Pakistani airliner crashes in Karachi

[jb747]

I've seen the Shuttle trainer flying some approaches. They were certainly steep compared to the civil world, but not so outlandish for parts of the military.

The A-4 had one flight profile that was around 12º. The Mirage was about 50% worse than the A-4, which would put it at around 18º.

The USAF test pilot school, around the time that the early shuttle pilots would have been attending, used F104s. They were easily able to emulate the X-15 and shuttle profiles, but had an even worse practice profile that was twice as bad.

I doubt that you can reasonably compare the skills of shuttle pilots to what we seem to be seeing in this accident.

 

[jb747]

The Aviation Herald

Aviation Herald - News, Incidents and Accidents in Aviation

avherald.com

Makes for very interesting reading. Make sure you ignore the comments section though.

 

[Quickstatus]

Make sure you ignore the comments section though.

That’s the bit I like the most for a bit of entertainment

Landing gear set to down at 7200 feet 10.5 nm out. But then retracted landing gear and speed brakes at 1700feet and 5nm out AND continues approach!!!

 

[flyer89]

I don’t quite know where to begin with this. Had these two flown a plane ever before?

 

[MEL_Traveller]

It's a bit hard to find in the Aviation Herald report, but it's being mentioned elsewhere that the pilots were allegedly preoccupied discussion Covid-19 during the approach as it has affected both their families.

 

[p--and--t]

The airlines I'll use for future trips just got reduced again

 

[jb747]

Supposedly they missed their descent point, and so were high the whole way down. But, that‘s easy to fix. For most people anyway.

 

[AviatorInsight]

Wow....just wow....There were so many holes in that swiss cheese that I don't think there was any cheese left!

 

[flyer89]

Who needs a landing gear to land anyway. Waste of space and weight if you ask me.

 

[Mattg]

If this is all true, the sheer incompetence here is unbelievable. This was a totally avoidable crash.

This was also reported today: Plane crash: Around 40% pilots in Pakistan have ‘fake’ flying licences, says aviation minister

 

[AviatorInsight]

If this is all true, the sheer incompetence here is unbelievable. This was a totally avoidable crash.

This was also reported today: Plane crash: Around 40% pilots in Pakistan have ‘fake’ flying licences, says aviation minister

This doesn’t surprise me. The amount of times I was asked to just give someone (from that entire part of the world) their instrument rating so they could go back home was astounding.

 

[OATEK]

Who needs a landing gear to land anyway. Waste of space and weight if you ask me.

I don't understand why it the landing gear was deployed and then retracted - was that to slow the plane down?

 

[only4tehlulz]

Follow-up from Reuters - specifically on PIA - here

"KARACHI, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will ground a third of its 434 pilots on suspicion that they hold “dubious” licenses and flying certificates, a company spokesman said on Thursday, prompting concern from international safety and transport bodies."

Pakistan flag carrier to ground a third of pilots over 'dubious' licences

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) will ground a third of its 434 pilots on suspicion that they hold "dubious" licences and flying certificates, a company spokesman said on Thursday, prompting concern from international safety and transport bodies.

www.reuters.com

 

[AviatorInsight]

I don't understand why it the landing gear was deployed and then retracted - was that to slow the plane down?

Dropping the landing gear and speedbrakes in an effort to get down and slow down at the same time is a way of achieving that. Not sure of the A320 handling, but the 737 definitely doesn’t like to do both at the same time. So it’s a valid technique of achieving both things simultaneously.

The thing that gets me is that they then retract the gear at 1700ft! Once it’s down, leave it down. Speedbrakes need to be stowed by 1000ft and must not be used with greater than flap 15 (B737). So that is a good thing, but you can see that in the balloon effect on the side profile where all that drag has been dramatically reduced all of a sudden and they find themselves high again.

 

[jb747]

I don't understand why it the landing gear was deployed and then retracted - was that to slow the plane down?

The gear is an extremely effective speed brake (way more so than the actual speed brakes). If they had taken the gear at about 15 miles, and left it down, we wouldn't be reading any of this.

My guess is that at 1,700' the pilot flying actually forgot that he already had the gear down, and so asked for it to be extended. The support pilot, instead of reminding him of the actual status, knew that he had to do 'something' with the gear, so he retracted it. If the gear had remained down, they would have arrived at the runway, hot, but probably not outlandishly so.

The report continues with them selecting reverse thrust on the ground. You've got to wonder if the view looked a tad wrong. The manuals are all very explicit too, about NEVER going around once reverse is selected. BTW, the engines wouldn't have actually gone into reverse, as there was no weight on the wheels.

The shots of them during the last seconds of flight shows the gear to be down again. As they missed the airfield by about 1,300 metres, you have to wonder if they might have made it past all of the built up areas if they hadn't extended the gear after the engine failures.

Neither of these people could actually fly.

 

[flyer89]

Neither of these people could actually fly

The most important part of the whole incident.

 

[NM]

Another report on the Pakistani license problem. Wow ... Just Wow ... is all I can say. Makes me wonder which other countries have similar issues with licensing?

One third of Pakistani pilots suspected of fraud - World of Aviation

The nation’s Minister for Aviation told Parliament that 262 of Pakistan's 860 active, licensed pilots have been found to have suspect licences.

worldofaviation.com

 

[RooFlyer]

From the Aviation Herald (my bolding)

The landing was undertaken with landing gears retracted. The aircraft touched the runway surface on its engines. Flight crew applied reverse engine power and initiated a braking action. Both engines scrubbed the runway at various locations causing damage to both of them. Figures hereunder show selected screenshots of security / CCTV cameras footages of the aircraft engines touching the runway and showing sparks due to scrubbing, along with marks on the runway.

(j) The “Aerodrome Control” observed the scrubbing of engines with the runway but did not covey this abnormality to the aircraft. It was conveyed to the “Karachi Approach” on telephone. Subsequently “Karachi Approach” also did not relay this abnormality to the aircraft.

(k) The landing was discontinued and a go-around was executed.

Up the thread I expressed amazement that an aircraft could take to the air again after scraping the ground for a while. But not we learn that reverse and braking were applied whilst on the ground. I remain amazed (for what that's worth!) that the plane could get airborne again. The ground scrape was reported as 1.3 to 2.1 km!

I guess the decision not to stop while they were 'ahead' (on the ground, slowing down under brakes and reverse) was the least of their mistakes.

 

[AviatorInsight]

I guess the decision not to stop while they were 'ahead' (on the ground, slowing down under brakes and reverse) was the least of their mistakes.

Sure was! Not having the gear down creates a multitude of problems...besides the obvious it also plays a certain function for landing:
1. no brakes!
2. a lot of systems work on a weight on wheels (WoW) mentality. Meaning that as soon as weight is sensed and the wheels spin up to a predetermined speed certain “logic” happens that transfers the logic from the aircraft being in the air to now on the ground.
3. even if the speedbrakes were armed for landing, with no WoW logic the aircraft thinks it’s still in the air and won’t deploy. Much like the reversers.

What a mess...

Post automatically merged: Jun 26, 2020

Another report on the Pakistani license problem. Wow ... Just Wow ... is all I can say. Makes me wonder which other countries have similar issues with licensing?

One third of Pakistani pilots suspected of fraud - World of Aviation

The nation’s Minister for Aviation told Parliament that 262 of Pakistan's 860 active, licensed pilots have been found to have suspect licences.

worldofaviation.com

Take a look at my post above. By reading between the lines (think of a neighbouring country), this was also common practice along with a bribe for these student pilots.

 

[RooFlyer]

3. even if the speedbrakes were armed for landing, with no WoW logic the aircraft thinks it’s still in the air and won’t deploy. Much like the reversers.

Ah ... so what you are saying that even though 'brakes were applied and reverse thrust applied', they wouldn't have worked. Well, I'm obstinately still surprised that they could get into the air after a km or two scraping along the ground. I guess that wouldn't be for that long, so it would be 'Uh! that's the ground, full thrust ...'

Would it be 20 seconds on the ground for a 2km scrape? 5-10 seconds to realise whats happened and react, and 10-15 secs to get airborne again?