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Alaska air scare due to mechanical failure

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Ky.BrownBourbn

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 29, 2005
Posts
553
http://abcnews.go.com/m/story?id=16962482


Passengers flying from Ontario, Calif., to Seattle today said a chorus of angry infants was their first clue of a problem aboard Alaska Airlines flight 539.

"All the babies were crying at the same time," said passenger Roslyn Richardson, who was flying with her husband and 20-month-old son.

Fliers said their ears also started popping as the 737, carrying 131 passengers and five crew members momentarily lost cabin pressurization.

"My ears about blew up on me," said Dick Peck. "We're halfway from Ontario to here and we're up to our max altitude and ... my ears started hurting. ... And I looked around and everyone else was grabbing their ears."

In the cockpit, pilots sent an emergency call from 25,000 feet to Federal Aviation Administration controllers, asking for priority landing at San Jose Airport. They told controllers that they were in the midst of a "catastrophic electrical failure with loss of some flight controls and cabin pressure."

"The captain said: 'We're really sorry, but we have a problem with the cabin pressure, but it's under control now.' And I felt like the plane was going down and sure enough it was," his wife, Carol Peck, said.

Thinking the electrical system was malfunctioning, pilots opted for an immediate yet controlled descent.

Mechanics later found that an "air-ground censor," a simple mechanical control near the landing gear, had malfunctioned.

The censor had relayed to the airborne plane that it was on the ground and the aircraft had turned off the automatic flight controls and cabin pressurization.

"If it thinks it's on the ground, it's gonna wanna pull those throttles all the way back so that there is no more thrust coming out of the engine," said ABC News consultant Stephen Ganyard, a former fighter pilot and deputy secretary of state.

The pilots took over the plane manually and a backup system corrected the pressurization. There was no deployment of masks and Alaska Air said a backup system had immediately restored air pressure in the cabin.

"When the systems are not working properly, they need to know how to manually fly their airplane and bring it back safely," Ganyard said.

A spokesperson for the airline told ABC News that Alaska Airlines was making sure its passengers reached their destinations today.

Alaska Airlines swapped out a smaller plane that had been scheduled for a noon flight from San Jose to Seattle for a larger aircraft to accommodate larger number of fliers. Passengers like Richardson, however, were taking a shuttle to Oakland, Calif., and then flying to Seattle -- arriving eight hours later than originally expected.

"I'm just glad we're safe," she said. "That's what we were thinking at the end."
 
"If it thinks it's on the ground, it's gonna wanna pull those throttles all the way back so that there is no more thrust coming out of the engine," said ABC News consultant Stephen Ganyard, a former fighter pilot and deputy secretary of state.

Que the real men of genius music....

Here is to you Mr former fighter pilot that has no flippin' clue!!
 
Mechanics later found that an "air-ground censor," a simple mechanical control near the landing gear, had malfunctioned.

The censor had relayed to the airborne plane that it was on the ground and the aircraft had turned off the automatic flight controls and cabin pressurization.

An air-ground censor? Is this some sort of device that determines what information can be shared and what is confidential? I wonder if it's located anywhere near the air-ground SENSOR. I expect most pilots to be grammar hacks, but ABC News?
 
I wonder what the immediate warning indications were? I bet the "overhead" on the six pack was illuminated along with the PSEU light (maybe), but were probably buried with other indications and warnings. Sounds like they figured it out. One of the trickier things I've seen on the sim on the 737 is an engine failure while in a descending turn in the pattern. First thing you see is "Elec" and a drive light out. So you call for that checklist. Then your level wings and altitude is maintained and the next thing you know the autopilot is kicking off because it can't keep up with the asymmetric thrust. You realize you have just been had by the sim instructor. Sounds like the autopilot turning off along with lack of automated pressurization got them started on the wrong path, till they had a chance to sort it out.
 
Who moved this and the other Alaska Airlines thread to general aviation?
 
I had this "sensor" fail once a couple of years ago on a 400. It started as a transient master caution flicker during a cruise. Master caution wouldn't stay on long enough to catch the system and it wouldn't come on with recall. After TOD the cabin started to climb. Then I noticed a lower than normal N1. The engines, at flight idle during descent, where trying to go into low idle N1 - the system thinking that we were on the ground. End result was an air ground safety sensor that was intermittently going from air to ground - while in the air.
 
MODs, please move this back to majors . Alaksa, a major airline, with a major airline aircraft malfunction, in general aviation info, really?
 

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