PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

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oozeman64
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by oozeman64 »

Abbas Ali wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 4:22 pm According to Karachi Airport runway inspection report prepared by Pakistan CAA.

Left engine scrape marks 4500 feet from runway start.

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Right engine scrape marks 5500 feet from runway start.

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Both engines scrape marks 6000 feet to 7000 feet from runway start.

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Cockpit crew did not inform air traffic control about emergency landing.

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Abbas
Here is a visualisation of the runway scrape marks.

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TAILWIND
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by TAILWIND »

Real mystery in my opinion:
1. The events before we hear the R/T call "We are comfortable now----------we will make it inshallah". What circumstances brought them at 3500 ft at 5 DME during the approach. This will only be resolved once CVR is read and/or more ATC comms before this point are available in public domain.
2. Why they elected to continue from this point and opted not to abandon the approach. In my opinion it extremely difficult if not impossible, to salvage an approach from 3500 feet/5 DME and achieve a safe landing.

After this the pieces are more or less in place, except that it is extreme luck or superb flying skills to lift off again after grazing the engines only without tail strike during flare and subsequent rotation at lift off. On a CFM engine accessory gearbox with vital components and oil/fuel plumbing is at the bottom of fan case. Such a long ground contact on cowls would definitely cause some damage/disturbance in that area which probably resulted in subsequent engine(s) failure.
A310
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by A310 »

SM wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:58 pm
A310 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:34 pm Just like a forum member has mentioned above, SM was the first one to make the deduction that Capt. of Gilgit bound ATR approached in at a speed of 300 kts. And that is where I shall rest my argument. Yellow journalism would be something too holy for this oldie.
I was right about her then and I am right about this new crew now.

Had she been fired, this crew would have thought many times before committing to a steep dive to land on their first attempt.

They were too "comfortable" when warned by ATC to not resort to a 6.5 degree FPA.

They shamelessly killed 100+ people and destroyed over $50M worth of hardware.

Sorry everyone - but I can't mince my words when I know that shaming irresponsible attitude can and will save lives.
They might have been hot and high but no one knows what the reason was. It’s only a theory and so are a billion others. What about the repeated landing gear issues with PIA 320s? What about the horrible level of maintenance? When the IFE upgradation of 777s was awarded to a sub standard company? An ATR 72 was written off thanks to the engineering? Do you know anything about the unsafe crew scheduling practices?
Last edited by Abbas Ali on Sat May 23, 2020 8:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Edited
SM
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by SM »

Abbas Ali wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:04 pm
In my opinion, this is one of the most useful pieces related to this incident that I have come across today. It summarizes the entire event with just one line. What strikes me the most is how the aircraft was at 10,200 feet at 14:30 but reached 1,800 feet by 14:33:10.

That is - in just 3.3 minutes - it dropped 8,400 feet while still being fully in control and with no emergency declared. This equates to a 2,500 feet per minute descent rate which is quite steep for typical approaches in Pakistan.

Even in the U.S., the slam-dunk style approaches offered by ATC for sequencing reasons in very congested air spaces demand less than 3,000 feet per minute descents but even those rates are not common this close to the ground.

Minus a not-yet-known onboard emergency, recklessness is the only way to explain such a steep descent in a terminal environment.
SM
hassan khan
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by hassan khan »

Based on the information available so far. I think the pilots may have forgotten to deploy the landing gear, and carried on thinking its a normal landing.
Taking into account the height of the landing gear they would be expecting to land at the normal touchdown zone on the runway. However there was no landing gear and the aircraft must have kept going down (as pilots would be expecting the wheels to make contact) until contact by engines was made 6000 ft down the runway. They may have realised their mistake then and decided to go around.
In the 2nd approach the landing gear was deployed, and they wouldve thought theyll be fine this time. While staying calm all this time thinking they'd make it to the runway again since they were so close.

Hope there is an honest investigation that is acceptable to all stakeholders.
May Allah give patience to all those affected by this tragedy. Ameen


P.s. This is only my opinion, so please feel free to disagree (respectfully).
A310
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by A310 »

SM wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:58 pm
A310 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:34 pm Just like a forum member has mentioned above, SM was the first one to make the deduction that Capt. of Gilgit bound ATR approached in at a speed of 300 kts. And that is where I shall rest my argument.
I was right about her then and I am right about this new crew now.

Had she been fired, this crew would have thought many times before committing to a steep dive to land on their first attempt.

They were too "comfortable" when warned by ATC to not resort to a 6.5 degree FPA.

Abbas? Doesn’t this post warrant an edit too? Some words are really hurtful. Why are only my posts edited? I need an explanation for that, Sir.
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Abbas Ali
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

^ Posts have been edited.

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daniyal 07
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by daniyal 07 »

A310 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:55 pm
daniyal 07 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 7:45 pm
SM wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 4:40 pm
Abbas Ali wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 4:37 pm Dead bodies of Capt. Sajjad Gul and Purser Fareed Ahmed have arrived in Lahore on a PIA flight from Karachi.

Probably PIA Airbus A320 (registration AP-BLU) that arrived in Lahore at 8:07 PM as flight PK8304 from Karachi.

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Source: flightradar24.com

Abbas
Sajjad Gul's and his F/O's bodies should be sent for toxicology analysis and findings should be made public ASAP.

His and his F/O's behavior yesterday were nothing short of being under the influence while on the controls of a $50 million jet with 100 precious lives.

Lets also not ignore the state at which pia is keeping its planes, maybe the landing gear really failed to deploydue to poor condition of the aircraft.. still the question arises that if they were thinking if making a belly landing why did they lift the plane up again and on the second aproach the wheels are seen deployed so how did they open the second time while not in the first attempt maybe they forgot to open the landing gears as if it was a failure the wheels wouldnt have opened up in the second approach.

There is no procedure in any commercial aircraft that requires pilots to go for a belly landing on the first attempt. If for some reason gears don’t deploy or if there’s any other emergency, it requires them to go around and try recycling and if for some reason it still doesn’t work they can make a low pass and ask the tower’s observation. Even after that things don’t work then they can also deploy the gears by gravity extension(look it up on google). Belly landing is only pursued as a last resort.

Don’t forget that the condition of PIA 320 landing gears isn’t up to the mark and maintenance level is also horrendous. And landing gears is where the problem started. There are precedents establishing this.

On 28th Feb this year, PK 204 DXB-LHE diverted to DXB right after take off because the landing gear doors didn’t close. On another occasion this year, landing gears didn’t retract after take off of PK 717 LYP-MED and the pilots decided to divert to KHI. Only after multiple attempts they were able to retract them. So maintenance is a big question here. All sane people know every accident is a result of a chain of events. We are all ready to blame the pilots for the ultimate result but aren’t ready to debate about the root cause.

yes just like i mentioned the planes of pia are one if the worst flying in aviation.. Their boieng 777 are in ruins so obviously these a320s would be even worse. I also agree that first finger points to whether the aircraft was maintained properly or not which most probably is not which is not a surprise with pia.. but still both the aircrafts engines touched the runway before lifting off again as per the reports so why was the aircraft flying so low for it to touch the runway without landinggear opened ? This is a question , now lets see what the investigators have to say .
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Abbas Ali
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

Passenger Muhammad Zubair who survived the crash says that the crew made normal cabin announcement for landing at Karachi before the aircraft touched runway & climbed again.

Later, the crew again made normal cabin announcement for landing but the aircraft crashed this time.

No emergency landing announcement made for passengers/cabin crew.

The passenger has been discharged from the hospital and allowed to go home.



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Inam855
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Inam855 »

With all due respect to everyone, especially the deceased and their families, let me start by offering condolences.

The facts so far are:
- There was a go around
- Apparent similar damages on both engines induces you to think that they scraped the runway on the first attempt for an undeclared partial or total gear up attempted landing.
- RAT deployment indicates engines out OR manual extension to overcome underlying hydraulic problem. It could have been deployed before the landing or after the go around, we do not know.
- 2 engines fail, at the same time.
- Noticed the METAR of the time of the accident? Temperature 35ºC and QNH 1004 hPa! That's very hot and very low air pressure, I can imagine how poor was the aircraft's glide performance due to these conditions.

Listening to the ATC recordings on the net there’s a fact that puzzles me even more, the difference between pilot reported position and radar observed position. They call established 25L and everything is normal, the tone is calm. No reported anomaly onboard. Then radar says “You are 5NM from touchdown continue passing 3500”. At KHI you leave SABEN at 3000 and and you keep it to intercept a standard ILS path at 9NM. Either the ground radar controller is wrong or they were too high. This could lead to un unstable approach that could start a chain of events leading to a disaster. The warning we hear could be a gear not locked not for a malfunction but because they were late and fast in configuration. The gro around picture shows gear up but also no flaps, which is NOT the correct GA config. Something very anomalous there.

One of the things I learnt as a pilot under training was: procedure, procedure, procedure. checklist, checklist, checklist. It was drilled into me to the point of annoyance. Since it has been clearly established that this was NOT a stable approach, why then did they not discontinue? Doesnt the statement "We are comfortable, we can do this" accompanied the master warning during landing confirmation raise serious doubts ? I'd say that some folks wouldn't be too comfortable answering this question.

We have seen this dozens of times in the last few years. Pilots faced a, what could be considered a manageable minor or major technical malfunction, which then turned into disasters or debacles. This will end up being something similar - perhaps an issue with the hydraulics, yet the crew continued the approach then performed a contact landing on the RWY, then went around and probably crashed, having no idea - except perhaps low oil indications of what was happening.

A hull loss every 1.5 years is nothing to be proud of and I feel SM's comments hold some merit. Yes it is easy to do armchair analysis, but that doesn't mean these comments are uncalled for or that the system isn't terribly broken. I remember the whole Gilgit landing fiasco and hearing it directly from the horse's mouth left me dumbfounded to the standards Pakistani pilots are being trained and how certain people are being upgraded in this airline. There's a gaping wide hole in training, and its expanding fast.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Inam855 »

hassan khan wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 8:30 pm Based on the information available so far. I think the pilots may have forgotten to deploy the landing gear, and carried on thinking its a normal landing.
There are sufficient warnings (Aural and visual) on the A320 and other modern passenger jets to ensure that this does not happen.
A310
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by A310 »

The atc audio clip has some important communication missing. The controller asked them if were coming in for a belly landing. That’s the only thing indicating towards something wrong with the landing gears. He must have asked this only after the crew informed them about a problem with the gears. The point from where we hear about them being established on 25L, controller asking them about being too high and giving heading 180 which was declined because they were established on the localizer, is that recording actually of the first approach? Because the liveatc feed seems to have provided uninterrupted recording. When was the landing gear problem declared?


Another question I have in mind is that the picture exhibiting black marks on both engines and showing that RAT was deployed, when exactly could it have been taken? I’m sure it must not have been long before the impact because at that point they had already lost the engines. But then the final video clip shows all gears being deployed when it finally stalled. When were the gears deployed? I’m sure they weren’t deployed after engines were lost because that would only have hurried the stall. Some major clues are missing in all the theories.
oozeman64
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by oozeman64 »

A310 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 9:29 pm The atc audio clip has some important communication missing. The controller asked them if were coming in for a belly landing. That’s the only thing indicating towards something wrong with the landing gears. He must have asked this only after the crew informed them about a problem with the gears. The point from where we hear about them being established on 25L, controller asking them about being too high and giving heading 180 which was declined because they were established on the localizer, is that recording actually of the first approach? Because the liveatc feed seems to have provided uninterrupted recording. When was the landing gear problem declared?


Another question I have in mind is that the picture exhibiting black marks on both engines and showing that RAT was deployed, when exactly could it have been taken? I’m sure it must not have been long before the impact because at that point they had already lost the engines. But then the final video clip shows all gears being deployed when it finally stalled. When were the gears deployed? I’m sure they weren’t deployed after engines were lost because that would only have hurried the stall. Some major clues are missing in all the theories.
The picture was definitely taken after the landing attempt in which the plane struck the ground gear-less and then went around. This has been confirmed.
The gears must've been extended after the photo was taken, probably somewhere around the time when the pilots decided to fly direct to the runway instead of the full go around pattern for the ILS.
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oozeman64
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by oozeman64 »

As always, this incident seems to be one that involves not just one bad malfunction or reaction, but a chain of events. What may have been a smaller technical issue could've developed into a tradegy.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by ab7 »

A310 wrote: Sat May 23, 2020 9:29 pm The atc audio clip has some important communication missing. The controller asked them if were coming in for a belly landing. That’s the only thing indicating towards something wrong with the landing gears. He must have asked this only after the crew informed them about a problem with the gears. The point from where we hear about them being established on 25L, controller asking them about being too high and giving heading 180 which was declined because they were established on the localizer, is that recording actually of the first approach? Because the liveatc feed seems to have provided uninterrupted recording. When was the landing gear problem declared?
That recording is indeed of the first approach, and the landing gear issue is only heard of when the ATC mentioned 'Belly Landing' towards the end of recording. There is 10 minutes of ATC where the signal is weak, between 14:20 - 1430, it could be during this time the landing gear problem was discussed but it is doubtful noting that the real problem seems to have been the high altitude of the aircraft, not the landing gear.

But then why would the ATC mention belly landing, it could be that due to the first landing attempt with landing gear retraced, the ATC presumably was expecting another belly landing, upon which he asked the aircraft to confirm?!

During this whole ordeal, an hostile environment can be felt as pointed earlier and there seems to be clear barrier in communication. It also felt like the aircraft was holding back critical pieces of information and declared emergency too late.

You may listen to LiveATC's full recordings here:

14:00 - 14:30: https://archive-server.liveatc.net/opkc ... -0900Z.mp3
14:30 - 15:00: https://archive-server.liveatc.net/opkc ... -0930Z.mp3

I have reconstructed the last 10 minutes of the flight based on flightradar24 transponder datapoints and timestamped it with the ATC recording to try to have a clear picture. It has already been posted here by the admin earlier, in case if you haven't seen it, here it is: