaration. An air traffic controller with  jurisdiction 
over 
the flight asked at one point, "3701, are you an  RJ-200?"
"That's affirmative," one of the pilots replied.
"I've never seen you guys up at 41 there," she  said.
Then there was laughter in the cockpit.
"Yeah, we're actually a, there's ah, we don't have any  passengers on board, 
so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here,"  one of the pilots 
answered.
In the thin air, though, the engines had less thrust, and  the plane slowed 
further. The nose pitched up as the autopilot tried to keep it  at the assigned 
altitude, and then an automatic system began warning that the  plane was 
approaching a "stall," in which there is too little lift to maintain  flight.
"Dude, it's losing it," one pilot said, using an  expletive. "Yeah," the 
other said.
But as an automatic system tried to push the nose down,  to gain speed and 
prevent the stall, the pilots, for reasons that are unclear,  overrode it.
So the plane did stall, and the turbulent air flowing off  the wings entered 
the engines, shutting them down.
 
"We don't have any engines," one of the pilots said. "You  got to be kidding 
me."
At that point, the safety board says, the plane was  within gliding range of 
five suitable airports. Yet the pilots did not tell the  controller the full 
extent of their problem, reporting that they had lost one  engine, not both, 
and it was not until 14 minutes later that one said: "We need  direct to any 
airport. We have a double engine failure."
The airline has denounced the pilots.
"It's beyond belief that a professional air crew would  act in that manner," 
said Thomas Palmer, former manager of Pinnacle's training  program for that 
model of jet. He said the crew had evidently disregarded  "training and common 
airmanship."
But the Air Line Pilots Association says Pinnacle's  safety program had 
crucial gaps, including lack of training for high altitudes.  It also maintains 
that the engines suffered "core lock," in which engines  running at high thrust 
are shut down suddenly and, when the parts cool at  different rates, some 
rotating components bind up.
General Electric, which built the engines, says they did  not seize up.
To be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration,  engines must be 
capable of restarting in flight. One issue that the safety board  will have to 
resolve is whether the engines on this plane met that rule.

Other related posts: