HAWKER 800 Crash in Minnesota – Cockpit Voice Recorder Transcript Released

The NTSB just released a transcript of the cockpit conversations of the captain and first officer of a crash that took their lives and six others in Minnesota last summer. There were no surprises here. The flight crew flew into an area of very severe weather with the airport literally surrounded by thunderstorms that reached as high as fifty thousand feet and had spawned at least one tornado. They experienced turbulence and heavy rain as they approached the airport, which had a wet runway from a recent very heavy shower.

The crew violated the sterile cockpit rule – no non-pertinent conversation below ten thousand feet, distracted themselves by fooling with the radar tilt when they had the runway in sight, and failed to properly conduct both the approach checklist and the pre-landing checklist. Worse yet, they failed to extend full flaps, dooming their flight. Without full flaps deployed they could not activate the lift dump feature in the Hawker jet, an absolutely mandatory condition if they ever hoped to luck out and stop on a runway that was too short for this aircraft under those conditions.

The lift dump system extends spoilers both above and below the wing. Without it, the airplane doesn’t place enough weight on the wheels early enough to spin them up and allow the anti-skid equipment to work. In fact, with the engines at idle thrust, an attempted go-around was futile given the normal time it takes for a crew to react and change the aircraft configuration.

As in most aircraft accidents, there is more than one cause. Anxiety over the weather, the rough ride, the short runway, the non-pertinent conversation, and the failure to complete the checklist all combined to doom this flight. The failure to anticipate the heavy weather, the effect of water on the short runway, the inability of the aircraft to safely operate within the available runway contributed to poor decision-making by this crew. Sadly, even a crew that is well trained, skillful and has the best of intentions also becomes the victim of a combination of events that only they could avoid – a chain that must be broken if they and their passengers are to survive. It didn’t happen, and they too paid with their lives.

Every pilot talks about the near accident he has had with the bravado that only a hero (in his own mind) can bring to the discussion. The problem is that if the stars line up and the events build in an inexorable combination of troubles, one day those pilots won’t be able to tell their story. No doubt these pilots were careful, decent, well-intentioned men. Unfortunately this disaster began with faulty pre-flight planning, faulty appreciation of the heavy weather that would be at the destination, faulty cockpit crew coordination that led to the careless skipping of what for this airplane was critical to a successful landing, full flaps.

This accident will mean nothing if it doesn’t serve as a lesson to all pilots that the Federal Aviation Regulations, known as operating rules, are minimum standards. That means that even if they are complied with to the letter, they may not be enough to successfully complete a flight. The failure to meet those minimum requirements, however, is a virtual guarantee of an accident.

Regardless of what position The Wolk Law Firm must take in the litigation for the deaths of the passengers that follows this accident, all of us, including the families of those passengers who have suffered unspeakable losses, lament the unnecessary deaths of everyone aboard.

Arthur Alan Wolk
February 13, 2009

Hawker 800 Crash In Minnesota–Some Preliminary Thoughts for All Pilots

A Hawker 800 executive jet aircraft crashed at a small airport in Minnesota, south of the Twin Cities on July 31, 2008. Witnesses describe a touchdown on a wet runway, a roll-out, then the application of power and a crash just beyond the end of the runway. All aboard were killed, either from impact or the ensuing fire.

The crew had successfully diverted around heavy weather and was landing in an area of moderate rain showers. Just before the crash, a wind shear alert was given (a rapid change in wind direction and velocity). Normally, a flight crew will add as much as 10 knots to the landing reference speed in the event of wind shear. The aircraft made it to the airport and the runway, and presumably the lift dump system was deployed, which should have allowed the aircraft to stop in 4,000 feet on a dry runway, according to the flight manual. It is typical for jet aircraft to touch down in the first 1,000 feet but, due to the wind shear, the first 1,500 feet may have been used. Therefore, except for the wet runway, 5,500 feet should have been sufficient for landing to a full stop, leaving about 750 to 1,000 feet remaining, if all went as expected. However, because of reported tail winds and standing water on the runway, it was questionable whether stopping in the available distance was possible. Hydroplaning, further increasing stopping distance, was also likely.

For all, or some of these reasons, the landing didn't go as expected. The crew elected to “go-around,” meaning they would have had to stow the left dump spoilers and flaps, and trim and apply takeoff power. The engines, likely idle by this time, would have had to spool up and the aircraft would have needed to accelerate again to take-off speed. The time to make the decision to go-around, stow the lift dump and achieve take-off thrust could have taken 10 to 15 seconds and used up another 1,000 to 1,500 feet of runway. That left precious little, or no, runway for the aircraft to accelerate to lift-off speed.

The aircraft did not leave the ground. Wheel tracks show that it left the pavement, traveled in the runway safety area–still on the ground–struck an antenna array, and then fell into a culvert where it burned. While there is no doubt the crew tried to save the aircraft, the decision to go-around on that size runway may have doomed the flight.

Investigators will review the cockpit voice recorder and, if equipped, the flight data recorder for clues and will look at the wreckage to determine the aircraft configuration at time of impact.

This information should confirm that unless there was a mechanical malfunction, this accident was preventable, like so many others of a similar type.

• First, a go-around from idle thrust and with lift dump deployed on a 5,500 foot runway with this aircraft is nearly impossible under normal circumstances.
• Secondly, aircraft performance charts are prepared to sell airplanes and bear little resemblance to actual performance achieved by average pilots in the field.
• Thirdly, a pilot must always plan for contingencies and on this approach there was wind shear, lightning in the distance in all quadrants, heavy weather nearby and a short wet runway.

Even the best flight crew can find itself without options under circumstances like these. The tragedy of this accident reminds us all that aviation safety means no accident, whether it’s a mechanical malfunction, the combination of foul weather and a short runway, a faulty decision to go-around based upon inadequate aircraft performance information or just a mistake.

No conclusions can or should be drawn about this accident as the investigation has just begun, but these are some thoughts that bear consideration regardless of the ultimate findings.

Arthur Alan Wolk
August 1, 2008