PIA A320 Crash Karachi

[deltahotel]

From the Boeing FCTM:

‘Retract the landing gear after a positive rate of climb is indicated on the altimeter.’

So if my company wants me to say ‘positive rate’, that’s fine by me. Yes, I do know that I need to look at the big white needle going clockwise or the alt tape numbers scrolling upwards.

Out of interest, as a non Bus driver, what does their FCTM equivalent say?

[fox niner]

Nah. Semantics really.
”positive rate” as said in many SOP’s around the globe, simply means that a positive rate of climb has been established. It is the abbreviated form of “positive rate of climb”.
Same as: “gear down, flaps 20”, which means “select the gear lever down and subsequently select flaps 20, please”
Let’s not get into this. Just make sure you do a go-around when too hot and high.

[esscee]

So far then, appears aircraft approach was not ideal yet decided a bit late to go-around. By that time aircraft engine cowls had "touched" the runway, too much speed and not enough runway left so decided on a second approach not realising that the AGB's were not functioning normally. Moral of this may be - get your approach criteria correct including flap position and gear extended before decision height. Two captains and they could not get this right.

[henra]

Originally Posted by giggitygiggity

The second half of that aside. Is 35k to 10k in 13 mins that incredible? 25,000 ft to lose in 13 mins, ~2000ft/min?

It is surely on the high side. Would have been OK if they had space to dissipate the energy for the final approach. But with that descent rate even with engines at idle you will arrive at 10k on the high side of the speed range. And in this case at 10 kft they were so close to the airport that they had to even further steepen the approach. So looking at that graph it indicates that they probably started the descent a few minutes too late for the given circumstances. For whatever reason. Possibly they were expecting a holding pattern or a much wider circuit?

[henra]

Originally Posted by krismiler

If they were 5nm out and going so fast that the landing gear couldn't extend it's unbelievable that they continued, even if they had been on the correct vertical profile they were around 100kts too fast.

Maybe they tried to lower the gear even earlier, e.g. already during the steep descent from 10k? At that altitude and looking at the general descent profile, 260kts would not appear completely unconceivable. It is at least an interesting theory. The recorders will tell the story.

[giggitygiggity]

Originally Posted by henra

It is surely on the high side. Would have been OK if they had space to dissipate the energy for the final approach. But with that descent rate even with engines at idle you will arrive at 10k on the high side of the speed range. And in this case at 10 kft they were so close to the airport that they had to even further steepen the approach. So looking at that graph it indicates that they probably started the descent a few minutes too late for the given circumstances. For whatever reason. Possibly they were expecting a holding pattern or a much wider circuit?

It might perhaps be slightly on the high side but calling it incredible is somewhat sensationalist.

This is not a boast and I'm sure you'll label me as an accident waiting to happen, but I looked up the last flight I did on the A320 to Tenerife (sadly back in march), I descended from 39,000ft to 10,000ft in 11 mins after getting a very nice (and requested) short cut from ATC - 2,600ft/min average. I managed to land without crashing into Las Americas. There was however just (again sadly) 6 of us on board.

[Airbus Unplugged]

Thanks Aviation Herald.

So it did do a double pod scrape with the gear up, that will very probably have destroyed the IDGs and hydraulic engine driven pumps. AC1 and AC2 probably lost, hence RAT deployment. B HYD system only.

Since the gear is down, we're straight into direct law, protections lost. That would be a very challenging configuration for a good crew to fly on their lucky day, for the initial baulked landing and of course the subsequent approach.

Apparently high nose attitude in the final video would suggest an attempt to stretch the glide, with obvious results.

[Rednerib]

From the point of view of 'Human Factors'
1. The first is observed when the crew says that they are comfortable at 3500 feet at 5 miles. Here the crew is getting self trapped into being committed for landing
2. Second is when they announce that they are established on ILS, which they are not. Making such announcements would put lot of pressure on the crew to somehow push through the landing.

Ego could also have been triggered here. Still, the landing could have been hacked but for the fact that the gear was missed. This resulted in irretrievable situation.
Tunnel vision and get homeitis have a role.

Such mistakes though not common do happen. Here the crew were unlucky to have additional and overlooked problem of gear.

[henra]

Originally Posted by giggitygiggity

It might perhaps be slightly on the high side but calling it incredible is somewhat sensationalist.
This is not a boast and I'm sure you'll label me as an accident waiting to happen, but I looked up the last flight I did on the A320 to Tenerife (sadly back in march), I descended from 39,000ft to 10,000ft in 11 mins after getting a very nice (and requested) short cut from ATC - 2,600ft/min average.

No I won't call you an accident waiting to happen. It is fine as long as you have got enough space and time left for the final approach to dissipate the energy and stabilise and don't have to rush things. This is what was obviously missing here. Even after this rather quick descent from 35k the equation didn't add up. They had to steepen the aproach further and apparently couldn't get rid of the energy which in turn may have occupied them so much that it may have contributed to them making a very basic and stupid mistake. Moreover due to the high state of energy they only touched the runway after ~5000ft, which might have contributed to them trying to go around instead of putting it down. The choice of a tight curcuit over congested terrain was also obviously not the best choice in the given circumstances. It appears they got behind the airplane and never managed to catch up again. This appears one nice example of the holes in the cheese lining up and will probably be a shining example in future training/CRM curriculae.

[procede]

Originally Posted by henra

They had to steepen the aproach further and apparently couldn't get rid of the energy which in turn may have occupied them so much that it may have contributed to them making a very basic and stupid mistake.

Not having the gear down would have also made it difficult to slow down and stay on the glideslope.

[ManaAdaSystem]

3500 ft at 5NM is not doable in an A320. If you want to try, you need to start with gear down and flaps full. Still you will end up with an increasing speed. More so if you do this without gear down.
Every professional pilot knows this.
So, why did they try? What caused such a major breakdown in common sense?

And why are we not allowed to talk about the elephant in the room (or cockpit)?

[Airbubba]

Originally Posted by henra

Wow!.
From 35k to 10k ft in <13minutes. And then from 10k to 2k in less than two minutes.

From the FR24 .csv file linked earlier, looks like they left FL340 at about 09:15:47Z:



They descended through FL100 at 09:30:18Z:



Descending 24000 feet in 14:31 gives a little under 1700 feet per minute, fairly reasonable I would say. Check my math(s), like timezones, this stuff is easy (for me) to mess up.

On the other hand from FL100 to FL19 (these Mode-S altitudes are all referenced to QNE so the differences should be right even though corrections need to be added for QNH and QFE altitudes) looks like 162 seconds to lose 8100 feet or about 3000 fpm.




DaveReidUK posted this plot of the altitude data for the last few minutes of the flight:



And unworry posted this plot with a derived rate of descent:

[Out Of Trim]

Originally Posted by Greek God

With regard to this particular event and many more I have long wondered why Towers (especially at major airports) do not seem to have continuous CCTV coverage of every approach and threshold.

Also, in the absence of any notified emergency, should it not be SOP that the ATCO called a GA for a commercial airliner on short final with no gear?

Good Call, It wouldn't cost much to set up.

[henra]

Originally Posted by Airbubba

Descending 24000 feet in 14:31 gives a little under 1700 feet per minute, fairly reasonable I would say. Check my math(s), like timezones, this stuff is easy (for me) to mess up.

No, looking at the discrete data your maths do look correct. It is easy to misjudge the timings from the graphs a bit, which I obviously did.
OK, 1700fpm seems reasonable. That should be roughly what an A320 does in flight idle.

[giggitygiggity]

Originally Posted by Out Of Trim

Good Call, It wouldn't cost much to set up.

What will that really achieve except allow us to speculate on what happened at an earlier stage if the video is leaked rather than wait for the report to come out. The CVR and FDRs were both recovered. It is exceedingly rare for one not to be read properly. Some are never recovered, but those are not the ones that crash in view of a tower.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t speculate though, just that it might add little value to the investigation beyond fodder for the daily mail et al to broadcast.

[Fawad]

There appears to be a complete lack of any credible information on the first landing attempt:
- Why pilots were too high at this distance?
- Did Pilots announce any problem onboard (landing gear or otherwise)?

Surely, if there was a serious problem, ATC would have been informed and emergency services would be at the runway. Given the number of people that work in an airport, this would have leaked within minutes to media if not even prior to touchdown. Survivor says nobody knew about anything onboard which suggests there was no problem serious enough to let passengers know or brace for landing. Passengers first clue was when the plane "jolted 3 times", possibly engines scraping the runway incident, before taking off again. Pilots again announced to passengers that they are coming in for another landing (again no emergency, brace, evacuation procedure). ATC certainly mentions belly landing but it could be because they saw the first attempt.

[Fursty Ferret]

to try to really ’delete’ the call: ”positive rate !” from the brains of experienced pilots,

That's a Boeing-ism anyway. The Airbus call is "positive climb" which I've always taken to mean VSI, altimeter, and radio altimeter all showing a climb.

[champair79]

I’m not sure why everyone has ignored my theory but I’m betting false glide capture (a la Bishkek 747 a few years back) with no sense checking using their 3x table. Then target fixation, get-there-itis, steep cockpit gradient and selective hearing due to overload. The rest seems obvious once the aircraft scraped down the runway. What a shambles.

[what next]

Originally Posted by Fursty Ferret

That's a Boeing-ism anyway. The Airbus call is "positive climb" which I've always taken to mean VSI, altimeter, and radio altimeter all showing a climb.

It doesn't reall matter what you say: "Rate", "climb", whatever. The important thing is that things don't need to be rushed when it comes to clean up the plane. There is absolutely no need at all to retract the gear at the earliest possible moment, especially not during the (now mostly practised) noise abatement climbouts, which are done at V2+10kt (or 20). There is no danger of exceeding the gear retraction speed during that kind of initial climb, and the drag of the extended gear is no big factor at low speeds either, even in an engine-out scenario. So just wait as long as it takes to see all needels/tapes (altimeter, VSI, radio altimeter) pointing upward, wait another second or two or three (sometimes things change...) and then stretch out your hand towards the gear lever.
But I don't think that premature raising of the gear is a factor in this accident. It rather looks as if it was never down.

[dmba]

Could anyone post a comparison with the same flight on previous days, with the same graphs?