The official investigations on theAirplane crash in Toronto occurred yesterday 17 February when a plane Bombardier crj-900 Started from Minneapolis and operated by Endeavor Airlines, a subsidiary of Delta Airlines, he overturned and set on fire during the landing at Pearson international airport. Fortunately, of the 80 people on board Everyone was saved: There are 18 injured, 3 of which seriously. The authorities took the black box of the plane to analyze the data and reconstruct the cause and dynamic of the accident. A possible hypothesis concerns the presence of a microbursta burst of descending cold air.
How the plane overturned in Toronto: the dynamics of the accident
Let’s start with an assumption: according to what we have been able to see from the filming of the landing, the plane seems to have touched the land too abruptly. It was a violent landing. An element that jumps to a careful eye is that the plane has not landed “with the muzzle up” as we see in general, but with a very horizontal profile. In technical jargon it would seem that that maneuver called has not been made flare which allows the aircraft to sufficiently decrease its vertical speed before touching the track. What appears is that the pilots may have been unable to approach the slope most sweetly.
At this point the plane touched the soil at high speed and it is visibly inclined to the rightuntil the tip of the wing touched the ground and dragged for about 3 seconds on the track before the plane began to overthrow. It is possible that a not perfectly symmetrical landing concentrated a large part of the loading the impact with the ground on one of the trolleysand this has destabilized the structure of the plane by leaving it inclined. In the right conditions, which, however, are very rare, the rotation of the aircraft and the residual lift of the other wing could have been sufficient to complete the rotation to the plane until it overturns.
The possible causes of the accident during the landing phase
Ok, so there was no florker maneuver and the landing was too abrupt. But what can be the causes? We reiterate that At the moment we don’t knowand to shed light on the exact dynamics will be the investigations. What we can do at the moment are general considerations and likely hypotheses.
The hypothesis that it was a “trivial” maneuver error by the pilot cannot be excluded, but appears as an unlikely hypothesis since it is standard procedures.
A concrete possibility is that the pilots have had difficulties for maneuvering in the last seconds of flight due to sudden gusts of descending wind which may have pushed the plane too quickly. These are the so -called microburst – the small scale version of Downburst of which it is felt especially in summer and which are often exchanged for air trumpets. They are currents that are formed in the presence of storm clouds or in any case with strong vertical development. In these clouds a delicate balance is created between warmer currents that rise and colder currents that go down, and and a certain point may happen that the cold air “falls to the ground” all together at high speed. And when these currents crash to the ground, they “open” to fan by creating small horizontal gusts on the ground.
The meteorological relationship Metar (Meteorological Aerodrome Report) speaks at the time of the accident of gusts up to 35 knots, that is 65 km/h: The weather conditions were a bit at the limit but in any case within the operational limits, otherwise the flight would not have had the authorization to land. A microburst is therefore compatible with weather conditions, it may have prevented the plane from slowing down enough in the descent phase and may have created lateral winds on the ground able to further destabilize the aircraft structure. We reiterate anyway, once again, that this is only one Educated Guessa plausible hypothesis.
Why have there been no victims?
But how was it possible that such a serious accident may have had such a positive outcome, without No victims! Indeed, watching the videos of the crash and reversal seems almost impossible, but it happened.
The fact that the fuselage of the plane, that is, its central body, has resisted well to the impact is a testimony of the Good construction of this aircraft. To this should be added that theintervention of the firefighters It was practically immediate (since they were already on the spot) and prevented the flames from spreading before the evacuation ended. Part of the merit also goes to flight attendantswho coordinated and performed the evacuation operations impeccablely.
What will happen now: the procedures provided for investigations
In the event of a plane crash, the procedure provides for theStart of investigations Coordinated by the Canadian competent authorities (because the plane was built in Canada) and US (because the airline, the Delta Airlines, is USA). Investigations are intended to establish the causes and dynamics of the accident in order to adopt measures to prevent events of this type from still happening in the future.
Within a month the authorities will present a preliminary relationship which will integrate the data collected by black box: i Flight Data Recorder (FDR) with all the data of the tools and positions of the commands, and the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) with the audio of all communications within the piloting cabin, between them and with the control tower. To this will be added the interviews with pilotswho survived the accident and therefore are able to provide their testimony on the events that have happened. Most likely this relationship will be able to explain how and why the accident occurred. Subsequently, a official report.
