Among the airline's pilots, there is a certain prestige gained by pilots who take one of the jets to its maximum altitude of 41,000 feet.

Seeing their opportunity to join the "410 club", the inexperienced pilots set the auto-pilot to climb to maximum altitude, and in so doing, made their first mistake: Setting the plane to climb at a steep rate, without specifying airspeed. This caused the plane to climb at 2.3 gees, until it reached 41,000 feet, however, unfortunately, it had lost most of its airspeed in the climb, and was dangerously close to stalling. (Strike one.)

When the plane reached FL-410 (Flight Level 410, or 41,000 feet,) the air traffic controller cut in to ask, "3701, are you an RJ-200?"

There was laughter in the cockpit, before one of the pilots replied, "Yeah, we're actually a, there's ah, we don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here."

However, in the thin air, the engines had less thrust than they normally would at lower altitudes, and so the plane slowed even more, becoming dangerously close to stalling. As the stall warnings began clamoring for the pilots' attention, one of them was heard to remark, "Fuck, dude, it's losing it."

Ordinarily, the auto-pilot is programmed to drop the craft's nose in such an event, in order to prevent a stall and recover enough airspeed to maintain lift. However, when the auto-pilot attempted to do so, the pilots, for inexplicable reasons, overrode it, causing both engines to stall. (Strike two.) As the engines died, one of the pilots remarked, "We don't have any engines. You've got to be kidding me."

Jet engines are designed to be able to re-start in midair, however, when a jet engine is run hard at high altitude (as these pilots had just done in their maniacal climb to 41,000 feet,) and then shut down suddenly, the icy-cold air over the hot engines can cause parts to cool at different rates, causing the engine to seize in a condition known as "core lock", which can prevent the engines from turning over, much less re-starting.

At this point, the plane was within easy gliding distance of no fewer than five airstrips at which the plane could have been talked safely to an unpowered landing, if the air traffic controller had known the situation on-board the craft in a timely fashion -- which brings us to these Darwin Award candidates' third and final mistake (strike three, and you're OUT of the gene pool): Trying to cover their own stupidity by lying and saying that only one of their engines had failed. It was fourteen minutes before the pilots admitted the true nature of their situation, and in the meantime, they'd lost too much altitude to get to any airstrip. Both pilots were killed when the plane crash-landed 2.5 miles from the nearest runway in Jefferson City MO, after narrowly missing several houses.

For the spectacular fashion in which these nincompoops took themselves out of the gene pool (and by twos, no less,) I propose that a new Darwin Award be created just to honor them: The Rick Husband Darwin Award. (While Husband himself was a very competent pilot, he nonetheless bears the dubious distinction of having uttered the dumbest-sounding last words in aviation history; "Roger, uh, buh--...")

Here's the original article:

Just Before Dying, a Thrill at 41,000 Feet

By MATTHEW L. WALD, The New York Times

AP The pilots flew a type of Canadair Regional Jet for Pinnacle Airlines.

WASHINGTON, June 13 - Alone in their 50-seat commercial jet, the two young pilots decided to see what it could do.

According to documents released Monday by the National Transportation Safety Board, they climbed so fast that they were pushed down into their seats with 2.3 times the normal force of gravity, zooming toward 41,000 feet, the limit of their Bombardier CRJ200.

"Ooh, look at that," said the second-in-command, Peter R. Cesarz, 23, apparently referring to cockpit readings. "Pretty cool."

"Man, we can do it," said the captain, Jesse Rhodes, 31. "Forty-one it," he said, referring to the maximum altitude.

A few minutes later, though, both engines were dead, and the pilots were struggling to glide to an emergency landing at an airport in Jefferson City, Mo. "We're going to hit houses, dude," one of them said.

The plane crashed two and a half miles from the runway, missing the houses but killing the pilots.

On Monday, the safety board opened three days of hearings into the crash, which occurred last Oct. 14 on a night flight from Little Rock, Ark., to Minneapolis, to reposition the plane for the next day's schedule.

Among the questions at issue is whether the plane's two engines, which are designed to be capable of restarting in flight, may have seized up, resisting four efforts to get them running. Another is whether the airline, Pinnacle, which is rapidly growing and moving young pilots from turboprops into jets, provided appropriate training.

Some investigators say the pilots flew the plane far harder than an airline would fly with passengers on board, and in testimony on Monday, Terry Mefford, Pinnacle's chief pilot, agreed.

"If there's people in the airplane," he said, "you can count that the crew members are pretty much going by the book."

Quotes From the Crash

"Man, we can do it. Forty-one it.'' -- Jesse Rhodes, captain, urging the plane to its maximum altitude of 41,000 feet

"...We don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here"

-- Either Rhodes or his second in command, responding to an air traffic controller's question about the plane's altitude

"We don't have any engines." -- One of the pilots as the plane stalled

"It's beyond belief that a professional air crew would act in that manner.'' -- Thomas Palmer, former manager of Pinnacle's training program for the Bombardier CRJ200

Source: The New York Times

Mr. Mefford also said that since the accident, he had heard talk of a "410 club," whose members had flown the Bombardier to Flight Level 410, or 41,000 feet. Investigators for the safety board apparently heard similar talk. "Investigators formed the impression," a board report said, "that there was a sense of allure to some pilots to cruise at FL 410 just to say they had 'been there and done that.' "

The two pilots had set the autopilot to take the plane to its 41,000-foot limit, but instead of specifying the speed at which it should fly while climbing, they specified the rate of climb. When the jet reached the assigned altitude, it was flying relatively slowly.

The transcript of their conversation as captured by the cockpit voice recorder suggests exhilaration. An air traffic controller with jurisdiction over the flight asked at one point, "3701, are you an RJ-200?"

"That's affirmative," one of the pilots replied.

"I've never seen you guys up at 41 there," she said.

Then there was laughter in the cockpit.

"Yeah, we're actually a, there's ah, we don't have any passengers on board, so we decided to have a little fun and come on up here," one of the pilots answered.

In the thin air, though, the engines had less thrust, and the plane slowed further. The nose pitched up as the autopilot tried to keep it at the assigned altitude, and then an automatic system began warning that the plane was approaching a "stall," in which there is too little lift to maintain flight.

"Dude, it's losing it," one pilot said, using an expletive. "Yeah," the other said.

But as an automatic system tried to push the nose down, to gain speed and prevent the stall, the pilots, for reasons that are unclear, overrode it.

So the plane did stall, and the turbulent air flowing off the wings entered the engines, shutting them down.

"We don't have any engines," one of the pilots said. "You got to be kidding me."

At that point, the safety board says, the plane was within gliding range of five suitable airports. Yet the pilots did not tell the controller the full extent of their problem, reporting that they had lost one engine, not both, and it was not until 14 minutes later that one said: "We need direct to any airport. We have a double engine failure."

The airline has denounced the pilots.

"It's beyond belief that a professional air crew would act in that manner," said Thomas Palmer, former manager of Pinnacle's training program for that model of jet. He said the crew had evidently disregarded "training and common airmanship."

But the Air Line Pilots Association says Pinnacle's safety program had crucial gaps, including lack of training for high altitudes. It also maintains that the engines suffered "core lock," in which engines running at high thrust are shut down suddenly and, when the parts cool at different rates, some rotating components bind up.

General Electric, which built the engines, says they did not seize up.

To be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration, engines must be capable of restarting in flight. One issue that the safety board will have to resolve is whether the engines on this plane met that rule.

Copyright © 2005 The New York Times Company.

Submitted on 06/20/2005

Submitted by: Gos
Reference: New York Times, 6-13-2005

Copyright © 2005 DarwinAwards.com

Kelly said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
Loads of extra details on this one.

Jack said:
Definitely Keep: For Darwin's Eyes
I agree. More and better information than previously reported.

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