Plane crash: Pilot or technical error?

(Baonghean.vn) - Airplane accidents are always one of the most catastrophic accidents in the transportation industry. Although no one wants it, it still happens. A question arises: What causes air accidents? Is it due to the fault of the pilot or a technical problem?

On Thursday, February 7, after decoding the information in the black box of the TransAsia plane that crashed into a river after taking off from the airport in Taipei, Taiwan, authorities announced that the cause of the accident was that the pilot turned off the plane's main engine.

Taiwanese rescue team salvages the wreckage of the crashed plane last February. Photo: Reuters.

The investigation report of the Civil Aviation Safety Council of Taiwan said that just seconds before the accident, the pilot had pushed the wrong lever. And the only working engine of the ATR 72-600 aircraft was cut off while the other engines lost power. As a result, the plane began to lose altitude and fell into the river. The accident on February 4 in Taiwan killed 43 people. According to investigators, they will continue to find out why the pilot acted like that.

As for the military plane crash in Medan, Indonesia on June 30 that killed 142 people, the initial cause was determined to be engine failure. Also on July 2, the air force said that the 51-year-old C-130 Hercules aircraft was flying too slowly due to a problem with one of its four propeller engines. It is possible that a propeller stopped, causing the plane to hit the antenna tower of a building.

Indonesian military cleans up debris from the crashed plane on June 30. Photo: Reuters.

Faced with the hypothesis that the cause of the accident was “overloading”, the air force spokesman flatly rejected this hypothesis. The air force spokesman said that the plane could carry up to 12.5 tons while the weight of all passengers on board was about 8 tons. Although Indonesian authorities are continuing to investigate, the incident once again sounded the alarm bell for the safety of Indonesia’s aviation industry. Especially in the context that the fatal accident above is the 6th accident involving military aircraft to occur in the past decade in Indonesia.

Chu Thanh

(according to Le Monde)