Investigators yet to identify cause of Canadian A319 upset

*Kol*

Investigators yet to identify cause of Canadian A319 upset
David Kaminski-Morrow (11Jan08, 13:34 GMT, 305 words)


Canadian investigators have yet to determine whether yesterday’s in-flight upset of an Air Canada Airbus A319, which injured several passengers, was the result of air turbulence or a flight-management system problem.

Transportation Safety Board of Canada has assigned two investigators to Calgary, where the aircraft diverted, to conduct an inquiry.

The jet had been operating the domestic Victoria-Toronto route as flight AC190 when the disturbance occurred at around 07:00 yesterday in the vicinity of the ONSET waypoint in the US state of Washington.

This point is about 200nm east of Victoria; Transport Canada’s incident-reporting system CADORS gives the aircraft’s position as some 65nm southwest of Cranbrook in British Columbia.

It states that the crew advised air traffic control of an “aircraft upset that resulted in the aircraft doing a roll”.

Details of the dynamics of the incident are still unclear. But the crew told controllers at the US FAA’s Seattle area centre that they had difficulty controlling the jet, identified as a 10-year old example, C-GBHZ, leased from GECAS.

After being handed to Vancouver area control centre the crew declared an emergency and diverted to Calgary where the aircraft landed about 30min later, just before 08:30, stopping on runway 34 for a visual inspection.

CADORS’ information indicates that the aircraft was approaching the Rocky Mountains range at the time. But while the range has previously been associated with turbulence incidents, investigators have yet to identify the reason for the occurrence.

“It is not known at this point if there was a flight-management system problem or whether this event was related to turbulence,” says the CADORS statement.

Ten of the 83 passengers and five crew required hospital treatment after the aircraft landed, although all have since been released. Air Canada says it will be “co-operating fully” with the Transportation Safety Board’s investigation to determine the cause.

dogmatix

Shows the importance of always wearing your seatbelts when seated!

I'd assume if the aircraft did a complete roll, then that would indicate some sort of problem with the aircraft/computer/software rather then with air turbulence.

Or maybe i'm watching too many of those "Air crash investigation" programmes on National Geographic.

WexCan

Feel sorry for the poor cabin crew, we're always at quite ahigh risk of injury from thissort of thing.

*Kol*

dogmatix wrote: »

Shows the importance of always wearing your seatbelts when seated!

I'd assume if the aircraft did a complete roll, then that would indicate some sort of problem with the aircraft/computer/software rather then with air turbulence.

Or maybe i'm watching too many of those "Air crash investigation" programmes on National Geographic.

There would have to be a malfunction of the flight control computers to allow it to perform a complete roll. Interesting to see the final investigation result.