The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released a new preliminary report detailing a turbulence encounter involving a Delta Air Lines Airbus A330 on July 30. Flight 56 from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport following what the crew described as a “rapid” series of altitude changes near Creston, Wyoming.
According to the NTSB, 24 passengers were evaluated by emergency personnel upon landing, with 18 transported to hospitals. Two cabin crew sustained serious injuries, while five others suffered minor injuries.
Investigators noted the flight crew had discussed the potential for turbulence along the route during pre-departure briefings and initially observed only light cirrus clouds as the aircraft climbed. At flight level 370, air traffic control assigned the crew to a northerly heading. Shortly after turning, the aircraft experienced an overspeed event, disengagement of the autopilot, and a sequence of climb and descent cycles lasting about 2.5 minutes. Preliminary flight data recorder information showed vertical acceleration peaks ranging from 1.75 g to -0.5 g, with pitch variations of up to 10 degrees nose up and 5 degrees nose down.
The report notes there was a convective SIGMET in effect at the time with tops above flight level 450. Crew members declared an emergency and coordinated with dispatch while assessing onboard injuries. The aircraft itself sustained only minor damage to its interior.
The agency said cockpit voice and flight data recorder information is now under review in Washington, D.C., and the investigation will continue with the participation of the FAA, Delta Air Lines, the Air Line Pilots Association, and international representatives from France’s BEA and Airbus.
As a retired ATC familiar with radar weather display on ATC scopes, I can’t fathom a controller not seeing on his radar what is shown on the image in this report, and not issuing a vector around that big red spot. Maybe a current radar controller can explain the discrepancy?
There is zero accountability for controllers that do a terrible job.
Yes, the controller can issue an advisory but it’s the pilot’s job to fly the plane. By that, I’m saying look out the window and use your radar. With that kind of pre-departure weather brief, I’d be monitoring my radar all the time.
Mac, a few years back, was IFR and was given an assigned heading to fly, I read back the heading. I flew as directed and it became very rough, I then was handed off to another controller. When I checked in, the controller exclaimed, that she didn’t know why I had been assigned that heading as it was heading me directly into a thunderstorm. She gave me a new heading to fly out of the turbulence.
This is clearly on the flightcrew. At that altitude and in that airspace they could have asked for deviations in any direction, to avoid the convective activity they ended up flying into, and ATC would have approved it. There are several sources of information available to a flightcrew regarding convective activity along their route of flight. Modern aircraft have excellent on board weather radar and Part 121 carriers, like Delta, have a dispatcher monitoring each flight, providing updates on their routing including sending sigmets and ride reports. Armed with that information the crew would then tell ATC how they wanted to avoid the weather ahead. The NTSB report stated the crew flew through the area with the heaviest, all red, radar returns. Maybe they thought they could top it, but that is almost always a very bad idea. The fact that they didn’t have the seatbelt sign on is also very hard to understand . Since this flight had an augmented crew it will be interesting to find out who was actually on the flightdeck when this happened. In any case the responsibility for operating this flight rests solely with the flightcrew, not ATC.
I normally do not comment on these things because I am almost always wrong😀
In this case I am totally flabbergasted as to what this crew was thinking. I would expect this behavior from an inexperienced regional jet crew but not a mainline crew. Very disappointing!