A large cargo plane crashed at the end of a runway and split in two while trying to take off Sunday at Brussels airport, authorities said.
Four of the five crew members on board the Boeing 747 were slightly injured and were hospitalized, said Jan Van der Cruysse, spokesman at Brussels Airport.
"The plane is very seriously damaged," he said.
"seriously damaged" .... HELLO
And the rest, it is now two airplanes after all.
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SJ, no, I'm an avionics engineer, I fix the electronics on 747 cargo airplanes. That one was a regular visitor here but we had nothing to do with it, they flew with their own engineer. I imagine he'll be applying for a new job once he's changed his trousers!
SteveG what airline did the plane belong to.
Also did they have an engineer fly with the plane because they had a lot of problems with it, or is that normal practice these days to have an on board engineer.
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Chelsea, it belonged to an American cargo compay called Kalitta Air that operates out of Michigan.
I just looked up the registration and that airplane was 28 years old, so although these things are maintained to strict standards you are going to get reliability problems flying an airplane of that age.
This airplane was a 747-200 that still carried a three man crew with a flight engineer monitoring and controlling engine and other systems during the flight. They also flew with a ground engineer who basically oversees servicing on the ground at stop-overs and certifies the airplane for the next flight. Larger airlines either have ground engineers based along the route or contract to another airline to do this.
It seems like they probably blew an engine well into the take-off and when you consider that with a full load of cargo and fuel it would have weighed in excess of 300 metric tons, it will take a lot of stopping.
Before every flight the crew calculate the speed in that configuration and runway length at which point you have to commit to a take-off, and once you exceed that speed the correct procedure is to attempt a take-off, dump some fuel and land again.
Obviosly this did not occur, so either the pilot lost his nerve and tried to stop anyway, or he was experienced enough to know that in the situation he was in he was never going to get airborne, so he risked going off the end of the runway.
They were very lucky, because doing this with a full load of fuel often results in a mushroom cloud and a smoking crater!
Steve, I've been following this on the PPrune forum - this was posted recently:
The first N704CK was a 100 series (c/n 20528 - ex JAL JA8112) registered to Kitty Hawk International circa 1993. This airframe became N40489 in August 2003 and was scrapped circa 2004.
The second N704CK was the ex China Airlines 200 series (c/n 22299) which was registered in September 2003.
Does it mean the plane is 28 years old or 5 years old? There was mention of the plane being first registered in the 1970's!
Its reported the pilots heard a loud bang and pulled up?
Caller, we are talking about the second one, Cn. 22299, it was a 747-209F delivered to China airlines in July 1980, the date you have in 2003 was when Kalitta put it on the US registration taking the old number from the earlier one that Kitty Hawk had taken off the list.
Steve G Thanks for that information it was very informative. It was funny you mention the length of the runway as being a possibilty to the cause of the crash.
I was reading this artical after reading what you wrote, and seems to throw light on what you were saying.
Apparently the runway the plane took off from is a lot shorter (1,000 metres) than all of the others, and is only used at weekends, much to the disgust of the locals. http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingne ... ls-airport
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