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A320 Image: Alan Wilson from Stilton, Peterborough, Cambs, UK - Airbus A319-113 ‘C-GBHZ / 279’ Air Canada Rouge
Wake Turbulence Images: NASA, FAA
This is the story of air canada flight 190, in the early hours on the 10th of january 2008 an air canada airbus a319 was making the trip from victoria international airport in british columbia to toronto international airport in ontario. At 6:33 am, flight 190 was in contact with vancouver area control as they climbed to flight level 350. Flight 190 was then transferred over to seattle area control, theyd be the ones clearing air canada flight 190 to its cruising altitude of 37,000 feet. At 6:45 am they were cleared to climb to 37,000 feet.
By 6:48 am they had been climbing for a few minutes and they were 9 nautical miles from the US canada border, at 36,600 feet. Suddenly the whole plane experienced a series of jolts, it felt like the plane had gone over a series of speed bumps at high speed, the plane then started to roll to the right, it wasn't much just 5.6 degrees, but then it started to roll to the left, this roll was much more severe at 28 degrees of bank. The plane was supposed to be wings level and no one in the cockpit was commanding these rolls. The captain who was the pilot flying decided to disengage the autopilot and to hand fly the plane, The captain struggled to level the plane, for 18 seconds he fought with the plane, as it rolled from side to side, Commanding full rudder and full aileron corrections in both directions multiple times.
During all of this the plane kept descending, by the time they were at 35,500 feet flight 190 seemed to be under control. They cautiously descended to 31,000 feet, they took stock of their situation. They had quite a few injured passengers, three passengers were injured quite seriously. Everything that had not been secured in the cabin was thrown around. In fact during the upset the cabin service trolleys were lifted off the floor and slammed into the ceiling, thankfully they came crashing down down in the aisle and not on someone.
The pilots had two possible diversion airports available to them, kelowna or calgary, calgary was further away but they opted for calgary as the terrain at calgary was easier to work with and it had better medical services. The pilots hand flew the a319 all the way to calgary not daring to turn on the autopilot fearing another upset. At 7:29 am flight 190 landed at calgary without further incident. Out of the 88 people onboard, 8 people suffered minor injuries and 3 people suffered serious injuries. But everyone survived.
Once the plane was on the ground the engineers carried out whats known as a heavy turbulence inspection, the a319 had been through a lot and they wanted to know if it had been damaged in anyway. The flight data recorders had shown that the plane had experienced g forces well in excess of the limit set by airbus, But the airplane was fine even though parts like the vertical stabilizer had experienced loads 129% its load limit.
Now we get to why the plane experienced the upset in the first place, on the way back the pilots assumed that there was something wrong with the autopilot, but they were wrong. Infact the source of the problem wasnt even on the incident aircraft itself. The problem was 8.1 nautical miles out infront of flight 190, it was a united airlines 747.
Flight 190 had flown through the wake turbulence of another plane. But what is wake turbulence? When an airplane flies through the air, it creates a disturbance in its wake. Specifically it creates two counter rotating vortices behind the aircraft, think of it like two mini
11 окт 2024