Talk:Western Airlines Flight 2605

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'Your other left stupid.' - the eternal DI

Western was founded by a guy who flew for the RAF in WWI. Mark Lincoln (talk) 00:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Wrong Information?

The Spanish language page of Wikipedia cites the other runway, not 23L. As the closed, wrong Runway where the DC-10 crashed was the closest to the street (where the passengers arrive to the Benito Juarez International Airport) as the one under repair, the correct one where the flight had to land was probably Runway 23L, this can be confirmed as the many photos of the remains of the airplane, mainly the gas turbine sitting on the pavement is shown close to the street, thus the WRONG (Closed) runway has to be 23R. It has been said that the crew was in a strong disagreement, and that the pilot continued the landing in spite of first officer strong disagreement. This behaviour was a contributing cause of the accident, but is completely ignored in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.100.180.19 (talk) 01:38, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Flying the cleared approach?

The NTSB seems (from our article) to have believed tht the crew improperly chose to descend below decision height while 'not yet quite' having visual contact with the runway: "In continuing toward 23L below [decision height, 600ft aal], by definition the crew was deviating from their cleared approach". Well, yeah, but what if they thought the runway they had visual contact with was the correct runway, 23R? so they thought they were flying their cleared approach?

• The crew did not have "visual contact" with any runway probably until the left wheels hit the dirt to the left of 23L which apparently surprised the crew. However they (specifically the pilot Charles Gilbert knew based on what he said) they were at 23L. Question is misinformed.

They had "stayed on the correct flight path to Runway 23 Right for most of the time between the outer marker "Metro Eco" and [the] Airport, and only deviated to the runway closed to traffic (23 Left) when at a height of (600 feet) above the ground during .. final approach": it looks as if they were intending to maintain a lateral separation from the ILS path (to 23L) so as to keep them in line to come straight in to 23R. (That is, do the sidestep "in advance", out by "Metro Eco".) But then, with fog-banks etc giving them problems, visual contact was with 23L but not 23R; they reckoned they had slightly overdone the lateral separation and moved left to correct it, and so lined up with 23L . . then realised rather late tht they were now on the ILS path so this must be 23L - wrong runway - and they better go around.

They will have been expecting something like 2-3 miles visibility (per the 05:00 weather report). With a fogbank unluckily placed they would not see 23R; and this is at night, so they likely wouldn’t see the fogbank itself either. They’d have no obvious warning tht 23R was in front of them but hidden.

This explanation is not addressed by our article as it stands. It ought to be (if at all possible). Is it not discussed in the reliable sources? (any of them?)

• What explanation? This is a paragraph of speculation about what happened with some accurate details of what did. The pilot knew they were at 23L. This Wikipedia page doesn't thoroughly describe what happened, so speculation or additional questions might be expected by anyone hoping to gain a better understanding of the accident. That is certainly my intent by contributing to the talk page.

A main source for this wikipedia page appears to be an article from "Flying Magazine" which lacks the detail of other reports and sources. Presumably the "Flying Magazine" article abridged content from 'official' reports and other sources.

And, thinking of sources - do we have the CVR? Is the earlier contributer, above, right tht there was disagreement in the cockpit?

• The CVR has been widely available for years. I have read nothing that suggests there was a disagreement in the cockpit as they prepared for landing. The 2nd officer, Reichel, crucially did not call out altitude on approach.

"the flight touched down hard on the unpaved left shoulder of Runway 23L with more than 2 g of force, at 130 knots of speed."

The left landing gear was off the runway on the left side of runway 23L. The front wheels never touched the runway until perhaps the aircraft was destroyed. Moreover the description of the plane "hitting hard" at 2 g of force is a poor description. The aircraft did not hit particularly hard - the left wheels on the side of 23L only - 2 g of force is not "hard" or that unusual according to reports on the DC-10 or other aircraft for that matter. The right landing gear was momentarily on its way to impacting the parked and loaded dump truck. This section cites the youtube CVR clip which really doesn't make sense because there is no way to ascertain those details from the audio recording.

– SquisherDa (talk) 10:16, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Accident Details

This section incorrectly states that the pilot saw the dump truck and then exclaimed "..Jesus Christ". This is not correct. The CVR recording has the sound of the initial collision of the dump truck prior to pilot Charles Gilbert's exclamation of "Jesus Christ". The dump truck was most likely not seen by either pilot but there is no way to state this with 100% certainty.

The CVR recording of this crash is widely available.