When the instruments set off multiple alarms, pilots are confused about why it happened just after take-off. All three altimeters seem to be damaged, but after contacting Air Traffic Control, the pilot makes a series of mistakes that turn out fatal.
Do you trust pilot judgement, or would you fully trust technology?
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Mayday: Air Disaster - From Season 1 Episode 4 "Flying Blind": For flight crews, computerized systems like those on the Boeing 757 have introduced a new way of flying. Pilots are trained to fly the computer and the computer flies the plane. Conventional instruments are only used as back up. As long as the computer is working, the planes are simpler to operate. This is the story of what happens when the computers fail, and the pilots are left Flying Blind in the dark. It reveals crucial flaws in the computer systems that had remained hidden throughout the aircraft’s history. And it shows how a simple error and a lack of flight crew training can bring a giant, complex airliner to a deadly end.
Aeroperu Flight 603 bound from Lima, Peru to Santiago, Chile is a lightly loaded night flight. Captain Eric Schreiber and First Officer David Fernandez are highly experienced ex-Peruvian air force pilots with distinguished flying records for the national airline. Their 757 has been out of service and has just been brought back after a thorough clean.
All is normal as they leave the runway, but immediately after take off, the pilots begin to experience a confusing set of alarms and instrument indications. The 757 is equipped with three altimeters to give the plane its correct altitude reading. But all three now appear to have failed. The pilots ask the tower for their altitude, but the air traffic controller’s information comes from the on-board computer, making all his information wrong, too. Next, the error message “Mach Trim rudder ratio” comes up. This means that the airspeed indicators are also false, but the pilots can’t find this in the manuals.
Now the computer sounds an overspeed warning - the plane is flying too fast. Then there is a stall warning saying the plane is going too slow. The pilots struggle to understand what’s happening. It’s night and they don’t know how high or how fast they’re flying. They are flying blind, heading for disaster.
Now the crew is so confident of the tower’s altitude readings that they ignore the ground proximity warning when it starts up again. Fooled by the false confirmation of their altitude and unable to see in the dark, the crew crashes the plane into the ocean.
A massive salvage operation and investigation gets underway. Ten months earlier NTSB investigator Dick Rodriguez had investigated another 757 accident. The problem had been a blockage in the pitot static ports, which supply vital flight altitude and speed information to the computers. Was this crash due to similar causes?
The pitot static ports are small holes at the front of the wings. If they are blocked or impeded the computers will receive false information.
When the wreckage of Flight 603 was retrieved from the ocean, the piece of fuselage with the static ports revealed the terrible truth. The static ports were covered up with duct tape that had been put on to prevent water getting in during the cleaning - and it hadn’t been removed before flight. As a result, the computers were receiving false information.
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7 сен 2024
