This Afriqiyah Airlines crash at Tripoli was not an ordinary approach accident.
Ordinary approach accidents that involve an impact with flat terrain in the last kilometre before the runway threshhold do not usually smash the aeroplane into tiny pieces. They normally leave it crumpled but more or less complete, or otherwise the structure fractures into large but recognisable components.
Apart from the fin, the aircraft was smashed into small pieces
The tail fin's completeness in this case doesn't count: the fin is a monolithic composite structure of considerable strength that tends to snap off in impacts. So what kind of impact was this to break the rest of the aircraft up so totally? The debris field does not look as if the aircraft cartwheeled, and if it had done there would normally still have been some recognisable large components.
The hull of the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 accident on final approach to Amsterdam Schiphol in February 2009 was fractured but completely identifiable. That aircraft impacted flat, clear terrain about the same distance from the runway. The Turkish 737 stalled into the ground with a high rate of descent and very low forward speed.
The Turkish 737 hit flat ground on short final approach when it stalled
The undeniable fact is that the Afriqiyah aircraft impact was particularly high-energy.
The Airbus A330 has a terrain awareness warning system that would have alerted the crew to a high terrain closure rate, and its flight envelope protection system would have prevented the aircraft from stalling unless the crew had de-selected the "normal" flight control law, but there is no information to suggest that they would have had a reason to do that.
The weather was not challenging, in the sense that the visibility was adequate, there was little or no cloud and the wind was gentle. There is no suggestion of a technical snag because the crew did not report an emergency. The pilots were on the last leg of a long, uneventful night flight, arriving at their home airport.
The general visibility was 6km, although there is a suggestion that about the time of the accident the visibility dipped to 2km in haze. The pilots were flying an approach to runway 09 (due east) a few minutes before dawn, but being above sea level they would have had the sun shining into their eyes through the brightening haze, which can provide the crew with an impression of hanging in the sky with no sense of speed, no external visual references, with the ground beneath them almost invisible in the pre-dawn shadow.
Although technically the visibility would have allowed the crew to see the runway from at least 2km, it was probably invisible to them because the haze was illuminated, the pilots were dazzled by the sun's bright red disc, and the runway was in shadow.
It is not clear what approach aid the crew were using, but a precision aid like ILS was not available for 09, so the pilots had no glideslope guidance. They would have been tired after an all-night flight of more than eight hours, and looking forward to going home.
Having the dawning sun in your eyes when you are very tired after flying all night makes your eyelids feel like lead.
Flying into the low, rising sun near your home base at the end of a night flight is perhaps the most overpoweringly soporific combination of circumstances known to man.
The aircraft, we know, flew into the ground.
If it flew into the ground without any control inputs whatever to arrest the rate of descent, that could explain the degree of damage.
on May 14, 2010 3:48 PM | Reply
The debris field indicates an in-air breakup.
One has to wonder that if AF 447 had impacted on land, how much the debris from AF 447 would resemble the Tripoli crash.
The conclusion that AF 447 hit the water "intact" was based on evidence from pieces recovered from the water that fit that conclusion, and not the total body of evidence.
on May 14, 2010 4:10 PM | Reply
Another reason why the TK737 was whole was due to the clay ground, which absorbed a lot of the energy. I don't think the ground near Tripoli is quite so forgiving.
I hope they find the events behind this crash soon.
on May 14, 2010 9:35 PM | Reply
the comment of the Italian pilot who was at holding poing rwy 09 that morning is clear: he declared to have seen the aircraft breaking out the ceiling witha 20/30 degrees pitch down and a very hard inpact into terrain...unfortunatelly he can not tell all he had seen because of the investigation. Enought to understand a so high energy.
on May 15, 2010 2:38 PM | Reply
The photos of the debris area I've seen suggest that the aircraft impacted the ground with a flat trajectory and maybe at higher than approach speed, unusual CFIT.
on May 16, 2010 3:06 PM | Reply
I know that yawning leaden-lid soporific feeling, though usually in CRZ @FL 390 (in metres), 2 hrs to T/D with saw toothed mountains fringed with snow rising from the nebulous flat plains, (Strata-Q permitting). There is a Summer 6/Winter 7 hour time difference between Frankfurt-EDDF and Beijing-ZBAA and it is an average of a 8.5-9 hour block time flight.
Afriqiyah Airways 8U-771 JoBurg-FAJA- Tripoli-HLLT, was of a similar duration with the relative circadian luxury of paralleling the Longitude on the ND’s magenta highway without the yawning East-West Longitude transit. Westbound, I find best, as It always stretches the day and optimizes Zzzz-time.
So, unlike a Longitude Transit Flight/LFT, this flight, 8U-771 was a Longitude Parallel Flight/LPT, and as such the crew were operating in every sense, a circadian rhythm night shift, like any non-flying shift worker.
So grief was a falling fig leaf upon the dawning of the day of May 12th in Tripoli, that tripped down in fragmented fashion, as David said, where are the high V/S Turkish chunks ?, alas high IAS Libyan bits prevail, with a shorn tail. Prima facie, this does look like the un-arrested VFR descent without a dawning comprehension of the ND’s vertical path indicator and deviation scale on it’s right side. It is on the B-744/B-777 and A-330, I assume ?, I hope ?. It is displayed from T/D and it’s magenta diamond modulates in optimal moderation around the centre at a scale range of +/- 400 ft. It’s digital display is added when the display exceeds +/_ 400 ft. A very useful guide on a VFR profile descent, assuming a VFR runway threshold or Non-Precision approach waypoint is informing it on the FMC’s CDU LEGS page , paying no attention to this in a blinding sunrise points to understandable leaden-lid-lethargy and a lack of CRM SOP discipline. What are the positive aspects ?, hopefully a test of novel Libyan investigative transparency. Their accommodation of the bereaved is a good start and outside other investigative agencies like the NTSB is also continuing this good start.
For hardware hard-talk, current and productive or derivative and recent 10 year-ish past produced, informs our concern, rightly, in my view. If 8U-771 involved a TU-154, nobody with access to a keyboard, including me, would give a flying keystroke toss about this disaster, lest a linked in loved one, lets be honest !., “Oh !... another TU-154 smoking hole, yawn !, wake me up before you TOGA !”... The last TU-154M, I gave a toss about, excluding Polish President Lech Kaczinsky’s last April 10 in Smolensk was a Bashkirian one, namely BTC 2937 that TCAS T-boned, 274/004 track killed a drinking acquaintance of mine, among 70 others on Monday July 1st 2002. That was Captain Paul Philips of Liverpool and DHL PIC of B-757 DHX-611, “Dilmun 611 TCAS Descent”, spoken by PF-PNF/PM Canadian F/O Brant Campioni in that, the “impossible accident”. Paul’s last pint of blanche-Belgian wheat beer, was sunk in Brussels on Thursday, June 27th at approx 20:00, Brant sat opposite upon the terrace of the then Sean O’ Casey pub, currently, Michael Collins. Many ripples radiated from that disaster, politically and operationally, generally in a positive direction, funny old world. Extended victim Vitaly Kaloyev’s murder of Skyguide’s Controller Peter Nielson, another extended victim himself, in Zurich on Feb 24 2004, was a distinctly negative ripple. Kaloyev is now deputy construction minister in North Ossetia, funny old world indeed.
I consider myself well informed generally and had never heard, nor had ever seen Afriqiyah Airways until August 20 2009 when Scottish medically informed Jurisprudence flew Lockerbie bomber Abdel Baset Ali al-Megrahi via the Colonel In Chief’s demanded economic bidding to Tripoli. Ali al-Megrahi was flown from Glasgow by Afriqiyah Airways A-330, their tail logo, was rather intriguing, I found.
I am not a religionist by any metric, except of faith in humanity and humanity’s fallible technology. But if I was, in a cynical Machiavellian sense, I would say a Libyan sun rose to avenge a dish served bloody cold and innocent upon a fiery Scottish night with equal innocent, but I’m not that cynical. Considering that bad karma, I’m glad to be an aviator and not a theologian. And Machiavelli couldn’t have scripted an accident like this.
But out of this carnage arrived a miraculous survival of crash-orphaned nine-year-old Ruben Van Assouw. He must be meant built of stern and flexible stuff, the right stuff clearly and he is probably meant for great things, who knows, perhaps an EADS CEO itself in the years ahead. After all, what better advertisement than having survived a product you are representing ?. “Whoop, whoop, pull-up !”, whoops, I forgot, with the Franco-German axis of inertia in EADS’s C-suite kindergarten, only French or German CEOs can be an EADS CEO. Nationality is paramount it shows in every way with monotonous regularity. Having survived such a trauma, young Ruben would probably rightly conclude with an innate and now accelerated maturity of Dutch pragmatism, “EADS ?,no thanks, life is far, far too short !.”
on May 17, 2010 10:01 AM | Reply
Hi.
I must say I agree with Mr David Learmount's statement.
The picture of crash site is indicating CFIT with high speed. Although David's explanation is all human related factors, which most of the time are the reason for accidents and incidents. If we do not find technical failures then we should look for pilot error. Hopefully, listening to CVR/FDR will ease the investigation.
Brgds
Moe
on May 17, 2010 6:34 PM | Reply
found this info in a LinkedIn Aviation Professionals Group string, appears reliable, but judge for yourself
"The condition of the runway 09 NDB is according to an Afriqiyah employee "horrible, even for African circumstances". This is taken from the Tripoli Intl NOTAM of May 13th:
INTERFERNCE FROM SIGNAL BEING EXPERIENCED DURING CURRUNT AIRPORT
DEVELOPMENT WORK ( TPI VOR SHOULD BE USED WITH CAUTION
CREATED: 13 May 2010 10:13:00
Combine this with the poor visibility and a tired crew that is very eager to land the plane after a long night flight."
Am wondering when Libyan Incident Investigators will release first independant interim conclusions, even if they are painfull for the local stakeholders..
on May 17, 2010 11:45 PM | Reply
The visibility reported by pilots landing 30 min after the A330 crash was 500m. An Afriqiyah A320 landing on runway 27 at that time couldn't get the visual references at MDA leadind to missed approach procedure and diversion to HLLM.
on May 18, 2010 9:51 PM | Reply
regarding the info that the NDB or VOR at this airport were unreliable or interfered with; normally the crew would have been executing a non-precision approach using their FMS. As it is solely fed by GPS position (only secondary by LOC or dme/dme) and very reliable, any wrong radio-signal would be excluded from the actual position calculation of the aircraft and thus would have no actual influence on the approach.
on May 18, 2010 10:16 PM | Reply
TO David Connolly
I have seen you write so many things not related to the accident and just to say 2 points:
- Some people like me do not infact need to hear about your feeling towards AFRIQIYAH Airways so, kept for your self since this page is not the right one to write your feeling.
- A/C which took Mr. AL Magrahi was A 300-600 not A330 as your wrote up so be sur what to write. Cover your self it is cold Where you are in.
on May 19, 2010 12:12 PM | Reply
Michiel is slightly off track, so to speak, in stating that the FMS is "solely" fed by GPS position. That really would be a frightening prospect, by any metric. Indeed, a navigational affront to the FMS’s autonomy. The FMS has 2 FMC constituents, only one is selectable at any one time. Connected to the FMS on all production Boeing and Airbus long haulers are 3 Inertial Reference Units. The IRUs are constituents of the Inertial Reference System at it’s self contained internal heart. They are augmented externally for updating by 2 DME, 2 VOR, 2 ADF, 3 ILS and 2 GPS receivers.
The rationale behind having 3 IRUs dates back to the installation in the B-747 classic of 3 “INSs”. One is provided for positioning, the second provides a back-up position to the first and the third INS is the “voting member”, if the first two are in navigational disagreement.
With the advent of the FMS, it enabled the 3 IRU positions to be combined in a “weighted average” position that becomes the “FMC position”. This can be seen on the POS REF page of the FMC when the IRUs are aligned. At the gate thereafter, all four positions (FMC, IRS L,C,R) on the POS REF page should reflect the same position.
Once the IRUs are operating in the NAV mode, only two ways exist to update the FMC position on the ground. One is cycling the IRUs to ALIGN and insert a new position in the IRS boxes on the POS INIT page. The second occurs during takeoff when pressing a TOGA switch, occasioning a slight map shift on the Navigation Display. Electronic NAVAID updates are inhibited on the ground. TOGA allows the FMC to purge induced two dimensional aggregate taxi errors. After gear tilt is sensed, the FMC is in air mode and electronic NAVAID updates are permitted. Reception conditions, in order of preference are :
1) DME/DME (DD)-Using two distinct DME signals to create crossing arcs utilising ground range, which is corrected slant range via Pythagoras’ hypotenuse. A lot more accurate than modern Greek mathematical Achilles heel mythology, where GDP translates as Greek Decimal Point.
2) VOR/DME (VD)-Single sight VOR Radial with DME updating. In compliance with the 1 in 60 navigational rule, it’s limits are 40NM TO and 25 NM FROM.
3) LOCALIZER (LOC)-Altitude above NAVAID elevation is less than 6000 ft. Bearing to LOCALIZER is less than 25 degrees. Distance is less than 20 NM and the difference between aircraft track and LOC centre beam is less than 45 degrees.
LOC updating is inhibited when DD or VD is available.
4) GPS is available to augment all modes and DOES NOT UPDATE IRUs.
For approach considerations, the main concern is that the Actual Navigation Performance, shall not exceed the Required Navigation Performance prior to the Missed Approach Point. As a memory aid, “The ANP shall not exceed the RNP, prior to the MAP”. To be compliant with this formula/rule of thumb, it is worth recalling a weighty navigation philosophy. To wit : “It is better to be unsure of your position and know it rather than to be certain of where you are not”. Voting member or weighted average crew will thus be more accurate in all dimensions than their pilot sum aligned parts. QED !
on May 19, 2010 4:46 PM | Reply
Hi Salem.
I don’t have any feelings one way or another on Afriqiyah Airways per se. Though the pax cabins look very pleasantly green and fresh. I think my flight of Karma fancy was from observation of the unique tail logo of 9-9-99 commemorating Libya’s “Sirth Decleration” of that date of the Organisation of African Unity forming the current African Union. Unfortunately Africa’s Unionists make Belgium’s Leoplod II look like an Oxfam humanitarian. And the AU in turn makes the UN look nearly as useful as a Harley Davidson ashtray, yet hope springs eternal.
The missing 9 of my mischievous mind was the 9 months it was between Mr. AL Magrahi’s repatriation to Tripoli and this terrible crash. A tangible script for the Twilight Zone beckons surely ?. The investigation itself should be in technical or crew fatigue fact and in clear light with hopefully lessons learned and applied. Wx in EBBR is warm and severe clear CAVOK @ 20C btw. Brgds…DC
on May 19, 2010 8:39 PM | Reply
Hi Salem.
I don’t have any feelings one way or another on Afriqiyah Airways per se. Though the pax cabins look very pleasantly green and fresh. I think my flight of Karma fancy was from observation of the unique tail logo of 9-9-99 commemorating Libya’s “Sirth Decleration” of that date of the Organisation of African Unity forming the current African Union. Unfortunately Africa’s Unionists make Belgium’s Leoplod II look like an Oxfam humanitarian. And the AU in turn makes the UN look nearly as useful as a Harley Davidson ashtray, yet hope springs eternal.
The missing 9 of my mischievous mind was the 9 months it was between Mr. AL Magrahi’s repatriation to Tripoli and this terrible crash. A tangible script for the Twilight Zone beckons surely ?. The investigation itself should be in technical or crew fatigue fact and in clear light with hopefully lessons learned and applied. Wx in EBBR is warm and severe clear CAVOK @ 20C btw. Brgds…DC
on May 21, 2010 5:12 PM | Reply
Here is my theory - Direction of flight was away from runway 09, not toward it. The aircraft had an upset / departure from controlled flight for whatever reason, perhaps technical, perhaps trying to lose excess speed and altitude, and the wings were pulled off in the attempted recovery. The wings hit the ground first in the line of debris, the fuselage disintegrated along the original flight path, and the tail section fluttered to the ground.
on May 21, 2010 5:14 PM | Reply
Great theory, Jim, but one of the few things we actually know for sure is that the aircraft was flying the approach for 09.
on May 21, 2010 5:24 PM | Reply
I have seen the information that they were cleared for the NDB approach to 09, but were they still in the arrival and not yet actually on the approach?