NO ONE Was Ready for THIS! What Really Happened To Birgenair Flight 301

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As if in a nightmare, the pilots of Birgenair flight 301 were trying to control their aircraft but it just would not do what they asked of it. Unfortunately, the events that subsequently unfolded were very real and the story of HOW this flight went so badly wrong is shocking to this day.

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Below you will find the links to videos and sources used in this episode.

SOURCES
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Final Report:

Aircraft used:
Flight Factor Boeing 757 version 2 Professional

Mud Dauber: A Spider’s Worst Nightmare: used with permission from @randyadventure

#Mentourpilot #pilot #aircraft

[AnotherPointOfView]

I have seen this sort of thing numerous times in past aircraft crash reports.
One thing that stands out to me as an engineer (non-pilot) is that instruments that show faulty readings NEVER fix themselves. They just don't.
If there is a clear fault with one of the redundant systems, and acknowledged by the crew, then that system should NEVER be trusted again until it is serviced, regardless of whether it "springs into life" again. This fact should be drilled into all pilots.

[sprogg]

Hi Peter this story really resonates with me I was onboard a ATR42 that slammed on the brakes in an aborted takeoff approaching V1 during take off when the co-pilot read zero airspeed. After we taxied back to airport, engineers where called in and we watched the aircraft thunder up and down the runway in tests... Eventually engineer arrived and the fault turned out to be a mud wasp nest blocking the pitot tubes

[MrNicoJac]

It is so sad to have reached the point as a Mentour Pilot fan where you just _know_ halfway through the video how it's gonna end 😢

[enigmadrath]

After so many Mentour videos I've developed a knee jerk fight-or-flight reaction whenever I hear the words "PITOT tubes".

[VegaTheLyra]

I want to thank the Mentour team for including subtitles! It's very convenient and helps me not misunderstand the technical terms!

[Bandaid_Brigade]

My CFA asked why I’m so focused on the details as a new pilot student. I told him about your discord and videos, he is also apart of the community!

[sergiord]

I remember my mother telling me stories of this accident as it took cute a while to recover the bodies. I’m from Dominican Republic, they built a memorial site in the city with the names of all passengers and crews carved in a stone.

Locally there is so much speculation of why the plane crashed, thank you for taking the time to cover and clarify this terrible accident.

Greetings from DR. Love your content.

[tomstravels]

Remember this. Blocked pitot tubes do not cause crashes, the pilots reaction and response to the loss of airspeed is what causes the crash

[tmytyson]

I was a young copilot after Air France 447 when we got a bunch of simulator training on various ADC malfunctions. We had been briefed on the accident report the day before and even then, when we got a runaway airspeed in the sim, my first reaction was to rip the throttles back and pitch up to avoid the overspeed; the jumpseater had to call out the decreasing altimeter to snap me and the pilot out of it. It's wild how much situational awareness you lose when the instruments tell you you're about to exceed a structural limit.

[thanhvunam-wi]

Each of mentour pilot videos is getting better and better everytime.

[j]

I used PIOSEE to convince my mom to visit Urgent Care. I emphasized key info she'd excluded (her panic that the problem was serious). She agreed the best option was to be diagnosed sooner rather than wait many days for her personal doctor to say, you're fine. Worked great! Cut right through her anxiety. I was impressed.

[kennethmc]

I work on 737's for a military unit. Our aircraft spend more time on the ground than most. Sometimes a day or two, sometimes a month when there is major maintenance. Covers have not been SOP, because there has never been a problem. Back in July we started getting all kinds of unreliable airspeed problems, on all aircraft, seemingly one right after another. We'd always blow out the system with nitrogen and it would be fine. We never saw any direct evidence that it was caused by bugs, until one day I saw a wasp hanging out suspiciously close to one of the elevator feel diff probes. From that day forward, nobody goes home till probe covers are on. And dont forget about the elevator feel diff probes, there is a pole that you can use to install them from the aft galley doors!

It's my opinion that the unseasonably wet spring we had contributed to a larger wasp population in the summer.

[alanhelton]

Once when flying over the Tora Bora mountains, my aircraft while flying at 75 kn had a ground speed of -25 kn… Quite odd to fly backwards in a fixed wing plane…

[cccherry]

Nothing traumatizes me more than the accidents where "pitot probe tubes" and "jackscrew assemblies" have to be explained by Petter int he first half.

[ilya_baraev_sail_racing]

0:38 I was a nervous flyer, but now i happily wait to hear PTU barking on A320, then think about V1 and V2 during a take off, do not freak out when pilots refuse a plane after boarding is complete, enjoy light turbulence, and cannot wait for my first go-around experience. Thank you, Peter!!!

[crhvideo]

Another great video, thanks! Being German I remember the news about the disaster well.
On a different note, the comment on essentially hovering brought back a memory. On the last flight before my checkride the chief pilot of my flight school made me demonstrate minimum controllable airspeed into a ~45 knot headwind, which made our ground speed net zero. The chief pilot pointed out of the window: "Look, we are hovering!" Interesting feeling indeed.

[adul]

That is basically, what "Triple modular redundancy" is - having three systems, so in case one goes wrong, you can tell not only that one of them is faulty (as with "Dual modular redundancy", with two duplicated systems), but also, _which_ one is wrong, and therefore - what is the correct value.
Safety-critical computer systems often follow this principles - in some cases, if CPU can be restarted, two cores working in lockstep (like some Arm designs) are sufficient, but for things like space missions, triple redundancy was also used.
In the past sailors, needing to keep time for navigation, used to say to take either one chronometer (clock) or three, never two.

[aaron]

Three pilots, two functioning airpeed indicators, and nobody looked at the artificial horizon? Never noticed the nose-up attitude? This is infuriating, and terrifying.

[kul]

It’s seems like a lot of these accidents involve ignoring the stick shaker while a bunch of other stuff is going on in the cockpit. To me, a stick shaker is the last gasp of the aircraft trying to tell you what to do. Why doesn’t this cause a total reset in behavior to ignore all else, rely on basic aviation training, get the nose down and stabilize the aircraft?

[justintime]

40:09 is the scariest thing to see on a primary flight display. As Kelsey always says: Keep the blue side up!