This is always tragic. I hope they fought it every second they had. Good job in putting it down where no one was hurt or killed. Genuine professionals. May God Bless them.

Something a bit strange about this.

The flight was 50 minutes out of Dubai, and was already in contact with Bahrain, as he was out of the UAE airspace.

He declared that he had a problem, and wanted to return to Dubai. He was unable to contact UAE control due to a radio problem.

He had the choice of several airports closer than Dubai - Bahrain, Doha, Abu Dhabi and Jebel Ali.

But, he seems to have made up his mind to return to Dubai.

I am not sure whether this decision had anything to do with the outcome of the flight though.

When flying internationally, a big part of your decision making process concerns where you have diplomatic clearance to go. Yes, an inflight emergency can trump that, but even so it's best to land where you have Dips. The crew may not have thought their IFE was bad enough to warrant risking and international incident. Or maybe they just made a bad decision.

A suggestion was made that they decided to come back to Dubai because of better maintenance facilities here.

Apparently they missed an approach and reported on the go-around that the smoke was so thick in the cockpit that they couldn't see the instruments.

Cargo/or electrical fire I am guessing??

Any names? I have a few old friends over there at UPS.

Capt Doug Lamp, F/O Matt Bell

Here is a brief synopsis of what went down,

We were in Bahraini airspace when we heard the mayday of a "Fire on the 'Deck'" and an immediate descent to 10,000'. The captain requested vectors back to Dubai immediately. As the moments passed the whole cockpit filled with smoke and the CA indicated he could not see any instruments at all. With no visual reference and all instruments unreadable as well as difficulty relaying messages and getting information (reentered UAE FIR but was still talking to BAH 'cause he couldn't change frequencies). Altitudes, headings etc had to be relayed from UAE to BAH to airborne aircraft to UPS and back again (A MESS to say the least). Wound up straight in for 12L at DXB at 10 miles and 7,000'. Couldn't circle because he couldn't see anything. Turned south of the airport -blind- the whole while altitudes are being read to him. It was of no use. The aircraft crashed into a fairly unpopulated area (thankful for that at least). Words can't express the whole situation adequately.



RIP fellow aviators. They never had a chance!

Don't know them, God bless 'em.

quote:

Originally posted by jetdrvr:
Don't know them, God bless 'em.

+1

When I first became aware of this, I thought I might know them, too. I had already done a search for stories like this, though, so I was relieved.

They sound like a couple of great guys, though. I wish I had known them. My thoughts are with their families. Along with quite a few others on this anniversary of 9/11/2001.



Such as my friends Dan Shanower and Bob Penninger.

My ex girlfriend is a heavy captain for them. I was sweating that, although we haven't spoken in years.

Coupla other ex-SAT people over there, also.