With the recent crash of the Nepalese airplane, I saw a lot of comments on :reddit-logo: talking about how Nepal has poor safety standards, bad piloting certifications, and how they buy second to third hand planes that they don’t maintain.
I’m sure that has nothing to do with capitalism.
But I also saw comments about how Euro and American standards are much, much better. I’m sure that’s true to some extent, given how many airplanes fly over these regions with so few incidents. But… I don’t really see why.
Wouldn’t the center of capitalism be more aggressive with its cost-cutting measures and safety shortcuts? It would improve their profit margins and given the Tendency, they have to take every chance they get, right?
Are we just waiting for a huge, huge sudden spike in airplane crashes as these measures start catching up?
Or is government regulation (and enforcement) still somehow strong in this industry?
Nepal = hot and high. Air's less dense. Degraded performance. Mountains everywhere and approaches are a nightmare. I'm sure Europe wouldn't fare much better if everyone had to land in the Alps.
The Nepal crash seems to be a stall-spin accident. More common in primary training but not unheard of in the airline world. Usually with the airliners it's a case of how you are trained to deal with a stall. Minimum loss of altitude is still heavily emphasized in some places. Instinct to keep the nose up = bad things coming. It wouldn't have mattered in this case anyway, that close to the ground there's zero chance of recovery.
Ultimately I think this particular accident isn't the victim of the usual Nepalese circumstances but rather another case of disorientation a la Air France 447 and the Colgan Air flight from 2009.
There's really nothing to add here other than "don't stall the plane". I wouldn't worry about it, it's still exceptionally rare in the airline world.
Why'd it stall?
I can't be sure because I don't have access to the flight recorders, but the scenarios I'm most familiar with are:
Overshooting the runway centerline. Steep bank to correct course, nose up to tighten the turn. This has been nicknamed the "deadly turn". Very dangerous situation, you're supposed to abort if this happens. Increasing the bank leads to an increase in the angle of the wing to the wind, bringing it closer to the stall, which if you don't do something it will. That close to the ground it's over.
Wing icing the systems can't handle. Wing doesn't want to fly anymore, and you're just in for the ride at that point.
This is, I think, the most likely scenario. Pulled the power back and simply forgot to put it back in. Nose has to keep coming up to maintain altitude. Plane starts dropping and the instinct is to pull up, worsening the situation.
Forgot to put the flaps in. Stall speed goes up. Less room for error.
Severe wind shear. Headwind to a tailwind so quickly you don't have time to react and your speed drops dramatically. Often times the plane isn't capable of powering out of this situation.