Air France A-340 crashes at Toronto airport

[Gnomey]

Last night an A-340 overran the run at Toronto Airport in terrible conditions and burst into flames, fortunately only a dozen or so people where slightly injured and everyone escaped the aircraft. Story here

 

[FLYBOYJ]

Heard about it - Thank god all's OK!

SCAREBUS - FLY BY WIRE, DIE BY FIRE! (Sorry, sick humor)

 

[plan_D]

It's not really a wreckage. It was just a slight over-shoot. Everyone was already off the aircraft by the time it caught fire. It was a pilot error, he over-shot the runway.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

Would love to know why and how that happened.

 

[plan_D]

Extremely bad conditions over the airport, I think.

 

[Nonskimmer]

Yeah, that's what they reported. I guess the investigation will tell any details. Good thing no one was seriously hurt or killed.

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I am thinking mechanical failure. The aircraft was already on the ground I believe and that could mean something wrong with the brakes or the thrust reversers.

 

[evangilder]

One item that was mentioned here is that it might have been hit by lightning on final. It was said that the lights went out just before landing.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

If the pilot was flying through adverse weather he definitely was shooting a GPS or ILS approach which in either case should of put him down perfectly. What I suspect is he got into windshear, the plane detected the drop in airspeed (the whole bloody thing is computerized) and automatically throttled up the aircraft (a feature on Airbus aircraft). As the windshear settled, they were halfway down the runway, too fast, too high and too long - the rest is history.....

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I think you are probably 100% correct. Windshear is a bad bad problem. Most airports now though should have special equipment to detect windshear though, I was watching a nice documentary on it a while back.

 

[plan_D]

We'll find out for sure after the investigation. Leave the experts to it...

 

[FLYBOYJ]

We'll find out for sure after the investigation. Leave the experts to it...

Abolutely!

 

[Gnomey]

Agreed! It is their job after all.

 

[FLYBOYJ]

I'll still guess windshear!

 

[DerAdlerIstGelandet]

I would not want to try and pic through that stuff. I picked through an Apache crash once, not to investigate but to help find the remains and it was just a big mess.

 

[evangilder]

Crash recoveries are the worst. I had to do some in my day and they are never pleasant. Even worse when you know, or knew the people whose parts you're picking up.

 

[Nonskimmer]

I've done it too evan, though at least I didn't know the people personally. It sucks, regardless.

 

[plan_D]

Well, lucky for these investigators they're only picking up machine parts. And I know why it crashed, NS did it! He's the only person that lives in Canada...so, it must have been him...

 

[Nonskimmer]

Nope. Maestro and KK are closer.

 

[evangilder]

But where were you yesterday, NS? I was glad to hear that everyone got out relatively okay. The initial pictures I saw looked bad.