HeyEng

According to Juan Brown’s video both A and B were turned off during descent and prior to flap extension. They immediately punched off the Master Caution light and obviously missed what the Master Caution was for. The Autopilot will not engage with both systems de-powered.

The preliminary report of the Swift Air 737-400 crash in Vilnius has come out and the report indicates that the Pilot Monitoring (which was the Captain) accidentally shut off Hydraulic Systems A and B while trying to turn on the Engine Anti-ice. Both the Anti-ice and Hydraulic systems use the same lever-lock switches instead of red guarded switches for the hydraulics seen on other aircraft and the hydraulic switches are just below the switches for the Engine Anti-ice. The overhead panel layout shares the legacy design of the first 737 produced which had the option of having a Flight Engineer who would sit in the jumpseat. The overhead panel allowed easy access to the controls from the jumpseat but can be awkward from either pilot seat. Furthermore the Captain probably neglected to observe the blue Anti-Ice indicators come on indicating the Anti-ice valves opened and most likely just moved the levers by feel as he was monitoring the approach. Both pilots missed a vital clue as well since they could not engage the Autopilot with both A and B Systems shut down.

Some new insights into the Langley and other military base drone swarms from 60 Minutes.

Yea the barrel sections for the 707,727, and 737 have a very slight figure eight cross section like the old Stratocruiser but very subtle from a casual glance. You have to dig into the maintenance manual diagrams for the FS, WL, and BL to really see it.

Several arrivals into DCA reported false TA/RA notifications.

The British Army has more horses (for all the ceremonial duties) than tanks!

Yea unfortunately the warhead fragments managed to pierce all three hydraulic systems but otherwise the airframe managed to absorb the damage pretty good.

Great video by Juan Brown of the Blancolireo channel of the shoot down of the E190. There was quite a lot of confusion prior to the incident with the Russian ATC controllers not understanding that the GPS jamming wasn’t allowing the crew to accept RNP and RNAV approaches.

I came from the AF AMC community so VHF is our goto radios since we operate in ICAO airspace around the world. I do not think we are going to find any single fix for this accident but hopefully some changes come about.

From what I have heard they were on UHF and ATC were dual transmitting on UHF/VHF so you can hear ATC talking to the -60 but any civilian traffic could not hear the -60. Also I still have not heard if this was an older -60 with legacy avionics or a more modern one with glass. If it was legacy it probably had the small “fish finder” type of TCAS whereas glass typically overlays the TCAS on the HSI display. TCAS is probably moot anyhow since the TA/RA is disabled below 1000’

Yet another concern related to the LEAP engines is the LRD (Load Reduction Device) which can dump sump oil from the fan section and into the compressor section resulting in smoke in the cockpit from the AC packs. This video explains it much better than I can and it’s not an insurmountable problem as long as you know about before hand but apparently was poorly explained in the manuals given to flight crews!

I hope that one outcome of this accident is that we start installing more VHF radios in military aviation. I don’t expect every helicopter or fighter to have a VHF radio but certainly this helicopter flying and training in a dense civilian airspace environment should be a priority!

I have not been at McGuire (Sorry McGuire-Fort Dix Joint Unified Base) since I retired so I was wondering if the “Cornfield Cruiser” is still in use outside of Morgantown. It’s some sort of Naval Ship Superstructure used to test radars and would be a logical “target” for drones although testing over large civilian populated areas seams suspect especially when there are more suitable MOA to choose from (most of Nevada is basically a test range).

As to that last paragraph, boy was I wrong! What a difference a year makes!

Thanks!