FlyDubai pax and crew killed by fatigue? - Curt Lewis videos

Flydubai Flight FZ981 Crash Update: Airliner Worked Crew To Death, Ignored 'Pilot Fatigue' Complaints, Report Says Russian emergency rescuer walks through wreckage of the flydubai passenger jet which crashed, killing all 62 people on board as it tried to land in bad weather in the city of Rostov-on-Don, March 19, 2016. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES/AFP The crash of Flydubai flight FZ981 Saturday was inevitable as the pilot was "worked to death" by the airliner, a former Flydubai captain told RT News. All 62 people on board were killed after the plane went down in southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don. The former pilot reportedly said that Flydubai's top management was aware that pilots were being overworked as several complaints were made to the authorities. As the new report emerged about Flydubai's crew being overworked, Russian investigators said Monday that they had been able to retrieve data from a damaged cockpit voice recorder recovered from the scene of a plane crash. "When I was still at the company, one of the last things I told management is that there would be an accident because of pilot fatigue," the ex-pilot told RT News on condition of anonymity. He also reportedly provided documents showing pilots, junior pilots in particular, being assigned multiple flight shifts in a row. He added that crew often did not get enough time for sleep. "Everybody at the company has these dangerous shifts from day flight to night flight, and then back to a day flight, and then back to a night flight, and it has definitely been a big issue for a long time," the ex-pilot reportedly said, adding that the sleep deprivation could be a reason for Flight FZ981 crash. "The way that [Flydubai] ... builds the schedules does not account for circadian rhythm ... they do not allow pilots to get the right amount of rest, or the proper rest before a flight, and that is exactly what both of these pilots were, the situation that they were in, for sure," the pilot said. RT news reported, citing the flight log of the co-captain of flight FZ981, that Alejandro Cruz Alava had worked for 11 days with only one day off prior to the crash. "[Alava] was working eleven days in a row with the exception of one day off, which was Tuesday March 15th," the former pilot reportedly said. "There's is no doubt he was fatigued and exhausted for this flight ... that definitely was a contributing factor, no matter how [Flydubai] may try to deny it." A source close to the captain of the flight told RT News that Aristos Socratous had reportedly filed paperwork containing his resignation because of the hectic schedule, and only had a few weeks left to fly. The Boeing 737-800 crashed while on its second attempt to land in strong wind and rain conditions. Russian officials said they would examine several scenarios, including pilot error, equipment malfunctions and weather conditions. http://www.ibtimes.com/flydubai-flight-fz981-crash-update-airliner-worked-crew-death-ignored-pilot-fatigue-2340795 Back to Top

BLACK BOX DATA RETRIEVED FROM PLANE THAT CRASHED IN RUSSIA MOSCOW - Russian investigators said on Monday they had been able to retrieve data from a damaged cockpit voice recorder recovered from the scene of a plane crash at the weekend in southern Russia that killed all 62 people on board. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered officials to examine whether Russia's flight safety rules needed to be tightened up after the crash, which happened as the Boeing 737-800 tried to land at a regional airport in strong, gusting wind. Questions have been raised about why the aircraft went ahead with its attempts to land when another jet heading for the same airport a short while earlier had diverted elsewhere because of the bad weather. The crashed jet, operated by Dubai-based budget carrier Flydubai, came down in the early hours of Saturday at Rostov-on-Don airport in southern Russia on its second attempt to land after flying from Dubai. The Dubai government said on Twitter that Flydubai would resume flights from Rostov-on-Don on Tuesday. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said other flights to and from the city had resumed. The airport was closed for a time after the crash. The plane's flight data recorder survived largely intact, but the cockpit voice recorder - which should shed light on the pilots' final conversations - was badly damaged, leading officials to say initially it could take weeks to restore it. "Memory has already been retrieved from the black boxes, it's being worked on," a spokesman of the 'Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which is investigating the crash, told Reuters. "The decoding of the two black boxes may take between several weeks and several months," he said. There is so far no suggestion of an attack on the aircraft. Russian media say the two main theories under consideration by investigators are possible pilot error or a technical failure. Flydubai's CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said on Saturday it was too early to determine why the plane, which was just over five years old, crashed. http://ewn.co.za/2016/03/21/Black-box-data-retrieved-from-plane-that-crashed-in-Russia Back to Top

New CCTV footage offers insight into Flydubai FZ981 crash (VIDEO) Two previously unpublished CCTV videos allegedly showing the Flydubai FZ981 crash in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don that killed all 62 people on board have been posted on YouTube. Both show the Boeing-738 inexplicably dropping out of the sky. The black-and-white videos taken during the night of the crash show the catastrophe from a new angle and distance. The first one shows the plane literally falling from the skies almost vertically, with a massive fireball upon impact. The second clip posted by local DONDAY channel shows what looks like a plane trying to land. All of a sudden the aircraft goes up and disappears in the clouds. Moments later the bright spot is seen going down fast and an explosion follows. On March 19, Flydubai's Boeing 737-800 jet flight FZ981 was en route from Dubai to Russia's Rostov-on-Don. The aircraft crashed early in the morning during its second landing approach amid poor weather conditions. The plane disintegrated, killing all 55 passengers and 7 crew members onboard.