"The aircraft flew into a cloud of volcanic ash [...] resulting in the failure of all four engines. [...] The cloud sandblasted the windscreen and landing light covers [...] After landing, the flight crew found it impossible to taxi, due to glare from apron floodlights which made the already sandblasted windscreen opaque."
"Soon after take-off, at 1,300 metres above the ground, the aircraft’s nose was pummelled by hailstones the size of golf balls, shattering the windscreen and leaving the pilots unable to see." "The pilot made a decision to return and was able to land by tilting the airplane to see the runway through the side window and by good coordination with the airport’s dispatchers."
You missed my favourite part and quote from the pilot (Moody):
> As Flight 9 approached Jakarta, the crew found it difficult to see anything through the windscreen, and made the approach almost entirely on instruments, despite reports of good visibility. The crew decided to fly the instrument landing system (ILS); however, the vertical guidance system was inoperative, so they were forced to fly with only the lateral guidance as the first officer monitored the airport's distance measuring equipment (DME). He then called out how high they should be at each DME step along the final approach to the runway, creating a virtual glide slope for them to follow. Moody described it as "a bit like negotiating one's way up a badger's arse."
Twice! They tried to land at the original airport again, it happened again, they cleaned it again, then diverted.
The pictures are intense!
Edit: The original title was way more focused on the fact this is a Boeing 737; I feel the new post title is a good compromise.
BTW: I think this is gaining traction because it's a 737; however, can most airplane windshield wipers clean a thick layer of dead, crushed locusts off the windscreen?
I would argue that we should change the title to "airliner." I think the title is meant intentionally to capitalize on the notoriety of the model of airplane, when this incident is not specific to that model.
There's no intention to capitalise here: Simon Hradecky (who runs the Aviation Herald) runs almost all his headlines in a standard format: (Crash|Accident|Incident|Report): <Airline> <aircraft type code> at <place> on <date>, <short description>.
The description is sometimes updated when more information comes in.
>can most airplane windshield wipers clean a thick layer of dead, crushed locusts off the windscreen?
Pretty much any rubber bladed windshield wiper will not be able to clear them after they dry out and at several hundred miles an hour with equatorial air temperatures that will happen very quickly.
Wipers make it worse! I had the misfortune of driving through some flying termites (not dense - think 20 splats/minute). Insects have fatty/non-soluble insides: when I turned on the wipers, I managed smears the goop more uniformly across the windshield, making visibility infinitely worse. Spraying water does not help, unless it has some detergent in it.
Older aircraft had the ability to spray deicing fluid on the windshield. After that bleed air from the engines was used but now it's mostly electrically heated.
I've exited an aircraft at 220kts a few times. It's very hard and feels almost like hitting a wall.
I'll quote myself after the first time when it knocked me for a loop:
I guess by looking at the picture of the cockpit inside that one of the pilots only cleaned the part of the window on the left side which was reachable.
Initially I thought that since Dire Dawa is 4200 feet above sea level it was weird that they'd climb to ~4300 feet above ground level. But Dire Dawa is just a few miles north of the Ahmar Mountains (part of the Ethiopian Highlands), and they probably needed to climb that much to clear them.
Go arounds are a "normal" deviation from plan and pilots train for them. Reasons vary - airplane or traffic on runway, weather, and now bugs. As a passenger, you might not encounter one - my first time was in Sprint 2019, approaching Heathrow - traffic on the runway from a debris check, we were already on final, caught me off guard, but wasn't too scary.
As for the windscreen, I'm not sure if the 737 checklists include "depressurize and clean manually" for bug strikes, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did have instructions for general "windshield is obscured" conditions.
I am slightly scratching my head as to why, unless the pilots were only qualified for VFR.
I learned to fly with the RAF as an air cadet. I vividly recall the first lesson in which my instructor whipped out a piece of cardboard, covered the windscreen, and said “land”.
It turns out that as long as you’ve ILS, you can do it with zero vis.
I'm 100% sure they weren't only qualified for VFR. Every airline pilot is instrument rated, and there are no places that will give you a 737 type rating without IR.
Even when flying on instruments you still land visually, unless the aircraft is cat iii / autoland capable, the crew is certified and current and the airport has cat iii procedures in effect. Probably they didn't have one of these and didn't want to land with zero visibility.
Depressurizing at 8500ft is a good choice, the cabin is normally pressurized to the equivalent of 8000ft outside air pressure. So what they did was basically open the outflow valves and passengers wouldn't have noticed a thing.
I've heard from a couple of sources that it is possible to land in zero visibility by manually following the localiser to the ground. Only from light piston types though.
Doing it in a commercial airliner full of passengers would absolutely be a last resort.
It is possible, but not legal. And you cannot really flare based on just the glideslope.
As an absolute last resort in a small piston you can try to do what we learned to do in case of a night landing where all lighting etc fails: Fly it slightly nose up, no flaps, with a 100 ft/min descend and wait until you hit the runway. You will basically fly it into the runway at a speed that doesn't break anything. Only works for small planes on a big runway.
Yes, is very similar to a glass water landing in float planes. For a number of reasons the glideslope is unreliable below minimums anyway.
The legality doesn't matter much if you are doing it in an emergency (say unforcast fog shutting down all runways within the aircraft's remaining range).
True, they recommended LPV in this case. That remains quite stable all the way to the ground. It also doesn't require any ground equipment and this scenario is only likely in case of a total power loss at a remote airport.
Most jets have been capable of doing landing automatically for decades. This is allowed only on certified planes and runways and actually required for poor visibility situations. ILS CAT IIIc has no decision height or run way visibility requirements but no airport actually supports that yet. The main reason for this is that taxiing blind is kind of tricky. Landing and stopping the plane on the other hand is a solved problem. CAT IIIb landings are fully automatic.
The plane approaches, flares, and lands and keeps the plane on centerline (in some cases). Most (if not all) currently flying 737s are capable of this. The question is of course if this particular airport was ready for that (if not, I'm not sure if the autopilot would allow this) and whether the pilots were certified for this.
Cat III can be done with no DH, but you still require some RVR>0 (flare is done by the autoland system). Only IIIc could be done in theory with a blocked windscreen like in this case, but that's still not in standard operation anywhere that I know of.
>I can’t help but think a blind landing is safer than depressurising a cabin full of passengers.
We're talking about 1000ft above Mexico city amount of altitude, here, not Mt. Everest. Any inherent risk from that is below the threshold of what's quantifiable. Skydivers routinely jump from 10,000ft.
That makes a lot more sense. When I initially read the article, I assumed they were landing at a typical runway within ~1000 feet of sea level and for some unfathomable reason decided to ascend many thousands of feet before opening the window. I forget how high Addis Ababa is!
In the remarks section: "IFR flt are not permitted to tkof fr Rwy 15 or apch and ldg on Rwy 33."
So depending on the wind they might not had the option to land IFR.
You can circle to land if the approach is only one direction. Basically shoot the approach to minimums. Tower will say, circle to land north/south and you fly a normalish pattern, lower to the other end of the runway.
Circle to land requires visibility, you need to keep the runway in sight during the whole maneuver. So that wouldn't really have helped them in this situation.
It's one thing to land below minimums (as 0/0 certainly is) in the military, where you can very often be expected to do things with a low probability of survival.
It's another thing entirely to do it in a passenger airliner, and "depressurizing" at 8500' is nothing, you don't even need oxygen at all below 12,5 and even then only occasional usage for required crewmembers until 14,5.
Carriers that fly the 737NG (not MAX) are finding that the component that holds the wings to the fuselage is cracking much sooner than advertised by Boeing.
This grasshopper incident could have happened to any airplane, regardless of manufacturer or model. But the 737 has been making the headlines a disproportionate amount of the time recently, and mostly for reasons that are Boeing's fault.
Yeah. And the only things those other stories share with this one is "737". And, as you said, this incident could have happened to any airplane. So your bringing up the NG wing part issue is completely irrelevant here. It looks like someone just looking for a chance to rip Boeing.
Kudos to the crew for trying to clean the windshield @ 8500 feet and ~200 knots, but I don't know how effective that would have been anyway.
I once drove through a thick locust swarm in the Kimberley region of Australia and my car was covered in a thick bug splat paste in very short order, to the extent that I lost forward visibility and had to pull over. Even after the swarm passed and I got out to try and clean the windshield by hand using a towel, the 'paste' just smeared thickly and I needed to scrape it off with a plastic knife and some water.
And that was stationary and standing outside the car on the side of a road. I can only guess at how futile it would be leaning out a window with one arm holding a (presumably) paper towel in blasting wind.
It should be noted though that the airplane type is only marginally * relevant in this incident (I'm saying that because many have other associations when a B737 gets mentioned in an "incident" context).
* The only relevance is that the ability to open windows / reach other windows to clean them during flight depends on the airplane type. So it's actually a plus for the 737, in this case.
With a few searches, it looks like the A320 has windows that open (the expectation is that it's the last-resort method to remove smoke in the cockpit, or for escape), but the B787 and A350 do not.
I confess to immediately trying to think of a snarky remark about how Boeing will trivialize this with statement involving language about "3rd-world airlines" :-P
Theoretically - can civil aviation pilots land in "dark room" conditions, when there is zero visibility from windows at all times? I know that they can approach at least, but can they actually land in the "dark"?
No, normally we need at least 550m RVR (runway visual range) for a Cat I instrument approach. You need to see the runway (or lights) to be allowed to descend below 200ft and land, if you don't see it at that point you abort the landing.
The visibility can be lower with special procedures, extra training, and things like a HUD. But it will not go down to zero.
To land in zero visibility you need "autoland" which requires an aircraft certified to do that (multiple autopilot computers etc), crew certified and current (having done it recently) and special procedures at the airport. In that case the autopilot will control the aircraft all the way to rollout.
Find a very long runway, fly an LPV or ILS approach. When the radar altimeter is around 20 or 30ft depending on the size of the plane, reduce power and keep the nose up. Fly it into the runway at a 100ft/min descend rate.
This is roughly what we learned as a contingency in a small plane when you had a night landing without lights. You need the long runway because it takes some time to get down so you're going to waste some length trying to touch down gently.
It's not recommended, but if a plane is in the situation where the windscreen is opaque and the alternative is to circle until they run out of fuel then crash, landing blind is at least better than that.
When flying on instruments you still land visually at the end.
Instrument flying isn't more dangerous, actually all airline flights are instrument flights even in good weather. They're safer due to much higher margins compared to visual flying.
Not a lot of airplanes can fully autoland, and they definitely cannot do it on "most airports", it requires special ground equipment and special procedures.
You didn't address my claims, but changed them to your liking.
>When flying on instruments you still land visually at the end.
If you can, of course, if you can't, you'll land with instruments.
>Instrument flying isn't more dangerous
Instrument landing without visual is more dangerous
>Not a lot of airplanes can fully autoland, and they definitely cannot do it on "most airports", it requires special ground equipment and special procedures.
Almost all commercial operations and commercial airports can. Your tiny Cessna is not really important here and you don't need instrument rating to fly one.
The locusts, rather than grasshoppers, have now arrived in Kenya and causing havoc. Flights are not the only risk here, in a region that has been experiencing recurrent droughts and famine, these locusts are going to have a negative impact on food security. The East African countries seem to be also short of pesticide supplies and the requisite airplanes for spraying the same.
On a positive but albeit repugnant note, some people are finding these locusts very tasty. I haven't tried though.
putting a piece of paper over the windshield/viewports would work. Also setting a pitot/ADS failure because surely the pitot tube would have been jammed up with bug guts.
> The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) reported on Jan 6th 2020: "The Desert Locust situation remains extremely serious in the Horn of Africa where it threatens pastures and crops in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya. Numerous swarms have formed in eastern Ethiopia and adjacent areas of northern Somalia. A number of large immature swarms moved south in the Ogaden of eastern Ethiopia and adjacent areas of central Somalia and reached southern Somalia, southeast Ethiopia and, on 28 December, northeast Kenya." The FAO warns a dangerous situation arises at the Horn of Africa and on both sides of the Red Sea.
Thinking on the opposite direction, wouldn't it be interesting to have unmanned drones to eliminate locusts with ballistic impacts?
I think it's more like you plan to sleep over at Eve's house, but visit Bob on the way. As you drive to Bobs house, you run into a huge forest fire, so you turn back and go to Eve's - which was always your ultimate destination, but in this case you failed to visit Bob. (Also - Addis Ababa is Ethiopian's hub - so it makes sense for regional flights with connecting legs to terminate there)
Don't think so: the wording is consistent with a flight that was intending to make an intermediate stop, but cancelled it because of an inability to land and went on to their final destination directly.
Bug guts tend to be rather sticky, and wiper fluid doesn't dissolve them nearly well enough to be removed with wipers. That's been my experience after countryside drives, where you need to manually scrape the windows every few hundred miles, as the wipers won't do.
The article states grasshoppers. In Uganda, grasshoppers are a big business! They're yummy and tasty. Checkout here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nsenene
I am no expert either, but I have had the misfortune of driving through a locust swarm. 1) Every surface that could be reached through an opening of any kind was covered in muck. 2) Every vent and other opening was clogged with dead locusts. 3) I was still finding locust residue in the depths of the car YEARS later.
So I would expect just the opposite, namely that the engines would have to be stripped down to components and cleaned thoroughly. Now way is an exterior power wash is going to do the trick.
