Air Midwest 5481: Ten Years
 

RIP.

This thread is about a month late but I couldn't find that anyone had posted one in January.

If you're a new-ish regional pilot and not familiar with this, please take the time to learn more. You'll find out why so many smaller 121 aircraft are always weight restricted. Air Midwest (now defunct) was a Mesa subsidiary.

Air Crash Investigation - Season 5 - Dead Weight - FULL -- HQ - YouTube



If you don't have time for the movie: Air Midwest Flight 5481 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good video; thanks for posting. I can't see the airlines ever using actual weights for passengers. I am sure the pax would find a way to ***** and moan that their liberty/dignity is/are being violated once again by the evil airlines. Makes me angry. Perhaps it would be subtle motivation for some to go out and lose some weight...

At my airline, part 135, we use actual weights. All passengers are weighed with their carry on. Surprisingly, 99% have no issues with stepping on a scale. All you have to do is tell them it's for safety and they go right along with it.

Piston engine at 5:30, then persistent throughout the taxi. Lame. Oh well, the effects in every aviation movie or presentation is always total crap. That being said...

A good reminder that we have a great responsibility to fly carefully and not just get used to everyday sight pictures, attitudes, and takeoff performance.

Wasn't this a misrigged eleveator? It had been for several flights, but this accident flight was a full load which exacerbated the problem and it pitched severe nose up at takeoff.

Thanks for posting Rick. Very good video. It's very unfortunate that this crash resulted because of two circumstances that were out of the flight crews control: Bad average weights for Pax & luggage that the airline used, and poor Mx.

RIP

great find, accidents are tragic. We should always do our best to learn from the past for our sake and the people we transport every day.

Misrigged elevator and the plane was 500 pounds overweight and out of CG because of outdated average weights. They didn't have enough elevator authority to correct for the pitch up when they retracted the gear.

Everything on paper looked like a normal legal flight to the crew.

Letting them get weighed WITH the carry on is less threatening. S/He isn't 50 lbs overweight, it's a 70 lbs attache' case.

Thanks for posting... Captain Katie Leslie was a flight instructor of mine at Louisiana Tech University.. One of the sweetest people you could ever meet, her family is the all American family, so nice and just easy to get along with. It was such a tragedy! She died so young at age 25. When I got into this Industry in 1997, an old AA guy told me, "the hardest thing about aviation is, YOU WILL lose friends" he was right, I have lost 4 friends to aviation accidents. Sad thing is I have given the same advice to aspiring aviators. Rickair7777 thanks for posting and reminding us all, we are not immortal... Fly safe!!!