shanghai china a korean air md-11 cargo flight 6316 with 61 tonnes of cargo and two pilots with an experienced crew with an excellent safety record and a flight technician. they release the parking breaks for the flight back to seoul the crew comment on the break tempreature which is not a serious issue and drops down in time but the captains worried. the crew start the engines and taxi to runway 18. the crew notice the temp is normal now as they are cleared for takeoff just after 4pm and the climb is normal initally the flight time is two hours. the crew get their climb out instructions to 1500 meters and turn left. the controller notices they are late to turn which worries him but the crew can’t find the navigation fix on the captains screen but the fo spots it as they turn the climb stops which confuses the fo and they near the asigned alitude it disappears from radar and nose dives into the ground in a speed too fast to be pikced up on radar the crew try and save the plane but fail killing all 3 on board instantly 7 miles from the airport 2 and a half minutes after takeoff with an earthquake equilivant of 1.6. the chinese lead the investigation with the ntsbs help with the fdr damaged really badly and they are worried that the cvr wasn’t installed they look at impact scars and figure out it nose dived but not why it wasn’t explosives. the controller is interviewed and reports the crew strugled to maintain the flight plan and noticed they weren’t doing the instructions well and when he thought it was safe was when it disappeared, the decent rate of 17000 feet per minute alarms the investigation they look at maitence records and find a tail strike at lax that took 63 days to repair but it doesn’t explain the crash as it didn’t break up in flight. they look at the control services but that also doesn’t add up as a cause. two weeks after the crash terrorism atc and maitence are ruled out. they look at the pilots with a lot of experience and no psychological burdens it looks like and at that point they find the cvr. they try situations out in the simulator and find it hard to recreate the problems as a stall or mechanical failure impossible so it looks iike pilot action which is still hard to recreate but they do thinking it was deliberate. they find the crew counfused at the instructions with altitude leading to them using the western system which they don’t they should have used chinese. the pre flight briefing had been skipped caued issues with the climb but the dive is still not explained. the pilots were trying to overcompinsate is what lead to the nose dive and loss of control. the meters v feet confusion was a part so they look at the training and find it is the only route with metric and its one video to learn and the captain had the only flight there before of the crew. the korean culture also had a part in why the fo didn’t speak up.
this is the season 26 final i expect season 27 around the same time next year with 10 new crashes to cover (or maybe 9 and a remake).
Harrison’s world 