Miracle in Toronto: The Fireball Crash of Air France Flight 358

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Mike (0:27): Engine spooled. Checklist complete. Welcome to the Black Box Aviation podcast, where the stories behind the headlines get unpacked by the people who actually fly the damn plane. Hosted by Tom, a former military pilot turned airline and cargo, and Mike, a lifelong civilian flyer now flying left seat as an airline captain. It's aviation news, insider insight, and real pilot perspective.

Mike (0:52): Strap in.

Unknown Speaker (0:54): Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Black Box Aviation podcast. I'm with your host, Tom. I'm joined by Mike. Mike, what's happening, sir?

Unknown Speaker (1:01): What's up, Tom? How's training Oh,

Unknown Speaker (1:03): man. It was a rough day today. We had introduced some malfunctions into our procedure phases, so I don't even know how to run like the checklist for the most part, and then the guy's introducing, you know, left hydraulic pressure low, that's pretty much putting my brain pressure low, and that's a problem. So, yeah, we're getting there though. Me and my buddy are figuring out.

Unknown Speaker (1:22): You got another guy you gotta work with, you gotta kinda get used to him and and figure things out too. But we're gonna try to figure out today is this hot topic, Air France flight three of 58. Heard about this one, Mike? Have ever heard talked about this before?

Unknown Speaker (1:34): I forgot about this one till you started talking about it again, but I remember it happening. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (1:39): It's kinda like it doesn't get a lot of big news stuff because what's the big deal with this accident? Do you remember?

Unknown Speaker (1:44): People actually lived.

Unknown Speaker (1:45): They walked away. Like, 250 people walked away. Like, this is great. And the fireball that ensued was like insanity. So people are like,

Unknown Speaker (1:52): oh my god. I wish it'd be dead.

Unknown Speaker (1:54): Like, yeah, they probably should have been, but for whatever reason, they actually got out of the aircraft. And actually, there's a little note in this story that the the left forward main cabin door, the L two door, came open, and no one can remember opening that. The flight attendants remember it, the captains never called for it. I don't know. Nobody knows anything about that,

Unknown Speaker (2:13): which is pretty weird.

Unknown Speaker (2:14): Yeah. Because no one's gonna do it. They're not gonna command evacuation until, you know, somebody says, you know, evac, evac, evac. But the Delta Dior came open now. Maybe somebody freaked out and pushed the button, but nobody is fessing up to that and say anything about it.

Unknown Speaker (2:27): So this is Air France flight three fifty eight. This is an Airbus a three forty, which you don't see too many of flying around anymore. I don't even know who it not even flies anymore.

Unknown Speaker (2:35): Yeah. I can't I'm trying to think if I see them in Kennedy at all, but I mean, they're used to used to see them all the time, but I don't I don't think I see them anymore. No.

Unknown Speaker (2:43): There was a South African one. Do you remember that one?

Unknown Speaker (2:46): That one? Virgin Atlantic used to have them.

Unknown Speaker (2:50): I saw that that South African flight take off, and I was way down waiting to cross on whatever is it, four right at Kennedy?

Unknown Speaker (2:59): Okay.

Unknown Speaker (2:59): Two two right? Was way down there, Mike. And this thing passed me, and there weren't too many bricks left in that runway, and I'm like, oh, what's he gonna and he just barely crept off because they would go direct to Johannesburg from Kennedy, and that thing must have been bagged out. But no one flies the a three forty anymore because it's or fewer and fewer people. I think there's a few out there, but there's four engines.

Unknown Speaker (3:22): They just burns way more gas, and that's the end result. As a matter of fact, the a three forty pretty much takes out the MD 11 because the MD 11 isn't doing what it said it would do performance wise, and the bunch of companies had ordered them. And finally, they just kinda gave up on them. And I think Singapore was, like, the first one to give up on it because it was, we had they had 20 MD elevens, they started running numbers on them, and they were gonna run out of fuel in a lot of their routes that they had planned to find fly the MD 11 on. They're like, we give up.

Unknown Speaker (3:53): So they end up switched their orders to the a three forty. So this jet I mean, the jet is pretty cool in all in all. And kinda like we we talked about a little bit, Mike, the the Airbus builds their jets in sequential order so that you can it's an easy transition to go from all this stuff. And we'll talk about this in a second with what the crew is used to doing, but we you know, you and I fly both through I flew the three twenty, and you still do, and you're an instructor on it. So the the cockpits are kinda set up.

Unknown Speaker (4:22): When you say, well, you know, isn't there some, like, rapid new technology that could come into these airplanes and make a big difference? Probably. Like, there's something new in there, but you have to keep the tech consistent with what's happening with the airplanes and keep the pilots proficient at different levels as they advance to go fly the bigger airplanes too. So there's something to be said for keeping things kind of in the in the same regard. Plus, you're manufacturing and it's like, you know, I don't know, BMW isn't gonna go start off and build something new.

Unknown Speaker (4:51): They're building the same car that they've been building off of since they started in who knows when, you know. So I think that's kind of cool that Airbus does that. I mean, some things get different in the Boeing, but the Boeing seven fifty seven, like seven six, triple seven, they're very similar at the same time too. So it's it's not like it's distinct to Airbus at the same time. So so this situation is 08/02/2005, this flight departs from Charles De Gaulle in Paris.

Unknown Speaker (5:20): It's going to Toronto Pearson, which we've talked about many times going to Pearson. I've been there. There was an accident there in the wintertime. Right? It was the the The Endeavor.

Unknown Speaker (5:31): Endeavor flight that hit the ground and rolled over. Over. Yep. Another miracle at maybe the place to have an accident is Toronto, I guess.

Unknown Speaker (5:38): That that is another miracle for sure.

Unknown Speaker (5:40): Yeah. But there's a whole bunch of flights going to Toronto today that this day that were canceled. There's 540 flights that were departing and arriving that get canceled because of the weather. There's just terrible thunderstorms all day long and they they got problems there. But this flight takes off from Paris, you know you take off from somewhere that's pretty far away.

Unknown Speaker (6:01): I mean, there are lot of

Unknown Speaker (6:02): things can happen during that route. Weather's gonna change at some point. Yeah. You know?

Unknown Speaker (6:06): I said to the guy today, I was like, we're loading the thing up, the simulator. And was like, should I get the ATIS at the destination? And he was like, why? What if you're going to Dubai? Would you get the weather there?

Unknown Speaker (6:16): And I was like, probably not. You got me, but the flight plan here says we're going to Boston, so maybe I should look that up. But neither here nor there. What are we gonna do? But anyway, so this jet is going from Paris to Toronto, and they got there's 12 crew members on board and you've got the captains, a 57 year old captain.

Unknown Speaker (6:41): His name is Alain Rose. That's my French today, Mike. You're gonna have to tolerate that. It's better than mine. That's like We're talking about going to Paris France next summer, and Anna, she's like she had, like, French four, like, advanced placement.

Unknown Speaker (6:58): I'm like, who's gonna do better in Paris at speaking French? Me or you? And she's like, all you know is pointy talky. And I was like, well, you get along with pointy talky too. So I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (7:13): But anyway, so he was a former three twenty pilot, and he went on to fly a three twenty and three twenty one. So he's got a lot of flight time and he actually could have upgraded earlier, but he declined that to get more time flying the Airbus and get better at it, which is kind of a thing of knowing your ability, I guess, you know, it's not a bad thing. Yeah. 43 year old first officer Frederic Gnold, he has a four thousand eight hundred and thirty four hours of total flight time, and he did a proficiency check just in February that same year. So he had eight takeoff, six landings on the Airbus three forty the previous ninety days.

Unknown Speaker (7:50): This guy's pretty proficient. And again, both guys had flown the three twenty and, you know, there's pretty pretty similar to this. So, well, the day they take off, when they leave Paris, they actually don't have a weather packet for Toronto. Now, I think this is probably the first flag that comes into my mind because I can't remember taking off anywhere where I don't have like a weather packet to where I'm going. I mean

Unknown Speaker (8:15): Yeah. That's not normal.

Unknown Speaker (8:17): I know. And and and the accident talks about that, and nobody seems to be concerned about it. I don't know if that's like an Air France, like, thing that you just get, like, a weather push from dispatch along the way, and that's how it works. I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (8:30): But you'd still wanna look at the forecast and things like that. Right?

Unknown Speaker (8:33): I would think so, just like we're joking around, like the weather could change somewhere

Unknown Speaker (8:36): down legality to that honestly, but maybe it's different, I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (8:40): I'm not sure. So they they don't have that when they leave, And on the way, they request arrival weather, and then they when they're when they do it, they must request the company because they get back an alternate from Ottawa. So the company must have told them this is your alternate in Ottawa. They're not doing the math on what's going on. And in some regards, this kinda takes you out of the situational awareness of like 100%

Unknown Speaker (9:06): of those.

Unknown Speaker (9:07): Yeah. If the field is bad, where am I gonna go?

Unknown Speaker (9:10): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (9:10): Where are they telling

Unknown Speaker (9:11): me to? I like to have a better picture than that and kinda have my own game plan in my head, and then compare my game plan to dispatches, you know?

Unknown Speaker (9:19): Yeah, I think some of it, like, you're gonna take in consideration what the company tells you to do. If the company's like, You need to go to Ottawa, they might have reasons of why that is. Maybe that's Yeah,

Unknown Speaker (9:28): and as long as it makes sense to me as well, I'm fine with that, right? But I like to at least have my own ideas too, you know?

Unknown Speaker (9:35): Yeah, you can't just blindly be like, okay, they said Ottawa, well you might go to Ottawa, and then they got problems there too, you know, with weather or whatever's going on. Who knows? It's still part of the plan. The the dispatcher that told you to go to Ottawa, they're sitting in the nice warm cubby. They're not going to wherever you're going.

Unknown Speaker (9:49): They're not sitting in the jet, you know, going point eight two Mach. So but situationally too, because that's kind of a cue and to be like, hey. If you sent me an alternate to Ottawa Maybe I should check the weather. Yeah. I should figure out

Unknown Speaker (10:04): what's going the first things even on a domestic flight, when I'm looking at the flight, one of the first things I look for is if there's an alternate. Because if there is, I go I mean, I look at the weather regardless. Right? But I really queue in if there's an alternate destination alternate or a takeoff alternate or something like that. I'm, like, zoomed in on that weather at that point.

Unknown Speaker (10:20): Dude, I've definitely caught the dispatchers on multiple occasions not having a takeoff alternate when the weather, you know, is below the required minimums at the departure airport. And it didn't take much to for to cause it to come down, but there were certain things that would change at your at your departure airport too. Like, maybe there's only one approach coming back, and that would cause you to have different things. And then that's a whole other, you know, ball of yarn Right. Talking about

Unknown Speaker (10:47): Yeah. We're going off topic.

Unknown Speaker (10:48): Take off the alternates, but these guys just need an alternate to land. Like, their destination is a problem. Forget about taking off. They did that no problem. They had they had their their meal already, and and so they're going in.

Unknown Speaker (10:59): So they get a the weather is rapidly changing in Toronto at this time too, and it has been all day, and they should have known that too. So they they get a a new METAR gets issued. The METAR is just like a weather line. What's happening

Unknown Speaker (11:14): Hourly hourly weather report. Right? Unless there's a special or something.

Unknown Speaker (11:17): Yeah. And these guys, they, you know, they requested ADIS, but you gotta you gotta look at that and say, there a new one? And then if some of a new situation develops a field, they'll issue like a special weather line that comes out. It could be constantly changing. So they they get one comes out two minutes before the accident, and the weather's reported as follows.

Unknown Speaker (11:38): It's two nine zero at eleven with a visibility of four miles, heavy rain, and thunderstorms. There's broken towering cumulonimbus cloud layer at 5,100 feet AGL, and another broken layer 14,000, and then it just gives him a basic dew point temperature. It's it's hot. It's 23. It's a summer day.

Unknown Speaker (11:55): Now if you read that weather line, doesn't sound that bad.

Unknown Speaker (11:59): Right.

Unknown Speaker (11:59): And they're landing on Runway 32, so not so bad. But two minutes after the accident, they get there's another special that comes out three four zero at 24 knots gusting to 33 with visibility mile and a quarter heavy rain and thunderstorms. Now that's only two four minutes total time from two minutes before to the accident and two minutes after. So there's rapidly changing conditions. So you should be totally aware of this as you come in.

Unknown Speaker (12:29): So the air the airplane, they they get advised that the landing aircraft ahead of them had poor braking action. Okay? And Air France's weather radar is displaying heavy precip all over the place. All on the runway, departure end, it's all over the place. Actually, they're landing on 24, my my bad, not 34.

Unknown Speaker (12:49): So they got a little bit of a crosswind there as well. So they are on the approach and as they come down, the first officer's flying. Now that's another question, Mike. If you knew the weather was that bad, would you make a decision to change who's gonna fly the aircraft at that point? Or do you just say

Unknown Speaker (13:07): I mean, no, not at that point. I mean, can always change in route, know, if it you know, you can definitely do the takeoff and all that. If it gets bad enough that we're shooting the cat three or something like that, yeah, I could take it by then, you know. They got a long flight. They got plenty of time to figure that out.

Unknown Speaker (13:23): Yeah. I don't know if I would you know, like you said, because in my mind, and and this is kinda gonna go get ahead of us a little bit, but if the first officer's leg to fly and it's challenging weather, like, that's what he's there for. Right?

Unknown Speaker (13:39): Yeah. Mean, have

Unknown Speaker (13:39): give him a shot. You wanna fly?

Unknown Speaker (13:41): We've talked it before. I've not had to take the controls, not at a major airline, You know, mean, they're still, you know, ATP, PIC rated pilots over there. I mean, they're not incapable. Right?

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Unknown Speaker (14:25): No. And I think my mentality too is that, you know, if things get unsafe or out of limits, I don't necessarily need to, like, all of a sudden rush in and save the day. We can go around and figure out what happened.

Unknown Speaker (14:37): You can always go around.

Unknown Speaker (14:39): Yeah. So I from for people to be like, the first officer, he was landing. Like, I don't think that's a good plan. No. That's pretty normal.

Unknown Speaker (14:46): Just like the accident that we're talking about in Denver in Toronto, the captain let the first officer fly and it was really gusty. Well, maybe that's a good learning experience, but you you gotta call a go around and There's not plenty of captain butcher

Unknown Speaker (14:57): there's been plenty of captain butcher landings too.

Unknown Speaker (15:00): That's a fact too. The first off then the first officer should call a go around too. 100%. That's

Unknown Speaker (15:04): free both sides.

Unknown Speaker (15:05): Well, there

Unknown Speaker (15:05): was that one gosh. What was it? Was it a commuter? Somebody last year or something, they went off the end of the runway somewhere, and the the I think the first officer called for a go around like three times, and the captain just ignored him, and ended up going off the end

Unknown Speaker (15:18): of the runway, and the EMASS caught him. We're working to talk about EMASS too, but in that case, Mike, if you're the first officer sitting there, like at some point you've gotta maybe intervene. If it's not good, and it's gonna be your butt that's going off the end of the run. We're gonna talk about another incident that happened on Toronto on this runway that caused an EMASS issue as well. But yeah, so there's different different aspects of that, and and why this shouldn't be alarming.

Unknown Speaker (15:43): But this is what the first officer does. He disconnects the autopilot and the autothrottles.

Unknown Speaker (15:47): Auto thrust.

Unknown Speaker (15:47): I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (15:48): It's an air post.

Unknown Speaker (15:49): My bad. Auto thrust. You're correct.

Unknown Speaker (15:51): You did it right.

Unknown Speaker (15:51): I yes, sir. I don't I don't think they briefed that and I don't know why he did it. And in that post flight accident report, it doesn't come up that that that was right or wrong. I mean, lot of people

Unknown Speaker (16:05): do that, you know, then you have more control with it. There's definitely been times where, you know, especially in gusty conditions, sometimes the the speed might drop on you and sometimes it's nice. Remember on the one ninety, you could override the auto throttles? You can't do that on an Airbus. You're just kinda let limited to what it gives you and it usually works out.

Unknown Speaker (16:21): It usually does a really good job, but some people like a little more authority, so maybe he turned it off for that, maybe turned it off for practice. You know, if he only gets to do a couple legs a month because he's a long range pilot, maybe he was like, I need to practice on this, you know, and so he wanted to do it. Nothing wrong with that.

Unknown Speaker (16:37): Yeah. They don't talk about why that did or didn't happen, but again, like I said, in It would be good thing.

Unknown Speaker (16:42): It would be a good thing. Hey. I'm gonna turn it out. I would brief it. Know, hey.

Unknown Speaker (16:44): I'm gonna turn it out. I'll throw stuff. I'm gonna hand fly this. So you have a problem with that. I need, you know, I need because I need his second set of eyes to help me on that if, you know, I get behind the plane a little bit.

Unknown Speaker (16:52): I guess I should back it up too a little bit. While while they're shooting the approach, they are getting hammered. Like, the the turbulence is nasty. There's heavy rains and it the aircraft is and then when you're in turbulence, the aircraft shakes and and you the airplane doesn't care. Like, they it's gonna fly.

Unknown Speaker (17:10): It's not a problem with, like, oh, are we gonna crash? No. But you can't see the instrument sometimes because the airplane's shaking that bad. Sure. If it's that bad

Unknown Speaker (17:18): And if it's that bad, I'm gonna leave the autothrust on. I might just bump my my approach speed up a little bit, you know, which I would get on the landing data. On the landing report, I would say that I was gonna come in with a higher approach speed as well to make it legal and safe and everything. Yeah, that's probably what I would do. I'd bump up my speed and and leave the let the autothrust do their thing.

Unknown Speaker (17:35): I wanna turn them off. Not in that.

Unknown Speaker (17:37): Yeah. I agree. And that's why I think that's it's a con it's weird that they that he turned it off because if you can't see the instruments and you're having problems, maybe the most automation in this situation

Unknown Speaker (17:48): Well, if you remember the the Airbus has the the airspeed trend vector, know, giving you Airspeed

Unknown Speaker (17:53): Ground speed mini, Mike. Get it right.

Unknown Speaker (17:54): Ground speed mini too. Well, you have the speed trend vector as well, And a lot of

Unknown Speaker (17:59): people will like, Oh, had plus

Unknown Speaker (18:00): or minus 10 knots on final. No, you didn't. Just because your airspeed trend vector's bumping up 10, your actual airspeed's not moving. So that thing might have been going up and down like crazy as well. But you're right, if there is a strong headwind component, they'll have that Ground Speed Mini, which will be bringing them in faster, which is a good thing.

Unknown Speaker (18:16): It is a good thing. And that's all based on

Unknown Speaker (18:18): a headwind component. If they had more of a Crosswind component or a tailwind, then they're not gonna have Ground Speed Mini working in their favor.

Unknown Speaker (18:23): Well, this is gonna go wrong for them too, Mike, at the wrong the wrong point in this one too. But, like, going back to the automation, in the event of a go around, if you select go around and the automation's fully engaged, it makes that event a lot less difficult because everything is gonna start happening automated. You're gonna get the power's gonna come in automatically. The pitch is gonna come in automatically. So you're not gonna be thinking about, like, what what do my hands need to be doing right now?

Unknown Speaker (18:48): And where's the airplane going? And, you know, how close are we to the ground? Like, you don't have to think about a lot of that stuff. So that's another concern that I have with them kicking all the automation off that early or not that early, but at that point, for any reason, you know?

Unknown Speaker (19:02): Sure.

Unknown Speaker (19:04): So this is where they get into some more trouble. So they he kicks off the automation, and they're still going down on the ground, and the captain yells, I'm gonna say it excitedly in his tone, get down. Maybe he says, get down stupid, what's the matter with you?

Unknown Speaker (19:21): No. I don't Okay. So he's hot.

Unknown Speaker (19:23): He yells get down. So obviously they're Where was that on the approach where he yelled at? They were over the runway.

Unknown Speaker (19:30): Okay, so they're in the base of They're

Unknown Speaker (19:33): pretty much at the flare, yep, and they're blasting through rain, they're struggling with visual contact with the runway, the autopilots and autothrottles are off. So why would

Unknown Speaker (19:42): EL get down? Because he's afraid they're not gonna land in the touchdown zone, right? And if you're not gonna land in the touchdown zone, what are we supposed to do?

Unknown Speaker (19:50): Go around, man. Push the button Especially and go

Unknown Speaker (19:52): on a wet runway with a heavy jet. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (19:56): So they don't do that. So the captain yells, get down. And if the captain's yelling that at that point, the both of them now have the this decision in their mind that they're gonna put this airplane on the ground, which, again, they've gone through too many gates of we should not be doing this, but they continue to press it. Don't who knows why? I mean, sometimes you just get so focused on one thing that it's like

Unknown Speaker (20:19): We've talked about it before. There's multiple reasons why you should go around and you don't. It's a pride thing. It's a I don't want to inconvenience people thing. It's a I don't want to embarrass myself thing.

Unknown Speaker (20:29): I just want to get to the hotel thing because we just did an eight hour flight. It's bad weather. The bad weather might be getting worse. I don't want to go around and do this again. I don't wanna have to divert.

Unknown Speaker (20:38): Oh my gosh. I'm exhausted. There's a lot of reasons. And and and and it's just from a human factor standpoint. None of them are valid.

Unknown Speaker (20:46): You should definitely be going around if you're not gonna be in the touchdown zone. But there's a lot of reasons why you kinda like you kinda like try to put it off to the last possible second. Doesn't always work out.

Unknown Speaker (20:57): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (20:58): It's definitely a gamble at that point. Right?

Unknown Speaker (21:00): And at some point, you've crossed the line of no return where you're gonna you're stuck.

Unknown Speaker (21:05): And there's that line of accepted deviance, right? Like how many times has that captain landed out of touchdown zone and got away with it? Was this the first time? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe he's like, yeah, we've done this before, you know what I mean?

Unknown Speaker (21:18): I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (21:19): Yeah, that's why we try to stick to standards in all the procedures that we do, so you don't develop that deviation like you're saying, Well, I saw that guy do it so many times, so it must be okay if I do it. Well, the time that I try to do it, nah, not so much. Yeah, if

Unknown Speaker (21:30): you don't draw the line in the sand, then that line will continue to move on you.

Unknown Speaker (21:35): And they got a 9,000 foot runway in this bike. So the touchdown zone is probably the first third of the runway, so about 3,000 feet down the runway. They're gonna end up touching down halfway down the runway, 94 4,500 feet. So they they got problems. So they do touch down on the runway, and it then takes the first officer sixteen point four seconds to put thrust reversers into full reverse.

Unknown Speaker (22:05): Which seems crazy.

Unknown Speaker (22:07): Yeah. So let's talk about the thrust reversers I would think

Unknown Speaker (22:09): you could get that thing to a complete stop in that amount of time.

Unknown Speaker (22:12): It probably with all four of those engines out there, I think, you know, it's got a lot of stopping power,

Unknown Speaker (22:20): but maybe not at that speed and And the braking action stuff, I don't know. But sixteen seconds is a long time.

Unknown Speaker (22:28): It is a very, very long time. He did get thrust reverses out there because you can tell from the charred wreckage that the reversers are still deployed on all the engines. So he did put them out. He didn't take them back in again, which is a good thing. But thrust reverses, it's a part of the engine that essentially deflects the the reverse thrust of the engine and pushes it forward.

Unknown Speaker (22:49): There's deflector fan vents that open. And maybe you've been sitting on the wing ILC and you land on Southwest, and all a sudden you see part of the engine, like, opens up and you're like, oh my god, the engine just blew up. No. It didn't. The reverser's open and that air that's normally going backwards is going forward now.

Unknown Speaker (23:06): And the thruster first is most effective at the highest speed when you touch down. It's gonna provide that much drag. Now, our landing data usually isn't tabulated to to count on the thrust reverse. So you're actually The getting thrust reverses like

Unknown Speaker (23:23): a bonus, exactly.

Unknown Speaker (23:24): Yeah. It's bonus. And guess what? It works really good. Makes you slow down like a champ.

Unknown Speaker (23:29): I mean, I would say 95% of my landings, I'm I'll put it in reverse, but I leave it in idle reverse, meaning I'm not giving it much oomph, you know. I'm just there

Unknown Speaker (23:38): in case I need it. I can get it

Unknown Speaker (23:39): there because it's smooth. If you slam it in, you know, people go up into the head, you know, they get hit the seat in front of them and everyone's been on those landings before. So I try to be smooth with it, burn less gas for the company, that kind of stuff.

Unknown Speaker (23:51): But I do get

Unknown Speaker (23:51): them in reverse. It just doesn't you don't need them, usually, as long as you land in the first third of the runway.

Unknown Speaker (23:58): Yeah. Actually In a situation

Unknown Speaker (24:00): like this with with rain and poor braking, I'm gonna be using them a 100%, you know.

Unknown Speaker (24:04): They actually we haven't done maneuvers phase, so I haven't flown like the actual simulator to feel what it feels like, but they say when you when the captain stows the thrust reversers, there's so much of a jump forward that you have to be careful because you have to anticipate what the aircraft's gonna do when it lurches forward because that drag is no longer on them. And you're talking about being at 60 knots.

Unknown Speaker (24:25): The triple seven's got giant engines though. I mean, you know?

Unknown Speaker (24:28): Massive engines. Yeah. 101,000 pounds of thrust.

Unknown Speaker (24:32): So when you're redirecting that thrust and how little it might be, it it's gonna it's gonna change things.

Unknown Speaker (24:39): Yeah. It lurches forward. And look, the if the three forty that these guys are flying is no slouch either. It's got some big wham and jammas on it. So they definitely had that.

Unknown Speaker (24:48): And they didn't have it because they didn't use it until it was, you know, way down the line. So You know, have you you've done

Unknown Speaker (24:53): landings before. I mean, not so much in the Airbus. I feel like the Airbus thrust reverse are really easy to get in. But like, I feel like I remember the one ninety sometimes you get one of them and then one of them might be kind of hard to get out right away. So I don't know if they ran into that situation where you just couldn't get the the handle, the throttle quadrant, the handles like move in the direction you wanted.

Unknown Speaker (25:12): They kinda got stuck or something. I don't know. But in my experience, the Airbus is pretty dang easy once you get those little triggers up, you know.

Unknown Speaker (25:20): Yeah. Most of those things are activated. Yeah. There's different switches on the airplane. It could be like weight on wheels.

Unknown Speaker (25:29): Some of them are based on like spin up pressure switches in the lane. There, aircraft's a little different, but I I was trying to

Unknown Speaker (25:36): think of a reason why it took them sixteen seconds to get it in.

Unknown Speaker (25:38): Yeah. The one ninety, I do remember. You'd be pulling on it and trying to because you would click them from the bottom and pull them up.

Unknown Speaker (25:43): Yeah. Sometimes you'd almost have to go forward and then back again, you know, which was kinda you know? You know what I'm talking

Unknown Speaker (25:48): Yeah, because you're just trying to meet there must have been like an electronic switch in there and you'd you'd struggle with it, but look, you wouldn't struggle for sixteen and a half seconds. No. No. It felt like

Unknown Speaker (25:57): a long time, but it was probably like two heartbeats, you know.

Unknown Speaker (26:00): Yeah. Sure. I'm trying to think. This is gonna come up in our next show. We're gonna talk about the Southwest flight that went off the runway in Midway, which there's similarities to this and a lot of dissimilarities, but they also don't put the thrust reversers out there at all.

Unknown Speaker (26:15): It's like So they don't even get them out. Feel like if you land halfway down

Unknown Speaker (26:18): the runway, you're my go to would be, like, full reverse max braking, everything she's got, you

Unknown Speaker (26:23): know? Right.

Unknown Speaker (26:25): Unless you're just in such shock that you, oh my god, you know, that you freeze up.

Unknown Speaker (26:31): The other thing that kinda doesn't go well for them is when they pull the flight data recorder, it actually shows that they they deviated a little bit on the glide path and they were getting high. And then right around that time, the crosswind component shifted into a tailwind component, and they were actually in a 10 knot tailwind at the same time. This was kinda happening at the

Unknown Speaker (26:53): end. This is probably right, the limitations for the airplane on a dry runway.

Unknown Speaker (26:57): Yeah. And they didn't get any alerts or anything for wind shear, and I think they were just kinda caught up in this like whole situation. Like we said all the time in aviation accidents, it's not one thing that takes you out. There's a whole bunch of factors that lead into it and and

Unknown Speaker (27:10): And I could see myself being in that situation and being like, oh crap, I'm high and I'm fast or but go around. You know, and you come around and you realize the wind shifted in lane on the other runway.

Unknown Speaker (27:21): Right.

Unknown Speaker (27:21): I mean Air National I hate to Monday morning quarterback guys, but like

Unknown Speaker (27:26): That's what we're doing, baby. That's what that's our job. Like,

Unknown Speaker (27:28): this is a know. But topic. God, don't land halfway down a wet runway in gusty conditions in a heavy airbus. I mean, like, that's like I don't know.

Unknown Speaker (27:37): According to the Air France manual, with full reverse selected at touchdown, with the recommended speed that they're supposed to be flying, approach, the aircraft would have used 5,574 feet of runway. And when they touched Which

Unknown Speaker (27:51): isn't enough. Yeah. They had 4,500 feet to go. So That's plenty of runway if they land in the threshold.

Unknown Speaker (27:57): They did not run landing data, Mike, with a contaminated runway.

Unknown Speaker (28:01): So they missed that one too.

Unknown Speaker (28:05): Yep. When you run your your landing data, Mike, you push forward, it comes back to your jet through the the computer, but I mean, you probably you have a good idea what what you see and can't see. Like, today, I ran the landing data. We don't and believe it or not, Mike, the triple seven doesn't have that at my company.

Unknown Speaker (28:22): Are you getting

Unknown Speaker (28:22): the I run it books

Unknown Speaker (28:23): every

Unknown Speaker (28:23): on an iPad. I and yeah, I run it on, like, a performance pad and

Unknown Speaker (28:26): I remember at Comedy, we used to have Box Airport. We had we had if I remember, we had a book and, like, each airport had their own like landing that you had to look at the landing data and then we had a card with the weight for the speeds, but we had to go look originally look at like each airport that we went to in this book, if I remember right.

Unknown Speaker (28:44): And that's a CRJ 200, right?

Unknown Speaker (28:47): Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (28:48): Yeah. I mean, that's pretty modern jet that's proliferating.

Unknown Speaker (28:51): But yeah, I when we push for the landing data, we get what the conditions we send and then we get the worst case we get two numbers back. One for the conditions that we sent for, whether it's dry, wet, snow, ice, whatever, and then the worst conditions that we can accept. So we get both of those back. And I always send for like worst case scenario kind of thing. Like if it's starting to drizzle, I'll send wet runway, you know, why not?

Unknown Speaker (29:14): You'll see what I'm working with. I don't know. I always round up in the safety factor area.

Unknown Speaker (29:21): Same thing with weight. If I'm if

Unknown Speaker (29:22): my fuel on board shows me landing at 8,000 pounds, I'll usually bump it up to, 8.2. Why not?

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Unknown Speaker (29:58): It's gonna give you a more conservative estimate of that data 100%. Back. The other thing too is, like, if I put numbers into the performance software, like I say I said, it was, you know, whatever win degree heading I put in there, I just read it off the the ADIS that came back and it's it's out of parameters. The the thing will flag it and say you can't do it. And your thing will probably you send bad data to the company, it probably comes back to you and says like, no data or something like that.

Unknown Speaker (30:24): It sends you back like just dashes instead of like numbers, you know.

Unknown Speaker (30:28): And in that case, you probably just put something in wrong, but it makes you look at it. It makes you aware.

Unknown Speaker (30:32): 100%. Yeah. If you go to the remarks on our the the the program we have,

Unknown Speaker (30:36): if you go to it'll give you a remarks page. If you go

Unknown Speaker (30:37): to there, it'll tell you, like, invalid runway because instead of, like, nine, you put eight or something. Don't know. You know, if that runway doesn't exist or if there's a note for the runway, you know, and they'll have like the code after it for like because they're doing construction on a part of it. If you don't put the code, it'll kick it back as invalid runway.

Unknown Speaker (30:54): So Yeah. So there's protections to help you to to, you know, garbage in garbage out kind of stuff. But these guys didn't even send for it. And that's another flag. Crazy.

Unknown Speaker (31:02): And I like you said, Mike, there could have been stuff going on where they're just like, let's make this flight end. The the accident doesn't talk about that. They didn't these guys and as a matter of fact, there's lawsuits that the Air France these guys never have even talked publicly about this. It's all hearsay still. And, you know, it's been twenty years since that this accident.

Unknown Speaker (31:20): So in the aftermath of this, the like we talked about the l two door. So what happens is they go off the end of the runway, and they go down into this, like, ditch. There's like a gully drop off. It's actually like a 50 foot drop. When they hit that, the jet keeps going and then, like I said, the the L two door opened for some reason and then the jet cracks up and catches on fire.

Unknown Speaker (31:44): For whatever reason, the flight crew, the flight attendants get everybody off the aircraft and away from it before it burns up, and everyone survives. The captain, I think, is his back is severely injured because the seat seat broke on touchdown. There must have been some kind of an impact when they went down.

Unknown Speaker (31:59): Off a 50 foot ravine.

Unknown Speaker (32:00): Wow. Yeah. That's gonna be the problem. Yeah. And when they went back and looked at like what happened, they were like, well, what are these what the first thing they look at is like, what malfunction?

Unknown Speaker (32:09): Was there an equipment malfunction?

Unknown Speaker (32:12): Yeah. In this case the professional pilot did his job. Right?

Unknown Speaker (32:14): Absolutely. And And rightfully so.

Unknown Speaker (32:18): Right? I want if that if ever happens to me, I want them to assume that I did the right thing and until you investigate. Right? Yeah. And because they're like,

Unknown Speaker (32:26): how did this airplane go off the Internet? How did it you know, like but they when they look into it, they start comparing it to do you remember this American MD 11 in Little Rock that crashed? Yeah. Remember that went out and off the

Unknown Speaker (32:37): That's side of the my that went like, the the approach lights. Right?

Unknown Speaker (32:41): Yeah. I think. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Unknown Speaker (32:43): And the but a couple people got killed in that when it burned up, and I think that was a a an anti skid problem or something something to that effect. They're looking at other accidents too.

Unknown Speaker (32:56): What's that? I don't remember the details. I just remember the incident. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (32:59): They're comparing they all and this is, like, they look at, like, other accidents remind me remind us of this in this so but then they pull up too. In 1978, there was an Air Canada DC nine that went off the end of the runway on two four left in the same ditch that Air France three fifty eight went off in, and that jet was a rejected takeoff that went off the end of the runway. I think it was in bad weather, and they dropped off the ditch. And when they went over the ditch, the jet broke into three pieces and two people got killed. Now the recommendations off that was to extend fill in that gully to make it more stable, you know, so there's not a big ditch that somebody could fall off of.

Unknown Speaker (33:39): They didn't do that. For whatever reason, Toronto didn't heed that one, and that kinda sucks. And the other thing that's kinda interesting here is that a lot of airports have EMAS, and EMAS is engineered materials arresting system, and it's pretty cool. It's just like crushed concrete. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker (33:58): At at the end of the runway.

Unknown Speaker (33:59): It's almost like think of like cinder blocks, you know, and it's like but it's like flipped up on its side, so that when the weight of the airplane goes over, it just collapses in and, you know, becomes like quicksand.

Unknown Speaker (34:09): Yeah. And it just absorbs the energy of, you know, the overrun so that the plane I don't I wish I had I looked I should've looked at more numbers of like how much stopping power it provides, but I know that the international standard for overrun, just overrun, not even EMASS, is 300 meters. And for whatever reason, Canada only adopts 60 meters. So there's only 60 meters of overrun there, and there's no emasse. So I don't know if they have 300 meters of overrun plus the emasse, this jet probably doesn't depart into the gully and never catches on fire.

Unknown Speaker (34:41): It's certainly not good still. It's going off the end of the runway.

Unknown Speaker (34:44): Here you go. I just I just geminized it. It's the 70 knot standard, a standard fully compliant FAA EMAS installation is required to bring the runway's critical aircraft to a complete stop from an entry speed of 70 knots before it reaches the end of the bed. So you can hit the EMAS at 70 knots and still stop. That's pretty fast actually for going off the end For the

Unknown Speaker (35:04): being that far down and still going off You're not going run

Unknown Speaker (35:06): at that point.

Unknown Speaker (35:07): Yeah. I don't know how fast Air France was going when when they went into the gully, but it was not good. And you see the people, as the people are evacuating the airplane, it's pouring rain, like, there's thunderstorms. And people on the highway are, like, picking people up and driving them to the airport and the hospitals and stuff. But, yeah, this is a cascade of bad events that ended up in a horrific accident that luckily everybody walked away from.

Unknown Speaker (35:34): So there is a Mayday on this that you can check out, and you can fact check me and Mike. You can fact check my French accent as well. That's at duolingo.com. For our plugs though, if you wanna hit us in an email and tell us how bad we're doing or how good we're doing, it's a blackbox01@yahoo.com. You can hit us a text at the hotline, (203) 699-6792.

Unknown Speaker (35:59): That's (203) 699-6792. Leave your name with that, and we'll get back to you. Mike loves getting back to people. They make him crazy, and he goes he gets back to them.

Unknown Speaker (36:07): That's been good mostly lately.

Unknown Speaker (36:10): The website is www.theblackboxaviationpodcast.com. If you get to there, you can get to anywhere else. And again, if you're flying, go and peek in the cockpit, say hi, and maybe you run into me or Mike someday. So Mike, you wanna add anything else?

Unknown Speaker (36:27): Not you. They probably won't run into you on a cargo jet, but who knows? No.

Unknown Speaker (36:33): That'd be weird. I'll be I'll be I'll be one of the pastors sitting next to you.

Unknown Speaker (36:36): That could That could happen.

Unknown Speaker (36:39): Yeah. And be like, hey, man. Do you like podcasts? And then be like, you do you know these hosts or something? I'd like, that's me.

Unknown Speaker (36:46): That's probably more likely than to something's gonna happen. That's my new line on flights too when I'm commuting. Do like podcasts or something? And the next thing they're doing is getting they're getting a show card and and a pitch. So alright, Mike.

Unknown Speaker (37:00): Let's put this one in the can. It was a great show, and I will see you later.

Unknown Speaker (37:03): See you, man.

Unknown Speaker (37:04): See you.

Mike (37:05): You've been listening to the Black Box Aviation Podcast. Real pilots, real stories, and aviation news the way it's actually talked about in the cockpit. If you like what you heard, make sure to like, subscribe, and follow so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep the blue sign up, and we'll see you at Al

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Unknown Speaker (37:36): I never thought she'd try out the fast rides, but Space Mountain was her favorite. And me, I didn't think anything could feel so special.

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Unknown Speaker (37:54): The two.