Pilot error, including an excessive rate of descent, may have contributed to the Feb. 17 crash of an Endeavor Air CRJ-900 at Toronto Pearson International Airport, according to a preliminary report by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada.
“Pilot Error May Have Contributed To Endeavor Air CRJ-900 Crash”
Are you kidding me??? The pilot crashed the damn airplane.
There is no other conclusion.
In an unrelated incident. “Fire, may have contributed to house burning down.”
Are you kidding me?“Pilot error, including an excessive rate of descent, may have contributed to the Feb. 17 crash” It’s obvious the landing gear and wings simply were not engineered well enough for this drop test. The flight time and experience of both crewmembers are short of a full load.
I think we must spend money on the FAA to help revamp the pilot training and the FAA in general to become more productive and safer. In think the FAA should force the airlines to make planes that can land on runways at 2000’/min descent rates as a safety margin. Or perhaps a ballistic parachute to soften the landing. Maybe get Elon involved with Commercial aircraft landings. Oh wait! That means bringing politics into the story. So scratch that idea. Let’s just stick to sarcasm.
Two bodies in motion collide. At least half of the blame must go to the Earth.
What happened is not in dispute. Why it happened is yet to be determined. Microburst? Locked controls? Pilot distraction at a crucial moment? For all we know the PIC may have simply been along for the ride. It may have been pilot error, or it may not.
This preliminary report from the Canadian TSB is just Chevy Chase reporting that “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead”
A descent rate of 1000 ft/min at touchdown would result in a G force of approximatly 0.52/0.73 Gs. Commercial airplane FAA/EASA limit is 1.5 to 2.5 G, above 3.0 G is considered severe and could damage de airframe.
So…
The flight experience of the crew, although not near an average of the majors and big aircraft experience, is probably pretty average for the the smaller companies. And both should have been sufficient for the job. It rests on the Captain though, although he was experienced with both flight time and time with company. Since life was good until the last few seconds, I’m guessing some factor other than pilot caused the sudden upset. So many opinions, so little time.
My math is different, first switch to metric and all figures rounded, 1000fpm is 5m/s velocity, say the tire sidewall and gear can compress 10” or 0.25m, starting velocity is 5m/s, ending is 0m/s fully collapsed for average velocity of 2.5m/s. Now we need time, to travel 0.25m at 2.5m/s is 0.1s. Now, acceleration change 5m/s in 0.1s is 50m/s/s or roughly 5G so at least it starts to make some sense why there was a structural failure especially if we assume the figures have some error and the instant of impact was greater or much greater than 5m/s etc.
In think the FAA should force the airlines to make planes that can land on runways at 2000’/min descent rates as a safety margin.
Sorry; that just isn’t being realistic.
Airlines don’t make planes.
I simplified further. Using an on-line g-force calculator I used 1,100 ft/min vertical velocity, changing to zero in 1/10 of a second. It works out to 5.69 G. Even extending the time element to .2 seconds reduces the impact to 2.85 G. It was a very hard hit indeed.
Other sources report that the gear was designed to withstand a sink rate of 700 fpm. The aircraft came down at almost 1100 fpm. Add to that the full weight of the aircraft was on the right main gear only at impact. Some images suggest (only suggest) that the right gear might have travelled through the wing and damaged the wing spar which accounts for why it folded over so easily. It’s conjecture only, it’s going to take some time to understand.
So crunchy. Possibly a rug pull LLWS event. With a woman at the controls scrutiny will be ruthless but hopefully facts will prevail.
A - pilot - who makes a serious error should be held as accountable as any other pilot would.
My first thought was it could’ve been a wind shear event as well; iirc the winds that day were pretty strong and gusty.
Hang on here… The FO was hired at 1000TT? What happened to the 1500hr ATP minimum? And the CA only flew 3.5 hours in the preceding month? At a regional? This doesn’t add up.
Some images suggest (only suggest) that the right gear might have travelled through the wing and damaged the wing spar
From the prelim report:
At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right MLG fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire. The exact sequence of these events is still to be determined by further examination of the fracture surfaces.
Certainly when you fly an airliner into the runway at 1.5 times the rate of descent used for carrier landings something will break. And it did.
I’ve love to hear the CVR, and see what actions were taken from the “sink rate” warning.
It’s possible with flat lighting that the distance to the runway was misjudged, just like can happen sometimes on stairs if one is shorter. Surprises all around. But one would think the radar altimeter was helping out.
Ocham’s razor ; Good review link: https://youtu.be/zpYLosCQqkk?si=yrwgcX89Ccmx2QKl