VIDEO: Delta 4819 crash: all signs point to DEI pilot error

Yesterday, Canada's Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report into the crash (call it "collision with terrain" if you like) of Delta Airlines flight 4819 on landing at Toronto's Pearson International Airport (YYZ). If you missed our initial post on this story, click here to read it and see the video.

The TSB report, boiled down to one sentence, says that the Bombardier CRJ900, experienced a hard "pancake" landing. A warning system on the flight sent an alert indicating a high rate of descent less than three seconds before the plane touched down. Less than a second before touchdown, the plane's rate of descent was 1110 feet per minute.

The flight manual defines a hard landing as a "landing at a vertical descent rate greater than 600 ft/min when the aircraft's gross weight is less than or equal to [maximum landing weight]." Flight 4819 (operated by Delta Air Lines subsidiary Endeavor Air) weighed less than its maximum allowable take-off weight at the time of the crash. 

The report also says that less than a second before landing, the angle of the plane's aircraft, known as the pitch attitude, was 1 degree. The flight operations manual states pitch attitude at touchdown should be between 3 and 8 degrees.

In today's video, Dan Millican -- the same experienced pilot who appears in the earlier video -- analyses the TSB report and draws some inescapable conclusions as to the role played by DEI First Officer who was flying the plane. We've added a summary of the report below the video window.

   

In a news release yesterday, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada said, "It is too early to draw conclusions as to the causes of this accident. A full investigation report, which will include the TSB's analysis into why the accident happened and the Board's findings, will be released in due course.

Delta 4819 took off from Minneapolis (MSP) with 76 passengers, two flight crew members and two cabin crew members. The names of the pilots have been scrubbed from the Internet. in the wake of Delta's denial that they were DEI hires. 

All we know is that the Captain was male, hired by Mesaba Airlines (forerunner of Endeavor Air) in 2007, and that the First Officer was female, hired by Endeavor in 2024. Delta says stories that she had failed training events are false. 

According to the TSB, the FO was in control of the plane when it crashed. At 1400 EST, winds were gusting to 35 knots in the area. After the flight crew received clearance to land at Runway 23 at YYZ, they flew the approach at 149 knots, "given the reported wind gusts."

 Around 2.6 seconds before touchdown, a "sink rate" alert sounded, "indicating a high rate of descent," the report said. The alert came from the plane's enhanced ground proximity warning system. At the time the alert sounded, the plane's airspeed was 136 knots. Less than a second before touchdown, the aircraft's indicated airspeed was 134 knots and its ground speed was 111 knots. 

Around 1412, the right main landing gear touched the runway. The report continues: "At touchdown, the following occurred: the side-stay that is attached to the right [main landing gear] fractured, the landing gear folded into the retracted position, the wing root fractured between the fuselage and the landing gear, and the wing detached from the fuselage, releasing a cloud of jet fuel, which caught fire. The exact sequence of these events is still to be determined by further examination of the fracture surfaces." 

The plane then began to slide along the runway, eventually going off the right side into a snow-covered grass area, coming to rest on Runway 15L, near the intersection with Runway 23. Meanwhile, the right wing became fully detached from the plane and slid around 215 feet further along Runway 23. Once the aircraft came to a stop, an evacuation began. There were 21 people injured among the 80 on board, with two people reported to have serious injuries.

John Gradek, an operations and integrated aviation management professor at McGill University, told the media the plane had "a hard, flat landing", sometimes called a "pancake landing". He said the plane's descent rate was "significantly higher than you would expect to have in a given landing area.... It was, by all classifications, a hard landing. The nose only being up 1 degree is also not typical, he added, and can result in a flat landing that puts stress on the aircraft, he said.

Getting back to the DEI question, here's a photo from the Endeavor Air website.

On the same page, one can read Endeavor Air's Mission Statement, followed by:

"OUR MOST IMPORTANT BEHAVIORS [which include]

Promote diversity and inclusion in all aspects of the airline and our operation."

That's all ye know and all ye need to know.

Take off, eh! de Havilland Canada flies again!

CBC News has a story today that I know will be of interest to a couple of Walt's agents. They report that Longview Aviation Capital Corp. has launched de Havilland Aircraft of Canada Ltd., following purchase of the de Havilland trademark and the complete Dash-8 aircraft programme from struggling Bombardier Inc.

The new(ish) company will build and market the latest version of the Dash-8 -- the Q400 -- from the plant in Downsview (now a part of Toronto) where it started business in Canada in the 1920s. During World War II, its DHC-1 Chipmunk became the backbone of the Commonwealth Air Forces training programme.

Longview paid C$300 million ($223 million in real money) for the rights to Bombardier's Q Series of aircraft, originally known as the Dash-8, comprising the 100, 200 and 300 series, all turboprop regional jets which seat 40 to 90 passengers. The Dash-8 is in use not only by Canadian airlines like Porter, but all over the world, and is known for its economy and reliability.

Another Longview subsidiary, Viking Air Ltd., based in British Columbia, still produces the famous de Havilland Beaver and Twin Otter aircraft, workhorses of the Canadian North and other remote areas. If you're headed for Kathmandu, for instance, you may well get there (and safely too) in a Nepal Airlines Twin Otter.

David Curtis, chairman of the Longview, said in a statement de Havilland Aircraft would take on board more than 1200 employees from Bombardier. He previously pledged to keep all manufacturing already in Canada within the country and to maintain supply chains for the Q400 series that currently stretch from China to Ireland to Mexico. Bombardier manufactured roughly 28 to 30 Q400s annually at the Downsview plant.

This one's taking off! Are you in?

Walt has a longstanding interest in commercial aviation. The first "big airplane" I flew in was a BOAC Super Constellation, which really dates me. Since then I've flown in some excellent aircraft, including the the DC-8 ("Old Smoky") and the Lockheed L-1011, beloved of those who flew them but not by the beancounters flying desks at the world's airlines.

Here's a new passenger jetliner, coming soon to an airline and/or airport near you.

She's the Bombardier CS100, which took to the skies at YMX yesterday morning, after nearly 9 months of delays to make sure everything was just right for the maiden flight. And so it was.

The CSeries is the first larg(ish) jetliner to be manufactured by Bombardier, heretofore known for executive and regional jets as well as smooth and quiet turboprops. [Don't forget about the Skidoos! Ed.] The CS100 is a bigger plane, capable of taking 110 to 145 pax clear across the continent with no stops.

With the new "big airplane", Bombardier will be competing with the smaller ends of the Airbus and Boeing product lines, but yesterday's flight suggests the CSeries has a Unique Selling Proposition. (A doff of the adman's hat to the late Rosser Reeves.) The new plane is super-quiet, roughly 15 decibels quieter than a B737, or only roughly as loud as Bombardier’s Q400s turboprops.

That should silence the NIMBY types who want to keep jets out of smaller downtown airports like YTZ and the new airport which London Mayor Boris Johnson proposes to locate in the middle of the Thames. Bombardier already has orders for 177 of the aircraft, but is on track to sell 300 by the time it enters service, in about 12 months.

Bombardier has said it aims to capture half of the 6,900 deliveries expected in the 100-to-149-seat segment of the commercial aircraft market over the next two decades. With the airline industry making a slow but steady recovery, I think the CSeries could be very profitable for Bombardier. The company's shares are trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange at around $5. I'm in!