Quote:
Originally Posted by Lizard2Barney
One other aspect of the accident.
The C-5 went through a cockpit mod recently. The older version I believe had tape gages the newer on had dials. Out of pilot training, I went from dials to tapes (C-141) and it was an adjustment. Going back to a glass cockpit with electronic dial (C-17) was even more of an adjustment. The crew was probably had little experience on the dial guages.
Someone asked about bringing the throttle over the hump so as not to use it. I believe over the hump in the C-5 is the thrust reverser. That is why the throttle is still available for use. I use the "matching throttle" technique... oh wait, the C-17 has autothrottles!
The thing missing when watching the FDR video, is that this crew was doomed to fail by AMC.
Now I know many of you are going to say, "WHAT?!!!!!!!". The CRM was lousy, they were still "training" during a real emergency, they rushed to land and violated tech data yada yada yada.
What you don't know is, AMC (Air Mobility Command) did a modification to the C-5. At the time of this accident, NOBODY was given training on the new design. AMC rolled it out and the crews were to adapt to it. The crews were given a set number of hours to fly a modified jet, with an instructor of course, and once reaching those hours, they were signed off.
Well, there is this ugly thing called other time in the USAF (time when you're not in the seat flying),... for example, sleeping in the bunk or using the loo. Someone in the command decided C-5 pilots could use other time towards "modified jet" certification. Additionally, since there were only a few jets modified at the time, it was rare for a crew to fly one of the modified jets. Also, AMC acknowledged that there was a deficiency in the design of the instrumentation and quietly fixed it.
NOT ONLY THAT, the crew went back to their training that they were so accustomed to do. In the USAF, some airframes actually perform simulated emergency work in the aircraft during flight (probably not a smart thing to do in complex heavy aircraft). This type of training should be done in the simulator so you can conduct realistic training to set the example for what you want your crews to do in case it happens for real.
For the C-5 crews, they routinely flew around the pattern with one throttle at idle. The instructors would pull an engine to idle during the takeoff. The crews would then enter the downwind pattern, engineers running checklists, and then bring it back around to final and land. When in reality if you had a real engine failure, you should be getting your ducks in a row, not rushing, calling back to mom and dad, dumping fuel .. whatever the case, THEN shooting an approach and landing the aircraft. Very few emergencies require you to return to the runway immediately. However, this is not how the crews used to train and in this case, it came back to haunt them.
It is very easy to throw blame to the crew when you don't take into account how they were set up to fail from the beginning. AMC knew it was complicit in this accident, yet, everything was done to blame only the crew. Some accidents happen long before the crew ever shows to the jet.
As for the crew, I'm told only one or two are back to flying. When the C-5 touched down, it drug its tail for a while, then the aircraft dug into the mud and slammed the nose down ... at 32Gs !!! ... causing the nose to break off and separate. Most of the people up front suffered broken backs and were paralyzed, while the people in the back of the aircraft thought the touchdown was almost normal.