PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

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Abbas Ali
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

Today, Airbus A330-800 (aircraft registration F-WTTO) arrived in Karachi at 6:34 AM as Airbus flight AIB1888 from Toulouse Blagnac Airport.

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Source: flightradar24.com



Later, the A330 will departed from Karachi at 8:02 AM as flight AIB1889 to France with the French team that took part in the investigation of PIA Airbus A320 (AP-BLD) crash in Karachi. The crashed A320's CVR and FDR also be taken to Paris for data downloading/decoding by BEA.

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Source: flightradar24.com

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ammad
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by ammad »

First ground casualty is reported. One of the girl who were waiting outside of a house to pick her friend was impacted by crash and today she passed away. Her other friend is also in serious condition.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Inam855 »

ammad wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:00 am First ground casualty is reported. One of the girl who were waiting outside of a house to pick her friend was impacted by crash and today she passed away. Her other friend is also in serious condition.
Tragic loss indeed.


@Tailwind, @A310, @induceddrag:

This is a very strange accident and there has been massive speculation as to how the operating crew could possibly have ended up in this situation. There has also been a lot of conjecture based on limited knowledge. I accept that we are probably in for some more surprises, but encouraged that the flight and voice recorders have been recovered, which should eventually throw some light on the situation. Although I suspect we will be left shaking our heads very much as we did with the AF A330.

The 1000' gate should have given any 'professional' pilot the information needed to make a sensible decision. Warnings have their limitations. Only good procedures and discipline could have kept this crew from deteriorating to an extent where reason and experience no longer work. If there is a lesson here, it is not to get outside the envelope in the first place - and if you do, do everything possible to get back inside it before continuing.

We simply don't yet know whether the gear was selected down and did not extend because of the protections and was then selected up again before first contact with the runway. This requires a fairly convoluted series of actions not least the failure to properly select TOGA at the first attempt. But it is conceivable. What we do know is that there is CCTV coverage of the runways at KHI, so the investigators must have a better angle. We also know that APP controller asked the pilots, "Confirm belly landing?" which is an ominous indication to say the least.

Just as it is now conceivable that the crew ignored all the warnings and failed to lower the gear, maybe a Corona enforced reduction in flying, plus low blood sugar, plus Airbus skill atrophy encouraged insidious skill deterioration. In which case we need to be very careful when we all go flying again.

We have also had some interesting inputs from the ATC perspective. I am surprised that the tower was not closely watching an approach that appeared so unusual, particularly at a time of lower than usual traffic. Perhaps they were caught off guard by the aircraft reaching the runway sooner than expected. If they were maintaining in excess of 200 knots inside the last three miles rather than the more usual 130 then the controller may have been looking the wrong way. But it is still odd that the APP controller asks, "Belly landing" but doesn't mention sir, you scraped the damn runway! No doubt one cause behind it is the steep authority gradient and culture of fear cultivated by the products of nepotism and incompetence like palpa, who prefer to play politics and housing societies over safety.

While in this accident there may be technical issues present which may/may not be contributing factors, it would be a rare 17000 hr pilot to not know that 200kts across the threshold is simply not going to work no matter what. Yet there is Air India Express @ Mangalore & Garuda @ jakarta, and 15deg nose up in an A330 at cruise altitude. All unbelievable, but not to the crew involved. Why?

How to break the "freeze"? Clearly, (but again, not to the crew...), there is a VERY strong human factors element in which recognition of & techniques for dealing with "tunnel vision" need thorough investigation and then re-training.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by arshad.altaf »

So there is/was a footage of landing available to investigators as mentioned in this report.

Arshad
https://ibb.co/p4ZsVXL


French experts complete their crash probe

KARACHI: A team of French experts, who are in the country to ascertain the reasons behind the PIA plane crash near the Karachi airport on May 22, have completed their investigation and will return to France on Monday (today).

On Sunday, the 11-member team of Airbus, the manufacturer of the aircraft, again surveyed the crash site in an aircraft, the runway at the airport and the approach tower.

They will return to France with the flight data and cockpit voice recorders with them.
A team of Pakistan’s Aircraft Accident and Investigation Board’s (AAIB) will also accompany them.

Another team of experts in France will investigate the crash after the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are decoded.

Work on the devices will begin on June 2 at an aviation laboratory in Le Bourget, France.

The decoding of the data recorder will allow the investigators to hear the conversation between the captain and the first officer during the flight and their communication with air traffic controllers.

After the black box is decoded, they will be able to determine as to how the two captains used the plane’s equipment from take-off till the crash and assess how well the cockpit crew adhered to Airbus’ agreed procedures for operating the aircraft.

They experts will also use the pictures they took of the crash site and marks on the runway using high-resolution and drone cameras in the investigation process.

During their stay in Karachi, the French team inspected the aircraft’s engines, landing gear, wings and flight control system avionics. They also inspected the houses destroyed in the crash.

They inspected the friction marks on the runway because of the belly landing, reviewed CCTV footage of the landing and surveyed the runway and apron from different angles from the control tower and approach tower.

The French experts had also sought the complete record of the crashed aircraft from the PIA, to determine how many times had the A320 landed in a year, what defects were worked on, how many cycles did the engine complete during the flight last year, how many times did the plane go through the check process, how many times the landing gear was serviced, which engineers worked in the main technical services of the aircraft and what resources and parts were used to fix the technical issues.

They will also take samples collected from the wreckage to France.

On Sunday, heavy machinery reached the crash site to remove an engine and wing still buried under rubble. The wing was extracted and transported to the airport.

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2232911/1- ... ash-probe/

However, the engine will be extracted and transported under the supervision of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) construction experts on Monday.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by TAILWIND »

Inam855 wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:41 am
ammad wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:00 am First ground casualty is reported. One of the girl who were waiting outside of a house to pick her friend was impacted by crash and today she passed away. Her other friend is also in serious condition.
Tragic loss indeed.


@Tailwind, @A310, @induceddrag:

This is a very strange accident.........

While in this accident there may be technical issues present which may/may not be contributing factors, it would be a rare 17000 hr pilot to not know that 200kts across the threshold is simply not going to work no matter what. Yet there is Air India Express @ Mangalore & Garuda @ jakarta, and 15deg nose up in an A330 at cruise altitude. All unbelievable, but not to the crew involved. Why?

How to break the "freeze"? Clearly, (but again, not to the crew...), there is a VERY strong human factors element in which recognition of & techniques for dealing with "tunnel vision" need thorough investigation and then re-training.
Very balanced comment indeed
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by raihans »

As per BEA, Pakistan's AAIB team also supposed to fly to France with Airbus team for investigation of CVR/FDR

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

Today, Airbus A330-800 (aircraft registration F-WTTO) arrived at Paris Le Bourget Airport as Airbus flight AIB1889 from Karachi with the French team that took part in the investigation of PIA Airbus A320 (AP-BLD) crash in Karachi. The crashed A320's CVR and FDR also be taken to Paris for data downloading/decoding by BEA.

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Source: flightradar24.com

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

Crash investigators to also interview two passengers who survived the crash.

The twelve-year old girl who unfortunately succumbed to her burn injuries today was a domestic worker and with her two colleagues/friends waiting in the street for another colleague/friend to finish her job as domestic worker in another house when the aircraft crashed into the street and caught fire causing injuries to the three.

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

An engine and wing section of the crashed A320 remain to be removed from roof of house(s), according to news sources.

Can they use some helicopter to lift wreckage pieces that are difficult to remove from the ground?

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by TAILWIND »

Abbas Ali wrote: Mon Jun 01, 2020 7:21 pm An engine and wing section of the crashed A320 remain to be removed from roof of house(s), according to news sources.

Can they use some helicopter to lift wreckage pieces that are difficult to remove from the ground?

Abbas
Yes, easily. MI-17 helicopters operated by PAA/PAF have a cargo sling capacity of 3000 kg, whereas a Puma can lift upto 2500 kg. As per wiki, average weight of of CFM56 is 2380 kg.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by Abbas Ali »

^ Thank you for the info :thumbs_up:

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by H Khan »

That Jee Sir by the F/O was indicative of him seeing what was about the happen.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by H Khan »

That Jee Sir by the F/O was indicative of him seeing what was about the happen.
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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

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Re: PIA Lahore to Karachi Airbus A320 Flight Crashes

Post by fawad »

It is still a mystery why the pilots came in so high and without any apparent reason. I am not sure it has been discussed here but is it possible that they got a "false" glideslope? This can happen due to reflection though Pilots are trained on this. It can happen if you try to intercept the glideslope above 5000ft. This can explain the initial behavior. After that, the hurried landing would have kept them pretty occupied to miss the landing gear (or it did not deploy due to the speed). Similarly, the alarms would have been misinterpreted to a fast approach or rapid descend or something else the pilot thought they could "handle".