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Caribbean B738 at Georgetown on Jul 30, 2011, overran runway
From: AvHerald
Accident: Caribbean B738 at Georgetown on Jul 30th 2011, overran runway A Caribbean Airlines Boeing 737-800, registration 9Y-PBM performing flight BW523 from Port of Spain (Trinidad and Tobago) to Georgetown (Guyana) with 154 passengers and 8 crew, overran Georgetown's runway at around 01:30L (05:30Z), broke through the perimeter fence, fell onto a perimeter road and broke up, the front section separating just ahead of the wing root. Two passengers received serious injuries (leg fractures). The airport is currently closed. |
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Reversers deployed , but NO flaps or slats deployed.
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Obviously i dont know details, but would suspect its the same age old story of an iffy landing on a short runway in the dark in wet weather and apparently in the wrong config. Wont be the last.
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Sorry to see this - I flew into GEO for about two years in the 757. 7500' for Rw 06, the ILS never worked the entire time I flew in there, and was never notamed as out. The VOR approach can be interesting since the DME didn't work either. I had more map shifts there than I've ever seen before or since. Add to that the closest realistic alternate is POS, so you tanker a bunch of fuel in addition to (usually) max payload. Add the occasion tropical downpour and it can get interesting!
Good catch on flap position - I bet that was a big jump from the overwing exits. Can't imagine an -800 even trying it with less than full flaps. One wonders how they managed to be "up" when the reversers are still deployed? I always thought my career had hit rock-bottom when I did an overnight there. Haven't seen too much worse, but Khartoum comes to mind! |
Why land without flaps???
They must have some kind of problem prior landing then! Otherwise? |
Pretty impressed that no deaths for a crash like this one.
Among the injured was Geeta Ramsingh, 41, of Philadelphia, who said passengers had just started to applaud the touchdown "when it turned to screams," she said, pointing to bruises on her knees. |
Cannot explain why the pic shows the flaps/slats retracted. I have thirty plus years experience into GEO with the predecessor airline to Caribbean and we always landed with max flaps for the type due to the challenging approach, normally bad weather and short and slippery runway. If I remember the 737 if you did not get full weight on wheels you can only get partial spoilers and idle reverse. Maybe when the over run was inevitable they retracted them.
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Isn't the clean speed af a 737 with 150 pax something in the region of 190-200kts? Unlikely that they would have conducted an approach and landing at that speed thats like 50kts more than with full flaps! Not to mention all the red lines that would appear on PFD speed tape...
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Flaps/slats retracted
Possible explanation may be that during the evacuation checklist, which calls for F40 selection, if not already selected, the flaps were inadvertently retracted. Seems unlikely that the crew would have attempted a landing without flaps/slats set. Imagine the landing distance requirement.
Praise the Lord for no loss of life. |
Do people applaud landings frequently? Or was there some sort of sense of impending disaster that the touchdown alleviated? |
Timehri (now Cheddi Jagan) is well known for night fog. As someone else said, the ILS is there in name only most of the time. Those who know it treat it with great respect.
BWIA had 2 over-run incidents in the distant past, none of them as serious as this. A Viscount overrun that was due to reverted rubber hydroplaning, and an MD-83 that was hit by lightning on the T/O roll and aborted (below V1) and overran. The runway was noted for slipperiness Too early to speculate what happened, or why it happened, but when BWIA was closed, many of the more experienced pilots were picked up by sandpit operators. The pilots union was squeezed out, and a new philosophy was put in place. Let us say it was slanted to "productivity". They say that a safety culture dies slowly unless nurtured carefully. It has been 5 years since the old regime was broken up, I hope the replacement will stand scrutiny in the investigation. |
As to the lack of flaps/slats.....perhaps that particular Captain retracted them at touchdown on short runways to dump the lift and, supposedly help with the stopping. Just a thought. I never did that but it WILL work.
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Soft touchdown on wet runway.......not good.
Policy in Georgetown used to be "no greasers", put it down firmly and get spoilers and reverse fully engaged asap. Braking unpredictable. Not so, NG? I doubt that has changed. |
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Sorry, but I don´t believe the flaps were out. If you land with full flaps, it takes actually quirt some time to retract the flaps. And I do not believe it was done deliberately after the crash – I don´t think there is any connection to the flaps nor any functional hydraulic system – they must have broke. I just wonder!
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RE: Retracted Slats
A FA friend mentioned, on B738s, once the emergency evacuation is activated,the flaps will retract to allow pax to use the overwing exits as an evacuation area...
There is no way, this plane would have landed with 0 flap settings... |
The speed between 0 flaps and vref 40 is like 60kts.
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The evacuation checklist on the 737NG:
Parking brake …SET Speedbrake lever … DOWN FLAP lever ….40 Pressurization mode selector… MAN Outflow valve switch… OPEN Hold until the outflow valve is fully open. If time allows, verify that the flaps are 40 before the engine start levers are moved to CUTOFF. Engine start levers (both) … CUTOFF To be continued…. The reason for the flaps is set to 40 is to assist the evacuation from the overwing exit. The passengers can slide on the flaps. Walder:p |
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