Smartlynx A320 runway excursion EETN 28.2.2018
 

Training flight MYX9001 reg ES-SAN, no casualties. Smartlynx has confirmed that flight had technical problems during flight before landing.

Video of the landing run:

just in front of the cameraman and in line with his car... there is a metallic sound and at that point the plane appears to leave the runway. Weird to see a tyre or wheel coming off, following the plane, and the doing a few circles below the wing behind it. ARFF pretty quick.

The video was taken from here (note that Street View is very outdated):
https://www.google.ee/maps/@59.41579...2!8i6656?hl=en

From FR24 it appears that after a number of left and right circuits and touch-and-go-s some problem developed, apparently they did a tower fly-by before data discontinues. From the video it can be seen that at least one nosewheel separates and briefly sparks from the nosegear appear before the aircraft comes to a full stop about 850m from RWY 26 threshold, well before taxiway F (fire trucks approach of F). Main gear doors are hanging indicating some hydraulic issue.

The position of the cameraman suggests he was aware of the issue and was waiting to film the landing. ARFF also appear to have been alerted and in waiting. Airport re-opened about four hours after the incident.


Edit: just released photos show the aircraft to be in the snow off the runway, with L1 slide deployed:


http://f8.pmo.ee/EZI4UvlSc0iZzTVvgi0...303t1h7cce.jpg

Main gear doors open can also be an indication of a manual landing gear extension.

Severe hard landing due to Ground Spoiler extension after a bounce has been mitigated by a new SEC standard, it would be interesting to know if this new logic was fitted to this airframe. In any case, the new SEC logic won’t prevent a severe hard landing after a bounce caused by the Thrust Levers still being in the CLB detent on touchdown, in which case immediate application of TOGA and go around is required.

Someone forgot to tell the new recruits that it’s the landing gear that needs to touch, not the fuselage.

But in all seriousness, this must have made for some interesting base training and a pretty awful landing to cause the damage seen in the pictures.

My understanding is that the fuselage/engine damage was caused by hitting the approach lights while making an early touch-down before the threshold. It is not confirmd whether this happened duing the prior touch-and-go pr the final landing, but the cloud of snow on touchdown in the video suggests the latter. Not hard to envision with the adrenaline still running after the bounce, likely made worse by all the bells, whistles and xmas tree lights and not knowing the extent of structural damage.

Did they make 180 turn after their last touch and go and made an emergency landing in the opposite direction? If yes, then something quite serious must have happened. AFAIK, the runaway in use was 08 and they landed on 26.

Estonian CAA flight inspector was onboard - watch this space...

From the link in post #5 (earlier today):

"Estonia's Ohutusjuurdluse Keskus (OJK, Estonia's accident investigation board) reported the aircraft had departed at 12:03L for a training flight to practise approaches and landings with 7 people on board, at 17:04L the aircraft approached runway 08 for another touch and go, the aircraft could not climb out and collided with the runway, subsequently managed to become airborne again, performed a left turn and landed on runway 26 veering off the runway."

Strange. If nothing is on fire and the donkeys work, I would always fly a normal pattern and not do a 180 and return downwind on final.

RAM Air turbine
 

It looks like RAM Air turbine is deployed for some reason.

https://tallinn.postimees.ee/4425029...&image=7648999

Hard touch down...?

Piecing together the puzzle from various (unconfirmed) reports and visual clues it appears the bounce was hard enough to dislodge the RAT and the main gear doors. The right main gear door later fell away during the go-around, while the left one probably fractured during the subsequent early touch-down.

Looks like they really wanted to land ASAP - on 26 they had around 12kt tailwind ...

That stuff get bent on pattern training is nothing new, not the first, in no way the last one. As long as everybody can walk away, it is a successful landing. You learn enormous by that.
The biggest hit takes the ego of the PF. Hope that he keeps flying. As usual the most is to learn for the decision making process. Much worse if your luck runs out before you have mastered that.

The gear doors are mechanically uplocked and I would be very surprised if a hard landing could defeat the locks. I wonder if two of hydraulic systems were damaged on a previous circuit. Gear doors open is normal with loss of Green and did they deploy the RAT to redover the Yellow and through the PTU the Green? Flight on Blue only is demanding and offers very limited flight controls. The Avherald also shows damage to an engine nacelle. The aircraft doesn’t appear to have landed with any flaps, pointing to a double hydraulic failure.
The report on this one is going to be very interesting.

The embedded light as seen in the Avherald appears to be pointing in the direction of flight so they hit it on climb out not approach.

Several avherald comments claim loss of both engines, subsequent to short/hard landing. There are also pictures showing some damage to the engines.

That would explain the RAT extension and the quick 180 turn...

Edit, the fan on the photo looks intact, however there seems to be damage to the inlet and probably to the underside of the engine.

Looking at the photos boths slats and flaps are clearly out, appear to be 1+F (T/O setting).

You have now got me trying to remember the failure wherby the aircraft will give 1+F rather than just Flap 1,and I am guessing it will be some sort of ADR failure.The Avherald is reporting that there was no data from the transponder for the latter stages, which woud suggest a failure of date from ADR1

Simon is not correct in this case, there is ADR data for the last stage, but only speed and heading, no altitude. The final 180 loop is treated as a separate flight in the FR24 database, this seems to be the cause of the confusion:
https://www.flightradar24.com/data/a...s-san#1091b691


The same was commented on AVH but probably Simon did not yet see it.

The FR24 data (as usual) needs to be treated with caution.

The last three plot points are definitely incorrect, showing the aircraft's final position (after the teardrop turn) about a mile northwest of the 08 THR, heading west at 160 kts. That's probably FR24 doing a bit of dumb extrapolation based on the last reliable position plot (turning onto the 26 centreline at 15:10Z).

Incidentally, one thing that can be discerned from the FR24 data is that the training detail of 10 circuits appears to have included a couple of GAs and one full stop landing as well as touch-and-goes. The final circuit before the crash was, needless to say, a T&G.

Of course, I merely pointed out that there was some transmitted data, though quite clearly patchy and unreliable.


As I'm in Tallinn currently, I do check FR24 quite often for arriving flights, there is some signal disturbance for almost all rwy 26 approaches, flights usually end up North of the airport instead of shown as being on the runway.

Very true, I was also watching Tallinn and Helsinki traffic recently and sometimes FR24 shows complete bull**** in terms of aircraft position close to the airport / runaway.

Heard via via so take with a grain/bucket of salt... I don't know anything about Airbus systems so it can be complete bull as well but since it's the rumour forum...

Trainee being PF, could not get nose lifted after touch to proceed with the go, sidestick not responsive or something like that. Captain takes control, lifts off with trim input, due to slow change of pitch, aircraft nearly overspeeds, thrust is reduced, aircraft makes a hard touch down, lifts off again. Both engines fail for whatever reason (story said both caught fire), immediate turn around and landing supposedly in glide pretty much, touching around 50m before threshold.

Not sure about the speed at which they couldn't get the nose up by sidestick, supposedly around or between Vr/V1.

Distance flown between getting airborne after the final T&G and touching down again was around 11 nm.

It's unlikely that much of that was flown with zero thrust.

It will be interesting to see if the remaining A320 ATO candidates will get to finish their base training. I'm sure all future Base training will be suspended for the time being.

No info about when exactly the engines failed, just that it apparently happened due to the second touchdown. As I said, take it with a load of skepticism.

Is this a PTF outfit? If so, they seem to a paid a massive price after their aircraft was severely crippled. Wouldn’t want to see the bill for this one!

They are not a PTF/P2F outfit no

Depends how strict your definition is... This "cadet program" where you pay for your own A320 rating for a chance to join Smartlynx... I would consider that pay to fly.

OK, then Wizz, easyJet, Ryanair, CityJet, BMI Regional, FlyDubai and a countless list of others are also pay2fly


Small Planet ask you to pay for your TR and then you have to make a 40,000eu lump sum payment to them.

Smartlynx don't require this, it's the type rating and that's it (like almost 80% of the rest of europe).

You should do some research before seeking to make such firm statements that are incorrect.

You must be at Smartlynx if calling them P2F is pushing your buttons.

Of course they are a P2F outfit, you buy a type rating and hope to god they use you for some hours on type.

Don't try mix airlines where you are employed before being bonded.
Unfortunately, with the amount of pilots jumping around airlines, the companies now want the employee to bare the cost of a rating, sucks for everyone but it doesn't just happen at the low cost side of aviation!

You won’t hear me say otherwise :).

Out of interest... What kind of “conditional employment contract” does Smartlynx offer with the cadet program? Permanent? Six months?

Anyway, I suppose that is worth a whole other thread in discussion.

Anyone paying for a typerating today must be desperate.And going to this lot and not Ezy, Ryr or major lowcost does tell me a bit about the basic skill of the candidate.

By the way something the trainers are moaning about on a regular basis.
The poor level of cadets today, that is.
Something I can confirm.I never fly with anyone anymore that has the big picture, ever. ( In the old days that was one of the ways of knowing " Is he ready for command?")
Slowly going down over the last 4 to 5 years.
And big pressure to upgrade to cpt as soon as they approach 3000hrs.
I am not surprised we see accidents like this, it being Cpt induced or Cadet induced.

Happy Landings Chaps.
Gone fishing

Great that you have £130,000 burning a whole in your pocket to pay to EZY/CTC/OAA, or are willing to take the plunge with no job offer on the off chance of getting something with RYR upon finishing.


Pay2fly programmes are also knows as 'line training programmes', whereby you pay a large sum of cash to a company in return for flying 500 hours or so on a particular type. Some companies that do this are small planet and pegasus, just off the top of my head.

This is not what smartlynx do. You pay your type rating and then join permanently, not for 500hrs or 1000hrs or anything else - you do not pay for an amount of hours, so it's not pay2fly. This is exactly what most airlines in europe do too.

You may have grievances with other elements of the contract, but that doesn't make it pay2fly. Is it the best contract on earth? No. Is it it the worst? No. But that doesn't make it P2F just cos you don't like it. If you want to invent your own definition of P2F then go ahead, but it's rather disingenuous to try to fool those who may not know any better whilst concealing the real truth.

Anyway I think I saw you post about this on the Italian forum with a laughing face with a sarcastic 'hope no one was injured' ... says all we need to know about you.

Best Regards to you too

C'mon, they offered me a NTR DEC position, I have to pay €29.900 after which I will receive a whooping €235 for every flying day, as captain!!!!

How is this not pay to fly.

I used to pay FA's much more on a daily basis.

Didn't do it

I believe the only person making up definitions for pay to fly is you...

Are you money out of pocket before even flying a single minute for, or receiving a single minute of training from your new employer? You've just paid to fly.

Pay to fly started exactly like this, paying for your rating, and when people fell for that, people smarter than those paying for the ratings decided to make their business out of it and offered 'line training packages' and now 'self funded cadet programs' like the BAA Smartlynx program. If you need to consider it not pay2fly to justify your decision, that's fine. Just don't bring that bull to people who know better.

I'd still like to see what kind of 'conditional employment contract' they offer and if it is really permanent as you say. Even then, is it worth a €100 per day FO salary when you just plunked down €25k and are basically paying your own salary for the first year or so?

This should really go into a separate thread though...

Ontopic... Saw the plane on the apron today, could see the damage from quite some distance. Probably won't just buff out ;)