Hard to believe, but it seems to be that the FO. put 100t. less in the Computer so that the Airbus ROT was extremly late near a catastroph.
Some further developments in the EK tailstrike at MEL came out sunday in this article:
 http://www.news.com.au/travel/story/0,28318,25323449-5014090,00.html

I tried to find the details at the ATSB website but I have heard on the radio sunday that this report was actually leaked early to the media. For those interested the ATSB details are here:
 http://www.atsb.gov.au/publications/...ports/2009/AAIR/aair200901310.aspx

It amazes me how little media attention this incident has been getting given how serious it was and how close Australia came to having a major air disaster. As I said earlier in the thread I am fascinated by how this happened...

There is more discussion going about this at this thread: EK A345 MEL Incident "Near Crash"

This is really hard to believe, but it is definitly a plausible cause. The whole order of events could be caused by this mistake.
Fortunatly no one died. To err is human, this things had been repeated in the past and will repeat in the future

Greetings from EDHI

Thanks for the info. ( LA Wolf2008 )

You are right, it is hard to believe.
Good that no body died.
Lets hope for the future, that things will change. - (to the better)

Saludos

Unfortunately not hard to believe for me. :(
This miscalculation happened in other airlines worldwide as well.

The problem is the mixed-fleet flying (340-300 and 340-600 together.)
With the -300 you are used to type takeoff-weights of about 200-240 tons. Now sitting in a 600 you have normally weights about 100 tons more (320-360).

This won't be an excuse but it is the most common error in this case.

Most operators changed their computer-program which is used for calculating the takeoff-speeds. So if you sit in a 340-600 and put weights starting with a 2 a pop up-window will come up and warn you.
Also the two pilots have to calculate independent.

Very glad no one died in this accident.

-----
:!:  http://www.pilotenbilder.de

Can someone explain the technical details behind this? Is it a case of you enter in the magic number and the plane "adjusts" the amount of power you will need to get airborne? If this is the case, why would you restrict the power on take off when I would have thought it is one of the most critical times to have access to all power?

Also, being off by 100t is a pretty hefty amount, is there any kind of double check to ensure the right numbers are put in? Could this be something to be addressed as a result of what happened? Knowing full well here that anything from the crew not paying attention, not being fully alert etc could have them ignore/accept/etc the prompt to confirm the data entered. Also the main runway at MEL. is very long, 3.65km, and for the plane to have got that far without the pilots having aborted take-off or taking emergency procedures much earlier is very concerning.
And there were suggestions last month after it happened that the aircraft was overweight.
I think its an EK Problem, this is not the first tailstrike incident for EK on the A340s. There was another incident in JNB in 2005 where a -300 suffered a tailstrike due to poor training procedures. PF was given a non approved rotation tip during training.

Just trying to get enlightened on how it all works.

[quote]why would you restrict the power on take off when I would have thought it is one of the most critical times to have access to all power?[/quote]

Triebwerk hält länger!

[quote]got that far without the pilots having aborted take-off or taking emergency procedures much earlier is very concerning.[/quote]

Menschen können Beschleunigung nicht abschätzen, wenn man merkt es ist zu wenig Schub, ist es zu spät!

[quote]Knowing full well here that anything from the crew not paying attention, not being fully alert etc [/quote]

Schon mal müde geflogen, Emirates fliegt die meisten Ziele mit minimum rest, Piloten sind denen wohl zu teuer!

Assuming that we can indeed measure the weight of the aircraft either through pressure in the struts or strain gauges, measure air pressure/density with more instrumentation, and measure wind speed and direction at the start of take off, we should then be able to get an instantaneous calc for V1 etc.

Going further, we can also compute increasing lift on the wings as pressure on the landing gear reduces (or by wing deflection), and our next-gen computer pulls back gently on the stick at exactly the right time and away we go...

Surely this is possible with today's technology?

[quote]Assuming that we can indeed measure the weight of the aircraft either through pressure in the struts or strain gauges, measure air pressure/density with more instrumentation, and measure wind speed and direction at the start of take off, we should then be able to get an instantaneous calc for V1 etc.[/quote]

Tehnical very complicated, tried to implement on A380, but not accurate enough.

[quote]Going further, we can also compute increasing lift on the wings as pressure on the landing gear reduces (or by wing deflection), and our next-gen computer pulls back gently on the stick at exactly the right time and away we go...[/quote]

No one wants the aircraft to be flown completly automatically. Not the customers nor the passengers.

Greetings form EDHI

Does anybody know when the pilots realized that they were too slow? How did they react? Not being a pilot, I could imagine that they increased the thrust when they realized they will not rotate before reaching the end of the runway. Does anybody know?

After they reached and overshot V1 speed, but not VR in a way they expected, normally they should have selected TOGA Power by pushing the thrustlevers to the TOGA detend, and start the rotation. But the problem with any Jetliner is, that as soon as you lift off the nose from ground, the drag increases so dramatically, that there is nearby no further acceleration.
I don'T think there is a special checklist or procedure for this case, that if you have entered to less weight and trying a FLEX Takeoff. With one engine failure after V1 the Aircraft could easily lift off safely, but when you have 4 engines running at to low power, things are getting from bad to worse in a very quick time.

Greetings from EDHI

First off....we can calculate the weight...then the speeds according to the weight...
now the real problem hits when, we decide to FLEX takeoff....which basically means, we are reducing the power required to reach these speeds, and these are dependent on OAT, and runway length and a/c config....

now imagine this...i need 8000 feet to takeoff with a 250 ton A340, speeds around 144/150/162.... to reach these speeds i can use 90% power or 100%, if i use 90% power i will end up using most of the runway, the 90% is just arbitrary.....

BUT if the weight is wrong, even if the speeds will get me off the ground, it means i might not have enough runway to reach those speeds, so i would need 95% minimum for THAT runway, they were very very lucky that they had remaining runway...
BUT, i also suspect that, there really was a lower weight, because, they rotated early, without enough lift...so in this case, very very lucky, had this been on a shorter runway...disaster....

ist es hier "aero.de" oder aero.uk"???
wenn jeder in seiner Sprache schreiben würde, gibt es sicherlich Chaos.
Mille Grazie

Wenn jemand ein Problem mit dem Verstehen hat, kann er sich gerne melden, ich übersetze dann sinngemäß. Sollte jemand der deutschen Sprache nicht mächtig genug sein, um damit einen aussagekräftigen Text zu schreiben, kann er dies gerne in Englisch tun.
Deutsch ist zwar Forumssprache, aber sollte nicht Ausschlussgrund sein (Editiert in Abstimmung mit dem Forumsbetreiber)

Gruß aus EDHI

Thats the way it is.

Asi son las cosas.

Saludos

Deutsch ist zwar Forumssprache, aber sollte nicht Ausschlussgrund sein (Editiert in Abstimmung mit dem Forumsbetreiber) (Entschuldige bitte den Eingriff: Edited by SDFlight)

Tolle Aussage...... Danke!!!!