United Airlines flight loses height en route to Dublin

Davy

http://www.thejournal.ie/united-airlines-dublin-airport-1138289-Oct2013/

A NUMBER OF passengers on a United Airlines flight that landed in Dublin Airport this morning sustained minor injuries when the plane lost height while in the air.

It is understood that the aircraft lost altitude suddenly while coming into Dublin but landed safely in the airport before 7am. A Dublin Airport Authority spokesperson confirmed that emergency services did attend and there were no issues with the plane on the runway.

conor_ie

Was listening in on live atc when this happened. The plane suffered downdraft at about 3000 ft on approach into Dublin

dm09

I guess those who were injured ignored the seatbelt sign?

usersame

Would the passengers have felt that? Heard of a more extreme version happening to a Virgin flight, the passengers thought they were going down

lord lucan

dm09 wrote: »

I guess those who were injured ignored the seatbelt sign?

From what i can gather most of the injuries were the result of items coming loose from the overhead bins.

Jhcx

Talk was that the injuries happened on the runway it came in too hard. Which would add up to it dropping. Apparently there is a panal missing from under the aircraft.

SpaceTime

Are overhead bins bit designed to stay closed during extreme turbulence?

shamwari

Were any SIGMET's issued at that time? There has been a lot of convective weather and CB's around in the last 18 hours.

breanach78

Roblestone wrote: »

If you listen back on liveatc.net you can hear the Approach controller asking "how many passengers are hurt?" To which the pilot responds "we don't know yet, we have a hydraulics problem and are busy working through the checklist".

It's hard to decipher what exactly the sequence of events were and if the "hurt" passengers were related to the hydraulics issue because the feed missed out on some of the transmissions.

One things for sure though, the passengers were injured before 3000ft so the runway theory is blown out!

I'm not one to judge until the findings are out and I know the saying "aviate, navigate, communicate", but IMO the pilot should have at least got a number of the injured passengers for the controller as he was trying to organise how many ambulances etc.

Any link to ATC?

LeftBase

I heard there were a couple of windshear go-arounds today at Dublin on the radio while I was flying up to Belfast

Dacian

SpaceTime wrote: »

Are overhead bins bit designed to stay closed during extreme turbulence?

One of the indications of 'severe turbulence' is O/H bins opening an objects falling out.



As for the flight deck comms.....at 3000ft they were a bit low to be focusing on anything other than getting safely on the ground...."Aviate, Navigate, Communicate"......Aviate takes priority here.

breanach78

Roblestone wrote: »

Can't link it off iPhone but go to the ATC Archive section of liveatc.net and search EIDW feed for this morning. IIRC, the transmissions started around 0445Z so choose that feed.

As I said not a lot to listen to, but enough to get the general idea.

IIRC ? sorry new to this!

The Black Oil

If I recall correctly.

breanach78

The Black Oil wrote: »

If I recall correctly.

DOH!:rolleyes:

dm09

breanach78 wrote: »

Any link to ATC?

http://www.flightradar24.com/2013-10-20/05:00/12x/UAL23

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/eidw/EIDW3-Oct-20-2013-0500Z.mp3

Listen to the ATC recording from about 20min onward

Henry Ford III

SpaceTime wrote: »

Are overhead bins bit designed to stay closed during extreme turbulence?

A very odd question.

AGC

Jhcx wrote: »

Talk was that the injuries happened on the runway it came in too hard. Which would add up to it dropping. Apparently there is a panal missing from under the aircraft.

Correct, quite a large panel came off the aircraft. Unsure if it was on the approach to Dublin or earlier

basill

There is no such thing as "extreme" turbulence. The 3 categories are light, moderate and severe. Light is a daily occurrence, moderate every now and then and severe you hope to never to encounter in your career although anyone listening on 121.50 across the ocean will regularly hear the cousins declaring this all the time. Severe turbulence is a major event requiring aircraft maintenance inspections and report writing including informing the IAA.

http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/media_gallery/files/safety_library_items/AirbusSafetyLib_-FLT_OPS-CAB_OPS-SEQ10.pdf

andy_g

basill wrote: »

There is no such thing as "extreme" turbulence. The 3 categories are light, moderate and severe. Light is a daily occurrence, moderate every now and then and severe you hope to never to encounter in your career although anyone listening on 121.50 across the ocean will regularly hear the cousins declaring this all the time. Severe turbulence is a major event requiring aircraft maintenance inspections and report writing including informing the IAA.

http://www.airbus.com/fileadmin/media_gallery/files/safety_library_items/AirbusSafetyLib_-FLT_OPS-CAB_OPS-SEQ10.pdf

And dont forget CAT (Clear Air Turbulence)

LeftBase

andy_g wrote: »

And dont forget CAT (Clear Air Turbulence)

CAT is a type of turbulence. Light, Moderate and Severe are degrees of turbulence.

declanfoleyirl

http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/html5/html5lib/v1.8.3.1/mwEmbedFrame.php/entry_id/0_k2hnwbn4/wid/_483511/uiconf_id/5590821?referer=http%3A%2F%2Fabcnews.go.com%2FGMA%2Fvideo%2Fsevere-turbulence-injures-united-airline-passengers-dublin-bound-20631549&flashvars%5BautoPlay%5D=false&addThis_playerSize=392x221&freeWheel_siteSectionId=nws_offsite&closedCaptionActive=false

jmkennedyie

dm09 wrote: »

http://www.flightradar24.com/2013-10-20/05:00/12x/UAL23

http://archive-server.liveatc.net/eidw/EIDW3-Oct-20-2013-0500Z.mp3

Listen to the ATC recording from about 20min onward

Thanks for posts. Actually starts about 10 min into it for me

RonanM123

has the aircraft in question departed back to the US.

Mech1

If anyone wants to listen to the full ATC chat at the time of above video go to live atc, below my feed there is a link for archives, click that, then 20th Oct, then time 0500Z starts about 10min in.

eatmyshorts

basill wrote: »

There is no such thing as "extreme" turbulence. The 3 categories are light, moderate and severe.

Although ICAO only uses those 3 definitions, the FAA does have the classification of "extreme" after "severe". Don't have a link to the reference, but it's in the FAA AIM.