It would not be a surprise to anybody familiar with the eccentrities of the inmates of Rons Towers to learn that, in between church, a re-watching of Die Hard and a late dinner, the crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 was the main topic of conversation this Christmas Day. It’s something of a tradition for us to enjoy “a good plane crash investigation” of a Sunday evening (usually narrated by the excellent Mentour Pilot), enabling us to comment sagely to one another that “He should have checked the cabin pressurisation system!” or “He should have used the de-icing boots!” from the comfort of the settee. So, as grisly as it sounds, we couldn’t help but be drawn into speculation about what caused the dreadful loss of 38 lives this Christmas morn. Little did we know that it would soon turn into a murder mystery, and then into a story of heroic airmanship against the odds.
In writing this, I’m very conscious that there’s been no official investigation as yet (but, given the location, could we trust such an investigation anyway?). Also, while I’m not a pilot or any kind of expert, I’m very conscious that members of this parish are. So I apologise in advance, but I’m confident enough in the overall gist of what likely happened, that it’s worth telling the story. “Fools rush in…”
From the initial short video that emerged on Christmas morning, my first hesitant thought was that the pilots had somehow managed to stall the right wing near the airport – possibly due to some problem with the aircraft – but very quickly a longer video emerged, showing dramatic oscillations in the pitch of the aircraft in the minutes prior to the crash, causing it to rapidly and repeatedly pitch up and then down again. And while pilot-induced oscillation is certainly a thing – recently responsible for the death of YouTuber pilot TNFlyGirl in a small aircraft – nevertheless in large commercial aircraft which are less sensitive to this sort of thing, and which are almost entirely automated anyway, it immediately suggested some kind of serious problem with the aircraft (i.e., the loss of the horizontal stabiliser and elevators, which control pitch).
Despite the pressure of performing my superbly well-researched and nigh-perfect roast potato cooking technique, it didn’t take long for me to start drawing conversational comparisons with United Airlines Flight 232. In that incident, a triple-engine DC-10 had a catastrophic engine failure in the central tailfin-mounted engine at 37,000 feet, causing pieces of metal to spray out of the engine and rupture all three redundant hydraulic lines, only one of which would have been necessary to move the “control surfaces” of the aircraft (the elevators, ailerons, rudder, etc.). This was thought to be an impossible occurrence, but suddenly the pilots had almost no control of the aircraft, which then started to bank to the right into what would have quickly become an uncontrollable descent into the ground.
However, due to the quick thinking of the pilots, and eventually the involvement of a passenger who happened to be a training captain, and who had – completely on his own account – attempted to train himself for just such an “unthinkable” scenario, they managed to get the aircraft to an airport, and although the very rough landing did result in the loss of 112 lives, 184 survived. The full story of how the crew could only use the thrust levers (“differential thrust”) to control the aircraft down to the ground has been told numerous times in books, on TV and latterly on YouTube. It has been called the “impossible landing”, and it was the Chesley B. Sullenberger story of its day. In subsequent efforts to train other pilots in how to use this technique to control an aircraft in such a scenario, supposedly everyone who tried it in the simulator failed disastrously.
The similarity between United 232 and the pitch oscillations seen in Azerbaijan 8243 derive from the fact that one of the big problems faced by anyone attempting to control a large jet aircraft just through the thrust levers is that (a) jet engines take time to spool up or down, and (b) the resultant change in thrust only affects pitch gradually (partly due to the engines being slung below the wings, partly due to speed). The “feedback loop” between moving the thrust levers and seeing the results has been estimated at 10–30 seconds, which would make it exceedingly difficult not to end up making a series of over-corrections resulting in dramatic pitch oscillations – which become ever more dangerous as the aircraft gets closer to landing.
Nevertheless, in 2003 a DHL cargo plane was hit over Baghdad International Airport by a man-portable surface-to-air missile, resulting in a complete loss of hydraulic pressure and forcing the pilots to use differential thrust to land the aircraft – which, amazingly, they did (albeit ending up in a minefield). Yet their initial problems were also to do with the kind of “phugoid oscillation” previously described.
It was then on Christmas Day that, having been satisfied that Hans Gruber had met his deservèd end at the Nakatomi Plaza, and Aldi Crémant de Loire in hand, I saw the damage to the rear of Flight 8243 from pictures taken on the ground, posted on X. We’ve probably all seen the tell-tale signs of bullet-holes and similar kinds of shrapnel damage taken by vehicles from images posted online over the last several years, so it didn’t take a lot of convincing for me to believe that the punctures and paint delamination visible in these images were the result of high-speed impacts of smallish bits of material (likely metal), and not from damage sustained in the crash itself.
Further video has since emerged from a passenger, with the audio proving once again that people seem to think they’re lucky to survive a plane crash – not that they were unlucky to be in one. But the fact that the plane had been attempting to land at Grozny in Russian-controlled Chechnya (before being diverted over the Caspian Sea), and given later reports that Ukraine was conducting drone attacks on Grozny at the time, made it all the more believable that the apparent loss of control of Flight 8243 after its diversion to Aktau International Airport was the result of a shoot-down by a Russian air-defence system (some have speculated a Pantsir). At this point, noboby is seriously doubting that it was brought down by air defence (as more recent sources all but confirm).
It’s important to note that many types of surface-to-air missiles (including any of the possible Russian types) use proximity fusing to detonate close to the target, not hitting it directly but spraying it with shrapnel. In the case of MH17, the missile exploded close enough to ventilate the cockpit, killing the pilots and effectively destroying the aircraft. The shrapnel hits to Flight 8243, which apparently perforated the cabin, must surely have ruptured hydraulic lines at the rear of the aircraft, resulting in at least partial loss of flight controls. The precise extent of the damage is very much in doubt at this point, but (e.g.) Hydraulic System 3 might have remained operational, giving some aileron and rudder control.
Of course it is Christmas, and so (the only time you’ll hear me say this) I don’t want to be too hard on Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, or even the Russian authorities. I don’t believe anyone intended to shoot down Flight 8243, but it looks like they did anyway. Similarly, I don’t imagine the U.S. Navy intended to shoot down their own F/A-18 a few days ago, but they did. (Incidentally, the supposed account given by the F/A-18 pilot shows that, for some reason, fighter-pilot banter remains incomprehensible.)
Regardless of what caused the apparent loss of control, what seems quite clear to me is that the pilots of Flight 8243, Captain Igor Kşnyakin and First Officer Aleksandr Kalyaninov, did their best to deal with the problem and deserve respect. Looking at the flight data (and bearing in mind the caveats), they were attempting to turn for final approach to Aktau, and might have got there too, but for one last oscillation and roll which (as the vertical speed data and video shows) they were correcting at the time the aircraft hit the ground. The impact was, based also on the video evidence, much lessened by this final correction. Additionally, they had lowered the landing gear (presumably by gravity) which may have helped to stabilise the aircraft and would also have been intended to reduce the effects of any impact. It certainly seems that they understood at least some of what had happened, and were trying their best to fly the aircraft. Early reports also indicate that they were refused landing at airports in Chechnya and were forced to divert to Aktau, while having their GPS jammed along the way. I feel sorry that the pilots’ efforts, which saved the lives of 29 of the passengers, didn’t save them in the end.
And if there’s one scant lesson us passengers can draw from this, it’s that when you get on an aeroplane in dodgy parts of the world, take a moment to consider where you’ll be flying, and whether you’ll be overflying active air-defence systems that might be on high alert. Russia has a particularly bad track-record (KAL007 was completely deliberate, but there are also MH17 and AHY8243, to name a few), but the problem isn’t just Russian, as the USS Vincennes incident and the recent shoot-down over Tehran demonstrate. Mostly, there’s nothing else to do while sitting around in those kinds of airport lounges, so you may as well take a quick look.
But also, perhaps it’s time that automated systems on aircraft were programmed in such a way as to be capable of entering a fallback mode using differential thrust alone in the event of a catastrophic hydraulic failure of the sort first seen with Japan Air Lines Flight 123 back in 1985 – which was the inspiration for Dennis E. Fitch, the passenger-cum-crew-member on United 232 who had trained himself to deal with that situation, and who made the “impossible landing”.
And ultimately, a shout-out and much respect to those pilots who, by trying to save their own skin also save ours. Keep saving your own skin, and don’t let it get even mildly burned, unlike my roast potatoes.
Ian Rons
