Public release on Dover C-5 crash

[wmss]

Doubtful, I was doing pattern work at Dover last week, and its still sitting in the field.

 

[CHQ Pilot]

Several people have laid claim to the airframe. I read an article (on af.mil), that Air Material Command laid claim to the cockpit to use in testing the new AMP mod since currently all testing has to be done on the aircraft. I'd heard some of the fuselage was going to be made into a load trainer. It seems it will still find use.

When I got a type rating a few years ago, the sim was the cockpit of an aircraft than ran off the runway and was a hull loss. They had said a lot of sims are built from damaged aircraft.

 

[Caveman]

First of all, let me make it very clear that I bear no ill will towards this crew and I wish them the best. Better pilots than me have made mistakes and any of us can screw it up given a particular set of circumstances. Having said that, I notice that the tone of this discussion is much more patient and understanding than if it had been a civilian crew that erred. For example, take the SWA incident at MDW or the recent SkyWest accident. Look how toxic those threads were. IMO, neither of those are significantly different from this C5 incident. All three crews were given less than perfect circumstances and neither had good outcomes. Yet, the military crew seems to have been given a pass on the typical FlightInfo post-flight critique/bashfest. That's a good thing. In a perfect world we would give ALL flight crews the benefit of the doubt and try to imagine walking in their shoes during the incident. There are exceptions that deserve severe critiscism. The Pinnacle fiasco comes to mind, but there are plenty of others that don't deserve the lambasting that goes on. Let's try and extend that courtesy to all crews in future discussions of accidents. As someone else noted, let's use sombody else's mistake as an opportunity to learn. Good job on keeping this thread professional.

 

[Phrogboy]

Caveman,

Excellent observation and recommendation. Kudos.

Good CRM is something many crews say they embrace, but accidents like this one state otherwise. We all need to take something like this to heart.

 

[ATR-DRIVR]

Caveman,
Excellent post. You can look around anywhere on this board lately and see the bashfest to non-military crews. Pathetic. Look at the Tradewinds, Arrow or Centurion incidents also. All of the "experts" from here. Looking at most of their backgrounds, couple of hundred or thousand hrs in singles and they are right in there blaming the crews before they have climbed out of the windows.
I guess they are all FAA and NTSB experts on their time off.....

 

[CHQ Pilot]

Caveman,

You're spot on. Thanks for a refreshing post.

 

[TankerDriver]

Even though the gist of that article is mostly correct, having read the official report (which probably will never be made public), I can say there are some key differences between the two and/or lots of info left out.

The #3 engine was not intentionally left at idle. In fact, The #1, 2 and 4 engines were firewalled at one point when the pilot realized they were getting low and slow. Unfortunately, having #2 firewalled and #3 at idle didn't do them much good and by the time it was realized, they were too much behind the power curve. They were in that helpless range where retracting flaps to get rid of drag will also send you into the ground, but didn't have enough thrust available to overcome the drag of full flaps. They were already a few hundred feet low on the GS, so lowering the nose to pick up some smash wasn't an option.

 

[C-141/C-5]

The C-5 is underpowered. 3 engine heavy weight is tough but 2 engine is near impossible. Above 600,000 LBS the Dash 1 states CONSIDER using 40% rather than landing flaps. The crew simply screwed up! They just didn't push up the correct engine. The military flies local rides which are great, but when we simulate an engine is shut down it remains in idle, so we don't bring all four throttles up while practicing. We have 1-2 sims a year depending on airframe and this is where I practice using all 4 throttles even if one engine is out.

MY BIG CONCERN IS WHY DOES THE C-5 COMMUNITY INSIST OF USING THE Pilot Not Flying READ THE CHECKLIST RATHER THAN THE ENGINEER. IF THE PNF WAS HEADS UP RATHER THAN HEADS DOWN READING THE CHECKLIST THIS MIGHT OF BEEN AVOIDED!!!!!!

 

[C-141/C-5]

THE C-5 IS SO THRUST LACKING THAT USING SYMETRIC THRUST ON 3 ENGINES IS AN UNSAT! When I flew C-141s this techinique was alright because of power, but in the C-5 you ought to be CRAZY!!! THE CREW JUST SCREWED UP!!!

 

[JimNtexas]

I really hope the Air Force looks carefully into why crew coordination so clearly failed in this incident.

I have to wonder if there was some personal issues between members of the crew that impeded communication.