Flyer59 wrote:
I just think that the AF447 story is so negative and scary that it will shed a very bad light on civil aviation … the general passenger wil think that “if that could happen with AF it can happen with any airline” … I have the Concorde crash in the book but that’s an accident that was really bad luck (the metal part on the runway lost by the preceding DC10 …) … but AF447 can really give you nightmares
If you really want to go into this, then you have to include the Air France A340 in Toronto as well. Actually, investigating AF and their numerous hull losses would be enough to fill a whole book.
Frankly, I decided even before the Concorde crash never to fly AF and found this well founded looking at these 3 accidents. And it’s funny you should call the Concorde crash “bad luck” when in fact it was a terrible succession of unacceptable blunders and airmanship which got the airplane in that position in the first place, combined with withholding vital information availabe to AF years before that accident. No, the Concorde crash and it’s aftermath was anything but bad luck, it was in no way better than what followed with AF447.
But you are right in one point, the tragedy of how Air France keeps loosing airframes to sheer incompetence and neglicence is really not something to put in a book like that.
The Hudson story has been done to death, it is a very good example of what a capable crew can do in a real bad situation whereas incapable crews can ruin perfectly sound airplanes.
It will surprise you but my vote would be for the Cirrus story. Why? 1st of all you know all there is to know about it. 2ndly it is one of preciously few real success stories in recent living GA history. Right product, right time, right marketing. You don’t see that often, so if you wanna do that, you have my vote.
If you want another good one about GA, you could include the Round the World race in 2012 onwards, where the record for the youngest solo flights was broken 4 times in a row. Carlos Schmied (C210 Silver Eagle), James Tan (C210 Silver Eagle), Jack Weigand (Mooney Ovation), and Ryan Campbell (SR22). I found it remarkable that 4 youngsters managed to get these flights financed and done, particularly the Avgas planes. I’d call this a rather interesting story.
Flyer59 wrote:
I’d love to write a second volume … but it’s very hard to make a publisher invest in such a book. And it took me one year to research and write Vol. 1 …. and even though my book is one of the best selling aviation books in Germany … they still hesitate to make such an investment.
Hmm, we should talk about that at some stage. I went the way of self publishing a few years back, different genre however, and discovered that even though I sold not that many in terms of pieces i got more money out of the whole thing than if I had gotten involved with a publisher. I’ve been thinking of doing something new as well, but it is a huge task to do, primarily to convince a publisher. However, if your book really was in the best selling league, it should not be that hard, provided you can sell the publisher with the content. It can’t be more of the same, but it has to top No. 1. Also learnt that the hard way.
But in any case, I’d be interested in a signed copy of the books :), we can swap if you want 
Good luck with writing.
And it’s funny you should call the Concorde crash “bad luck” when in fact it was a terrible succession of unacceptable blunders and airmanship
Why is that?
The book was the best selling german nonfiction book about flying for a long time. I have no real interest in becoming a publisher (i am so many things already…), but Piper/Malik Germany and National Geographic are fine publishers, so I see no need to self publish. I did it with an eBook though. But on paper i rather work with publishing houses.
As is said, i do not want to raise the body count of the book, because it will get a touch too negative. The last story was the Concorde crash, and the only “crash” story i can imagine is the Hudson River landing. The other stories you proposed are not whati am looking for. THey are good for a flying magazine and even there i never read these stories about record flies. I must say they bore me. I don’t see the story in those adventures. They are probably a lot of fun to DO though.,
I’ll send you a copy, of course, when it’s ready!
Flyer59 wrote:
Why is that?
That would warrant a thread of its own. Only that much:
- The aircraft was dispatched with a missing spacer on it’s left landing gear. This was one reason why directional control was lost the way it was.
- The aircraft was dispatched with 10 kts headwind calculated, the actual take off happened with a significant tail wind. As a result, the airplane was overloaded by at least 6 tons.
- The taxi fuel calculated was not used up to break release, adding more weight.
For that reason, the aircraft should never have taken off in this configuration and the direction it did. Obviously, had it taken another runway,the FOD would not have occurred.
As a consequence of the damage and the missing spacer, directional control was lost. Captain Marti was forced to take the airplane in the air early as he could not keep it on the runway and it went in the direction of a waiting 747. The airplane never reached a safe flying speed, which with a Delta wing is almost always fatal. .After it lifted off, the FE shut down no 2 engine uncommanded due to the fire warning, something which is not done unless a safe altitude has been reached. The missing thrust from engine two could be compensated initially as the other 3 were running, but when No1 failed probably due to lack of fuel feed, the airplane could not maintain flight on 2 engines only.
The information withheld was that of the aftermath of another Concorde incident in Washington, which had a tyre failure and sent parts through the wing. BA apparently never knew of this until after the accident. Also, Air France wrecked one Concorde earlier with a tail strike at Dakar, however never realized until the next grande visit what kind of damage had occurred. When the damage was detected,the airplane was scrapped very fast, trying to keep this accident under wraps.
Mind, I go from memory and what I wrote here is MUCH condensed from loads of information I saw and heard in several presentations about this, the most memorable one by one of the BA people involved in the investigation. All of it is metioned in the final report, yet the conclusions are different and point as the FOD as the only real cause, which it clearly wasn’t. Had the crew acted on the fact that they could not take off legally from that runway with the weight they had, the accident would not have happened. Had the spacer been installed, it would have been more likely to keep direction after the failure of the two tyres as well as loss of some thrust.
So you have an overweight airplane with a missing part taking off in the wrong direction and a wrong action taken once airborne in an underspeed situation.
If you compare all this to what happened during the crash landing at Toronto (Overrun) and AF447, it does not paint a funny pic.
What has happened in the last 20 years:
Well, you dramatized that, of course. But none of those factors were the reason for the crash. The captian was highly qualified, but the airplane was simply not controllable in t.o. configuartion.
Airliners of alls kind take of overloaded and with a tailwind all the time. AFAIK ot was 810 kg over MTOM, which was negligible for the performance. The main reason why this accident happened was that the Airplane overran the metal part on the runway. The missing spacer… well, there was some spcaulation about that, but (citation) …“BEA said it had been able to exclude the missing part’s role in the crash by a series of tests, including examining traces on the runway at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport and the state of the aircraft’s tires.”
And that was just bad luck.
XL Airways 888T remains an unfortunate and tragic accident where the interaction between fly-by-wire and trim settings might be usefully explored to explain the accident in detail, and in lay mans terms. Including this lay man.
Yes, that was an ugly accident too …, but as i said, I prefer to have no more deaths in that book
Hi Flyer59
Does it have to be fixed wing? You could find plenty of great stories in the helicopter field:
- 1955: first flight of a turbine-powered helicopter (Alouette 2)
- 1956: introduction of the Bell UH-1 (Huey) which will play a key role in the Vietnam war
- 1962: Sikorsky sky crane
- 1980s / 1990s : Large European / American defence programs: Tiger / NH90 / Black Hawk / H101 / Lynx
- Focus on rescue / parapublic choppers: Airbus (Formerly Eurocopter) H135 (German ADAC) / H145 (French Securite Civile) / Agusta 109 Koala
- Innovative concepts of the early 21st century: Agusta AW139 / Eurocopter X3 / Sikorsky X2
…
One suggestion: how Rogallo wings were borrowed from the space program and developed into hang-gliders in the 1970s. The movement was very far from the aviation mainstream, and it attracted some real characters. Modern hang-gliders often have variable geometry, quite impressive performance, and are the ‘flyingest’ sort of flying I’ve come across. In my old club, there were a Tornado pilot and an Airbus pilot who liked to fly hang-gliders on the weekends – it is that good. Chuck Yeager talks about being the fastest, highest man in the world, yet felt utterly motionless after he cut the rocket engine in the X1. You might only fly at 30mph in a hang-glider, but when you’re scraping for lift next to the hill, it really feels as if you’re moving.
Failing that, I would rather like to read about the SR22 or perhaps one of the Eastern European light aircraft manufacturers. In fact, I would be interested to read a lot more about Eastern European / Soviet aviation. A lot of the background to their space programmes and experimental projects must be at least as interesting as the over-rehearsed stories of the American aerospace adventure, but the stories from the early years, in particular, must be at risk of never being told.
Sorry… That doesn’t quite fit the remit of ‘within the last ten years’ but still something I’d like to read more about.
