Critical thinking on Air Crash Investigation

Rizal Philippines  | June 30 2014

I watched the Air Crash Investigation on Otter twin prop on service at Haiti minutes after take off. The KT approach still applies here.

It is a case where the critical thinking applies.

An Otter twin prop  plane dived after take off.  All of the 19 passengers and crew died.

They had several hypothesis as to why the plane crashed:

1.  weight and balancing
2.  engine failure
3.  failure of flaps to retract.

After sometime they hypothesized,  after seeing the plane control cables which abnormally snapped (the others snapped because of the crash) that this was due to cable failure:

Some observation:

1.  The cables wore out due to frequent take off landing especially for the elevators;

2.   The particular Otter plane did quite a number of take off landing;

3.  This Otter used stainless cable which wore out quickly vs carbon steel cables.

4.  The Otter were parked near jet planes and were exposed to jet blast because the jet barrier blast were removed.  The elevators were in land position further enhancing the wear and tear of cables.

The results:

Because of this tragedy, certain safety standards were promulgated

1.  Stricter standards for cable maintenance.

2.  Restoration of the jet blast barrier between prop commuter planes and jet planes