Aeroperu 603 in 1996 - Did the pilot warn the passengers before the crash?

[Vincentomoh]

I watched the Mayday episode about Aeroperu 603 - the flight where the tape covered the pitot-static ports and gave the confusing computer readings. Indicators were wrong and many warnings went off.

In 1996 an Aeroperu 757 took off. The flight was going from Lima, Peru to Santiago de Chile. Soon the pilots did not know if speed indicators were correct and the pilots contacted ATC to try to clear the confusion.

What got them was the fact that the altitude meter displayed a higher altitude than the real altitude and the ATC told the pilots the altitude that was in fact being generated by the airplane. At one point the pilots realized that the plane was close to water. For 20 seconds they tried to climb, but the plane hit water and broke apart.

I believe (I am not 100% certain) that the passengers were never told that the flight was in trouble. A Miami lawyer said that some pax died from drowning.

If this is the case, when the pilots realized the plane was in imminent danger, should they have told passengers to put on lifejackets and brace themselves? Would 20 seconds be a reasonable time frame for this? Would some passengers survive in this scenario?

[cegro27]

It sounds like the pilots were just completely disoriented, attempting to make sense of what was going on. The first impact probably came as a surprise to them (I'm assuming they had no outside visual references since this was a nighttime over-water flight). At that point they were too disoriented and too focused on the confusion to give any warning to the passengers that a crash was imminent.

It would be the same as if you were driving a car with your eyes closed and you side-swipe a guardrail. Would you then pick up the phone a call someone to tell them you're about to have an accident, or would you be more focused on trying to keep from crashing?

20 secs seems like a lot of time, but given the situation they were in, that 20 secs probably seemed more like 5 secs.

[Bok269]

There's an expression in aviation that says "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate." Apply it to this situation, and the actions of the flight crew make sense.