Page 16 - Flight Instruments News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Distraction. >> with zero visibility and icing conditions in the fog the pilots are having trouble keeping track of the air bus' horizontal position. the plane ends up almost a mile left of where they should be on approach to runway 5. at 7:19, landing gear is down and locked. but the air bus is descending too fast. passengers are completely unaware of the serious problems in the cockpit. >> i didn't notice something strange. it was a quiet, normal flight. >> just as passengers are asked to make sure their seat belts are fastened, a low altitude sensor rings out in the cockpit. a second later,...

Landing gear are extended normally. the force causes the plane to vibrate and yaw or pull to the right. a light in the cockpit to indicate the landing gear is down and locked does not illuminate. >> when the landing gear extends under normal system operation, it's hydraulic. so it extends at a given rate. it extends smoothly. in the case of united 173, what occurred is it fell out and it fell at a very rapid rate. one of the other components of the landing gear also broke free and in so doing damaged the wiring that closes the switch that lights the light. >> the captain, a veteran pilot, does...

And reliability of service. still, there are differences within the industry on how much flying time is required to pilot a commercial airplane. >> you can be done with those ratings in as little as 350 hours of experience. and what happens is when people get out of flight school, and they have their required government ratings, they then move on to the regionals because that's who hires them. >> while major airlines usually pay better, they usually demand that new hires have 1500 flight hours or more. further blame could lie with how colgan trained its pilots on the q400 stall protection syst...

As the plane descends, the hijackers fight the pilot for control of the plane. >> i said, "guys, this is finished now. we are all dead people now. let me do it my way." and decide -- i don't know how they did it. disengaged the autopilot. >> disengaged it? >> he did. >> from this -- >> from that control. >> right. >> and then, i disconnected the autopilot and then i had to start flying it myself. >> in the cabin, passengers start to panic. >> when the pilot first made the announcement that the plane was out of fuel in one engine and running out in the other, the plane just broke into pandemoni...

>> that captain was under a different kind of stress than we've seen in these others. >> absolutely. not only had the issues of having to put the airplane in the water, he had people on board that were trying to kill the airplane and everybody on board with it, including themselves. >> it's november 23rd, 1996. ethiopian airlines flight 961 from ethiopia's capital to nairobi, kenya, should be a routine two-hour flight. it turns out to be anything but. the pilot, captain leul abate, sat with documentary filmmaker salim amin, whose father mo was killed in the crash. in the cockpit of a boeing 76...