Exactly.
PAKISTAN INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES AIRBUS A320 CRASHES
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Exactly.
I agree it's not excusable. I was just pointing that it is possible for something like that to happen.
Modern aviation history is full of examples of it. Take Northwest Airlines flight 255. Prior to take-off the pilots failed to extend the flaps and slats. The aircraft crashed killing 156 people on August 16, 1987.
Human error is probably the single greatest cause of accidents in modern times.
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Pretty much, same on the hangar floor.
The Dirty Dozen
That Eastern Airlines B727 sim I worked on right after I got out of the Nav in 1974 was a dinosaur with 19 different audible alarms, none of them "smart" and most of them prone to going off during routine operations, whenever a "hard" parameter was touched or even approached. The early version of GPWS was a particular offender, going off and being cancelled four or five times in a routine approach. Cacophony became a way of life for flight crews, and any event that triggered multiple alarms (as was often the case) tended to elicit a "deer in the headlights" sort of response among crews used to older and simpler a/c.
Human factors sucked bigtime.
This is what happens when non-pilot "gee-whiz" engineers get to tack on single-purpose non-interactive bells and whistles to a good airframe and make it a potential Pilot Error Generator. Witness recent history.
Cheers,
Wes
DarrenW
Staff Sergeant
My biggest question is why attempt another go around when:
A) you definitely know that your gear isn't functional.
B) you could have easily damaged the engines when they hit the ground.
Why would the pilot feel it was better to try the landing again while knowing that the results would be at least very similar, if not worse? It looked like if he had just throttled all the way back and applied reverse thrust after touching the runway the plane would have slid for a while but burned off speed, especially if he cycled left and right rudder to help brake the forward momentum even more. Even if the plane collided with objects near the runway while doing so it would have been safer than stalling short of the runway and crashing into a well known residential area.
A) you definitely know that your gear isn't functional.
B) you could have easily damaged the engines when they hit the ground.
Why would the pilot feel it was better to try the landing again while knowing that the results would be at least very similar, if not worse? It looked like if he had just throttled all the way back and applied reverse thrust after touching the runway the plane would have slid for a while but burned off speed, especially if he cycled left and right rudder to help brake the forward momentum even more. Even if the plane collided with objects near the runway while doing so it would have been safer than stalling short of the runway and crashing into a well known residential area.
Having started the approach high and fast with a clean airplane, they arrived over the threshold still high and fast, a formula guaranteed to make a low drag airplane float...and float...and float. They never got down to Vle speed and I'm sure once on the ground the departure end was coming at them at an alarming rate.
Quite likely the deceleration skating along on the engine pods was less than expected, and less than it would have been on the gear with antiskid brakes, squatswitch activated lift dump spoilers, and fully functional thrust reverse. Considering the disastrous effects of in-flight thrust reverse activation, thrust reversers are generally rigged to require a weight-on-wheels condition to enable deployment.
Given the training differences in third world countries, quite likely the flight crew was unaware of how tender the bottoms of the engine pods are. The engine accessory case is down there, so using it for a sled runner is apt to impact generators, hydraulic and fuel pumps, and sundry other necessities. Bad enough on a conventional jet, but this was a FBW Airbus, "The Electric Cadillac".
BTW, Airbuses have a lot of "keep you out of trouble" control laws built into them, and it may not be possible to extend the gear in excess of Vle speed. I bet BiffF15 could tell us.
Cheers,
Wes
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DarrenW
Staff Sergeant
Thanks Wes, your insight helps me to understand why the pilot may have believed it was reasonable to attempt another landing.
That is what I speculating as well. I also wonder if it was an automatic reaction by the pilots to pull back up. I think there would have been a disaster either way, because Zi think the plane would have gone off the runway at high speed. Since they were too fast it seems to begin with. Stabilizing your landing speed is so important. It can make or break your landing. I have been coming in too fast before, and the acft just wanted to float and float as you called it. Had to do a go around and reestablish my approach and airspeed.
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There's a well worn video floating around out there of the landing, and you can see that they landed way long and touched down level, which points to too much speed and minimal flare. The plane doesn't appear to slow much as it slides along.
Juan Browne on the Blancolerio YouTube Channel had a pretty good analysis of the accident, as he had access to ADS-B flight data, the above mentioned video, and the aircraft flight and maintenance manuals real soon after the event. Check it out.
My lady friend, the Embraer/Canadair/737 pilot, said any one of her jets could have made the approach from where PIA was handed off, as long as they were not in a hurry to get on the ground.
"Thrust levers to flight idle, maintain altitude until you slow to gear and flaps speeds, then fall out of the sky at slow forward and high vertical speeds. Start powering up 2000 feet above your stable approach profile, and capture the ILS onspeed and on course. Easy, just don't dive for the deck."
Cheers,
Wes
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I'm honestly baffled: They seemed to make some remarkably silly mistakes that generally wouldn't be made pilots with fairly low flight-time.
- They didn't comply with altitude requirements
- They didn't report a landing-gear failure
- They just decided: Hey we'll attempt a belly landing...
FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
To some it's better to die than look bad.
I guess, but the scope of these errors is quite outside the norm: If it's not license Raj, I'm curious if there was an impairment of some kind. Sleep deprivation could account for some of these mistakes -- I've heard some crazy things that come out of that.
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And Delta 1141 -- same situation and only a year and 15 days apart. A lot less people died though, but it's still senseless.
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MiTasol
2nd Lieutenant
and of the dirty dozen human factors complacency is the worst offender. I will not fly Qantas as they insist they have never had an accident (they have had had shitloads, including many with no survivors) and downgrade accidents like the Bangkok runway excursion to being merely incidents and preach to their staff that Qantas has never had an accident thus starting the complacency on day one of induction and encouraging it regularly. They heavily promoted Rainman as a factual story in Australia. Go to Bill Morrows web site and you will see it was based on two autistic friends, neither of who were institutionalized and one of who had his own business. It was a "what would have happened if x was institutionalised" story
If you read the accident reports on the Qantas Bangkok runway over-run accident, especially the FSF report, the company culture of we know more than Boeing, pretend we are safe and sacrifice everything for profit comes through loud and clear.
On top of that QF insist that only the captain can initiate an evacuation (he is usually one of the first two fatalities and insist that only cabin staff can deploy escape slides. Other airlines realise that crew can be killed and allow pax to open doors and deploy slides so long as they first check it is safe to by looking out the window in the door. This slide was deployed by Qantas cabin staff.
Note that #3 engine pylon damaged the wing causing a massive fuel leak, but fortunately no fire. Other airlines insist that the cabin crew empty the aircraft within 90 seconds after the engines shut down yet the first pax was not allowed off QF for 14 minutes and the last got off after 21 minutes. If #3 had caused a fire there would have been no survivors because the cabin crew were not permitted to start evacuations, the PA system was dead and the loud-hailers that other operators carry had been deleted to reduce cost and weight.
Look at all the recent QF accidents and incidents (using the ICAO definitions, not QF definition) and you will see failed to carry out a risk assessment of the change showing up time and time again.
Then there was the later Bangkok incident that happened because putting temporary floors over the drip trays during heavy maintenance costs money so QF did not do it. The drip trays crack from being walked on and then when the drain mast fails for days on end due to improper maintenance the water dripping off the bottom of the cracked drip trays shorts out the generator control relays. According to the initial report the aircraft lost all electrical power. The final report said they only lost 3 of the 4 generators. A 747 with no AC electrical power does not fly for long. After that incident they checked the rest of the fleet and the majority of aircraft had the same drain mast failure caused by complacency. The failed heaters and cracked/split drain pipes were readily visible during a proper preflight and the galley flooding on every flight was "rectified" by giving the cabin crew more towels to wipe up the water instead of looking for a blocked drain mast or other drainage problem.
One major factor in the aircraft overrunning the runway was the companies refusal to allow the use of thrust reverse because that reduced operating costs significantly. Max thrust reverse and max braking would probably have caused the aircraft to stop in the available distance.
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FLYBOYJ
"THE GREAT GAZOO"
The evidence suggest they were so engrossed with their high approach that they forgot to lower their gear. That probably why they didn't mention it to the tower.
So evidently they ignored their checklist.
They touched down so far down the runway, they would have probably slid right off the end of the runway anyway, but maybe more would have survived.
And why no one in the tower noticed their landing gear wasn't down, is another question.
One of those situations that the expression FUBAR was created to cover..
MiTasol
2nd Lieutenant
I forgot to mention the QF runway excursion in Bangkok started as touching down too far down a very wet runway and refusing to try a go-around (go-around's cost money).
Qantas's first jet accident was a 707 at Singapore and started the same. As soon as the mains touched the ground the pilot jumped on the brakes and the nose gear was punched up into the cockpit.
Like the Bangkok 747 they rebuilt a BER aircraft so that they could pretend it was not an accident.
Qantas's first jet accident was a 707 at Singapore and started the same. As soon as the mains touched the ground the pilot jumped on the brakes and the nose gear was punched up into the cockpit.
Like the Bangkok 747 they rebuilt a BER aircraft so that they could pretend it was not an accident.
According to the ADS-B profile which was available immediately after the accident, they never got down to gear extension speed (Vle) until just before they touched down. Instead of slowing down at altitude and throwing out the drag, they pointed the nose at the runway and let the speed and descent rate get out of hand. In this case, as in stall recovery, the intuitive thing to do is the one that gets you killed. It takes discipline (and faith) to hold the nose level and slow the aircraft while that tiny little runway way down there threatens to disappear under your nose.
On a midnight ferry flight into Syracuse, we decided to do a practice emergency descent with the blessing of a bored tower controller, who cleared us to land on RWY28 when we were 15 miles out. We crossed the outer marker (4.3 miles to the runway) at 12,000 feet and 230 knots, went to flight idle, slowed to 190, threw out gear and flaps, and played Stuka pilot. Just before we pitched down, the FAR end of the runway disappeared under the radome, and the tower asked if we wanted a circle to land on RWY10. "Nope, straight in 28." We put it on the numbers and pulled off the runway at the first high speed taxiway.
The tower's response: "Awesome!". Stabilized at 180 knots with the drag hanging out and idle power, it felt like a vertical dive, hanging in our harnesses, but it was actually somewhat south of 60°. Can't do that in a jet.
Cheers,
Wes
