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PIA A320 Crash Karachi

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Old 25th May 2020, 18:56
  #601 (permalink)  
 
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Originally Posted by Georg1na
Now I have to admit at this stage that I have never flown an airliner.

But I would like to know if you had touched down on your engine pods - and realised it quickly - would going to reverse thrust have stopped the beast?
That would depend on touchdown point ( in this case well past the runway threshold, around 4500 ft past, out of a total length of 11000), touchdown speed (presumably quite high) and breaking capacity ( no wheels, just the engine nacelles scraping the asphalt- probably deteriorating very fast, probably unable to deploy reversers). I’m quite sure deceleration seem very poor to the pilot, so his arse was yelling “go around or you’ll depart the end of the runway at a high speed and no control”
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:16
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That looks like 210kts touchdown ! Unbelievable...
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:21
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Originally Posted by Schnowzer
The A380 and I believe the 320 has an airspeed input into the LGCIU that prevents extension at high speed. In the 380 it’s 280kts, can’t remember the 320.

As to what they were thinking. Nothing. They had pressonitis which then overloaded their cognitive functions. The big question is why the PM didn’t intervene earlier in the error chain. With the time of year and the airlines culture, I think we know the answer to that one.
Careful...

The real problem in certain parts of the world and certain cultures, people are not selected on merit!!

Nepotism raises it's ugly head in all countries of course, somewhere along the line. There are other countries where nepotism is rife.

being in the know has it's advantages of course but does it weed out the undersirea6ble candidate?? I say not always.
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:23
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Originally Posted by Milvus Milvus
That looks like 210kts touchdown ! Unbelievable...
I was going to say “arrival”, but yes, the almost inevitable end product of everything we have seen/heard all the way down from cruising FL.
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:25
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The Airbus team is on the way to Karachi for the investigation.

PIA plane crash: Airbus team to arrive in Karachi today for investigation

KARACHI: The team of renowned plane manufacturing company, Airbus, will arrive in the southern port city on Monday to investigate the recent crash of one of its own manufactured aircraft.

The Pakistan International Airlines plane crashed into a narrow residential street in Karachi on Friday, dealing significant damage to houses in a densely-populated area. Of the 99 people aboard, 97 were killed and only two passengers survived.

Airbus will run an independent investigation into the plausible reasons for the crash, which reportedly happened due to an engine failure.

Due to the arrival of the Airbus team, the transfer of objects from the site of the incident has been halted.

In an earlier letter, the Airbus team said that they do not have any conclusive details regarding the crash.

Pakistan International Airlines and Air France will also assist the plane manufacturer in the investigation.
https://www.thenews.com.pk/latest/66...-investigation


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Old 25th May 2020, 19:32
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Georg1na answer to your last question, I would say yes.


There is one other situation where manufacturers state to do what you have asked, once reverses are selected, do not go around.
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:32
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Interresting choice of equipment for the team
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:40
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Originally Posted by Cloudtopper
It's not a prelim, rather a 20 page PDF document put together by an insider of PIA stating a number of grievances and also pass accidents where management failed to respond to the lessons learned with the appropriate response.

You will find it shared on whatsapp
Multiple news sources quote a PCAA document, such as, "according to an earlier report, prepared by the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA)..." While this doesn't sound like a grievance document from PIA, perhaps they are all just quoting each other.

And now they are all quoting an apparent report from air traffic control, "a
ccording to a report from air traffic control..."
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:44
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Originally Posted by meleagertoo
Faint hope!
Have we yet had CVR from either of the 737 MAX accidents?
Sadly the sort of nations we are dealing with regard loss of face as paramount importance, thus anything self-incriminating - as both of those tapes must be, won't see the light of day.
So with Pakistan's National airline, one of their 'most experienced' pilots flying and this cluster ****, what hope of transparency I wonder? Well - I don't wonder for long actually. Barely a second or so...
Just being realistic!
Agree.

This is one way we learn. That is by the mistakes of others. If we are deprived of any of the information, gleaned from an investigation, we ALL loose out.

By with holding this information says a lot for the lack of safety culture of these countries.

Learn from the mistakes of others. This we must always try to achieve.
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Old 25th May 2020, 19:47
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Originally Posted by Airbubba
Ian at FlightRadar24 has harvested some indicated airspeed data from the extended Mode-S data fields
Interesting - that will certainly warrant further analysis.

One word of caution - the data from the 14 different receivers isn't synchronised, as they all seem to be running different clocks, hence there is a lot of spurious jitter when you try to plot timeseries. So you get, for example, TAS jumping from 374 kts to 400 kts with timestamps only half a second apart.

But that's not an insurmountable problem, it should be possible to deduce the relative time offsets that should be applied to the data from respective receivers and produce a more accurate plot.
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Old 25th May 2020, 20:12
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agree, we should respect these lives voices abrubtly severed in a common uneventful friday.
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Old 25th May 2020, 20:21
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Georgina's question:

But I would like to know if you had touched down on your engine pods - and realised it quickly - would going to reverse thrust have stopped the beast?
I've not flown an Airbus, but I'd be very surprised if you didn't need the "weight-on-wheels" switch (air/ground logic) to be made before the reverse will deploy, most lilkely also thrust levers at idle. That switch would be on the wheels and hence not available in a gear-up touchdown.

Revert to previous advice - "close the thrust levers and hang on!"
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Old 25th May 2020, 20:22
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Originally Posted by siropalomar
I fly A330, been flying A320 too. FCOM states literally what you state. Type rating Instructors tell me that during simulator sessions Landing gear will come down when speed falls below 260 kt , no need to recycle Lng Gear lever. In that case, if they landed with gear retracted, it means they simply didn’t select Gear down. Obviously plenty of aural warnings (“too low gear, too low gear”) and ECAM Warning “landing gear not down” up to the moment they struck the runway. That is what we call “tunnel vision”, pilots exclusively centred on getting the plane on the runway, disregarding everything else. Let’s wait for the voice recorders reading, maybe the copilot was yelling “we’re too fast, too high, or please go around” all the way down. It’s happened before.
absolutely right Siropalomar. in these situation (behind the plane) a training Captain told me that you forgot also your name and do not hear anything else. Tragic and true. we will know soon (CVR ) "low gear" "low gear" !!
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Old 25th May 2020, 20:26
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Originally Posted by DaveReidUK
Is there not a presumption that, regardless of how a FFS might behave, the real aircraft will act as described in the FCOM ? The latter makes it clear that, with the gear selected down, the only thing that prevents hydraulic pressure extending the gear is IAS of 260 kts or more.
With the best will in the world, the FCOM (or any other document, or group of documents even) cannot be a complete or perfect description of an aircraft's systems. There can be subtleties in any unusual condition which can make the necessarily general statements in something like an FCOM inapplicable, never mind that people can make minor errors in phrasing which might not be apparent except in an "edge case". Once you also get into the possibility of a non-normal condition, the FCOM description is a starting point but by no means the final word. Compare, for example, the amount of pages in an FCOM dealing with a given system to the number of pages in the full certification data set for that same system, and it's clear that there have to be things omitted or simplified.

That's not to say that I believe either the FCOM-described or FFS-experienced behaviour to be not representative - I just do not know that it necessarily is. And I would hope that if something like this behaviour is deemed potentially causal, or part of the "chain", that it would actually be verified by test (assuming test data doesn't actually already exist, of course)
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Old 25th May 2020, 20:59
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As others have said, this accident is looking increasingly bizarre.

Yes, cognitive overload; yes, distraction; yes task fixation, but at some point self-preservation has to kick in, surely? Before they hit the ground the first time, it appears that the aircraft was serviceable, albeit on the receiving end of a bit of a beating. The report and CVR transcripts will be fascinating, although will there actually be anything to learn...?
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Old 25th May 2020, 22:20
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Originally Posted by Georg1na
Now I have to admit at this stage that I have never flown an airliner.

But I would like to know if you had touched down on your engine pods - and realised it quickly - would going to reverse thrust have stopped the beast?
Georgina
You won’t get reverse with no gear. But it’s a bit academic. Reverse was probably wrecked by the impact on the engines. If they had simply let it slide to a halt someone will one day work out that it would have gone off the end at 30’kts with little damage and no Loss of life. Or something like that. But they didn’t have a lot of time to ponder that one I suspect. If you are so overloaded as to land halfway down the runway with the gear up at high speed, I suggest that there wasn’t a lot of thinking space left?
The main issue here is why did the Crew of the plane not observe the landing gates which are there to force a go around long before it becomes a crash. Been an SOP for years and in well run airlines it’s mandatory and there’s a no blame culture for executing a go around at any stage when the approach is becoming too unstable to safely continue. Cheers Ret’d Guy
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Old 25th May 2020, 23:02
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Originally Posted by Airbubba
Ian at FlightRadar24 has harvested some indicated airspeed data from the extended Mode-S data fields:

This altitude plot agrees nicely with the ones previously posted in this thread.

https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/p...-near-karachi/
Thanks again Airbubba

took the liberty of highlighting a couple of key areas below, although it's comes as no surprise to most here.

Based on the FR24 CSV data
- (best approximation, due to periodicity and latency of recorded data)
-
  • 251 IAS out of FL100
  • 240 during descent, give or take
  • 236 IAS at 2,000'
  • ~215 IAS on tarmac, skipping down to 191 IAS
  • recording a minimum of 173 IAS, 200' AGL into the GA


Last edited by unworry; 26th May 2020 at 00:48.
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Old 25th May 2020, 23:22
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Originally Posted by Mad (Flt) Scientist
With the best will in the world, the FCOM (or any other document, or group of documents even) cannot be a complete or perfect description of an aircraft's systems. There can be subtleties in any unusual condition which can make the necessarily general statements in something like an FCOM inapplicable, never mind that people can make minor errors in phrasing which might not be apparent except in an "edge case". Once you also get into the possibility of a non-normal condition, the FCOM description is a starting point but by no means the final word. Compare, for example, the amount of pages in an FCOM dealing with a given system to the number of pages in the full certification data set for that same system, and it's clear that there have to be things omitted or simplified.

That's not to say that I believe either the FCOM-described or FFS-experienced behaviour to be not representative - I just do not know that it necessarily is. And I would hope that if something like this behaviour is deemed potentially causal, or part of the "chain", that it would actually be verified by test (assuming test data doesn't actually already exist, of course)
Come on guys. Select the G/L down on your next flight at 280 kts, decelerate below 260 kts and wait for the dunlops.

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Old 25th May 2020, 23:55
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Originally Posted by gearlever
Come on guys. Select the G/L down on your next flight at 280 kts, decelerate below 260 kts and wait for the dunlops.
And then wait, without hope, for biscuits with that cup of tea when one next has a meeting with the chief pilot. I will venture a guess here: most companies have monitoring programs in place such that a gear extension at greater than the usual airspeed will attract some (unwanted) attention.
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Old 26th May 2020, 00:05
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Originally Posted by 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.
Another logical assumption emerged by a A320 pilot:
There was no issue of L/Gs, L/Gs were down during 1st attempt.
G/A was opted to avoid runway overshoot due to high altitude approach leading the acft to 4500 ft from threshold.
Now this is the catch:- Probably Flaps selection to position 3 from 4 and Gears Up selection was too early while engines still spooling up from approach Idle to TOGA,.
Too early retraction of Flaps caused loss of lift and acft sank while the Gears already retracted up and engines dragged along the runway 3 times( as witnessed on runway)
First mark : Eng 1
2nd mark: Eng 2
3rd mark: Both engines
Acft climbed with struggling engines to 3000 ft but couldn't hold the Alt and ATC warned the crew about this and crew asked for 2000 ft but due to complete loss of power acft kept on descending and crashed on to residential area.
Pic taken by plane spotter shows dragged engines with black marks and RAT auto deployed due to dual eng failure( AC Bus 1 & 2 being dead ).
Having lost G&B Hyd crew extended the Gears by Manual Gravity Extension, L/Gs extended can be seen in the video just before crash.
Aircraft was still maneourable as Flt Control being supplied by Blue Hyd circuit pressurised by RAT and Flight Control computers by Emergency Generator but no power to keep the acft up.
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