Fault in altimeter cause of plane crash

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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The Dutch Safety Authority said the pilots did not pay enough attention to the problem with the altimeter which led to the crash, the Associated Press reported yesterday. However, the airplane had problems with its altimeter on eight occasions earlier, said the chief investigator Pieter van Vollenhoven in a press conference in The Hague yesterday.

Vollenhoven said the plane was landing on automatic pilot and the problem with the altimeter, a device that measures altitude, led to a loss of airspeed before the crash.

At about 700 meters "the airplane's left radio altimeter suddenly registered a change in altitude" of negative 8 feet (about 2 meters). "It didn't only register it, but passed it on to the automatic steering system," Van Vollenhoven said. Due to that "sudden altitude change" the automatic pilot reacted as if it was too close to the runaway and it stopped the fuel, said the inspector.
"From the black box it appears that then the pilots immediately gave gas, full gas, however it was too late to recover," Van Vollenhoven said.

Van Vollenhoven said it was not unusual to land a plane on autopilot and added that the pilots might have preferred to land autopilot instead of manual due to weather conditions Ğ cloudy with light rain. The trained pilot was in the cabin too and he had full control during the landing, however, that was not something unusual, said the inspector. There was no problem with the amount of fuel the plane was carrying, said the inspector, and added that the research at this point indicated no mechanical error other than the faulty altimeter. Meanwhile, the head of Turkey Airline Pilots Association, or TALPA, Ziya Yılmaz said, "This is just a preliminary report based on the findings of the Black Box." Air Transportation Directorate criticized the inspectors’ explanation for not clarifying the reason of the accident.

"From the black box it appears that then the pilots immediately gave gas, full gas, however it was too late to recover," Van Vollenhoven said.

Van Vollenhoven said it was not unusual to land a plane on autopilot and added that the pilots might have preferred to land autopilot instead of manual due to weather conditions Ğ cloudy with light rain. The trained pilot was in the cabin too and he had full control during the landing, however, that was not something unusual, said the inspector. There was no problem with the amount of fuel the plane was carrying, said the inspector, and added that the research at this point indicated no mechanical error other than the faulty altimeter. Meanwhile, the head of Turkey Airline Pilots Association, or TALPA, Ziya Yılmaz said, "This is just a preliminary report based on the findings of the Black Box." Air Transportation Directorate criticized the inspectors’ explanation for not clarifying the reason of the accident.