Well episode two was on last night and again it frightened the hell out of me.
The story was about AeroPeru 603 that was on a flight from Peru to Chilie in 1996. The 757 took off as normal and whilst on climb-out lost its readings of altitude and air speed. As a result of this loss of readings, the computers started to give out warnings about going too slow, going to fast etc.. when for the majority of the time the 757 was flying normally. The crew requested help from Air Traffic asking them to inform them of their height, but Air Traffic returned the incorrect readings back to the cockpit (the aircraft was sending its incorrect FL to ATC). As a result the crew began to believe the readings were correct.
It was a night flight and the 757 was over the sea. They believed they were at 10,000 feet when in fact they had gradually been descending for some time and were only a few hundred feet about the ocean. With the gound proximity warning sounded, the pilot and his co-pilot believed it to be another in a string of erroneous messages and didn’t take the necessary action. The 757 crashed into the sea killing everyone on board.
And the reason for the crash, a piece of sticky tape had been placed over a sensor during routine cleaning (normal practice) but the person had forgotten to remove it. Furthermore, his boss had failed to spot it and the pilot too didn’t see it during his pre-flight walkaround.
*****
The programme gave a good account of the events and once again portrayed the facts with a chilling reality. I think what scared me more than anything else in this incident was that ‘forgetting to remove a piece of tape’ could bring down a modern 4 year old aeroplane. Truly scary that with all this technology in place, there was no technology to warn that the sensor maybe covered up.
Did anyone else see the programme? What were your views?
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