The Other Recent Deadly Boeing Crash No One Is Talking About (nymag.com)

New York magazine's Intelligencer remembers last month's crash of a Boeing 767 carrying cargo for Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service -- and shares a new theory that its cause wasn't a suicidal pilot or an autopilot malfunction: In online pilot discussion forums, a third idea has been gaining adherents: that the pilots succumbed to a phenomenon called somatogravic illusion, in which lateral acceleration due to engine thrust creates the sensation that one is tipping backward in one's seat. The effect is particularly strong when a plane is lightly loaded, as it would be at the end of a long flight when the fuel tanks are mostly empty, and in conditions of poor visibility, as Atlas Air 3591 was as it worked its way through bands of bad weather. The idea is that perhaps one of the pilots accidentally or in response to wind shear set the engines to full power, and then believed that the plane had become dangerously nose-high and so pushed forward on the controls. This would cause a low-g sensation that might have been so disorienting that by the time the plane came barreling out of the bottom of the clouds there wasn't enough time to pull out of the dive.

It has been speculated that this might have been the cause of another bizarre and officially unsolved accident from three years ago: Flydubai Flight 981, which crashed 2016 in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.... While it's still too early to draw any kind of conclusions about Atlas Air 3591, the possibility exists that a firm conclusion will never be drawn -- and if it is, the cause could turn out not to be a design flaw or software malfunction that can be rectified, but a basic shortcoming in human perception and psychology that cannot be fixed as long as humans are entrusted with the control of airplanes.

Comments

Flying by Instruments?

[seven of five]

I'm not anything near being a pilot, but seriously, aren't jet pilots supposed to fly by what the instruments tell them and not by seat of the pants?

Re:Flying by Instruments?

[quonset]

Beat me to it. Was going to ask about looking at the artificial horizon to see what it said. That should have told the pilots whether they were climbing or descending regardless of what they may have felt.

May we wait for the Black Box interpretation

[mschuyler]

please? Speculation as to the cause isn't helpful to anyone, especially by non-pilots (Read: Most comments and yes, I am one) Wait for the Black Box interpretation before you go running off at the mouth about stuff you know nothing about.