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On August 28 2020, a Cessna 401A aircraft was involved in an accident at Arnsberg-Menden Airport based on a report from the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation (BFU). The accident occurred during the final approach phase, resulting in the aircraft impacting the ground short of the runway. The three occupants on board suffered severe injuries, and the airplane was substantially damaged. The investigation identified several contributing factors to the accident: the pilot did not correct the approach by increasing engine power or aborting the approach, failed to monitor the airspeed during the final approach, and steered the airplane into an uncontrolled flight attitude during the flare. Additionally, the approach was not stabilized and not aborted, the pilot did not pay attention to the Precision Approach Path Indicators (PAPI) and did not perceive the stall warning, and the continuously changing approach parameters likely exceeded the pilot's capabilities, leading to a loss of goal-oriented control of the airplane.
The flight had originated from Marl-Lohmühle Airfield, with the pilot and two passengers onboard for a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight to Arnsberg-Menden Airfield. After takeoff, the pilot established radio contact for crossing the control zone towards Arnsberg. During the final approach, the airspeed decreased continuously, falling below the minimum control speed and eventually below the stall speed. The aircraft then impacted a slope more than 200 meters in front of the runway threshold. The approach initially seemed normal, but the pilot had pulled the engine power into idle, focusing on the beginning of the runway. The wind conditions during the approach were reported, and the airplane’s landing gear and flaps had been extended. However, the aircraft eventually plunged and disappeared from view, leading to the impact and severe injuries of the occupants.
Amelia™
Amelia™
Amelia™ offers a Flight Envelope for the aircraft and a Health Envelope for the pilot, effortlessly integrating as an unobtrusive add-on within the avionics system, requiring no modifications to existing equipment. The aircraft appeared to be in a stabilized approach until the pilot likely lost situational awareness as he was struggling with optical illusions and monitored the flight progress and instruments insufficiently. Even the pilot colleague had to address him and drew his attention to the low speed of the airplane when the pilot stopped observing the airplane for a short time to make entries in the computer. Such a situation would have been avoided with the Amelia™ Flight Envelope.
View of the Clariden mountains in Switzerland from the cockpit of a South African Airways Airbus A340-642.
Amelia™ monitors the aircraft’s speed and would have alerted the pilot about the low speed even before the stall warning horn sounded. It is important to note that the acoustic stall warning sounded for a total of about 8 seconds prior to impact but did not result in a noticeable reaction of the pilot as reflected by the large upward pitch attitude witnesses described based on the BFU report. This is likely since the aircraft was at the final approach sequence, already at a very low height, and the pilot probably suffered from a tunnel-like attention allocation so that he neither noticed the approach angle becoming critical, the decreasing airspeed nor the stall warning horn. Alert from Amelia™ would likely have been at a time before the pilot got into the tunnel-like attention allocation.
In addition, the Amelia™ is enabled by a novel 3D holographic interface to the Flight Envelope, an intuitive way to gauge aircraft’s operating parameters such as aircraft’s speed, pitch and attitude. The novel 3D holographic interface for flight envelope provided by Amelia™ minimizes the attention time needed to gauge flight envelope deviation such as the case here where during the short final approach, the pilot allowed his control inputs to cause the airspeed to fall below the planned approach speed (Blue Line Speed) and the airspeed to continue to decrease.
Lastly, the pilot did not comply with the criteria for a stabilized approach. The chosen approach instead required continuous control inputs to reduce speed and adjust engine power to accommodate configuration changes. During this high workload approach, Amelia™ Health Envelope could have caught change in pilot’s behavior as a result of not being in peak mental state due to work overload before a critical level would be reached and alerted the pilot.
References
References
Further read
Further read
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