Loquascious

I just talked to a coworker who was on this flight. He said it was absolute chaos on the plane after it happened. He said there was no order and tons of panic. No wonder some people grabbed their bags.

He also confirmed what the OP said. He said they got in the air and then immediately came down hard. he said the impact was so severe that had people not been buckled in, there would have been severe injuries.

Always Flyin

As an 18-year pilot with an ATP, yes, I ask.

It is not harshly worded question. It is a very direct question to an assertion that you made.

If you spent 20-years in the Air Force and had training on emergency aircraft evacuations, you would know that, if you survive the initial impact or emergency event, literally every second counts getting off that airplane as the next most likely cause of death is smoke inhalation.

While you take the time to retrieve, don or carry your backpack, you are slowing down your evacuation and the evacuation of those behind you. Once you have your backback, you are slowing things down further since you will be moving slower, will be less coordinated, and the physical size will result in it taking longer for the person behind you to exit the aircraft.

What if you are exiting through an overwing window plug? Slower even yet.

I suspect most people here have never been in the type of emergency where even a single second could mean the difference between life and death. Emergency aircraft evacuations are often that kind of emergency.

A fourteen-year-old girl was recently killed by a train because she wanted to retrieve her mobile phone from the train tracks. http://www.examiner.com/article/jenn...hing-for-phone One second killed her.

Life is far more valuable than anything in a carry-on.

Leave it behind and get off the airplane.

But if you insist, I'll make you a deal, you can wait until every other person has deplaned and can then take all of your bags off with you. Sound good to you?

BoeingBoy

While initial media reports are often wrong so make getting a good picture of what happened all but impossible, having two eye-witnesses saying the same thing is credible. It's starting to sound like an attempt was made to land on the remaining runway - they would have been airborne well before the end of the 10,500' 27L.

I'd be interested in hearing if your friend could tell whether the nose gear collapsed in the initial or second impact on the runway and whether there were any unusual signs/sounds from either engine before the final impact with the runway.

Jim

Loquascious

I won't talk to him again until Monday, but he said that he distinctly remembers hearing the nose gear break, then the skid and the smoke. I'll ask him for more specifics if there isn't any further info by then.

phlwookie

Thanks for this. I always take eyewitness accounts with a grain of salt, but this is mine and I'm quite confident in what I saw.

BoeingBoy

I suspect merely taking part in an emergency evacuation drill for certification is something few, if any, here have done it would be an eye-opening experience. While flight crewmembers can't take part except to play their role in an evacuation, the absolute quickest way off the plane is briefed to the other volunteers. #1 is to take the quickest route to the nearest available exit - including climbing over seatbacks if required. #2 is to not take anything with you when you evacuate - no purse, laptop bag, backpack, absolutely nothing. None of the normal line up in the aisle and wait for the line to start moving nonsense will get a full airplane evacuated in the 90 seconds allowed for certification. Even in these demos, the worst case is assumed - half the exits unusable and it's dark except for emergency lighting.

In the real world, even the 90 seconds isn't a guarantee that everyone will live. I believe it was in the mid to late-1980's that an AC flight made an emergency landing at CVG due to a fire in the cabin - the pilots were using their oxygen masks the whole time. As soon as the emergency exits were open, the fresh supply of oxygen only increased the severity of the fire and many people died still sitting in their seats. And those passengers were fully briefed prior to landing. None of the "I've seen it 1000 times" ignorance.

An evacuation is nothing to take lightly - a second can literally be the difference between life and death.

Jim

phlwookie

Jim - I clearly saw the gear collapse on second impact. Initial impact still had the nose up slightly so the rear gear took more of the force. In fact, after that first impact I still thought they had a shot at recovering from whatever was happening, whether that be getting it on the ground "normally" or circling around for an emergency landing. But when I saw them get airborne a second time with much less stability (both the wing level and angle of attack) and then lose altitude again with the nose angled down some, I was afraid they'd lose the nose gear and it was a potential disaster. Thankfully it wasn't.

(Edited to add) - takeoffs from 27L were into a stiff wind at this time, so aircraft were off the pavement way earlier than usual, climbing fast, and had a low relative ground speed once airborne. This is actually why I was facing the window at all in the club and in a position to witness this - I was marveling at how quickly many aircraft, particularly Dash-8s, were getting airborne. I suspect, but cannot prove without knowing how far down the runway they were on first impact and the current wind speed, that they could have pretty easily stopped the plane well before the end of 27L.

Always Flyin

Exactly right.

^

BoeingBoy

Thanks, that's what I got from your initial post but was just looking for verification since the tail high position with the nose gear collapsed could have possibly made it look like it became airborne a 2nd time if your view of that portion of the runway was obstructed any.

To bounce 30-40' in the air on the first impact would mean a hell of a sink rate, which I can certainly envision. The second time, since the nose gear isn't designed to take the initial impact with the runway, makes sense for the collapsed gear.

The media is portraying it like a tire blew and the nose gear collapsed as the aborted takeoff happened - what you get with anchors who are just reading the teleprompters - but your description is an entirely different chain of events.

Jim

GEXPO

Not a pilot by any stretch, but I thought once you hit V1 you're committed to taking off. Would it have been a better decision to take off, fly around, maybe burn fuel and then have the entire, probably foamed runway to land on?

FWAAA

Post #68 responded to an identical question with a potential scenario that might explain the rejected takeoff.

phlwookie

Yup, I think what you're seeing in mainstream media is an oversimplification of what happened, as verified from Loquascious' coworker on the flight. I have no reason to not believe that a tire blowout was the root cause but in most aviation accidents, it takes more than that alone to go wrong, and the wind may have been a factor. And it you look back at page 1 of the thread, one of the first things I wondered about was the gravitational forces on both impacts.

I think I mentioned this upthread but - and I'm in pure speculation mode here - they may never have wanted to get airborne. I observed no indication of a blown tire, but it's not something I was looking for and might not have been visible anyway from how far away I was, so I really have no idea when it blew or how much time the crew had to diagnose that and make whatever instantaneous decisions they had to make. In any case, I have to wonder if a wind gust came up just as they were trying to abort. Jim may be able to speculate on that, but if winds on the nose suddenly went from, say, 15 MPH sustained to a gust of 45 - and it was extremely windy in PHL yesterday - I have to wonder if that was the other piece of the causal factor puzzle.

While the result of the accident is good - everyone made it out well enough that many continued on just 5 hours later, which was not at all what I was fearing as I watched this unfold - I also don't discount the possibility that the crew made the wrong decision, such as an airborne abort after V1, and that was either the root cause or a contributing factor. I don't want to believe that, but that's something for the NTSB to determine. I will say that between this and the US 1549 (Miracle on the Hudson in Jan 2009) incidents, US has had incredibly good results for the occupants of the incident aircraft, both A320s of very similar age, and I will have no pause getting on my next flights. I also wouldn't be surprised if they repair N113UW and it flies again ...

McSam18

According to Chris May via his twitter account.

“@chrismayCBS3: FAA: Pilot of US Airways 1702 aborted takeoff after noticing smoke coming from engine; nose gear collapsed after impacting runway.”

Interesting news. I wonder if the tire blew and sent shreds into the engine?

N830MH

Does anyone who have a registration number or ship# is that?

phlwookie

That's certainly possible, and debris could have gotten into both engines. That said, I did not see smoke or flame from either engine while it was in my line of sight. By the time they were in the air the second time, I was looking for smoke and/or flame, initially assuming that the lack of power was engine related and just wondering why this was happening, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist.

This map shows the approximate distance, 3,900 feet, from where I viewed the incident to where events unfolded to give everyone a sense of my distance from it: http://tinyurl.com/oc8mk9t