Helios Crash Update!

[Saitek]

Very sad. Lets hope this doesn't happen again. This really shouldn't have happened. I'm heavily critical though of having two pilots who can't speak the same language flying a plane with 121 lives on board. Doesn't that seem a bit senseless?

[beefhole]

I'm heavily critical though of having two pilots who can't speak the same language flying a plane with 121 lives on board. Doesn't that seem a bit senseless?

The Air Brazil (think thats the airline) 707 that crashed on Long Island had a crew that all spoke Spanish, but only the F/O spoke English well enough to communicate with ATC effectively.  This created problems, like when the captain said he wanted to declare a fuel emergency and the copilot continually told ATC that their situation "urgent", instead of declaring an emrgency.

In a nut shell, this is not the first time language barriers have brought down a plane.

[afi0yz]

hmmm, thats weird I posted this exact article or one very similar a few months ago yet nobody responded. wtf? :-/

[Hagar]

hmmm, thats weird I posted this exact article or one very similar a few months ago yet nobody responded. wtf? :-/

In that case this is not new information & confirms what I said. It's pure speculation & cannot be based on fact. Therefore it's not worth the paper it's printed on or worthy of discussion. The article Dave quoted is dated 08 September 2005. http://www.airdisaster.com/news/0905/08/news.shtml

PS. The incident happened on August 14th, 2005, just over 2 months ago.

[Sytse]

They didn't ignore it, they misunderstood it.  Read the article a little more carefully  

I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty stupid to just continue your flight when you hear an alarm...

To Hagar: are you back? If so, I'm glad you are.  ;)

[Hagar]

[quote]To Hagar: are you back? If so, I'm glad you are.

[beefhole]

I don't know about you, but I think it's pretty stupid to just continue your flight when you hear an alarm...

The alarm that went off meant "improper takeoff configuration" to them.  Neither of them was aware of the secondary meaning.  In planes, things malfunction. They probably assumed the alarm was faulty and pulled the fuse (just for that alarm).  When more alarms went off, they DID try to do something (that's why the pilot was out of the cockpit).  After the second series of alarms, and shortly after the pilot left the cockit, it would appear they both passed out.

Plus, you don't immediately land the plane every time a bell goes off.  It has to be some serious ****.

Of course, this is what is most likely, not necissarily what happened.

Doug, I buy this article's set of circumstances because it was far, far too weird of an accident for there to have not been a set of circumstances such as those described by the article.

Who's ever heard of (non-explosive) decompression bringing down a plane?  

What the hell was the pilot doing out of the cockpit?

Why didn't they just descend?

For now, this article seems to best answer these questions.

[Nexus]

Sad thruth is...if the pilots would've brought down an aircraft that didnt appear to malfunction....they'd be out of a job afterwards. For sure.

That's how it works in the aviation business, especially for those smaller charter companies that operates without large margins.  

And it scares me that the crew didnt know about the Horn...heck even I knew that for christs sake  :(