Article in The times today.
A giant Airbus carrying 448 people came within seconds of crashing into a Moscow suburb when its pilots failed to realise how near the ground they were.
A controller had to intervene as a flight deck alarm barked: “Terrain ahead, pull up!”
Still eight miles from Domodedovo airport, the Emirates A380 was banking in a turn 395ft (120m) above the ground — only one and a half times its wingspan — when the captain realised the error and slammed on power to abort the approach and climb to safety.
Details of the near disaster have emerged after an inquiry. Flight EK-131 from Dubai was flying towards the airport in good weather in the dark in September 2017 with the 39-year-old co-pilot at the controls, monitored by the 54-year-old captain.
Under a heavy workload, the co-pilot descended and turned the “superjumbo” to intercept the instrument landing system, the radio beams that guide aircraft towards the runway.
However, the radio signal was unreliable as the aircraft was too far away, and the co-pilot continued to descend, believing he was on the normal path. He failed to check the altitude with his instruments, the investigators of the United Arab Emirates Civil Aviation Authority said.
“The commander . . . was concentrating on communications with air traffic control to such an extent that his situational awareness of what was occurring in the cockpit and of the actual aircraft state was significantly degraded,” the report said. With the jet at 195mph, dropping at 1,600ft per minute and about 25 seconds from hitting the ground in Gorkiy Leninskiye, the controller ordered the pilots to halt their descent. However, the Russian’s command of English meant he had to repeat the instruction three times.
The captain applied thrust to climb as the automated terrain warnings began blaring in the cockpit. The plane, weighing well over 300 tonnes, continued to descend for more than 100ft after power was applied.
In their second attempt to land the crew made errors setting up their automated system and aborted again, circling to land safely at their third try.
The investigators had no voice recording of the incident because it had been overwritten by sound from the return flight but investigators pieced together details from the black box and tapes from air traffic control. The report criticised the crew for failing to report the incident immediately, which would have preserved the recording.
The investigators depicted the near-accident as the latest in a series of serious incidents caused by pilots’ inability to keep pace with modern automated flight systems. However, it blamed the crew for poor judgment due to “insufficient communication and co-ordination between them”.
The co-pilot became “erroneously focused” on readings that “supported . . . his expectation that the aircraft was high”, the inquiry found, adding that the captain’s “stress level may have reached a point that led to anxiety and a reduction in his performance.
The passengers were unaware of how close they came to death.