Accident report: HiFly A332 at Cologne on Sep 18th 2016, touched down short of runway
 

Report published: English summary
Accident: HiFly A332 at Cologne on Sep 18th 2016, touched down short of runway

Longer report in German only at the moment, page 72 on of
http://www.bfu-web.de/DE/Publikation...ublicationFile

Poor visibility SRA approach, visual and manual from 600 ft HAT. Captain PF. Descent rate built up approaching runway and struck just short of threshold. Both pilots + relief head up, inadequate instrument monitoring/callouts.

2nd URL doesn't relate to 1st URL; in fact 2nd URL seems to lead to a general report on GA incidents and not Airbus 332. I tried everything.

1st URL is Aviation Herald, original report updated from 2nd URL which is German BFU Bulletin, see page 72 on.

I think poor visual flying; not instrument flying issues. They hit threshold lights, had PAPI, 3 km vis, few clouds above 1000 ft, and few winds.

.... According to the routine weather report (METAR) of the airport Cologne / Bonn from 00:20 hrs
The view was 2 800 m in damp haze. The wind was blowing from 350 ° with 3 kt, variable
From direction 310 ° to 010 °. There was light rain. The cloudiness was 1 / 8th
To 2/8 in 1 000 ft height, 5/8 to 7/8 in 5 000 ft height. The temperature was 16 ° C.,
The dew point 16 ° C and the air pressure (QNH) 1 016 hPa
Weather change can be expected within 2 hours.
Navigation aids
The approach was carried out as an SRA Approach on runway 32L in Cologne / Bonn.
Excerpt from the OM-A manual: SRA terminating at 2 NM or more is the lowest
DH / MDH 350 ft ....

.... According to the automatically generated computer voice "30" a cockpit occupancy bulletin

- 74 -
Glied said: "we are getting slightly low". Then the computer-
Agree "retard". After the landing, the three pilots discussed the height of the
Approach The pilot on the Jumpseat saw four red lights in the last approach segment
The visual ancillary assistance (PAPI) "I think we were four red, we were putting very very
Low ". The responsible aircraft operator and the copilot agreed that
They would have seen 3 red and 1 white PAPI light. All three pilots were
Whether the aircraft with the main landing gear is a downhill
Lamp had touched.
The responsible aircraft operator became the event leader of the BFU
Interviewed. According to his statement, the approach was stabilized until the
About 200 ft. From this altitude, he had vertical
On the flight path. The PAPI lights are blurred too. ....

When I first Converted onto a wide body, a lot was made of threshold crossing heights.
i.e what height you crossed the threshold to the actual height of the main gear above the threshold.
I noted before i retired that if i mentioned it to the new F/O's they didn't know what i was on about, obviously no longer taught.

When I flew the DC-10 a million years ago, TCH (Threshold Crossing Height) was hammered into us. I seem to remember that the DC-10 had a TCH of 48 feet so any runway that had a TCH of less than 50 feet, then a visual adjustment had to be made.

One national airline decided to ignore this with a DC-10 on one of the runways at Boston. He took out most of the close-in approach lights and the aircraft was subsequently written-off.

I also seem to remember that we used to visually aim for 3 whites and 1 red.

If that's a reference to the 1973 Iberia accident, the NTSB attributed it to the captain's failure to recognise and arrest a windshear-induced increased RoD on approach in time to avoid hitting the lights.

32L is 1840 m, and that is less than 2400.

This is very important with respect to different runway TDZ aim point marking, PAPI position and its beam height over threshold.

330 is supposed to be landed with 50 ft antenna heigtht, about 56 feet pilot's eye over threshold. On standard, longer runways the MEHT for PAPI is 66 feet. To land the A330 i.a.w. performance assumptions you need to be noticeably (10 feet) lower.

Do the same on a shorter than 2400 meters runway, and you are aiming for trouble. Does not really explain contact with the THR LTs.

The visual check on the DC-10 was at 100 ft radalt: threshold just disappearing. If it had already disappeared, you were too high, if you could still see it, you were too low.