Toronto - Delta Airlines CRJ-900 upside down, Flight 4819 from Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (MSP) to Toronto

[Tools]

Wow, didn’t know the 4x the energy thing. Pretty sure the old carrier birds take a shot like that now and then on a EGTL IC-AR.

Landing transport category jets is a very repeatable predictable exercise. All the technique of a smooth touchdown is different, but not necessary. NEVER saw a captain even come close to making the mistake made in this incident. When I was junior and even notioned at getting in a low energy state the capt said something or his hands headed to the throttles. Didn’t have to be a check airman or instructor or anything, they just had experience.

And my indiscretions towards that regime were pretty minor and corrected IMMEDIATELY. I’m a Navy throttle jockey, so much more comfortable at snatching power but keeping the engines spooled up, so got to see a lot of nervous captains! Point is, NONE of them were gonna let me get low energy.

For this to happen the ONLY thing I can come up with is simple inexperience. Crazy illusions, gusty winds, none of that should matter. This just isn’t like landing a small GA airplane, which frankly is a bit tougher. More forgiving, but requires a lot more stick and rudder skill. The jets are procedural, and have a ton of inertia, think Newton….

 

[dtuuri]

Wow, didn’t know the 4x the energy thing. ... The jets are procedural, and have a ton of inertia, think Newton….

Newton says landing at Vref has 1.69 times as much energy to dissipate in a crash than touching down at Vso, which could account for the smoke pouring off the Lear's brakes after the ex-fighter jock I flew with landed it on a driveway in Powhattan, Virginia.

 

[Tarheelpilot]

There's a bunch of scrap aluminum that says there was a problem.


I think the captain's decision making skills were maybe a hair too slow because he's spent too much time in the chair in the back of the sim, knowing exactly what was going to go wrong, and having the luxury of just letting it go to red screens than having to save the day.


Like I said, I get that it wasn't green on green because I know that's not allowed. The FO wasn't "green" with 400 in type, but the 1400 TT is a different form of green. The Captain wasn't green either, but his recency of experience left a lot to be desired. Put the two together, and now we have a charred mess of airplane parts and used up a helluva lot of our luck bag not killing anyone.


Difference of opinion, I suppose. To me, safety trumps everything. But that's what being a Director of Safety will do to a person I guess.


You would think after 400 in type the FO would have probably seen winds like that before? I wonder what will come out in the final report.


You would think, but there was potentially a flat light situation with all of the snow and the overcast sky which can create the illusion that you're not so close.

The captains decision making was flawed long before the final nail in the coffin. While their reaction time may have been slowed it’s not what caused the crash it was just the last step in a poor decision making process by the captain. Without it no crash but crash not a forgone conclusion with it either. It took every layer of this guys **** sandwich.

The bent aluminum does nothing to validate your position, it verifies things went sideways. Not how.

This was not any type of green on green. Not just a difference of opinion but honestly a difference of experience. 1400 hours TT is plenty to be in the seat but not necessarily enough to fly any approach. That’s where the captain comes in and this guy screwed the pooch.

your position that nothing trumps safety is emotional bullcrap. Pretty sure you fly airplanes, drive cars and live a full life. You make risk/value decisions every day just like everyone else. Safety trumps nothing until we decide the risk is more than the return.

If you want to make it about the system a much better question to ask is how did such a pilot make it to be an IP? Go back and read @hindsight2020 posts on this thread he hits on some really good points you can think about.

In summary. You are wrong. There’s plenty the airlines can do better and should do better but you are looking at the flea on the elephants back.

Cheers.

 

[Larry in TN]

You would think after 400 in type the FO would have probably seen winds like that before?

Yeah, pretty regularly. The winds were not extreme.

 

[35 AoA]

This apparently hit at about 2x the down rate of a carrier landing, which is 4x the energy, on a plane that is not built for it. Plus ... it wasn't intentional.

I've seen the figure for this mishap as 1100 fpm at impact. Normal carrier landing is 700-900 fpm depending on winds. I've landed with much more than that descent rate, easily 1100 at times. This isnt really relevant to the discussion though. Carrier aircraft are designed to handle that sort of stuff, whereas this CRJ was not, like you say.

 

[bbchien]

Bruce, I was 27 years old and making international flights with 100+ passengers and less than 1400 hours. So much depends on recent experience and proficiency, not easily measured by total time.

...And demonstrated in that "slam it on landing". You don't pull power at 150 feet (even in a straight wing P3). I think someone already said that. If you have to do that, you go around.

And the NATS isn't immune to this either. They're just BETTER at it, on average.

 

[tobnpr]

Newton says landing at Vref has 1.69 times as much energy to dissipate in a crash than touching down at Vso, which could account for the smoke pouring off the Lear's brakes after the ex-fighter jock I flew with landed it on a driveway in Powhattan, Virginia.

C'mon now.
Don't be a tease...

 

[nauga]

Pretty sure the old carrier birds take a shot like that now and then on a EGTL IC-AR.

I've seen the figure for this mishap as 1100 fpm at impact. Normal carrier landing is 700-900 fpm depending on winds. I've landed with much more than that descent rate, easily 1100 at times. This isnt really relevant to the discussion though. Carrier aircraft are designed to handle that sort of stuff, whereas this CRJ was not, like you say.

Not relevant to the mishap but relevant to the discussion by now.

The T-45 design spec was 24 ft/sec (1440 ft/min) sink rate at touchdown for exactly the EGTL @Tools mentioned. I was standing just outside the 'debris containment' cage for the first 24 ft/sec drop test. I say 'first' because given the frag pattern and amount of hyd fluid leaking afterwards I can only assume there were additional tests later on. I don't recall the nose gear spec but given the dynamics of an inflight engagement I can only assume it was similarly impressive.

Nauga,
who knows there's no grade like a no-grade

 

[dtuuri]

C'mon now.
Don't be a tease...

Looks the same now as 48 years ago. Good thing the brakes didn't fail, or we'd have been quenching them in Ambassador Guest's Pond: https://www.thepowhatanplantation.com/index.html

 

[Albany Tom]

For this to happen the ONLY thing I can come up with is simple inexperience. Crazy illusions, gusty winds, none of that should matter. This just isn’t like landing a small GA airplane, which frankly is a bit tougher. More forgiving, but requires a lot more stick and rudder skill. The jets are procedural, and have a ton of inertia, think Newton….

As somebody with less than 1k landings, and nothing over 3000 lbs gross, I appreciate this info. Because I can't see ever pulling the power at 150' in gusty conditions, or getting into a slow speed state on purpose when it's windy. I flew enough in gusty winds with an instructor that would say "if it's gusts up, it's going to gust down, be ready for that, it's how it works" that I can still hear it in my head. I'm positive that I'm not unique in that, I learned beside a lot of people better than me who also learned how to fly in a little bit of wind. You fly it down.

So my follow-up stupid question is - is it possible that the pilot flying didn't have much if any experience in gusty landings? I don't mean this as a setup question, or a shot at anyone...sincerely don't know.

 

[dmspilot]

So my follow-up stupid question is - is it possible that the pilot flying didn't have much if any experience in gusty landings? I don't mean this as a setup question, or a shot at anyone...sincerely don't know.

Possible? Yes, it was the FO's first winter flying, so it is possible it was the windiest day she had seen as PF. But it is also possible it wasn't. A large "set and forget" power reduction at 150 is a very rookie mistake, but then again, maybe the sim instructor CA was scolding the FO for being over VREF at 50 feet.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

your position that nothing trumps safety is emotional bullcrap. Pretty sure you fly airplanes, drive cars and live a full life. You make risk/value decisions every day just like everyone else. Safety trumps nothing until we decide the risk is more than the return.

That's not what I mean. Too often, we conflate "safety" with "zero risk". There is no such thing in life.

Aviation safety is all about identifying and mitigating risks before an incident happens. That doesn't mean you eliminate risk, that means you analyze the level of risk and if it is elevated you take steps to mitigate that risk to an acceptable level. You are an airline pilot, aren't you? This is the basics of what should have been covered in your SMS training.

We've been talking a lot about both the captain's lack of recent flight time and the FO's total time. The captain, flying with a more experienced FO, could be reasonably safe. The FO, flying with a captain who flew the line full time, could also be reasonably safe. But you put the two together and this is what you get, so you do something to mitigate the risk. That may mean not pairing a sim instructor with a lower-time FO, or that may mean putting the sim instructor on a trip every three weeks instead of every three months, or it may mean something else - That's up to management to decide. But crashing a plane and changing nothing is not an option.

 

[Bob Noel]

... Too often, we conflate "safety" with "zero risk". There is no such thing in life.

 

[Tarheelpilot]

That's not what I mean. Too often, we conflate "safety" with "zero risk". There is no such thing in life.

Aviation safety is all about identifying and mitigating risks before an incident happens. That doesn't mean you eliminate risk, that means you analyze the level of risk and if it is elevated you take steps to mitigate that risk to an acceptable level. You are an airline pilot, aren't you? This is the basics of what should have been covered in your SMS training.

We've been talking a lot about both the captain's lack of recent flight time and the FO's total time. The captain, flying with a more experienced FO, could be reasonably safe. The FO, flying with a captain who flew the line full time, could also be reasonably safe. But you put the two together and this is what you get, so you do something to mitigate the risk. That may mean not pairing a sim instructor with a lower-time FO, or that may mean putting the sim instructor on a trip every three weeks instead of every three months, or it may mean something else - That's up to management to decide. But crashing a plane and changing nothing is not an option.

I know it wasn’t what you meant. I was just messing with you because I, in general, read your posts on this subject and think “this dude is smart but he has no efn’ idea how this works and refuses to listen.” So I was having a little fun when I told you the best answer was for you to go hide in your closet and be safe.

You make lots of assumptions about how much safer the captain would be with more recent flight time. What would you think if he had flown 80 hours in the last month? What changes would you make?

Sometimes having a crash and changing nothing is the only correct answer.

Cheers.

 

[TCABM]

…That's up to management to decide. But crashing a plane and changing nothing is not an option.

Is it possible an n of 1 mishap in however many million operations is an acceptable rate to management? If not, the alternative is zero and we all know that is unachievable.

Trend analysis should play a much greater emphasis than a kneejerk response, because that’s what Colgan was and that hasn’t done as much to improve safety as people think it has.

 

[MauleSkinner]

Is it possible an n of 1 mishap in however many million operations is an acceptable rate to management? If not, the alternative is zero and we all know that is unachievable.

Trend analysis should play a much greater emphasis than a kneejerk response, because that’s what Colgan was and that hasn’t done as much to improve safety as people think it has.

But…but…the trend is it went up by an infinite percentage! We must jerk knees to compensate!

I think it’s very possible, even probable, that the appropriate solution would be different for a small-scale operation than an airline-scale operation. I think most of us non-airline types really don’t consider the large scale of an airline operation.

 

[Larry in TN]

that may mean putting the sim instructor on a trip every three weeks instead of every three months

I think they should fly a trip every month. They're very good with procedures, as that's what they do everyday. They need time in the real world where things don't follow a script, like they do in the sim.

 

[jbarrass]

The NTSB is overly quick to blame Pilot error as a cause.

But sometimes, it is just is that simple.

 

[flyingcheesehead]

I know it wasn’t what you meant. I was just messing with you because I, in general, read your posts on this subject and think “this dude is smart but he has no efn’ idea how this works and refuses to listen.”

I'm not refusing to listen... I'm sharing my perspective and hoping that further discussion will make us both smarter.

I was Director of Safety at a 135 operation, but I've never worked in 121. And learning what I did to become DoS kinda blew my mind a little, as it was quite a bit different than expected. FWIW, I was working with consultants who were 121 pilots. The process is the same in both. What's different is the scale of the operation.

You make lots of assumptions about how much safer the captain would be with more recent flight time. What would you think if he had flown 80 hours in the last month? What changes would you make?

Probably none, because he would have been sharp enough to catch the FO's error, prevent the accident, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.

If he had that much recent flight time and the accident still happened, then there would likely be more focus on the FO, their training, etc. But really, I'm focusing on that mainly because it's something that is fairly obviously different from a "normal" operation, even though it's not uncommon. When you wreck an airplane, every single link in the accident chain deserves some scrutiny.

Sometimes having a crash and changing nothing is the only correct answer.

Disagree. Even United 232 resulted in changes, and that crash supposedly had a 1 in 10 quadrillion chance (IIRC) of happening in the first place, which is why there were no existing procedures for how to deal with it.

Do we need to change regulations? Not necessarily. Do we ("we" quite possibly meaning Endeavor only) need to change *something*? Probably.

Is it possible an n of 1 mishap in however many million operations is an acceptable rate to management? If not, the alternative is zero and we all know that is unachievable.

It depends. If the mishap results in no serious injuries or loss of life and a reasonably low financial cost, probably. The SMS process that is in use at airlines today and will be required for non-single pilot 135 operations within a couple of years uses a risk matrix that takes into account both the severity and likelihood of a particular occurrence. Severity takes into account the effects on the business, operations, aircraft, crew, and passengers.

The thing with aviation safety is that we're *so* close to zero accidents per flight hour that it's hard to say anything is statistically significant, but that also means that a crash is a big deal.

Trend analysis should play a much greater emphasis than a kneejerk response, because that’s what Colgan was and that hasn’t done as much to improve safety as people think it has.

Again, it can be hard to analyze trends when the number of occurrences of almost anything is so close to zero, because there will never be a trend. I do agree on kneejerk responses, but those usually come from Congress.

I think they should fly a trip every month. They're very good with procedures, as that's what they do everyday. They need time in the real world where things don't follow a script, like they do in the sim.

That would be a big improvement.

As far as procedures, I'm sure they *know* the procedures inside and out, but are they that good at executing them? I think there's a difference between knowing the procedures and the mistakes other crewmembers make on them, vs. actually executing the procedures. Like I mentioned earlier in the thread, I've always felt like three weeks or so is the cutoff where I start noticing that I'm not doing things as automatically or as quickly as I'd like. I have to look at a control rather than just reaching for it, I have to think for a fraction of a second longer on each checklist item, etc. How much is sitting in the back of the sim going to help them execute things quickly and smoothly vs sitting in a control position?

 

[flyingcheesehead]

The NTSB is overly quick to blame Pilot error as a cause.

But sometimes, it is just is that simple.

It's really never that simple. Most of aviation safety is human factors. IMO, the NTSB stopping at "pilot error" is missing the point, though I don't think they stop there on 121/135 crashes the way they do on 91.

"Pilot error" is not a root cause. WHY did the pilot make the error? Was there something about the situation they were in that caused substandard performance? Were they properly trained? Did they have the right recency of experience? Is there something about the design of the cockpit and/or the procedures that hampered them? There are a lot of areas to look into when it comes to pilot error. I do feel like the NTSB is starting to get it and they're not just saying "pilot error" and moving on nearly as much as they used to. However, there's not as much to be found and fixed in part 91 recreational aviation.

 

[midwestpa24]

And another one, CRJ-200 this time.

Accident: Skywest CRJ2 at Johnstown on Mar 24th 2025, wing tip strike on landing

Aviation Herald - News, Incidents and Accidents in Aviation

avherald.com

 

[Lindberg]

"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." — H.L. Mencken

 

[flyingcheesehead]

And another one, CRJ-200 this time.

Accident: Skywest CRJ2 at Johnstown on Mar 24th 2025, wing tip strike on landing

Aviation Herald - News, Incidents and Accidents in Aviation

avherald.com

This thread isn't about the first wingtip strike. At least I think it was a different one, 'cuz I think it was more than 2 days ago and they went around IIRC.

So yeah, one, uh, "inboard wing strike after landing gear obliteration" and two tip strikes in fairly short order. Fun.

 

[TCABM]

…after landing gear obliteration" and two tip strikes in fairly short order. Fun.

Three makes a trend, what’s common? Gusty winds. An SMS program could effectively address ways to mitigate risk in those scenarios where shear event conditions are likely to exist based off forecast weather.