cyphur01

Wow DiscoWings. What a jackass is right. ( used in correct context as a donkey) why don't you go strap about 7 lbs of lead to the tail of your F-18 and see if you can fly it. Take a video too so I can call it pilot error when it rotates and goes straight up and then into the ground in a fireball.

dbsonic

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Horrible. sad indeed. That footage reminds me of the B-52 out of Fairchild and the crew perished.

Alex48

Upsetting to watch... I'm lost for words

philakapd

Hustler58

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I don't think the nose would come back down if it were tail heavy. It would have done a tail slide.

Robrow

Just tragic to watch, heart goes out to the families.

Whatever the cause it's plain to see airspeed pretty much drops to zero with the inevitable stall.

Rob.

stevekott

Wow, so sad. And condolences to the families.

I wouldn't even consider pilot error. Any pilot with enough time to be flying big iron would have been shoving that nose down, muscle memory and instinct , IF it was possible.

My younger brother is a Mechanical Engineer at Northrop Grumman. Before that he was at Boeing working on cargo systems , floor rails and restraints. It was always priority 1 to prevent a load shift. It was common knowledge that a big load shift could easily lead to the tragic loss of the aircraft. The critical phases were in heavy turbulence and especially take-off. So sad for these guys and their families.

speed is life

......WRONG, WRONG, WRONG

what you saw is a classic nose high "upset" or "departure" and spin entry.

Tail slide? ....... How long have you been flying full scale jet or transport category airplanes?

Hustler58

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That is what I said in a different way. Read it again! It would have done a tail slide if it were tail Heavy! I don't think it was tail heavy. Butch

speed is life

??????? That is still my point, even grossly tail heavy, a plane like that is not going to "tail slide". It will just depart and spin.  Besides, he was not going 90 degrees vertical in any case.

j.duncker

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That is hard to watch. The pilots must have known it was all going horribly wrong for quite some time.

If the fire does not damage the black boxes the investigators will have data to work with

Grodus

That is tragic. My heart goes out the the families. It appeared the gear was still down, dont care to watch it again to verify that, I suspect they were fighting with the aircraft trying to gain control of the pitch from the time of rotation.

erbroens

terrrible.

A thousand things can cause something like this.. hope the investigators can find quickly the crash cause.

smaze17

My Feedback: (60)

Absolutely horrifying video. Very sad indeed. That must have been a massive cargo shift for the plane to become that tail heavy if that is in fact what transpired.

Rest in peace gentleman.

S

lopflyers

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What??? Horrible loss, my deepest condolesense to those families, the American ones and the international too

Factorypilot

Yes the gear was down. I completely agree they knew something was wrong at rotation.

Doug Cronkhite

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Wow. You clearly have no grasp of anything going on here. You'd be better off just not posting at all.

Rumor is the crew was heard on radio stating the cargo had shifted aft. I can't verify if that was true or not, but it WOULD explain what's seen in the video.

DAN AVILLA

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I was at the Reno air Races and watched the 51 go in. When you see video like this it makes you sick knowing the loss of life. I know of 2 jet buddys that fly cargo. I hope to here from them.  Just say a prayer for the families .  Dan

GSR

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That is a tragedy. Just hope they were all KOd on impact. Prayrs. S

Chris Nicastro

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Very sad and agonizing to watch.

For you full scale guys on heavy iron, is there any way to tell the load is off while on the ground besides doing the math? AND how far aft can the CG go before the jet is either light on its nose wheel or just tips on its tail?

Its amazing to me that will the sensors and technology employed in aerospace that there isnt a scale built into the landing gear, maybe through the hydraulics in the struts, to get some accurate read on the CG of the aircraft prior to flight.

Who knows what happened here but I hope the cause is determined soon for closure.

Doug Cronkhite

My Feedback: (34)

This statement assumes the cargo was aft loaded prior to takeoff. As described by witnesses, the airplane took off, was climbing out, and then abruptly pulled the nose up sharply. Now, knowing how inaccurate witness accounts can be, I still get the feeling this is something that happened during the takeoff phase, and not some preexisting condition on the ground. Nobody really knows real factual data yet. That's what the NTSB investigations are for.

patrnflyr

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If it was indeed a "shift", scales wouldn't have done squat on the LG. the word shift means that upon acceleration and rotation, the equipment used to tied down the equipment loosened, broke or shifted allowing the cargo to move aft causing the accident.

PS. As I was typing, Doug beat me to the punch... So ditto.

EDFJim

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777 has a sensor in nose gear that measures weight and will alert if it does not agree with performance input into FMC for CG...

stevekott

The cargo floors in the 747's (or at least the ones I've seen) have steel ball rollers in them. This makes it easy to push around heavy pallets. But you can also imagine that if something failed in the cargo restraints all those pallets could be sliding rapidly to the back of the plane. Even if the pilot knew what happened he may not have had enough elevator throw to do anything about it. So sad, a tragic accident.

jdrd

Having flown 747 freighters for Northwest and being familiar with the hazard of load shift, I suspect that the truck shifted during the take off roll. A heavy take off takes about 45 seconds of roll from start to rotation. The full shift was probably complete right at or near rotation speed causing the unrecoverable pitch up with full power. All numbers in the FMC were probably correct for take off. There is a warning message during taxi if there is a CG problem. The nosewheel strut is part of the system. The accident aircraft appears to be a B-747-800 or 747-400.
My heart goes out to the crew and families. A nightmare scenario that could not be controlled once deep into the take off roll. There is not enough time/elevator or trim to recover controlled flight once that much weight shifts to the rear.

Joe Grice