HARTFORD, Conn. — A enterprise jet flying over New England earlier this month violently pitched upward then downward, fatally injuring a passenger, after pilots responding to automated cockpit warnings switched off a system that helps preserve the plane secure, U.S. transportation investigators reported Friday.
The Nationwide Transportation Security Board didn’t attain any conclusions in its preliminary report on the primary explanation for the lethal March 3 accident, nevertheless it described a collection of issues that went improper earlier than and after the aircraft swooped uncontrolled.
Confronted with a number of alerts within the cockpit of the Bombardier jet, pilots adopted a guidelines and turned off a change that “trims” or adjusts the stabilizer on the aircraft’s tail, the report mentioned.
The aircraft’s nostril then swept upward, subjecting the individuals inside to forces about 4 occasions the drive of gravity, then pointed decrease earlier than once more turning upward earlier than pilots might regain management, the report mentioned.
Pilots informed investigators they didn’t encounter turbulence, because the NTSB had mentioned in an preliminary evaluation the day after the incident.
The trim system of the Bombardier Challenger 300 twin-engine jet was the topic of a Federal Aviation Administration mandate final yr that pilots conduct additional security checks earlier than flights.
Bombardier didn’t reply on to the report’s contents, saying in an announcement that it was “rigorously learning” it. In a earlier assertion, the Canadian producer mentioned it stood behind its Challenger 300 jets and their airworthiness.
“We are going to proceed to completely help and supply help to all authorities as wanted,” the corporate mentioned Friday.
The 2 pilots and three passengers had been touring from Keene, New Hampshire, to Leesburg, Virginia, earlier than diverting to Bradley Worldwide Airport in Connecticut. One passenger, Dana Hyde, 55, of Cabin John, Maryland, was delivered to a hospital the place she died from blunt-force accidents.
Hyde served in authorities positions through the Clinton and Obama administrations and was counsel for the 9/11 Fee, formally generally known as the Nationwide Fee on Terrorist Assaults Upon the USA.
It was unclear if Hyde was belted in her seat or up and about, within the cabin of the jet owned by Conexon, primarily based in Kansas Metropolis, Missouri. Her husband and their son, together with the pilot and co-pilot, weren’t injured within the incident, the report mentioned.
A consultant of Conexon, an organization specializing in rural web, declined to remark Friday.
The report indicated the pilots aborted their preliminary takeoff as a result of nobody eliminated a plastic cowl from one of many exterior tubes that decide airspeed, they usually took off with a rudder limiter fault alert on.
One other warning indicated autopilot stabilizer trim failure. The aircraft abruptly pitched upward because the pilots moved the stabilizer trim change from main to off whereas working by means of procedures on a guidelines, the report mentioned.
The aircraft violently oscillated up and down and the “stick pusher” activated, the report mentioned, that means the onboard pc thought the aircraft was at risk of an aerodynamic stall.
John Cox, a former airline pilot and now a security advisor, mentioned “there are positively points” with the pilots’ pre-flight actions, however he mentioned they reacted accurately after they adopted the guidelines for responding to trim failure.
The flight crew was comprised of two skilled pilots with 5,000 and eight,000 hours of flying time, and held rankings wanted to fly for an airline. However each had been comparatively new to the mannequin of plane, incomes their rankings final October.
The FAA issued its directive about Bombardier Challenger 300 jets final yr after a number of situations during which the horizontal stabilizer on the aircrafts induced the nostril of the aircraft to show down after the pilot tried to make the plane climb.
