Incidents and Accidents : March 2010 B738 LOWW

Shit happens and in the case of flight simulation the worst that can happen is that your plane crashes into the virtual earth, luckily with no loss of lives or personal injuries! But practice makes perfect and that means we should learn from our mistakes. This blog entry describes my latest flight simulation accident including an analysis of what caused it and how not to do it.

Aircraft: Boeing 737-800
Simulator: FSX SP2
Type: default aircraft with freeware livery
Departure: Amsterdam/Schiphol (EHAM – AMS)
Arrival: Vienna (LOWW)

For this flight I used my full simulation rig, including yoke, pedals, throttle quadrant and MCP Pro with a secondary display for the world map (IvAe) and Pilot client software (IvAp) on my new system. It was my first full flight in many months in an aircraft of this class so I was out of practice.

First Incident
After taking off from Schiphol and some 3000’ from the ground the autopilot was engaged for throttle and altitude command, initial climb 7000’. There was some strange interaction of the autopilot (Control Wheel Steering got engaged) and the default boeing.

The aircraft’s speed kept increasing and the pitch increased to nearly 30 degrees. The initial attempts to control failed, then the I disabled the autopilot using the disengage lever but it was too let, the aircraft was damaged due to overspeed.

Second Incident
Took off from Amsterdam and flew all the way to Vienna. I had charts for all runways and the wind was 340 degrees 04 knots so I chose doing ILS on runway 34. However, LOVV Radar was active and told me to expect vectors for runway 29 (go figure!). I was told to go direct to STO which was a problem because default a/c are not that sophisitated, after some insistence I managed to get a heading to STO VOR.

I passed STO at Flight Level 120, was told to turn right heading 115 and descent to 4000’. Later I was told to turn right (circling approach) and then right again to head to the runway. The charts for runway 29 said the OCX localizer was 109.55 and bearing 294. The controller told me to report when intercepting the localizer but that did not happen.

I did get runway in sight and yet the localizer was not active and for that reason I was not aligned. Then there was a “cockpit intrussion” (yes, even in flight simulation) because my father came in to ask what I wanted for lunch and he is not very patient :) so I had to respond several questions while I tried to listen to ATC and control my final approach.

Unfortunately all warnings came active, too low! I could see the ground. I disengaged autothrottle (had it on approach speed) and applied full thrust but it was too late, it wouldn’t come up fast enough and I crashed and burned some 5 nm from runway 29. All 150 virtual passengers died around 18:10 :(

Here two things were the culprit of this virtual air disaster. First the cockpit intrussion, yes even in flight simulation you must have all senses on your final approach (people think that it is a game, or that it is easy) and any distraction can be (and was) catastrophic!

The other factor was the virtual pilot’s confusion when the navigation instruments did not behave as expected. Further analysis of the virtual crash site produced the approach charts used by the virtual pilot, the black box indicated the a/c was in approach configuration but something important was amiss! the OCX localizer frequency was not 109.55 as in the charts but 109.70 (bearing was still 294)!

The problem there was that the Austrian IVAO division points virtual pilots to get their charts from the European Air Traffic Control organization which I used. Unfortunately the default Flight Simulator (Microsoft) FSX scenery has a different frequency for the localizer of runway 29! all other LOWW localizer frequencies were correct. So, had I been allowed to land on rwy 34 as I had originally planned at least one bad factor would not have orcurred! Funny enough, more than a year ago I had a similar incident because the ILS frequency of the charts of the Brussels runway was not the same as in the flight simulator. I still wonder why online flying organizations point to use real world charts if they know some things are not the same, luckily these are mostly exceptions rather than the rule.

Lessons learned:

• When flying online put a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on your bedroom! if you fly offline (undeclared flights) you can press “P” (Pause) but I never fly offline.
• Always check the frequencies and headings shown on your charts (approach plates) with those in the flight simulator, they may differ! sometimes the frequency, other times the bearing, and in some cases both!