Amazon Prime Air Cargo Plane Crashes in Texas, Three Dead (weather.com)

An anonymous reader quotes Weather.com: An Amazon Prime Air cargo plane crashed Saturday afternoon into Trinity Bay near Anahuac, Texas, as it approached Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Three crew members aboard the plane did not survive the crash, the Chamber County sheriff told WJTV. Air traffic controllers lost radar and radio contact with Atlas Air Flight 3591 shortly before 12:45 p.m. CST. The 767 jetliner was arriving from Miami when the crash occurred 30 miles southeast of the airport, according to a statement by the Federal Aviation Administration.

Comments

It was me, I did it.

[Anonymous Coward]

I ordered a pair of socks, next day air, clearly my fault.

I feel so guilty.

Where will they bury the survivors?

Re:It was me, I did it.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

Where will they bury the survivors?

I don't think that burying survivors is legal.

Re:It was me, I did it.

[mentil]

It is in Djibouti.

Re:It was me, I did it.

[Anonymous Coward]

[Disclaimer: I'm not the GP AC.]

You may have just been whooshed. The joke is "a plane crashes on the border of <insert two places you don't like>. Where do they bury the survivors?"

Re:It was me, I did it.

[reboot246]

I heard that it crashed in a cemetery. They had recovered over a hundred bodies so far.

Re:It was me, I did it.

[novakyu]

I don't think there were any survivors to bury.

Re:It was me, I did it.

[Comrade Ogilvy]

Burying the survivors has a more powerful deterrent effect, you must admit.

Re: It was me, I did it.

[Hylandr]

That's best done when landing.

Re: It was me, I did it.

[c6gunner]

That sounds like an "in soviet Russia" joke.

Re: It was me, I did it.

[Grog6]

Not if you really want that "Maximum carry capacity of any flight" award.

That would take cremation pre-flight; but that would get that carry rate metric up to 20k per flight, and that's the important thing, the metrics.

Look at it this way, the airline has a 100% "Flight survival rate", even if it crashes! /s

Re:It was me, I did it.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

No, I've heard this joke a million times but couldn't resist.

Sorry to hear they died.

[jfdavis668]

I know this thread will fill with jokes, but I'm sorry to hear that they died in the accident.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

This happened just West of me. Reports are sketchy but a witness said there was a sound like lightning. We have very light rain and no reports of a thunderstorm in the area.

The water at the impact site is only 1-5 feet deep. We used to get fresh oysters from there.

Looking at the overhead shots, I didn't see am impact crater. I would expect one because it's a marshy area.

No witnesses reported an impact fireball. When planes hit the ground, avgas hits the jets and it's BOOM!

The debris field shows very small pieces as if the plane had a catastrophic unplanned disassembly before crashing.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[Alwin Henseler]

• Crew members may have taken pride in their jobs anyway. 21st century logistics isn't as simple as it appears on first sight you know.
• 3 People lost their lives. That is 'stuff that matters' even if you didn't know them.
• Respect... obviously you have none.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[Shikaku]

It's clear you don't work for the FAA or NTSB.

He never said he did.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

At least he added some interesting information to the story.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

Thanks. I was in Uncle Sam's Yacht Club for 9 years as part of the air group on air craft carriers and at NAS Jax, NAS Key West, NS Mayport, NAS San Diego.

I've seen some things and, like OP, I too am very sorry to hear that there are no survivors.

They're going after the black box now.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[drinkypoo]

"3 People lost their lives. That is 'stuff that matters' even if you didn't know them."

Am I supposed to care because they were pilots, or because they might have been transporting something I ordered? Asking for the 150,000 other people who died the same day, but won't be mentioned on slashdot because they aren't part of delivering our future landfill stuffing.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

I don't think it was a bomb, but I have no way of knowing. I'd expect witnesses reporting a mid-flight fireball if it was a bomb.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

No. The black box records just about every instrument on board and it can be installed on a simulator to reproduce the last few moments of flight. I've never heard of a black box blowing up.

Re: Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

Actually, it's fluorescent orange with strips of reflective tape that help in locating the box. Also, the box has a pinger that hydrophones can listen to under water for echolocation.

If the box is covered with mud (these waters are shallow), that nay not be a lot of help.

--

BLACK BOX

It's a term used in avionics to generically describe any electronic box on board be it radar, altimeter, airspeed, radios, and the like.

I was a flight deck troubleshooter aboard the aircraft carrier USS Wasp. When something avionic broke, I would jump aboard the aircraft and either fix it (loose cable), replace it (call for a black box), or scrub the mission.

Re: Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

Read this real slow and you can move your lips, OK?

Avgas is a term we used to generically describe any fuel used for aviation.

Aboard a carrier, we had a mixture of aircraft and you can call it gasoline, or kerosene, or whatever you want.

That's you.

We called it "gas that went into an airplane," or "avgas." We weren't interested in semantics.

Re:Sorry to hear they died.

[CaptainDork]

Update:

The local authorities have found the remains of two (2) persons, as yet unidentified. A third is still missing.

They said they responded to reports that an aircraft went down in that area. Appreciate that the shallow bay is quite large. Normally, they would look for an oil sheen but there was none.

It wasn't until they spotted the debris field, composed of many small pieces and packages, that they were able to pinpoint the area.

I find it very odd that there was no fireball, either in the air or on the ground. Also, there is no impact crater. That area is water, silt, and mud. I was expecting to see mud splatter from overhead shots, but that's not the case.

Going out on a limb, I'm going to say flame-out, attempted restart, flood of avgas and clean explosion. One witness did say there was a sound "like lightning."

I'm sure he meant thunder.

If the crew was aware of trouble, it's easy to squawk a mayday both verbally and through the transponder. However, the number one rule of aviation is to fly first and report later.

Nice job editors

[sunking2]

This story would bring nothing but snarky remarks. The editors should know this. I'm blaming them for posting it and not the people making the comments, it's what you get on the internet.

However, there is nothing in this story at this time that merits and sort of actual discussion.

Re:Nice job editors

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe, just maybe, humour is how people deal with the horrific terror that death instils in us all...

Re:Nice job editors

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a reason it's called gallows humor. We laugh, because if you scream continuously they put you in the looney bin.

Not Amazon Air

[kqc7011]

It was Atlas Air Flight 3591 a contract flight for Amazon.

Re:Not Amazon Air

[SScorpio]

Amazon doesn't operate the flights. They contract that out to Atlas and two others. The plane was likely dedicated to Amazon Air flights and had an Amazon Air livery painted on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Not Amazon Air

[Anonymous Coward]

It did. This is the plane that crashed https://www.planespotters.net/photo/917927/n1217a-amazon-prime-air-boeing-767-375erbcfwl

Checked my in-flight shipping ...

[Anonymous Coward]

out of all the things that Amazon ships all over the place daily, very few people will have their packages delayed over 1 flight.

Sorry to hear about the people killed. A B767 has been a fairly safe aircraft over the decades. The NTSB+Boeing will figure out the cause with this one too and make all our travels a little safer. At least it was mostly "stuff" on the plane and not mostly people.

That won't help the families of those 3 who died.

Possible mechanical problem

[Anonymous Coward]

By media reports, there were at least 5 eyewitnesses to the events leading up to the crash. The eyewitnesses report that the plane appeared to be having mechanical troubles with the pilot fighting for control.

That's unreliable info, but if true it would point towards a maintenance or mechanical problem with the plane, rather than pilot error. (Many crashes are caused by pilot error, so that's not unheard of).

Gotta be horrifying for the crew, to be powerless.

Re:Possible mechanical problem

[Waffle Iron]

That's unreliable info, but if true it would point towards a maintenance or mechanical problem with the plane, rather than pilot error.

I wonder what's the likelihood that the underlying cause is due to this Amazon Prime plane not actually being a genuine Boeing 767, but instead just a Chinese counterfeit.

Re:Possible mechanical problem

[Aighearach]

That's what they get for buying a plane from a supplier with co-mingled inventory.

Re:Possible mechanical problem

[bobbied]

By media reports, there were at least 5 eyewitnesses to the events leading up to the crash. The eyewitnesses report that the plane appeared to be having mechanical troubles with the pilot fighting for control.

That's unreliable info, but if true it would point towards a maintenance or mechanical problem with the plane, rather than pilot error. (Many crashes are caused by pilot error, so that's not unheard of).

Gotta be horrifying for the crew, to be powerless.

Actually, in this case it looks to me like a weight and balance issue. Of course, anything that happens when you are low and slow can cause you to ball it up pretty quick and not have any warning. Weight and balance could make it impossible to control the aircraft's attitude and only become apparent as the aircraft slows down for it's approach.

So, my leading theory is that the load wasn't properly secured and shifted though the turbulence they where experiencing or during takeoff. Then as they where slowing down for the approach they couldn't keep the aircraft in trim and control the attitude. They either stalled and couldn't recover or couldn't keep the noise up as they where adding flaps and putting the gear down which involves some pretty big trim changes.

Another possible issue is a micro-burst. It was very windy and thunderstorms where around but they where way above the critical altitude to allow recovery and pilots are highly trained for recovery from any hint of this these days. They didn't seem to be low enough for this to have killed them.

It could be pilot error, but when you are an ATP rated pilot flying this kind of aircraft, even in the right seat, you have a lot of experience. It is unlikely you are going to ball it up w/o somebody in the cockpit catching your mistake. Pilot mistakes do happen, but that's why there are two and why one flies while the other monitors these days. I put pilot error at #2 on my list for this crash.

For pilot error, the most likely mode here is an "over stress" of the aircraft. They where in rough weather, it was very bumpy, and it's easy to apply too much control pressure and structurally damage the aircraft. Such damage can break your ability to control the aircraft. The most dangerous thing that's happened is pilots who applied too much rudder and the tail departs the aircraft as a result. In this case, it seems the aircraft was not missing it's tail, so I don't think this happened, though it's possible that mechanical damage got done, rendering the tail useless.

Mechanical issues are on the very bottom of my list of possible causes. It's possible something went wrong with the horizontal stabilizer and, like the weight and balance problem, they lost pitch control at the exact wrong time, but due to the huge safety issues with this part of the aircraft, there are backups of backups for controlling this. It's possible, but unlikely unless there are serious maintenance problems with the airline and the FAA's inspectors are asleep on the job.

So, mechanical issues are about the last thing on the possible list that I would investigate. My list goes, weight and balance, pilot error, weather, aircraft system failure (maintenance).

However, the NTSB will look at everything. They likely have the flight data recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder already recovered and are in the process of dumping the data now. My guess is they will pretty quickly know what caused this one. We have the complete aircraft and the black boxes. There is unlikely to be much question as to what exactly happened.

Breaking news links

[nuntius]

Condolences to those who knew the pilots. Fortunately no victims on the ground.

Its too soon to say what caused this tragedy. Weather? Package? Other?

Whatever it was, the plane appears to have suddenly gone from a mile high to ground impact in about 10 seconds.

https://www.flightradar24.com/...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/2...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.click2houston.com/...

https://www.flightglobal.com/n...

Re:Breaking news links

[john.r.strohm]

I strongly doubt it.

Boeing has been building heavy airplanes for a long time. They know how to do it, and they know how to do it safely.

If memory serves me, the last airplane Boeing built that required that kind of planning and in-flight fuel management (and hence a flight engineer in the cockpit) was the 747.

This sounds like something went suddenly, badly wrong.

And: I have friends who are former, current, and future pilots, including airline pilots. I get this really sick feeling whenever I hear about something like this.

Re:Breaking news links

[Chewbacon]

ATC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Always gut-wrenching hearing people talk while clueless it'll be their last words. 7000fpm descent at the end. RIP.

Re:Breaking news links

[WhiplashII]

I am a pilot - from what they are saying on the air, it sounds like they hit some turbulence that caused massive structural damage. If the pilots had been in a working cockpit, there would have been at least a broken transmission. No clicks means the pilots couldn't push the talk button (which is on the control wheel, where there hands would be anyway).

Probably an in air breakup, nothing they could do. Hopefully they find the cause and prevent recurrence - unfortunately, accidents are often the way that new safety rules are created.

(Condolences to all involved)

Re:Breaking news links

[dougTheRug]

http://avherald.com/h?article=...

Re:Breaking news links

[Megane]

Over Pennsylvania, not Houston.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

this is horrible and my thoughts go out to the pilots and the families of the pilots

my *guess* is that ntsb is going to discover a miscalculation of weight and balance vis a vis fuel burn that rendered the airframe no longer flyable

My guess is weight and balance, but that it changed during flight due to shifting cargo (or less likely was loaded wrong). At least that's my leading theory. For some reason some cargo broke loose or wasn't properly restrained and though the turbulence they where having moved. Then as they where slowing down for landing they lost pitch control. They either stalled it (my guess) and couldn't recover due to an aft CG shift outside of the controllable limits, or couldn't bring the nose up with the gear and flaps down (though less likely).

So, aft CG was out of controllable limits, pitch control authority wasn't enough to trim the aircraft for slow speeds in that weight and balance condition. A non-recoverable stall happens, the pilots become mere passengers and the aircraft falls out of the sky. I would have expected some radio calls, but as congested as the approach frequency is nobody may have heard them anyway.

The NTSB will know pretty quick. All this will be apparent from the CVR and Data recorder if it happened. Of course the NTSB will be very detailed and systematically put everything back together to fully understand what happened and why, but they will know within days what generally happened.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

Structural damage is possible, thunderstorms where in the area, however, we don't hear any of the eye witnesses reporting anything but a fully assembled aircraft crashing.

It's possible they partially removed the tail though excessive control inputs during an upset recovery, or at least did enough damage to make the tail stop working. However, if the aircraft was fully assembled, this doesn't seem likely. Also, structural damage isn't common on approach as the aircraft is slowing down, approaching V(sub0) where any full control input won't damage the aircraft anyway, so structural damage on approach from over-stress isn't as likely as on departure. ,

My guess is weight and balance. It seems to explain the fast uncontrolled descent and given this was a cargo flight, it's likely they where operating near the maximum weight limits. The question I have is did he cargo get shifted during flight or was it loaded wrong before the flight. IF the aircraft was in an AFT CG condition, as you slow down, it want's to pitch up and once you reach the speed where the airflow over the horizontal stabilizer isn't enough to push the nose down, your go nose up, which slows you down and quickly puts you into a stall, even with the yoke fully forward. The pilots become passengers at this point, as you cannot control an aircraft that's stalled and unless you have a lot of altitude and a whole lot of luck you won't recover.

Re:Breaking news links

[fluffernutter]

Maybe they should be paying the airplane loaders a bit more than they pay the warehouse workers.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

I am a pilot ... If the pilots had been in a working cockpit, there would have been at least a broken transmission.

No you are not a pilot.. I'm only a private pilot with about 100 hours experience and even I know better than this.

One of the first things my instructor taught me about emergencies is that you follow this list. 1. Aviate (you fly the aircraft first). 2. Navigate (You keep track of where you are second). 3. Communicate - (Comes last). IF you where a pilot, you'd know that list because you would have practiced that list. When you are dealing with an emergency, the LAST thing you want to do is talk to somebody on the ground who's not able to help you and only has questions for you (How much fuel do you have? How many people on board? Hazardous Cargo? What are your intentions? What's the nature of your emergency?). If you are struggling for control of the aircraft, you don't have time to play 20 questions with ATC. Fly the plane first as your life depends on being successful doing that, if you can sort things out enough to catch your breath, THEN you can talk to ATC and let them know.

So given the apparent situation, the pilots where working on #1 and didn't have time for the rest.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

Just a guess, but I'll bet the load master gets paid a lot more than the folks packing boxes at the warehouse. Such work requires you to be properly trained, certified and managed and the FAA is going to be making sure of that. Also, Amazon likely isn't the load master's employer anyway, the airline likely is. Amazon likely just provides packed containers to the airline who is responsible for weighing and loading them onto the aircraft properly.

Re:Breaking news links

[Obfuscant]

When you become a pilot with thousands of hours of experience you might realize that pushing a button that is already under your finger and speaking into a microphone that is already just inches from your mouth to begin reporting an emergency to someone you are already in communication with is not a task that requires 100% concentration on the part of a pilot. It's not like your 100 hour 172 pilot who has to look up the local controller frequency and then reach over to pick up a mic to be able to call someone because you're tooling around the practice area and didn't bother with flight following to start with.

You identify and announce an emergency. That starts the ball rolling. That get the full attention of the controllers. There are now at least two pairs of eyes following you on radar (the controller and a supervisor) if you are still in radar contact. There is now a room full of other controllers who are starting to manage their traffic to give you a clear path to where you need to go. There is a phone in the hand of the supervisor passing info on to emergency responders to get them ready.

If you are a 100 pilot and cannot manage to squeak out a mayday when it happens to you, we can expect that we'll someday be wondering what happened to the plane "bobbied" was piloting that mysteriously didn't appear at the destination. I can tell you, other pilots are able to manage a radio transmission while they are aviating and navigating, too. Someday it won't be a daunting task for you, either.

If you are struggling for control of the aircraft, you don't have time to play 20 questions with ATC.

"Air Flooby thirty two mayday mayday mayday" is not "20 questions." Of course you don't play 20 questions while getting things figured out. But you DO make your initial radio call so everyone is awake and alert when you get around to dealing with them.

Sheesh. Using the radio in a modern airplane is not rocket science.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

Like I said.. The FIRST thing you do is fly. Communicating is way down the priority list.

This event happened quickly, they went from a normal descent into a +6000 FPS one in really short order and watching their heading changes tells me they stalled and spun. The lack of communication isn't an indicator of a structural failure, when you find yourself in a dire situation your first job is to recover the aircraft, diagnose enough of the problem to keep from balling it up. That job does not include mashing the PPT button and saying something lucid to the controller.

My flight instructor was right. The controllers are going to get chatty, soaking up your limited concentration, once you talk to them. It's what they are trained to do. One time I had a minor incident where the flaps on my 150 stuck full down during touch and goes. Climb performance was crap (less than 100fpm) so after I cleared the tree tops, I got on the radio and told the controller (and the traffic around the airport) that I was going to need a really LONG climb out but that I was staying in the pattern and needed to return as soon as I could. Even though I didn't declare the emergency, I got the 20 questions anyway, which was fine, I had plenty of time to answer them as I was climbing up to pattern height and didn't have much to do for about 5 min. I probably should have made the "pan pan" call but hey, I had a positive rate of climb....

There is no need to communicate with ATC until you have the aircraft under some semblance of control. Fly the plane first. Now as soon as you can take a breath and ATC can be helpful with emergency clearances and radar vectors, by all means, get on the radio. But if you are in the midst of a stall spin recovery with your hands on the throttles and yoke struggling for control, don't bother with the radio.

Re:Breaking news links

[Obfuscant]

Like I said.. The FIRST thing you do is fly. Communicating is way down the priority list.

And like I said, communicating that you have an emergency is a trivial task that can happen in parallel with other high priority things. When you get a bit more experience you'll figure that out. In other words, "FIRST" is not a synonym for "ONLY".

My flight instructor was right. The controllers are going to get chatty,

Jesus, if you cannot ignore a controller while you're trying to aviate, then you really should not be in the cockpit at all. They WILL call you when THEY want to call you, and you might be in the middle of something important. The skill of either simply ignoring them until you can deal with it, or saying "standby" by pushing a button that is, as I already said, right under your finger, speaking into a microphone that is already up next to your mouth, using a radio that is already tuned to the frequency you need to use and has someone you are communicating with at the other end, is critical to your own safety.

No, the controllers aren't going to get "chatty". They're going to go into 'emergency' mode and try to provide you with any help you need. They're not going to chat with you, they're dealing with YOUR flight and YOUR emergency and paying attention to YOU. What do YOU need, what can they do to help YOU. If standing-by is what they can do, a simple "standby" deals with it.

Your flight instructor is right -- clearly you don't have the experience to handle simple radio communications while flying the plane. It's a good thing he's there.

I got on the radio and told the controller (and the traffic around the airport) that I was going to need a really LONG climb out but that I was staying in the pattern and needed to return as soon as I could.

In other words, you gave a "life story" instead of a simple mayday, and other people, hearing you reciting your life story assumed you were in a position to communicate a lot of other things. And you didn't have the experience to ignore them instead of fly the plane. Yes, a 100 hour pilot doesn't have a lot of experience with that kind of stuff.

Here's the point: the pilots of the aircraft that went down weren't 100 hour student pilots, they were commercial pilots with probably thousands of hours. They were on an IFR flight plan (if thunderstorms were nearby) and talking to a TRACON filled with professional controllers. They had plenty of experience with ATC, and they were undoubtedly able to manage "20 questions" with a simple "standby". They would certainly be able to announce an emergency without any significant distraction from dealing with the aircraft.

Someday you may have enough experience to know better. I hope. I would be really pissed if I were called out on a missing aircraft search that could have been prevented because "bobbied" had a mechanical failure in flight, flew the airplane into the ground, but felt he couldn't manage a call to ATC to announce the emergency so they could deal with it when it happened instead of a few hours later when your family calls up wondering where you are.

There is no need to communicate with ATC until you have the aircraft under some semblance of control.

Other than starting a process and alerting the people who might be able to help you land safely, and who may be responsible for routing other aircraft out of your way for THEIR safety, no, there is no reason to tell ATC anything about your emergency. And yes, if you have so little experience dealing with radios and ATC that it is a major process for you to say anything to them until you have recovered from your emergency all by yourself, by all means, don't call them. But please don't project your limited abilities onto others and tell them they shouldn't announce an emergency when it happens because they're supposed to fly first, navigate second, and communicating is absolute last on the list.

Re:Breaking news links

[bobbied]

One last time, see rule # 1.

https://www.pea.com/blog/posts...

Or from the AOPA https://www.aopa.org/news-and-...

OR gives practical examples of what happens when you don't http://iflyamerica.org/safety_...

Even NASA agrees with me, and I'm no rocket scientist. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/...

Pay close attention to the conclusions in the PDF where it clearly indicates that ATC conversations are a hindrance to task management, not a help, and clearly justifies my reluctance to engage them in conversation when struggling to come to terms with how to keep my aircraft safe.

Again, I'm no great pilot, never claimed to be one, in fact I'm a pretty poor one having very little experience. The guys in that Boeing went from about 7,000 Feet to the ground in less than two min. They had their hands full of airplane. The publicly available flight data shows a rapid descent with a pretty healthy heading change to the right. They didn't have TIME to communicate and if you where in the cockpit you'd not either. This wasn't some gentle lazy maneuver as they lost control this was a sudden change into unusual attitude which I'm sure they where struggling to correct, while trying diagnose the reasons it was happening. 120 to 180 seconds is all they apparently had, and it wasn't enough. And you think they should have had time to get out a mayday call or two? Then there is my original point, that they MAY have tried, but on a congested approach frequency in an unusual attitude it may be nobody heard them. So there are many reasons other than a major structural or even electrical failure to account for the lack of a mayday call.

But at this point, we are both guessing. So Call me back when the NTSB publishes their final report and you where right... Until then, I'm done debating basic pilot training with you.

Re:Breaking news links

[Obfuscant]

One last time yourself ...

ATC conversations are a hindrance

How many times do I have to say this? You aren't having an "ATC conversation", you're declaring an emergency. One sentence. All of your citations talk about "communicate". That's more than declaring the emergency. It's doing all the other communications that can wait until the aircraft is in control.

It's pretty simple. Too simple, I guess. If ATC tries to "chat" (your description of them responding to an emergency declaration) when you can't talk to them, YOU IGNORE THEM. Is that really that hard? You've just told them you have an emergency. What are they going to do, get the FAA to yank your license because you didn't immediately respond to their questions? ATC aren't idiots. If you've just declared an emergency they're going to realize that you might be too busy to tell them how many souls are on board right this second. But, and this is the critical part, you will have the full, undivided attention of at least two ATC, ready to provide any assistance they can, and ready to call out rescue personnel the moment you leave their radar. They won't have to "pull the tapes" two hours later when you don't show up at your destination, they'll know within a minute where your echo was lost and where to start looking. And if and when you are ready to talk, they will have moved every other aircraft they can to another frequency so you'll have a clear channel and not face the "congested" radio you fear.

If you bothered to understand your citations, you'd notice that they weren't deadly experiences just because someone used the radio to declare an emergency. The "iflyamerica" link which you claims proves what happens if you declare an emergency while handling the emergency doesn't actually prove that. It proves that if NOBODY is flying the plane there is a problem. The PEA link refers to the same accident where the problem was NOBODY WAS FLYING THE PLANE. Again, nobody was flying the plane not because someone made a mayday call, it was because two pilots got engrossed in solving a trivial mechanical problem.

Your AOPA link talks about reading back a long complicated approach clearance before you start a turn and push the "approach mode" button on your autopilot, not you making a simple declaration of an emergency. If you read that clearance you'll notice that it gives you instructions where you will be navigating and aviating all the way to the missed approach point, at a minimum. Before you get there, you may get a clearance to land from tower with a "land short of runway 21". "My God, man, I'm AVIATING and NAVIGATING. I can't COMMUNICATE!" You are starting four miles from the approach fix. If you're at 120 knots, that is two minutes before you are established. Please, the first time you fly a practice approach as an instrument student, if you make it that far, try waiting two minutes to acknowledge a clearance like that and see if ATC buys the "aviate, navigate, communicate" rule #1. Then fail to acknowledge the "land short" instruction before you land and see if your landing clearance isn't revoked and you are told to go around (and, politely, "go away".) Yet, you've obeyed "rule #1" like a good pilot must.

in fact I'm a pretty poor one having very little experience.

I know. You don't think you can push a button that is right under your finger and speak into a mic that is right in front of your face while doing anything else.

So Call me back when the NTSB publishes their final report and you where right...

I where what? Christ almighty, you think the NTSB is going to issue a finding about how easy it is to use a radio? You truly have no clue, do you?

They didn't have TIME to communicate

They had two minutes. That's plenty of time for a mayday. I'm sorry that using a radio is a daunting task that consumes your 100% attention while saying anything, but for most of us it isn't that hard. We know the benefits of letting ATC know (for our safety and the safety of other airspace users) we have an emergency. We know that "rules" like the one you are fixated on have limits and what the words actually mean.

I have a family member in Air Traffic Control

[t00le]

I asked a family member in Air Traffic Control (ATC) on what happens from an ATC perspective when this type of thing happens. It just happens that my family member knew the protocols and could share what is available publicly since they were working at the time of the accident.

They were under the Houston Terminal Radar Approach Control (TRACON). This facility handles aircraft after departure usually up to 17,000 feet and arrivals descending from 17,000 feet. On the ATC tapes, you can hear them call “Giant 3591” several times but no response. Then they ask a United flight if he was picking up an ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter). After a crash, the aircraft automatically sends a signal on a dedicated frequency so that it can be found. Additionally, we would call any nearby aircraft/helicopter to report coordinates and what they see to initiate response teams.

https://flightaware.com/live/f...

Re:I have a family member in Air Traffic Control

[t00le]

How in the hell is there a thread where there is amusement on the event?

Pilots died flying Amazon cargo for the convenience WE expect as a service. These are people that have families, so let that sink in for a bit. How can anyone discount the fact that people risk their lives to deliver random things we order online.

Re: I have a family member in Air Traffic Control

[Anonymous Coward]

A lot of nerds spend a lot of time researching how to get humans and machines to play nicely. These tradgeties should be discussed to prevent similar failures in the future. Failures in aviation are often catastrophic, but the failure modes can be found in any industry. This type of technical/human errors should.. you know...matter.

Re:I have a family member in Air Traffic Control

[Aighearach]

In a small city, more people died in car crashes today.

There are billions of people in the world. If you're upset by 3 deaths, turn off the internet, unplug everything, and drop off the grid.

Re: I have a family member in Air Traffic Control

[Anonymous Coward]

That doesn't have a damn thing to do with why they're talking shit. "There just joking, brah, mellow out" is the refrain of the world's biggest douchebags

Amazon Delusion Syndrome?

[shanen]

Tech angle of this story seems kind of minimal, but I was interested in terms of logistics optimization and the ways of high-tech corporate cancers (AKA Amazon). I'm confident that Amazon is using sophisticated knapsack algorithms to pack their chartered planes to capacity--but that should not have been a factor in this crash since it was coming in for a landing. By that point in the flight, the plane would be much lighter because of all the fuel it had consumed on route. However, I am confident that Amazon picked the low bidder for the deliveries and kept up constant pressure to cut the costs more on each flight... One possibility is that the pressures could have affected the maintenance and helped lead to the apparent mechanical failure.