Remembering The Crash Of Flash Airlines Flight 604

SafetyEngineer

New Member
It was five years ago today that Flash Airlines flight 604 fell into the sea. I would like to take this time to remember the incident and give my condolences on the lives lost on that fateful trip.
On January 3, 2004, a Boeing 737-300 series took off from Sharm El Shikh-Ophira Egypt with 135 passengers and 13 crew, bound for Cairo International Airport Egypt. The flight was mostly French holidaymakers on their way home. During the flight something terrible went wrong and at 04:45am the aircraft struck the water and sank, taking all 148 souls on board.
The investigation and ICAO did not come up with a conclusive probable cause. I have attached the Aviation Safety Network information below for you.
I would like to take this moment to remember those who perished and to wish all of you safe flights in the future and offer my sympathy to those who lost anyone on this flight.
May angels guide you under your wings.
Fly Safe! :rawk:
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Accident description

<TABLE><TBODY><TR><TD class=caption>Status:</TD><TD class?desc?>Final</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Date:</TD><TD class=caption>03 JAN 2004</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Time:</TD><TD class=desc>04:45</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Type:</TD><TD class=desc>Boeing 737-3Q8</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Operator:</TD><TD class=desc>Flash Airlines</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Registration:</TD><TD class=desc>SU-ZCF</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>C/n / msn:</TD><TD class=desc>26283/2383</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>First flight:</TD><TD class=desc>1992-10-09 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Total airframe hrs:</TD><TD class=desc>25603</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Cycles:</TD><TD class=desc>17976</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Engines:</TD><TD class=desc>2 CFMI CFM56-3C1</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Crew:</TD><TD class=desc>Fatalities: 13 / Occupants: 13</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Passengers:</TD><TD class=desc>Fatalities: 135 / Occupants: 135</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Total:</TD><TD class=desc>Fatalities: 148 / Occupants: 148 </TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Airplane damage:</TD><TD class=desc>Destroyed</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Airplane fate:</TD><TD class=desc>Written off (damaged beyond repair)</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Location:</TD><TD class=desc>15 km (9.4 mls) S off Sharm el Sheikh (Egypt) http://aviation-safety.net/database/record_map.php?id=20040103-0</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Phase:</TD><TD class=desc>En route (ENR)</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Nature:</TD><TD class=desc>Domestic Non Scheduled Passenger</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Departure airport:</TD><TD class=desc>Sharm el Sheikh-Ophira Airport (SSH), Egypt</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption><NOBR>Destination airport:</NOBR></TD><TD class=desc>Cairo International Airport (CAI/HECA), Egypt</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Flightnumber:</TD><TD class=desc>604</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>Narrative:
Weather was perfect (excellent visibility, 17 degrees C and a light breeze) when Flash Air flight 604 departed the Red Sea resort of Sharm el Sheikh for a flight to Paris-CDG with an intermediate stop at Cairo. On board were 135, mostly French, holidaymakers who were heading home.
At 04:38 the flight was cleared to taxi to runway 22R for departure. After takeoff, at 04:42, the plane climbed and maneuvered for a procedural left turn to intercept the 306 radial from the Sharm el-Sheikh VOR station. When the autopilot was engaged the captain made an exclamation and the autopilot was immediately switched off again. The captain then requested Heading Select to be engaged. The plane then began to bank to the right. The copilot then warned the captain a few times about the fact that the bank angle was increasing. At a bank angle of 40 degrees to the right the captain stated "OK come out". The ailerons returned briefly to neutral before additional aileron movements commanded an increase in the right bank.
The aircraft had reached a maximum altitude of 5460 feet with a 50 degrees bank when the copilot stated: "Overbank". Repeating himself as the bank angle kept increasing. The maximum bank angle recorded was 111 degrees right. Pitch attitude at that time was 43 degrees nose down and altitude was 3470 feet.
The observer on the flight deck, a trainee copilot, called "Retard power, retard power, retard power". Both throttles were moved to idle and the airplane gently seemed to recover from the nose-down, right bank attitude. Speed however increased, causing an overspeed warning. At 04:45 the airplane struck the surface of the water in a 24 degrees right bank, 24 degrees nose-down, at a speed of 416 kts and with a 3,9 G load.
The wreckage sank to a depth of approx. 900 metres.

CONCLUSION: "No conclusive evidence could be found from the findings gathered through this investigation to determin the probable cause. However, based on the work done, it could be concluded that any combination of these findings could have caused or contributed to the accident.
Although the crew at the last stage of this accident attempted to correctly recover, the gravity upset condition with regards to attitude, altitude and speed made this attempt insufficient to achieve a successful recovery."
 
To help understand the crash, here is the BEA video of the short flight. This can be found on YouTube.com. Here is the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCLD6bwGq1I

If you want to see the Mayday Crash Inverstigation Episode on this accident you can see it on YouTube.com too. The Episode is titled "Vertigo" and runs in five sections. The link for the first episode is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abcDVb-BTFs

Again, I do not post this to be morbid, but so maybe we can learn from other's mistakes. My heart and prayers go out to the passengers and crew lost in this flight. May they rest in peace.

Fly higher, fly safer! :rawk:
 
Again, I do not post this to be morbid, but so maybe we can learn from other's mistakes.

I have no clue what it is, exactly, that you think we can learn from this? How about some analysis that might benefit pilots? What mistakes did they make that we can learn from?
 
All I can say that there is too many people trying to reenact plane crashes on their flight simulator and then posting them on YouTube
 
Here are some lessons that can be learned from the crash of Flash Airlines flight 604.

1. The Captain was the pilot flying and believed to have vertigo. It is possible the Captain was effected by this condition and instead of correcting a problem, he made the problem worse.

2. There wasn’t any cockpit crew resource management training done for the crew of this flight. The first officer seemed to have noticed a problem, but hesitated to speak up until it was too late. CRM is essential to a safe flight, as seen in the United Flight 232 incident.

3. The aircraft was experiencing electrical (and possibly mechanical) problems. The issue should have been checked out and addressed on the ground before the flight took off.

4. The jump seat dead heading passenger had more experience than the first officer and still didn’t speak up until it was too late. Another condition CRM could have corrected.

5. The Captain did not believe the instruments. He appeared to have a mindset that the plane should be doing one thing, but the instruments were telling a different story. The Captain chose to ignore his instruments and made a bad situation worse.

The final report was inconclusive because there were too many “maybe’s”, but the above five items are fact. The lesson one can take is good CRM is essential to safe flight, don’t be afraid to speak up when things are going wrong, look and understand your instrument readings, and check out any possible electrical or mechanical problem before the flight leaves the ground (especially if the problem is new).

Hope this helps. Again I want to express my thoughts to those who lost their lives five years ago. My prayers are with them.

Fly smart, fly safe. :rawk:
 
Here are some lessons that can be learned from the crash of Flash Airlines flight 604.

1. The Captain was the pilot flying and believed to have vertigo. It is possible the Captain was effected by this condition and instead of correcting a problem, he made the problem worse.

2. There wasn’t any cockpit crew resource management training done for the crew of this flight. The first officer seemed to have noticed a problem, but hesitated to speak up until it was too late. CRM is essential to a safe flight, as seen in the United Flight 232 incident.

3. The aircraft was experiencing electrical (and possibly mechanical) problems. The issue should have been checked out and addressed on the ground before the flight took off.

4. The jump seat dead heading passenger had more experience than the first officer and still didn’t speak up until it was too late. Another condition CRM could have corrected.

5. The Captain did not believe the instruments. He appeared to have a mindset that the plane should be doing one thing, but the instruments were telling a different story. The Captain chose to ignore his instruments and made a bad situation worse.

The final report was inconclusive because there were too many “maybe’s”, but the above five items are fact. The lesson one can take is good CRM is essential to safe flight, don’t be afraid to speak up when things are going wrong, look and understand your instrument readings, and check out any possible electrical or mechanical problem before the flight leaves the ground (especially if the problem is new).

Hope this helps. Again I want to express my thoughts to those who lost their lives five years ago. My prayers are with them.

Fly smart, fly safe. :rawk:

Thanks for the post. Every post of yours I have seen has added something intelligent to the conversation or just some good food for thought. It amazes me the amount of people on this site that just have all the answers.:sarcasm:
 
I am expressing how I feel and I am not the only one, that said, thanks for calling me out of three others.:)

I am not only calling you out...all the others also as you see in my above thread. He is obviously in a position to teach us as pilots some knowledge the amount of people acting like....to him makes me want to hurl. A good pilot is always learning so some should start acting like a good pilot.
 
Ever since the CAL incident Flight Engineer has come off as weird to me...

He's a SAFETY engineer, not a FLIGHT engineer.

I can see both sides, the mods are doing the job of making sure that the info/poster is legit, especially when it *appeared* that he was associated with the NTSB when in fact he isn't. That was cleared up in another post after some pretty good "interrogation" by the mods...which was maybe a bit much. However, if that is their right to do so, since they have been charged by Doug to do so.

I have enjoyed the posts by SE, they do highlight some areas that can use some good discussion once in a while...and he hasn't mentioned ONCE about the stupid Dallas Cowboys!!! :)

I can also agree that his font is annoying, but so is the "expired" ticker factory and a "self quoting quote" in JA Yawd Bwoy's sig line. :)
 
He's a SAFETY engineer, not a FLIGHT engineer.

I can see both sides, the mods are doing the job of making sure that the info/poster is legit, especially when it *appeared* that he was associated with the NTSB when in fact he isn't. That was cleared up in another post after some pretty good "interrogation" by the mods...which was maybe a bit much. However, if that is their right to do so, since they have been charged by Doug to do so.

I have enjoyed the posts by SE, they do highlight some areas that can use some good discussion once in a while...and he hasn't mentioned ONCE about the stupid Dallas Cowboys!!! :)

I can also agree that his font is annoying, but so is the "expired" ticker factory and a "self quoting quote" in JA Yawd Bwoy's sig line. :)

oops about the Flight/Safety thing, and what ticker factory?;):)
 
I can also agree that his font is annoying,

"Comic Sans" is hated all over the internet, to the degree that it's an immediate blow to one's credibility to use it. One blog that I visit said that most of his death threats arrive using that font.
 
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