Sympathies for TransAsia Flight 235 Crash

But liars can use stats.....

 

and frequently do

 

Most of the "stats" used in advertising are not stats at all, but made-up to sound like stats. OK, enough diversion.

 

I don't have any stick time with twin turbo-props so I'm holding off on jumping to conclusions until after they review the data recorders and other sources.
I imagine that you'd have to reduce power in the starboard plant if the port engine goes T.U. on climb-out in addition to other stick and rudder inputs but I simply don't know what happened.
It's easy to specuguess wrong based on early evidence.
When I looked at the pics, it appeared to me that the prop blade pitches were noticably different for port versus starboard and I believe that I read that both plants had been recently replaced and there was a engine gripe for the bird....but we'll know a lot more when they review the data.
It appears that 15 people survived...and nobody died on the ground....so it could have been a lot worse!

Diversions?

I spend half of my day at what my wife calls "chasing squirrels!"

 

i'm not a pilot, but it looked it stalled and fell to the ground because the pilots maneuvered it to avoid crash with the tall buildings. why the engines failed? have no idea.

 

I should have noted that while the airline deaths are quoted on a per mile basis, the actual incident rate is much more closely tied to takeoff-landing cycles than to actual miles flown. So the shorter the trip, the less compelling the flying-vs-driving difference becomes.

 

I believe air travel wins on distance traveled, time spent traveling, and crash survivability.

 

interesting. lets say the typical drive is 5 mile and average flight is 500 miles. under those assumptions, the risk of dying is the same per trip. i wonder what the actual numbers are (too tired to search). also, are the commercial flying safety numbers just for USA or worldwide?

 

I believe it's approximately 200 times safer to travel by air compared to automobile.

 

now let's say you put a yahoo in a plane like there is every day on the highway during the morning and evening commute, speeding, weaving in and out of other planes, changing elevation willy nilly, then see how safe it is. then throw in some over tired truckers with unstable loads...

 

There is no doubt that Fuzzy1 has well described the basis of powerplant efficiency. HKMB pointed to runway 'resources", that limit equipment choices on particular routes.

I was only trying to make the point (overlong as usual) that among 50-70 pax twin turbo props, there is a surprising range of (single-engine) power/weight ratios. On 99.(many nines) percent of flights this is irrelevant because both engines are operating well. so I was only referring to a small corner of operating envelop.

For the current crash, much more important is whether the carrier is maintaining well, and training well for the most dangerous phase of any (non-military) flight, which is climb-out. What some particular factors here (preflight or CRM) may have pushed this flight into that bad corner.

As always for such things I commend your attention to PPRUNE.