[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by sagarpadaki

But the loss of thrust will not cause the nose to pitch up so rapidly! The pilots would have made some corrections to bring the nose down. Going by the high AOA, it looks like a tail heavy result!

You're right. I was going through some analysis comments on the web. It was the sudden shift of weight which caused the nose to pitch up in this incident it seems.

There was one other incident shown on NGC's ACI series if I recall correctly, where one of two engines failed during takeoff thrust period. It had similar stalling results, and no, it is usually not possible to make corrections when the air speed drops from 250+ knots to 100-120 knots rapidly in that takeoff angle, that too with a heavy aircraft.

[ranjitp1]

The crew also had Rinku Summan from Jalandhar.RIP all of them

[skanchan95]

The cause of the crash is now confirmed

Shifting Cargo May Have Doomed Plane That Crashed Near Kabul

KABUL, Afghanistan — Crash investigators in Afghanistan said Monday that quickly shifting cargo of heavy military vehicles contributed to the crash of a civilian cargo plane on April 29 in which all seven people aboard were killed.

As the Boeing 747 began to take off from the Bagram Air Base, the vehicles slammed into the back of the cargo space so hard that parts of the plane broke off and were left on the runway, officials said. With the center of gravity pushed too far backward, the nose rose too high for the plane to fly.

The cockpit voice recorder did not indicate that the pilots knew what was happening, but wiring at the back of the plane showed damage from the shifting cargo, according to Nangialai Qalatwal, a spokesman for the Ministry of Transportation and Civil Aviation. The crash was caught on video by a dashboard camera on a vehicle at the air base.

The accident may cast new attention on the quality of Defense Department oversight of its contractors. The safety of civilian flights is usually regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, but after a 2004 crash in Afghanistan of an American civilian cargo plane under contract to the American military, the F.A.A., which had no personnel in the country, delegated the Defense Department to oversee safety.

With the American military pullout from Afghanistan in full swing, a vast network of transportation contractors has been employed to ship heavy equipment out of the country. Although most of the cargo traffic is expected to go through Pakistani seaports via road hauling, a huge uptick in outbound cargo flights is also under way.

On May 17, the F.A.A. issued a reminder to cargo carriers with heavy vehicles on board to ensure that their loads were tightly fastened, an indication that American safety officials suspected a cargo shift in the April crash.

But on Monday, Afghan officials cautioned that it was too early to determine the exact cause of the accident, which remains under investigation. The cockpit voice recorder, which was recovered from the wreckage, has offered few clues, Mr. Qalatwal said.

“The only thing that was recorded by the black box right before the crash was a pilot’s voice, who was shouting, ‘Wait! Wait!’ ” he said at a news conference in Kabul.

The plane, operated by National Air Cargo, a Michigan-based carrier, was loaded with three armored vehicles and two mine sweepers, almost 80 tons of equipment in all, for a flight from Afghanistan to Dubai, Mr. Qalatwal said. He said that the plane had been checked twice before takeoff, once two hours before departure and again just before it left, and that neither review had revealed any technical problems.

Aviation experts had speculated earlier that there had been a problem with the plane’s pitch control, and that a part might have fallen off during takeoff.

The charred remains of the cargo straps were recovered from the site and appear to have been cut, but Mr. Qalatwal said it was unclear whether the damage had occurred before or after takeoff. The plane, consumed by fire from the crash, yielded little else in the wreckage, he said.

Under treaties governing aviation, the responsibility for investigating a crash lies with the host country, although other parties, including safety officials from the country where the plane was registered, must be involved. The National Transportation Safety Board sent technical experts to Kabul to assist with the investigation.

If the problem was shifting cargo, it was “a freak accident,” said Mark V. Rosenker, a retired Air Force general who was a member of the N.T.S.B. from 2003 to 2009, and chairman for part of that period. But, he said, “it could be that one broke loose and flipped into the others.” In that case, he said, there would have been “a domino effect” inside the plane.

Azam Ahmed reported from Kabul, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/wo...bul.html?_r=1&

[AltoLXI]

Last week when the US evacuated from the base, they left behind 3.5 million items back in the base. Though many of the items are of little value like door knob, food packets etc. what is interesting is they have left behind thousands of civilian vehicles as well but without the keys.

The big ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles. Kohistani said the U.S. also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not being left behind for the Afghan military was blown up before they left.

• Do the defense forces carry the civilian vehicles across the continents? Or they procure them locally?
• Did they leave these vehicles with the calculation that carrying them back is not worth the effort both from logistics/safety perspective?

Link

[sukarsan]

Originally Posted by AltoLXI

• Do the defense forces carry the civilian vehicles across the continents? Or they procure them locally?
• Did they leave these vehicles with the calculation that carrying them back is not worth the effort both from logistics/safety perspective?

Link

I remember reading about MRAPs (a military jeep kind of vehicle) which could throw some idea on the kind of numbers involved.. Below content is from Wikipedia.. Each MRAP costs about $500,000..

In 2013 the U.S. government was looking to sell about 2,000 out of the 11,000 MRAPs it has in Afghanistan. The logistical and financial task of bringing all the vehicles back to the U.S., or destroying some in-country, is too great and foreign buyers are sought to take them. Several countries have reportedly shown interest, but none have signed agreements. The cost of buying them would include shipping them out of Afghanistan themselves.
If the MRAPs cannot be sold to allies, U.S. forces will have to resort to destroying the vehicles before they leave the country. The quantities of MRAPs have been ruled as "in excess" of the needs of the U.S. military and would cost $50,000 per vehicle to ship them out of the country, and they won't be given to the Afghan National Security Forces because they can't maintain them or operate their electronic systems. The cost of destroying them would be $10,000 per vehicle."

I suppose the same would be applicable for civilian vehicles too. The problem is that even if there was a key somewhere, there would be no spares and they will end up in a dump somewhere..