06 13 25 Aviation Expert Steve Cowell talks about the Air India plane crash

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Right now on Colorado's Morning News. An Air India passenger
plane bound for London, two hundred and forty two people
on board, crashed into a medical college after takeoff yesterday
in the northwestern city of Amamabada, official say, and in
one of the India's worst airline disasters in decades, a
single passenger survived the crass that according to Indian officials.
The airline said, there were no other survivors.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Joining us now in the Kowa Common Spirit Health Studio
is our aviation expert Steve cal Steve. The plane was
only in the air, It was less than a minute
and you saw the video. What do you think happened?

Speaker 3 (00:31):
Well, actually, there's two videos that are out. First and foremost,
the thing that stands out in my mind is the
landing gear is still down. As we all know, once
the pilots begin to rotate the nose upward from the
runway on takeoff, the gear is going to come up.
Once the pilots have what's called a positive rate of climb,
they have an indication that the airplane is climbing. The

(00:52):
next thing that happens is at one thousand feet the
airplane begins its initial acceleration to somewhere around two hundred
two hundred and ten knots. At that point in time,
the flaps are retracted. The flaps were retracted prematurely. This
airplane went down at six hundred and twenty five feet,
but the flaps were already up. That's number one. Number two,

(01:15):
the landing gear was still down. Why was the landing
gear still down? It tells me that the crew may
have been distracted in the cockpit, because that really is
almost an instantaneous reaction and call out on any normal flight.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Before we go or I think we're going with this,
and this is reminiscent of those disasters. What at the
Lion Airlines? What is I want to ask first about
the technology of the seven eighty seven Dreamliner. It is,
by merits, I guess it's the safest modern aircraft in history.
It's never had a crash before, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:48):
Never had a crash until now, so it is very
very safe. It is very very closely related actually to
the Triple seven. As a matter of fact, if you're
rated in the Triple seven, you only have about a
three or a four day transition course to the seven
eighty seven. So they wanted to make it very very close.
But you know, great airplane. They've corrected some problems that

(02:12):
they had during the manufacturing process, but this is going
to be very interesting to find out what happened.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, this doesn't necessarily seem like the Boeing issues that
we saw with the max planes a few years ago
and I mean even into last year.

Speaker 3 (02:27):
Right, No, this has nothing to do with Boeing. Absolutely
nothing to do with Boeing. And unfortunately, you know, there's
really two main manufacturers of airplanes, Boeing and Airbus, and
you know, so anytime there's an accident, it's probably going
to be Boeing because there's more Boeings out there.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Okay, so we're going to go to where I think
you're going with this because you and I have talked
over the years at length about how pilots are domestically
in the US are trained versus pilots that are trained overseas,
and not to be smirch all of them, because you've
said there's nuances and there's similar training, but this sound
like it's pilot air. Is this an example where they
don't have instincts, They really don't understand the plane they're

(03:06):
flying by the book versus as you say, pilots that
are tranger to say you throw the book out and
you saw for X.

Speaker 3 (03:12):
Okay, you've got an eighty seven hundred hour captain, very
experienced captain. You've got a one thousand hour copilot. Okay,
it's very low time to be at a seven eighty seven.
Foreign airlines tend to be able to put pilots in
the cockpit of larger airplanes with lower flight time than

(03:33):
here in the United States. Congress passed a law after
the two thousand and nine Continental thirty four oh seven crash,
the Buffalo accident, and they wanted to increase the amount
of hours that pilots needed before they got in the cockpit.
But foreign pilots tend to learn by rote memory. And
that's based upon my experience of training pilots for four

(03:55):
years as a contract instructor for United Airlines and where
I trained foreign pilots from Central South America, South Asia,
and Russia.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
So is that a simulator issue? I know the simulators
have become more and more realistic, and I mean United
has a huge simulator facility here in Denver. Do other
airlines not have access to this? I know it could
be a budgetary issue as well.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
No, not at all. Other airlines are training in the simulators. However,
it's how the pilots learned, how they learn initially, from
the time that they first get into an airplane until
they get into big airplanes. A lot of foreign pilots
tend to learn by ROTE memory. They don't think out
of the box when a problem occurs. United States pilots

(04:44):
are able to incorporate their entire learning experience from even
day one into a problem that they're trying to resolve
here in the future. That's the way US pilots are taught.
Foreign pilots in a lot of cases, not all cases,

(05:05):
and there's some very very good foreign airlines, you know,
are just learning differently. They learned by ROTE memory, and
if it falls outside of ROTE memory, they don't know
how to react. So I'm going to say this, I'm
not going to put the blame on that circumstance for

(05:30):
this accident. Every accident is different. Every accident has its
unique set of circumstances and causes. The cockpit voice recorder
is going to be key. The flight data recorder, which
on the seven eighty seven is one is the most
modern data recorder that's going to record, you know, dozens

(05:51):
of data points, is going to tell the story. We're
going to know much sooner than if the accident happened
here in the United States.

Speaker 1 (05:59):
We'll know with any year. Aviation expert our friend, Steve
cal thanks for coming in. Steve, Thank you.