Pinnacle CRJ Follow-Up..Limit FL370

[JEP]

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Pinnacle limits planes' altitude after fatal crash
Liz Fedor, Star Tribune
October 22, 2004 PINNACLE1022

In the wake of an airplane crash that killed two pilots on Oct. 14, Pinnacle Airlines said Thursday that it has imposed a policy prohibiting its pilots from flying above 37,000 feet.

On the flight that crashed in Jefferson City, Mo., the Pinnacle pilots had been flying the twin-engine CRJ-200 at 41,000 feet when both jet engines failed, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).

Pinnacle's new flight ceiling comes from "an abundance of caution," Pinnacle Vice President Philip Reed said. But he declined to provide further information about the crash or Pinnacle's operating policies because the NTSB is conducting an investigation.

Memphis-based Pinnacle operates a fleet of 108 Canadair Regional Jets (CRJs) on regional routes for Northwest Airlines. The flight that crashed was en route from Little Rock, Ark., to the Twin Cities when the pilots attempted to make an emergency landing and crashed just three miles south of the Jefferson City airport.

The plane was not carrying passengers; it was scheduled to be used later for a flight departing the Twin Cities.

The NTSB released an update on Wednesday that pays considerable attention to the plane's altitude when the pilots encountered problems.

The NTSB said the plane departed Little Rock about 9:21 p.m. The crew reported to the Kansas City Air Route Traffic Control Center that they were climbing to 41,000 feet. At 9:52 p.m., the crew acknowledged that they had reached 41,000 feet. Just two minutes later, the crew asked for a lower altitude. At 9:55 p.m., one minute later, the crew declared an emergency.

"At about 9:59 p.m., the flight crew requested an altitude of 13,000 feet," the NTSB said. "At 10:08 p.m., the flight crew stated that they had a double engine failure and that they wanted a direct route to any airport."

Both engines stopped operating "almost simultaneously at 41,000 feet" according to the flight data recorder, the NTSB report said.

The Kansas City center directed the crew to land at Jefferson City. "At about 10:13 p.m., the flight crew stated that they had the runway approach end in sight. The last radar contact for the flight was at 900 feet above ground. The plane crashed at about 10:15 p.m.," the NTSB report said.

Pinnacle CRJs, just like other commercial aircraft, are flown at a variety of altitudes. Typically, the higher you are flying, the less fuel the plane burns. On longer flights, pilots tend to fly at higher altitudes.

The day of the accident, two mechanics from Pinnacle's Memphis facility worked on the airplane. On the morning of Oct. 14, the plane was scheduled to fly from Little Rock to the Twin Cities at 7:45 a.m. when an alert system went off during takeoff and the pilots aborted the takeoff and returned to the gate. The 21 passengers on the 50-seat plane got off.

Later that day, the mechanics did a repair that deals with the system used to distribute engine heat into the plane. "On-scene evidence confirms that the repair was done in accordance with the aircraft maintenance manual," the NTSB said.

The agency is expected to spend months analyzing the engines and plane wreckage, and all aspects of Pinnacle's operations. It said investigators "traveled to Memphis to interview pilots who had flown with the two crew members and to interview some of the airline's training personnel and managers."

The pilots were Capt. Jesse Rhodes of Palm Harbor, Fla., and First Officer Richard Peter Cesarz of Helotes, Texas. Pinnacle said Rhodes had accumulated more than 6,700 flight hours, but the company has not released flight-hour information about Cesarz. Rhodes joined Pinnacle in February 2003, and Cesarz became a Pinnacle pilot last June.

Wakefield Gordon, chairman of the Pinnacle branch of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), declined to comment on the investigation. But he said pilots have reached out to help the families of those killed in the crash. Rhodes was married and the father of two children, and his wife is due to give birth in a few weeks, Gordon said. Cesarz was not married.

The Rhodes Family Support Fund and the Cesarz Memorial Fund have been established. Contributions can be sent to Wings Financial Federal Credit Union, 14985 Glazier Av., Apple Valley, MN 55124.

Liz Fedor is at


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Why the hell was a CRJ flying at FL410 when not even a A320 flies that high?

[Doug Taylor]

Jets: Get as high as you can as fast as possible and stay there as long as possible.

Altitude, not dope kids!

[Tokyo007]

Wow at 41K you would think the glide distance would be long enough to get to any small local airport even if the landing length wasn't long enough I'd still go for it.

scary crash.

Matthew

[Maximillian_Jenius]

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Why the hell was a CRJ flying at FL410 when not even a A320 flies that high?

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The aircraft mfgt. determines the celing that there planes can fly.
Just guessing since the CRJ is a derivative of the Challenger a corporate jet. (Corporate jets for example GV, Bombardier Global Express & GX5000 can fly at altitudes well above FL410) that might be why it is certified to fly at that high of an alttitude.
FYI Brian B-737NG's,757's,767's,777's and 747's are just some commercial aircraft certified to fly at FL410.
Though I'm not an airline pilot I believe it is rare to actually get that high up I have only been at FL410 like 3 times all on SWA in the 737-700.

Matthew

[N9103M]

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Why the hell was a CRJ flying at FL410 when not even a A320 flies that high?

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The CRJ is certifed to a maximum of FL410. Thats an aircraft limitation. It was light and they were on a ferry flight so that was very much within the envelope of the aircraft.

[NJA_Capt]

Interesting too:
It took them approx :30 to climb to FL410, but only :20 minutes to come down. They came down approx 700fpm FASTER than they went up. Gliding at +/- 200kts, you would think they would have stayed airborne a lot longer.

[cho_dude]

Airlines are concerned with getting weight off the ground. Large bypass jet engines, like the ones found on the A320, are better at doing this. Propellers are more efficient at lower altitudes while smaller bypass engines or turbojet engines perform better at high altitudes. Just like propellers the larger fan blades on the large bypass turbofan engines used by the airlines are better down low. Just think of it this way...you can either accelerate a small amount of air to a very high speed in a turbojet engine or you can push more air through a large bypass turbofan engine at a slower speed. Since the air is more dense at lower altitudes the large bypass engine is more efficient.

[Screaming_Emu]

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Large bypass jet engines, like the ones found on the A320, are better at doing this. Propellers are more efficient at lower altitudes while smaller bypass engines or turbojet engines perform better at high altitudes.

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just to be nit picky, props are more efficient everywhere, but jets are more powerful. If you have a jet and a prop that have the same amount of thrust, you could fly much futher on the prop, but it would take you forever. Jets are more efficient at higher altitudes, but that's in comparison to a jet operating at a lower altitude. If you could somehow get a prop to fly up there, then the prop would be more efficient than the jet. The way my aerodynamics professor explains it, is that the prop takes a big amount of air and moves it a little bit, whereas a jet takes a little amount of air and accelerates the crap out of it wasting a lot of heat in the process (heat=energy=fuel)

whoa...I have learned something in that class ;-)

[flyhigh]

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Why the hell was a CRJ flying at FL410 when not even a A320 flies that high?

[/ QUOTE ] but Brian, you were crusing at FL410 on an A320 with JetBlue

[jdflight]

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Interesting too:
It took them approx :30 to climb to FL410, but only :20 minutes to come down. They came down approx 700fpm FASTER than they went up. Gliding at +/- 200kts, you would think they would have stayed airborne a lot longer.

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What interested me is the fact they had a double flameout at 410 but didn't request vectors to an airport until 13,000, nearly 10 minutes later. Hindsight is 20/20, but if they only came up a couple miles short I'm thinking that 10 minutes would have saved their lives. May they rest in peace.

[NJA_Capt]

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The way my aerodynamics professor explains it...

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Ask him how a Citation X with a 5:1 bypass fan operates at FL510.

This I do know: At low altitudes the fan section provides most of the thrust. At the higher altitudes the turbine provides most/all of the thrust.

[SJFLYER]

The relight envelop for the CRJ is start at 21000 ft and requires 300 kts. You can't use the APU until 13K for starting bleed air. I would have definitely requested vectors to an airport during the drift down from 41K.

I suspect the crew was overly confident that the engines would restart right away once they drifted down.

[Kristie]

not that I know anything at all about airplane mechanics or the inner workings of planes, but if you think of it like a car... the engine goes out if it can't get fuel to keep it going. Does the battery really have anything to do with it once the engine is started and it's up in the air? wouldn't it all be fuel related as in maybe a kink or sediment of some sort prevented fuel from getting to both engines? how bizarre to have both engines quite at the same time, same elevation and so forth...it's not very often that you hear about both engines failing, much less at the same time!

and isn't it procedure to call ATC upon failure of BOTH engines? I would think it would be procedure in that one never wants to assume "they'll just start up" at a certain elevation right? that's an awfully large assumption when your talking lives here!

[A300Capt]

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and isn't it procedure to call ATC upon failure of BOTH engines? I would think it would be procedure in that one never wants to assume "they'll just start up" at a certain elevation right? that's an awfully large assumption when your talking lives here!


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They did notify ATC and did declare an emergency shortly after the problem began. I'm sure the crew was extremely busy in dealing with the problem at hand. There's not a lot of time to have a conversation with ATC initially when you're struggling to put the O2 mask on while hand flying a jet in the thin air at FL410. I'm sure ATC realized a serious problem had occurred and was standing by to assist in any way possible. Unfortunately, ATC can't fly the airplane for you. One way to assist the crew is to know when to shut up while they're busy handling the problem. I'm sure ATC was also busy clearing airspace below them and gathering wx for a possible diversion.

I can't stress enough how busy a two man glass cockpit becomes when all the motors quit (heck, that only happens in the sim, right?). Tensions are very high and most conversations are checklists related. Going from multiple glass screens displaying every piece of info a pilot could want, or need, to almost pure darkness except for a few standby analog instruments with some bells and whistle going off at FL410 would keep anyone busy and a little disorienting initially.

I'm sure the crew thought they could get at least one motor running before it was too late. Most high by-pass engines require at least 250kts for successful restart attemps while some even higher. Dual flame-out at the same time with today's modern jet engines would lead someone to think fuel problem. They are extremely reliable. Getting the APU started would be a priority at a lower altitude unless the fuel problem affects it also.

Without an operating APU or a RAT to provide electrical power you'll be operating on battery power alone. Not good at night and the clock is ticking.

I'm sure the investigators will figure out what caused the accident and hopefully fix the problem. The jet is relatively new with up to date black boxes that appeared in excellent shape.

[MikeD]

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I can't stress enough how busy a two man glass cockpit becomes when all the motors quit


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Try a one-man glass cockpit!

Kidding. Agree, things get pretty squirrly when all the info from the glass is suddenly replaced by about 4 analog instruments.

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I'm sure the crew thought they could get at least one motor running before it was too late. Most high by-pass engines require at least 250kts for successful restart at temps while some even higher.


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Specific to my jet, to airstart, we have to be below 18,500 for the APU to light, and 275-300 to be able to get the PASS (Pressurized Air Start System) to be able to spin the turbine. The engine will usually roll back to near zero RPM (almost no windmilling at all), and takes a while to light....that's after introducing fuel at 30% minimum for airstarts, versus the normal 12% for ground starts.

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Without an operating APU or a RAT to provide electrical power you'll be operating on battery power alone. Not good at night and the clock is ticking.

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On battery only, we have 18 minutes of flying time. That's with no radio transmissions, etc. Battery 1 is good for 10 minutes. After that, we lose the abilty to lower the tailhook, and lose primary brakes. Battery 2 is for the FBW. After that goes, the plane becomes a tumbling who-knows-what. Nylon letdown is the final recourse.

[I_Money]

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and isn't it procedure to call ATC upon failure of BOTH engines? I would think it would be procedure in that one never wants to assume "they'll just start up" at a certain elevation right? that's an awfully large assumption when your talking lives here!

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Every student pilot is taught - aviate, navigate communicate; Fly the plane, figure out where you are going, then speak to ATC. The truth is ATC is a valuable tool - but they can do very little for when you are struggling with an emergency.

[Mr_Creepy]

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The day of the accident, two mechanics from Pinnacle's Memphis facility worked on the airplane.

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Why am I the only one quoting this?

Almost every system failure I've had has happened immediately after coming out of maintenance.

From the text at the top, it sounds like they had a duct overhear problem, and this could have caused engine problems (backed up hot air.)

This could happen just as well at 370 as 410.

We has 737-700s at Midway and we went to 410 regularly. Even from Orlando to Raleigh. It got there so fast, why not?

The twin engine failure scenario in the sim was always exciting - arms and elbows everywhere. I know the APU has an altitude limitation but I always used to tell my students that limitations go out the window with double engine failures - GET THE D**N THING STARTED.