Blackwater aircraft accident 61

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Blackwater aircraft accident 61
N961BW CASA 212 MAN 14FEB09 (6785031410) .jpg

The sister machine N961BW
Accident summary
Accident type Stall during attempted turning maneuver in a canyon with no exit
place Koh-e Baba Mountains, Bamiyan Province , AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan 
date November 27, 2004
Fatalities 6th
Survivors 0
Aircraft
Aircraft type SpainSpain CASA C-212 Aviocar 200
operator United StatesUnited States Presidential Airways
Mark United StatesUnited States N960BW
Departure airport Bagram Air Base , AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan 
Destination airport Farah Airport , AfghanistanAfghanistanAfghanistan 
Passengers 3
crew 3
Lists of aviation accidents

The Blackwater 61 accident occurred on November 27, 2004, when a CASA C-212 Aviocar 200 belonging to the Blackwater Worldwide company Presidential Airways with the radio call sign Blackwater 61 had an accident on a flight from Bagram Air Base to Farah Airport in Afghanistan. Five out of six people on board were killed in the crash, the only survivor died due to the late arrival of the rescue workers.

plane

The aircraft concerned was a CASA C-212 Aviocar 200 made in Spain , which made its maiden flight on January 4, 1982. The machine with the serial number 261 was delivered to Air Miami in February 1982 , where it was put into operation with the aircraft registration N354CA . From June 1982 the machine was in service with North American Airlines and from October 1982 for Avianca Brasil . From February 1985 the machine was operated for National Air , in April 1986 it was transferred to the fleet of American International Aviation , and from September 1987 the machine flew for Executive Airlines under the brand name American Eagle . The Murray Aviation took over the aircraft on April 9, 1993, leaving it as N699MA to, it followed from June 7, 1996 operations in the Flight International as N203FN . From July 3, 2003, the machine was registered as N960BW on Aviation Worldwide Svcs LLC , but in operation with Presidential Airways. Its parent company Blackwater is the highly controversial, largest US private security and military company . By the time of the accident, the machine had had a total operating performance of 21,489 hours.

crew

There were six people on board the machine, including three passengers and three crew members. The three crew members were civil servants from Blackwater. The master and the first officer had only been in Afghanistan since November 14, 2004.

  • 37-year-old flight captain Noel English was hired by Presidential Airways on October 1, 2004. He had type ratings for the aircraft types CASA C-212, Cessna Citation I , Embraer EMB 110 and Swearingen SA-227 Metroliner . The captain had 5,720 hours of flight experience, 4,930 of which as a captain and 615 hours as a captain on board the CASA C-212. His cumulative flight experience with the type of aircraft used was 865 hours up to September 23, 2004.
  • The 35-year-old First Officer Loren Hammer, like the captain, was hired by Presidential Airways on October 1, 2004. Hammer had 2,228 hours of flight experience, including 1,248 hours in multi-engine machines. His cumulative flight experience as a flight captain was 917 hours. Hammer had flown 420 hours with the CASA 212.
  • The 43-year-old flight engineer Melvin Rowe was on board as a flight mechanic.

Passengers

Three US Army men were on board as passengers , including 41-year-old Lieutenant Colonel Michael McMahon and 31-year-old Chief Warrant Officer Travis Grogan. The 21-year-old Harvey Miller almost missed the flight, the machine was already rolling over the apron when it stopped briefly to pick it up. The machine was originally only intended to transport ammunition to Farah. The three soldiers were also admitted when it was found that there was still enough space in the machine.

the accident

The machine was used on behalf of the US Department of Defense to move materials and members of the US military between remote areas of Afghanistan. The weather on the day of the accident was good, the flight was carried out under visual flight weather conditions . After take-off at 0738 local time, the aircraft turned north-west instead of maintaining the intended course of 170 degrees. During the flight, the pilots enthusiastically shared how much fun they are with their work. Recordings on the cockpit voice recorder , however, indicated that they had problems with orientation in the area, for example shortly after take-off the pilot said he hoped he was flying through the correct mountain valley. Later the pilots talked about what music to play in the cockpit. “For fun” the captain flew into a narrow canyon , which ended in a dead end. When the pilots noticed their mistake, they deployed the buoyancy devices and tried to turn in the canyon. The stall warning system activated and a few moments later the flow stalled , with the machine crashing at a height of 4,465 meters against the slope of 5,102 meters high Baba Mountain. The plane crashed 25 nautical miles north of the planned route.

Rescue operation

Since Blackwater or Presidential Airways did not have any devices at that time to monitor the flight movements of their machines, the accident went unnoticed for a long time. It was eight hours before a military official in Farah realized that the machine should have been there long ago. Finding the wreck was also made difficult by the fact that no flight plan was completed. The scene of the accident was finally localized by a military machine flying overhead, which received the signals from the machine's ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter) .

The first rescue team arrived at the crash site three days after the accident with a Boeing-Vertol CH-47 helicopter . The rescue teams estimated that around 50 cm of fresh snow had fallen three days earlier since the accident. The helicopter circled over the scene of the accident for around 10 minutes, with the draft of its rotors blowing away part of the snow that covered the crash site. The rear loading ramp was torn off next to the tail unit on the floor, the right wing and the right engine were also torn off, while the left wing was found crushed under the fuselage. The valve configuration at the time of the crash could not be determined. The cockpit voice recorder was the only part of the wreck that was recovered for investigation.

When the rescue teams reached the machine, they also found that one of the passengers, 21-year-old Harvey Miller, had initially survived in the cold for hours after the accident. His body was in the back of the torso and was dressed only in pants and shoes. Next to him was an unrolled sleeping bag, a cigarette butt, an opened ready-to-eat meal, and a half-empty water bladder from a hydration system. The rescue teams also found two traces of urine in the snow next to him. Miller suffered a broken rib, abdominal and lung trauma, and minor head injuries in the accident. He survived eight to ten hours before succumbing to his injuries, the effects of which were made worse by freezing temperatures and the lack of oxygen.

Accident investigation

The accident investigation was conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Collateral Investigations Board of the US Army . The investigators found a large number of violations on the part of the operating company and the flight crew. Presidential Airways was well aware that an underqualified crew was on duty on the flight. The pilots, on the other hand, would not have completed a flight plan before the flight and, contrary to the regulations, would not have put on oxygen masks, which can easily lead to a lack of oxygen on flights at such altitudes in the CASA C-212, which has no pressurized cabin due to its design .

According to the NTSB investigators, the captain of the machine behaved “unprofessionally” and “purposely flown the non-standard route deep through the valley for fun”. The main causes of the accident were identified as the captain's inappropriate decision to fly a non-standard route and his failure to maintain a sufficient distance from the terrain. Contributing factors were the operator's failure to require its flight crews to submit and comply with flight plans, and the operator's failure to ensure that flight crews were complying with company policies and safety regulations of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Department of Defense. The lack of oversight of the airline in the country by the FAA and the Department of Defense also contributed to the accident. The operator's lack of flight tracking technology contributed to the death of passenger Harvey Miller.

swell