Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

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maDDtraPPer
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by maDDtraPPer »

EDITED, PM sent.
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200Above
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by 200Above »

Really upsetting they aren't able to recover the bodies and other parts of the aircraft till next Antarctic Season, which I understand is October. Hopefully they have a speedy investigation, but I have a feeling it will be a long drawn out process... Really unfortunate and saddening.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by aviate_77 »

200Above wrote:Really upsetting they aren't able to recover the bodies and other parts of the aircraft till next Antarctic Season, which I understand is October. Hopefully they have a speedy investigation, but I have a feeling it will be a long drawn out process... Really unfortunate and saddening.
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Edo
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by Edo »

Someone had posted in the original thread (since removed, not the time or place) about the possibility of the extreme winds, 50+ kts blowing within 30 degrees of perpendicular to the ridge line creating a venturi like low pressure area over the ridge tops. Apparently such winds can cause a localized low pressure with altimeter errors of close to 1000 feet.

Is that something normally or even occasionally encountered in Antarctica? Is it SOP to compensate in such conditions, or are they so rare as to not get attention? I am sure everyone adds cold wx corrections to the alt but what about high wind/terrain corrections?
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pelmet
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by pelmet »

I believe the AIM cautions about altimeter errors when strong winds flow over mountains. While that may not be the situation concerning this accident, it is a good reminder for us to discuss it once in a while in case we encounter this situation at various locations around the world.

In the Antarctic case, I would assume that there is no local altimeter settings around which introduces other potential altimeter errors for anyone to consider, just like in the Arctic but to an even greater extent. Then there is very cold temps with very high mountains which all really add up.

These mountains are very high. Ideally, one would go well above them but if you don't have Oxygen, you have a problem. Perhaps going around is a possibility but that could be a fairly long distance. Going higher could mean stronger headwinds.

One has to wonder what the fuel onboard situation was. If fuel was tight, options become more limited. Perhaps someone in the know of these operations to this location could enlighten us as to whether you would typically have loads of fuel or are you typically tight on fuel as it can be hard to come by down there. I assume they had drums in the back and refuel from them while in flight. It is tough to move those heavy drums around at 13,000' let alone 18,000 feet.

If you plan to make your way through terrain with a GPS while in IMC at any location, being paranoid about the coordinates is an absolute must. I remember we used to go to locations in the Arctic with no altimeter setting and no weather report and then do a planned letdown at a location where terrain was reasonable. I would have the VFR chart out and be plotting the lat/long coordinates on the map every few miles from the gps present position as we were doing our letdown. Then I would note the terrain coming up on the VFR chart and confirm that what the radar altimeter was doing made sense. If a small ridge was coming up, you make sure the radalt decreased at the expected amount and then went back to where it should be. At one location, we would pass the shoreline to our planned final descent point at which point the radalt smoothed out over the ocean. Now we could set our pressure altimeter to the radar altimeter and let down to what we were comfortable with. On departure for this leg, the radalt had been checked on initial climb to be sure it was working normally. This procedure becomes much more difficult to potentially impossible over big mountains of course, but you do need a good plan whatever it may be.

Also curious if anyone has ever seen large altimeter errors with winds over the mountains and what the details were.
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Last edited by pelmet on Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
godsrcrazy
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by godsrcrazy »

Antarctic crash plane too dangerous to recover, say officials

The wreckage of a Canadian plane which crashed in Antarctica is too dangerous to remove because it is embedded in snow and ice on a steep mountain slope, officials say.

The U.S. Antarctic Program and Antarctica New Zealand have decided to recall the search and rescue teams which have been in the area.

The plane, operated by Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air, was reported missing after it failed to reach its destination on Wednesday.

Search crews in aircraft spotted the wreckage on a steep slope near the summit of Mount Elizabeth on the Queen Alexandra range, but New Zealand officials said the impact appears to have been direct and would not have been survivable for the three crew members on board.

Search teams were able to recover some material from the exposed tail of the plane, including the cockpit voice recorder. Officials say that could provide investigators with more information about the crash.

They were not able to access and recover the bodies of the crew.

"With the advent of the Antarctic winter, and the generally poor weather conditions at the crash site, any renewed effort to recover the remains will need to wait until the next Antarctic research season," said Antarctica New Zealand.

The next research season starts in October.



Sorry for going on a rant as I have never flown in the Antarctic. I am sorry if I am off topic but I do not want to post this on the other site.. I cannot believe they are going to wait until October before they try to recover the crew. The next years of the families lives will be hell with the lost of loved ones. Now these poor families will be going thru hell over the next 6 months or longer waiting to put there loved ones to rest. Having lost a family member in the past the healing process only seems to start after the lost family member has been put to rest.

As mentioned earlier I have never flown in the Antarctic and understand the weather only gets worse from now until October. So is it unsafe to do the recovery now or is it that everyone’s budgets are out of money and its time to pack up and go home. I am not sure what will make the recovery any safer in October then it will be today.
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medi-whacked
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by medi-whacked »

I wonder if fatigue and a duty day will play into the process. It was said in some reports they were to fly back to Canada the next day.
EDITED
Do those TO's have auto-pilots..I don't think so.

EDITED
Godspeed to the final crew of C-GKBC
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ajet32
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by ajet32 »

I posted this on my facebook page two days ago .

It is with great sadness that I learned today of the loss of my good friend "Bob Heath" in Antarctica. Almost 20 years ago I roomed with Bob in Inuvik and we have had many a meeting at the "Port" in YYC. He was a great pilot and and a mentor to countless young pilots he trained through his long career. He will be missed by all. From here on it will be "Calm winds and clear skies Bob". Keep watch on us from up above.
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Doc
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by Doc »

godsrcrazy wrote:Antarctic crash plane too dangerous to recover, say officials

The wreckage of a Canadian plane which crashed in Antarctica is too dangerous to remove because it is embedded in snow and ice on a steep mountain slope, officials say.

The U.S. Antarctic Program and Antarctica New Zealand have decided to recall the search and rescue teams which have been in the area.

The plane, operated by Calgary-based Kenn Borek Air, was reported missing after it failed to reach its destination on Wednesday.

Search crews in aircraft spotted the wreckage on a steep slope near the summit of Mount Elizabeth on the Queen Alexandra range, but New Zealand officials said the impact appears to have been direct and would not have been survivable for the three crew members on board.

Search teams were able to recover some material from the exposed tail of the plane, including the cockpit voice recorder. Officials say that could provide investigators with more information about the crash.

They were not able to access and recover the bodies of the crew.

"With the advent of the Antarctic winter, and the generally poor weather conditions at the crash site, any renewed effort to recover the remains will need to wait until the next Antarctic research season," said Antarctica New Zealand.

The next research season starts in October.


I cannot believe they are going to wait until October before they try to recover the crew. The next years of the families lives will be hell with the lost of loved ones. Now these poor families will be going thru hell over the next 6 months or longer waiting to put there loved ones to rest. Having lost a family member in the past the healing process only seems to start after the lost family member has been put to rest..
While I hear you, this is a fairly common practice. Climbers are left on Everest if they should perish there. Many ship wrecks have been declared "memorials" to people who perished on them The two best know being the USS Arizona and Titanic.
It may well prove to be safest to make this site, the "final resting place" for the crew. I feel Bob would not have wanted death or injury to occur to people trying to recover him. Perhaps it's most fitting for the crew to remain "resting" just where they are?
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by Diadem »

godsrcrazy wrote:Sorry for going on a rant as I have never flown in the Antarctic. I am sorry if I am off topic but I do not want to post this on the other site.. I cannot believe they are going to wait until October before they try to recover the crew. The next years of the families lives will be hell with the lost of loved ones. Now these poor families will be going thru hell over the next 6 months or longer waiting to put there loved ones to rest. Having lost a family member in the past the healing process only seems to start after the lost family member has been put to rest.

As mentioned earlier I have never flown in the Antarctic and understand the weather only gets worse from now until October. So is it unsafe to do the recovery now or is it that everyone’s budgets are out of money and its time to pack up and go home. I am not sure what will make the recovery any safer in October then it will be today.
Put yourself in the rescuers' shoes: it's the end of the Antarctic summer, with storms increasing in both frequency and intensity, and you're on the top of a mountain that's 11000 feet high with no protection from the wind. It's freezing, the helicopter can't land at the crash site, which means you have to climb up and down to get there and back, and a few days ago the weather was so bad that you couldn't get within 50 km of the crash. Would you feel safe climbing up there and risking getting stuck for a week or more? It's not a rescue mission anymore, it's a recovery, so there isn't the same level of urgency or the same willingness to put their lives in danger to help the flight crew. If the weather closes in and the climbers get stuck, they don't have a whole summer to wait for retrieval; they've got about three weeks, and after that they're on their own until October. That sounds like unreasonable risk to me for anything other than saving lives. Besides, from what I've heard about the condition of the aircraft, they might not have taken the requisite equipment to access the cockpit, and by the time they can get it out there they may not have an opportunity to get back up the mountain.
It's certainly not the preferable outcome, but at this point the highest priority is preventing more people from becoming casualties. Besides, it's not like they're being left to the polar bears.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by ehbuddy »

The nagging question to me is...........

If the winds and weather were as bad as they were and they were flying an unpressurized aircraft over such high terrain.............why would they depart in the first place and if they were having difficulty maintaining altitude etc would a 180 degree turn been in order?

Flame if you wish but these are always the first 2 questions asked...........
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Doc
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by Doc »

ehbuddy wrote:The nagging question to me is...........

If the winds and weather were as bad as they were and they were flying an unpressurized aircraft over such high terrain.............why would they depart in the first place and if they were having difficulty maintaining altitude etc would a 180 degree turn been in order?

Flame if you wish but these are always the first 2 questions asked...........
Can't see you getting flamed for that one. Can't answer it though. Just one of those mysteries, that will remain same.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by North Shore »

pelmet wrote: If you plan to make your way through terrain with a GPS while in IMC at any location, being paranoid about the coordinates is an absolute must. I remember we used to go to locations in the Arctic with no altimeter setting and no weather report and then do a planned letdown at a location where terrain was reasonable. I would have the VFR chart out and be plotting the lat/long coordinates on the map every few miles from the gps present position as we were doing our letdown. Then I would note the terrain coming up on the VFR chart and confirm that what the radar altimeter was doing made sense. If a small ridge was coming up, you make sure the radalt decreased at the expected amount and then went back to where it should be. At one location, we would pass the shoreline to our planned final descent point at which point the radalt smoothed out over the ocean. Now we could set our pressure altimeter to the radar altimeter and let down to what we were comfortable with. On departure for this leg, the radalt had been checked on initial climb to be sure it was working normally. This procedure becomes much more difficult to potentially impossible over big mountains of course, but you do need a good plan whatever it may be.

Also curious if anyone has ever seen large altimeter errors with winds over the mountains and what the details were.

Just making sure I understand the above; is the speculation here that they were IMC, using a GPS for navigation, below the surrounding terrain? Yikes!
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by CpnCrunch »

Here is the weather at the time at the closest weather station (as far as I can tell), close to their destination:

METAR NZPG 230955Z 03011KT 9999 FEW080 M08/M12 A2899 RMK
SLP820 RCRNR FATA MORGANA GRID N-SE GRID20011KT
SDG/HDG=
METAR NZPG 230855Z 02006KT 9999 FEW090 M06/M11 A2900 RMK
SLP823 RCRNR GRID19006KT SDG/HDG=

(unlimited visibility, light winds and practically clear skies)

and here is the weather at the south pole:

METAR NZSP 230850Z 360011KT 9999 BLSN FEW000 SCT040 BKN080
M28/ A2872 RMK VIS GRID NE-NW 3200 BLSN FEW000
35010KT ALL WNDS GRID SDG/HDF=
METAR NZSP 230750Z 36010KT 9999 FEW015 SCT040 BKN080 M28/
A2872 RMK CLN AIR 36009KT ALL WNDS GRID SDG/HDG=

So really you couldn't pick a better better day for flying. Of course it may be completely different in the mountain ranges, and also this doesn't tell us what the winds were like up at 13,000ft.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by co-joe »

Not that I don't believer them but I'm a climber and I want to know just how difficult a recovery are we talking? It is impossibly difficult considering how remote it is or we talking that it's just too expensive? Do you think any aerial photos of the site will become public? No disrespect meant, but without seing the wreckage I feel like I'm just taking someone else's word that they're gone. I feel like I still haven't admitted to myself that people have passed. I can't imagine how their families are feeling not having that kind of closure.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by pelmet »

.[/quote]


Just making sure I understand the above; is the speculation here that they were IMC, using a GPS for navigation, below the surrounding terrain? Yikes![/quote]

No subsantial information to speculate about specific to this accident.

Still wondering how much extra fuel is available for flights on this route.

Also curious if Borek's Twin Otters have weather radar. That can be useful for terrain mapping to avoid an accident.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by stallie »

I'm (was) a climber too and have flown several seasons on the ice for other operators. Knowing the logistics of supporting the rescue, the height, cold, ferrying in fuel to support choppers, weather delays and consequences of a further mishap to rescue aircraft I'm not at all surprised by this decision. And that's not even considering the likely precipitous terrain as described by others (or looking at a map).

It's a harsh reality, but its not called the end of the earth for nothing.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by stallie »

Cpn Crunch.

Without implying anything, those obs are useless in trying to determine the weather at the site. 350nm is a long way in that part of the world. The weather at McMurdo was also OK on the days that they couldn't reach the Beardmore...
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by brownbear »

I don't know what this plane had in it for EGPWS but the upcoming regs which should have happened a long time ago are going to call for class A TAWS (704). Which means a screen with view of the rocks and avoidance instructions from the computer. "Turn left" etc. I've seen big terrain mapping screens in Twin Otters and they do offer a really good back up to what the rocks are like beneath and in front of the plane. The more tools you can give a pilot the better/safer they will operate the aircraft.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by xsever »

brownbear wrote:I don't know what this plane had in it for EGPWS but the upcoming regs which should have happened a long time ago are going to call for class A TAWS (704). Which means a screen with view of the rocks and avoidance instructions from the computer. "Turn left" etc. I've seen big terrain mapping screens in Twin Otters and they do offer a really good back up to what the rocks are like beneath and in front of the plane. The more tools you can give a pilot the better/safer they will operate the aircraft.
Glad to hear this is coming. That's what I was asking about in my first post.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by SkiPilot »

brownbear wrote:I don't know what this plane had in it for EGPWS but the upcoming regs which should have happened a long time ago are going to call for class A TAWS (704). Which means a screen with view of the rocks and avoidance instructions from the computer. "Turn left" etc. I've seen big terrain mapping screens in Twin Otters and they do offer a really good back up to what the rocks are like beneath and in front of the plane. The more tools you can give a pilot the better/safer they will operate the aircraft.
No TAWS, Class A or otherwise will give you "Turn left, etc" instructions. They can only provide terrain warning & avoidance in the vertical plane via "Terrain, Terrain!" or "Pull up, Pull up!" warnings. TAWS is not a "magic bullet".

All TAWS need a DEM (Digital Elevation Model) which is their terrain database - these stop at 70° South. Anything further South simply isn’t covered. The crash site is approx. 83° South so Bob's TAWS would have been of no use whatsoever.

There aren't even any digital aviation maps of Antarctica so there would have been nothing on the GPS screen either, apart from user-defined waypoints & a route line.

Flying down there is very different from what everyone is used to in the real world.......
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by CID »

Coverage really depends on the type of TAWS and the installed terrain database. Honeywell claims that their Mark VI has coverage of Antarctica.

http://www51.honeywell.com/aero/common/ ... egions.pdf

Sandel's TAWS on the other hand does not.

http://www.sandel.com/ST3400_database_Globe.jpg

And quite correctly, none of them will provide navigation commands.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by maxpower76ta »

The sad truth about operating in Antarctica is that if something goes wrong the limited resources available and danger to the "rescuers" means recovery is often not a very high priority. There is unfortunately a very real chance the crew will never be recovered. This is a reference to another incident a few years back http://aviation-safety.net/database/rec ... 19941124-2 In this case the aircraft impacted with an iceberg just meters from a research base and was visible for weeks before it floated away, The crew was never recovered as it was deemed to dangerous.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by MrWings »

stallie wrote: 350nm is a long way in that part of the world.
It's a long way in any part of the world.
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Re: Kenn Borek Antarctic Cause/Speculation Thread

Post by MrWings »

SkiPilot wrote:Flying down there is very different from what everyone is used to in the real world.......
In the real world, flying in mountains IFR below terrain without situational awareness is something that not done. I would guess that it is the same down there too.
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