The A2A Simulations Community

Some of you might have heard, a Norwegian C130J with 5 officers have disappeared in the mountains between Norway and Sweden. A sad thing, but thing like that happens.

For you who can read Norwegian:
http://nyhetene24.no.msn.com/nyheter/fo ... %a5-bakken

And for those who can't:
http://translate.google.fr/translate?sl ... en&act=url

probably a CFIT incident - very sad ...

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Why ground all your aircraft when one crashes unless there's proof that it was an endemic problem? The C-130J has been in service long enough to establish if there's any major issue with the design. This is one of (if not the) first hull losses for the type. While it's tragic that these guys perished, I don't see how this response by their commanders is helping anything.

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I do not know why, so this is only a guess from me. But I think it is some sort of procedeur here that they stop all aircrafts of the same sort as the 'crashed' one. If a plane crash they might stop the others and let them fly again when they have found out that it was nothing wrong with the model, if they find on the crashed plane that it was a detail installed on all the aircrafts that caused the crash they can then remove that part. I think they do it just to be secured.

I of cource agree with you that C130 is a well tested aircraft, and it may seems as a unneccessary action of them who have deccided it. But there can also be some extra military thing added to the Norwegian aircrafts, they test in winter climath. That is of cource also a guess from me. I just tried to find some reasons to why they act as they did.

Grounding a fleet is a normal response. When a MH-60R crashed last year they temporarily grounded all H-60's, and luckily they did. Debris was getting in to an oil passage on the intermediate gear box (is in the tail rotor drive train). This caused oil starvation to the gears and caused the IGB to fail within about 20 hours. After some investigation 1 or 2 more instances were found of this, and any gear boxes that had less than 50 hours on them had to be removed and replaced... Sometimes it is not the aircraft design itself at fault. I have seen many instances of refurbished parts failing due to mistakes during rebuild (on all different types of components from gear boxes to hydraulic servos).. So I say it is a safe bet that until you know that you ground everything until you can at least get a good look at all the planes. I know when we have a crash in the community we at least pause, send all qualified people out there to give the heli's a good comb over before resuming ops (unless we have specific instructions not to fly from higher than our local level till told otherwise).

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S Jordan
Milviz Staff Member
AM; United States Navy
FSX Hours: 2000 and counting

I guess it's great that the military can afford to do that. If every time a civilian aircraft crashed the whole fleet was grounded, there wouldn't be any airlines. To me, it just seems to be a knee-jerk reaction that has no real basis in practical operations. If you suspect a major mechanical malfunction, then yes, there is reason to ground it, but since the prevailing belief is CFIT and seems to be what is supported by the facts, why ground the planes?

I guess it's just the fact that the commercial operators have a helluva lot more background about how to handle this kind of thing and there's only been a very limited number of fleet-wide groundings happen in the commercial world in the last 60+ years and none of them happened just because the plane crashed. It was because they had a good reason to believe it was something systematic.

BTW, as for adding equipment - the USAF uses the C-130J in Antarctica on a routine basis and it's not just any specific model, all the aircraft are equipped for such operations. I doubt the Norwegians have anything onboard significantly different than the USAF or RCAF.

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I'm with you on this one Cappy... In this case, at first blush, this appears to be a goofy knee jerk reaction no doubt implemented by some beaurocrat who couldn't tell a C130 from a B-52.

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Buddy Morgan



i5 2500k - Asus P8P67 Pro - G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB - EVGA GTX 570 Fermi

Capflyer, I agree with what you are saying, but with a little but.

So far is there no one who knows why this aircraft have crashed, depending on bad weather they have not managed to find the aircraft yet. So what has went wrong no human knows, persons can only guess.

And another little but, you compared it with civilian aircrafts. Beyond the commercial aircrafts models so are there a lot of models you can not fly and land in Europe, but it is no problem with using this aircrafts in for example Russia and other underdeveloped part of the world. What I will try to show with mention this is that it is not so easy and clear, every country and part of the world have different laws and different ways to handle this. There have also been commersial aircrafts which have been taken out and are forbidden to fly in for example Norway and USA, but you can still fly this aircraft full loaded with fuel and passengers in other countries like for example China and Russia, who have other rules, and there is also countried who do not care about international rules.

This was my 'but's'. So I agree with your thinking but in the same time I think it is not a clear answer to this. And with aircrafts it is better to have too many security rules, to avoid crashes.

Two different issues though here. The reason those planes fly all the time in some areas and not in others is for a reason. Either the aircraft haven't received certification to fly in those areas (i.e. the designer or operator hasn't spent the time and money to prove they comply with the airworthiness requirements) or there is a proven track record of mechanical safety issues that has resulted in that type or operator being "black listed". Neither is the case with the C-130J, so it's not really germane to the discussion.

There are 747-400's that aren't allowed to land in Europe because of who they fly for. Not because the 747-400 is an unsafe type, but because the operator has refused to comply with the applicable maintenance standards that the European authorities require for all aircraft to meet in order to fly in European airspace. But the entire 747-400 fleet hasn't been removed from European skies just because a few operators choose to not maintain their aircraft properly or with the records required.

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Even thought the C-130 is such a proven design, sometimes precautions like these aren't pointless, because although the type is very proven and rugged, you never know if there were manufacturing problems, maintenance problems, or a problem that is unique to the J model...nothing wrong with this.

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© 2011 Peter J. Carlson, All Rights Reserved
"O! for a horse with wings!" -William Shakespeare

Capflyer, it is a bit absurd to discuss if it was right or wrong decided to ground the other Norwegian airforce C-130(it is only them who is grounded, not all C-130). Here have 5 persons died(4 men and a women), and a plane crashed and we discuss that, a bit absurd in my opinion.

Now has it come some new information about the aircraft. They have not yet found the 'black-box' so it is still persons who guess what can have gone wrong.

They started the flight on IFR, but have changed to something named 'tactical' flying, that is described as a military term for VFR flying. There seem to be some differents from the civilian term, the military tactical flying also include to hide the aircraft to be seen on other countries radars. And the pilot was told to practise this if the weather was ok enough. It has earlier been said that the weather was very bad in the area, but after the crashed aircraft started another C-130 took of and flew the same route as the crashed one. The pilot from that aircraft have told that the weather changed a lot and they changed to tactical flying, so they guess the crashed aircraft have done the same.

Another interesting fact is that the last signals from the civilan radar show that the aircraft was 2194 meter over sea level, but the military radar show that the aircraft wsa 2316 meter over sealevel, Kebnekayse(the montain), is 2111.

If they had flew on instruments(IFR), so should the aircraft automaticly raised, tells Norways most experienced C-130 pilot. So he guess that they have changed to tactical flying, something we will know, when(and if), they find the 'black-box'.

Why shouldnt they as a precaution? its not like its war critical that they keep all C130s flying, why risks lives when you dont have to? Or more likely these days, why take the risk of another expensive plane crashing?

The reason airlines dont ground an entire fleet just because of a crash is because they cant afford to, or want to. It'd hit their end of year profits and cause a massive PR backlash. The armed forces get better PR from grounding a fleet for "saftey" then to let the type fly and risk another crash, which if did happen, would cause massive backlash from the public demanding why they didnt ground the fleet and check them!

At some point, we must use our brains. Unfortunately, for some reason we have evolved into a species of litigious beings that firmly believes that life can be completely risk averse. Our "modern" world needs (immediately and without investigation) the following after every tragic event: 1) a cause and 2) a remedy.

In this case, derived from actions taken by the Norwegian Air Force:
1) The cause = It was the airplanes fault
2) The remedy = Stop flying the new airplanes today.

Meanwhile, those airplanes cost the tax payers more money and the military gets no use from them as they are sitting idle. Troops don't get to where they need to go, their equipment doesn't arrive, etc.

Now Cap and I have got our spurs tangled on plenty of occasions. But on this one, at least substantively, he's right IMHO. And the reason I think he's right is that he explained (in uncut/unadulterated Cappy fashion) that there is nothing to suggest that there is something systematically wrong with the airframe. The history behind the airframe supports this. From the translated article in the OP, all we know is that the airframes that have been grounded are new J models... and that the plane was lost in "very bad weather". There are a host of other factors that could be the cause of the crash, none of which would merit grounding a fleet.

All that being said, the loss of life under these circumstances is sad and my prayers go to the families of the departed.

Cheers!

Bud

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Buddy Morgan



i5 2500k - Asus P8P67 Pro - G.Skill Ripjaw 8GB - EVGA GTX 570 Fermi

Whereas I'm going to agree with stiz and point out that there's no reason TO keep them flying, until the cause is known.

This isn't an airline. It's not an organisation that is going to put thousands of people out or go bust just because the aircraft aren't in service for a short period of time. Maybe it isn't an aircraft issue, maybe it's a training issue, maybe it's something unrelated. Either way, it's got nothing to do with the fact that it's a C-130, lawyers or anything else, it's got to do with the fact that there's been an accident and nothing at all will be lost by putting the fleet on the ground until the reason why is known (except that they'll save some money on fuel for the budget...)

If it turns out to be an error of judgement, weather conditions or something equally unrelated to the rest of the fleet, problem solved and no-one else has been affected.

If it was a Russian aircraft, an A400M or a Transall, would you be complaining so loudly about the grounding? Somehow I doubt it.

Ian P.