Pakistan Airlines flight PK8303 (A320) Crashes in Karachi

Captain_Crash · 22-05-2020 11:54am #1

A Pakistan Airlines flight with more than 100 people on board has crashed in the Pakistani city of Karachi, an airline spokesman said Friday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/asia/pakistan-plane-crash/index.html

WishUWereHere · 22-05-2020 12:17pm

Captain_Crash wrote: »

A Pakistan Airlines flight with more than 100 people on board has crashed in the Pakistani city of Karachi, an airline spokesman said Friday.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/22/asia/pakistan-plane-crash/index.html

Just seen on the BBC also: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52766904

Gosh, if there isn't already enough bad news on the Airline front.

Let's just hope there is minimal loss of life.

JohnC. · 22-05-2020 12:21pm

It aborted a landing, reportedly due to possible gear issue. Then lost engine power for some reason, as confirmed by the pilot.

Last messages

Control: appear to be turning left.

Pilot: we are proceeding direct we have lost engine.

Control: runway available to land at 25

Pilot: Roger

Pilot: Sir Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Pakistan 8303

Control: 8303 roger both runways clear to land

There is audio of that transcript too.

Captain_Crash · 22-05-2020 1:56pm

Reading on AV herald that they had a nose gear issue, then lost both engines on the second approach.

Not many reasons for why an aircraft would lose two engines at once, but there is one glaringly obvious one... its hard not to speculate at this point.

http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0

mr.anonymous · 22-05-2020 4:21pm

AvHerald now showing airborne photos with what appear to be scrape marks on underside of both engines. Also quoting report of attempted belly landing that was aborted.

Would have assumed fuel starvation earlier but now could be dual engine failure due to damage from runway contact when attempting to land with a gear failure.

goingnowhere · 22-05-2020 4:35pm

RAT is also visible as deployed

Land with no gear, realise after scraping the engines off the runway. Go around, but engines have eaten a lot of FOD so die shortly afterwards

Heavy fire at crash site would suggest there was some fuel onboard

JohnC. · 22-05-2020 5:15pm

Would the rear of the engines be scraped like that if the problem was with the nose gear?

Maybe the black marks could be something other than scrapes, like a dark liquid or something else?

Jack1985 · 22-05-2020 5:24pm

goingnowhere wrote: »

RAT is also visible as deployed

Land with no gear, realise after scraping the engines off the runway. Go around, but engines have eaten a lot of FOD so die shortly afterwards

Heavy fire at crash site would suggest there was some fuel onboard

Have to agree, CCTV video shows High AoA with gear deployed and the aircraft clearly stalling seconds before crash.

Aircraft in question had been grounded for a month before re-entering service as of yesterday. Without a functioning GPWS and or possible mechanical gear issues the crew should have had at least three indications the gear was not down before the inital landing.

Caranica · 22-05-2020 5:30pm

Looks like significant loss of life. BBC article reference "at least 3 survivors" among the passengers and that's before the occupants of the houses.

Captain_Crash · 22-05-2020 7:00pm

No marks on the rest of the aircraft at all tho? If it is what it’s starting to look like it is, maybe they copped it just a few seconds too late

(Adding pic to post so save people time going looking for it)

RocketRaccoon · 22-05-2020 7:05pm

Captain_Crash wrote: »

No marks on the rest of the aircraft at all tho? If it is what it’s starting to look like it is, maybe they copped it just a few seconds too late

(Adding pic to post so save people time going looking for it)

I'm sorry to sound stupid but what is it starting to look like?

Captain_Crash · 22-05-2020 7:12pm

RocketRaccoon wrote: »

I'm sorry to sound stupid but what is it starting to look like?

It’s starting to look like they made contact with the ground on landing(with no gear) on the first attempt before going around. The damage to the engines from touching the ground may have been the cause of the failure

***I don’t mean to speculate and it’s purely my opinion from what I’ve read so far

Inquitus · 22-05-2020 7:13pm

RocketRaccoon wrote: »

I'm sorry to sound stupid but what is it starting to look like?

It looks like they tried a belly landing and bailed out of it, damaging the engines, which in the attached picture you can see have substantial black marks on the underside. I would assume the thinking is this caused the damage that then caused the engines to fail on the ill-fated final landing attempt.

kevinandrew · 23-05-2020 2:19am

The scorched engines, visible shredding and white smoke trailing from them almost certainly indicates that they made contact with the ground on that first landing attempt.

What's interesting is that rest of the aircraft appears untouched by this initial touchdown which suggests the pilots initiated the go-around before touching down but were already too low and scraped the engines which resulted in the damage we see in those photos along with lots of debris ingested into the engines which caused the catastrophic double engine failure now suspected of downing the aircraft. No doubt investigators will be taking a look at the runway for a clearer picture of that first attempt.

Of course, the initial cause of the accidental/non belly landing will be the key to all this and for now remains largely unknown, it would be irresponsible to speculate too much on what happened to cause that.

Most crash sites are chaotic but seeing the remains of an A320 strewn across such a heavily populated and physically built up area is especially disturbing.

Captain_Crash · 23-05-2020 6:40pm

So was told that it looks like the following happened.... they landed nose gear first, then bounced.... after the second bounce they initiated a GA and the PM selected the gear up (or vice versa, this isn’t yet clear) however they subsequently bounced again and this time, no gear and hence the damaged engines

EchoIndia · 23-05-2020 8:31pm

Captain_Crash wrote: »

So was told that it looks like the following happened.... they landed nose gear first, then bounced.... after the second bounce they initiated a GA and the PM selected the gear up (or vice versa, this isn’t yet clear) however they subsequently bounced again and this time, no gear and hence the damaged engines

Though you wouldn't expect a bounce with no gear to absorb the shock of landing, so premature retraction during a go-around sounds more plausible to me.

Captain_Crash · 23-05-2020 9:16pm

EchoIndia wrote: »

premature retraction during a go-around

Yeah this would be my guess also, much like EK521 except this time they managed to pull away before it all went wrong

HTCOne · 23-05-2020 9:33pm

Plenty of incidents of flaps and gear levers being mixed up on the 320 over the years, could have pulled the wrong one on the go around after a bounce.

Reports are they were at 3,500 ft 5nm out on the first approach. Could also have been mashing the master warning so much on the way down due overspeed that they silenced the gear warning and simply forgot about it.......

JohnC. · 25-05-2020 10:35pm

Sky have a report that a preliminary report says the plane scraped the runway 3 times in its first attempt. Approximately 4,500ft, 5,500ft and 7,000ft along. There’s also some video showing some of the scrapes on the runway from the engines.

https://news.sky.com/story/pakistan-plane-crash-video-shows-jet-scraped-runway-during-landing-attempt-11994336

bnt · 25-05-2020 10:48pm

More accurate data here shows that the A320 was much too high and fast on its first approach, and then scraped its engines along the runway at over 200 knots before going around. A typical A320 approach speed is around 140 knots. They were offered vectors to break off the approach so they could correct the problem, but declined. The accident report will not be good and I suspect will contain references to Crew Resource Management. :mad:

Popoutman · 26-05-2020 12:36am

Looking very like the gear was not deployed on approach, and the crew were not aware of that fact. It's been said that the warnings about that from the plane's warning systems were audible on the tower-plane radio, but that is not substantiated as of yet. Then after failing to realise they didn't have gear down after banging the engines on the ground, one of the crew pushes TOGA and scrape back into the air literally. Engines fail shortly afterwards due to no oil/nofuel, pumps damaged on the first attempted landing, and then the crash is inevitable.

It's fairly clear from photos of the crash scene that the engines weren't appearing to be rotating at any significant speed upon impact.

I'm also awaiting the reports with interest, and I'm also wondering about the CRM in this particular flight.

lintdrummer · 26-05-2020 1:45am

Popoutman wrote: »

Looking very like the gear was not deployed on approach, and the crew were not aware of that fact. It's been said that the warnings about that from the plane's warning systems were audible on the tower-plane radio, but that is not substantiated as of yet. Then after failing to realise they didn't have gear down after banging the engines on the ground, one of the crew pushes TOGA and scrape back into the air literally. Engines fail shortly afterwards due to no oil/nofuel, pumps damaged on the first attempted landing, and then the crash is inevitable.

It's fairly clear from photos of the crash scene that the engines weren't appearing to be rotating at any significant speed upon impact.

I'm also awaiting the reports with interest, and I'm also wondering about the CRM in this particular flight.

I've listened to the ATC audio and a master warning can be heard during one transmission on the 1st approach. We'll have to wait for the report to see what that warning was for.

I agree that it looks like the gear was not down for the first landing attempt. I don't believe they weren't aware of this. It's very strange, the FR24 data suggests that they were travelling at circa 200kts IAS during that landing attempt. Even if they were carrying out a flap 3 landing that would be in excess of the speed limitation for flap deployment. So, they couldn't have been configured for landing. With a functioning GPWS system they'd have heard shouts of "Too Low Gear" and "Too Low Flaps". But the speed alone means they couldn't possibly have been configured and they would have known this.

So potentially they have attempted to land with no flaps or gear but supposedly they haven't made any distress call in advance of this.
Lots of questions at this point that only the report can answer, thankfully the black boxes have been recovered.

cson · 26-05-2020 3:35am

It was a GECAS bird I think too.

Belfast · 28-05-2020 1:32pm

This American Airlaines pilot (Juan browne)gives good info on the crash.

He has several videos on the crash.

Belfast · 29-05-2020 11:21pm

Unstabilized Aircraft approach - Explained!

This may have been part of what caused the problem.

Belfast · 30-05-2020 8:56pm

More info on Accident.

lintdrummer · 02-06-2020 11:36pm

AVHerald reporting that data has been successfully downloaded from both the CVR and DFDR.

Belfast · 09-06-2020 1:18pm

PIA #8303 UPDATE ATC REPORT!

Belfast · 12-06-2020 12:01am

Roger_007 · 24-06-2020 12:36pm

BBC news are reporting that the Pakistani aviation minister, Mr Khan, has reported to Parliament that the initial report into the accident found that the pilots were at fault for not following ATC instructions. Curiously, ATC were blamed for not informing the crew that their engines had collided with the runway on their first landing attempt.

There was no problem with the aircraft.

Surely the crew knew better than ATC that they had collided with the runway.?

lintdrummer · 24-06-2020 12:43pm

Preliminary report published by CAA Pakistan.

https://www.caapakistan.com.pk/Upload/SIBReports/AAIB-431.pdf

So far it seems that the only reason for this crash was the decision making in the flight deck. How any professional pilot could continue with an approach that unstable is beyond me. Perhaps we will learn more in time but right now it seems to have been a senseless loss of life.

lintdrummer · 24-06-2020 12:44pm

Roger_007 wrote: »

BBC news are reporting that the Pakistani aviation minister, Mr Khan, has reported to Parliament that the initial report into the accident found that the pilots were at fault for not following ATC instructions. Curiously, ATC were blamed for not informing the crew that their engines had collided with the runway on their first landing attempt.
There was no problem with the aircraft.

Surely the crew knew better than ATC that they had collided with the runway.?

No blame is apportioned in accident reports, that is not their purpose. If you read the report, it states that ATC did not inform the crew that they had observed sparks, but it does not apportion any blame to ATC or anybody else.

Inquitus · 24-06-2020 1:57pm

lintdrummer wrote: »

No blame is apportioned in accident reports, that is not their purpose. If you read the report, it states that ATC did not inform the crew that they had observed sparks, but it does not apportion any blame to ATC or anybody else.

The Pilots one would assume would be well aware they had hit the ground without the gear down, and would not need ATC to advise them of that, from the moment they went around they were dead, sadly.

Belfast · 25-06-2020 12:57am

dilallio · 25-06-2020 2:54pm

According to this CNN article, almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, with some of these flying with foreign carriers.

Very scary.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pilot-intl-hnk/index.html

crushproof · 25-06-2020 2:54pm

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pilot-intl-hnk/index.html

Aviation Minister claims almost 1 in 3 pilots have a fake license, quite terrifying!

lintdrummer · 25-06-2020 4:49pm

dilallio wrote: »

According to this CNN article, almost 1 in 3 pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses, with some of these flying with foreign carriers.

Very scary.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pilot-intl-hnk/index.html

crushproof wrote: »

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/25/business/pakistan-fake-pilot-intl-hnk/index.html

Aviation Minister claims almost 1 in 3 pilots have a fake license, quite terrifying!

That would go some way to explaining this crash if the pilots of PK8303 are in the 33% ( :eek: ) with fake licenses.

Inquitus · 25-06-2020 5:07pm

lintdrummer wrote: »

That would go some way to explaining this crash if the pilots of PK8303 are in the 33% ( :eek: ) with fake licenses.

They only cheated on the exam itself, they would have completed all the relevant training. It's still utter madness, and unacceptable, but its not quite random joes off the streets put in charge of a passenger jet!

HTCOne · 26-06-2020 12:03am

India is the same. Every year there’s stories of guys flying heavies caught with fake licences they obtained by bribing someone.

1123heavy · 26-06-2020 11:15am

Inquitus wrote: »

They only cheated on the exam itself, they would have completed all the relevant training. It's still utter madness, and unacceptable, but its not quite random joes off the streets put in charge of a passenger jet!

If they showed up to class and went to sleep or played on their phones then did 0 follow up study then I'm not so sure about them 'completing' relevant training (everyone who went to flight school knows this type but over here they aren't able to send others in their place).

The only reason they would have had someone else sit their exams for them is because they did NOT complete the relevant training (no paying attention in class followed by no study) and they knew they would fail.

I take grave issue to sharing the skies with these people and would like for them to be banned into Europe. I also don't believe the numbers quoted by the minister, the true numbers are always higher than what they admit to (who can pay the bribe to get passed as 'genuine'?).

The whole thing is clearly rotten from top to bottom and they have no business carrying passengers in Europe, authorities need to act, now.

Inquitus · 26-06-2020 1:10pm

1123heavy wrote: »

If they showed up to class and went to sleep or played on their phones then did 0 follow up study then I'm not so sure about them 'completing' relevant training (everyone who went to flight school knows this type but over here they aren't able to send others in their place).

The only reason they would have had someone else sit their exams for them is because they did NOT complete the relevant training (no paying attention in class followed by no study) and they knew they would fail.

I take grave issue to sharing the skies with these people and would like for them to be banned into Europe. I also don't believe the numbers quoted by the minister, the true numbers are always higher than what they admit to (who can pay the bribe to get passed as 'genuine'?).

The whole thing is clearly rotten from top to bottom and they have no business carrying passengers in Europe, authorities need to act, now.

I guess my point is they must at least have enough competence to complete the co-pilots role?

If you put me next to you in whatever type you fly, you'd know something was well off within the fist few minutes?

1123heavy · 26-06-2020 2:06pm

Inquitus wrote: »

I guess my point is they must at least have enough competence to complete the co-pilots role?

If you put me next to you in whatever type you fly, you'd know something was well off within the fist few minutes?

What is the co-pilot's role though? A co-pilot must be fully proficient to fly the aircraft in order to be rated on it, it's no different to a captain. The differences between a captain and co-pilot will come in the form of legal authority, experience and decision making, but make no mistake about it, the co-pilot is very much 'a pilot'.

The traditional idea that a co-pilot isn't really a pilot and isn't expected to be able to do things on his own is nothing but a once widely held false notion, the co-pilot must be able to fly and manage the thing alone if anything happens to the captain and is examined on that as part of the type rating training (your captain will suddenly go quiet to simulate unconsciousness and you find yourself alone to manage the aircraft back onto the ground).

To answer your second question I'd say like to say yes, but I might fall into a trap of suspecting some genuinely qualified people as unqualified and I'm sure fellow pilots will know where I'm coming from with that in regards to some of the newer pilots being churned out of these big academies. I have sat in some sims with people and I've no idea what is going on with them at all.

I am a first officer though and if the captain started asking questions or doing things totally inexplicable for the level of experience you'd expect, I'd first probably discuss it with other first officers and then if there was a widely held suspicion it would go to the airline. It's unthinkable in Ireland though, however I know for a fact it has happened at least once (a person vastly inflated their hours and joined as a commander), they were released immediately upon discovery.

Belfast · 26-06-2020 9:53pm

Hotblack Desiato · 27-06-2020 1:50am

1123heavy wrote: »

The traditional idea that a co-pilot isn't really a pilot and isn't expected to be able to do things on his own is nothing but a once widely held false notion

BEA had this sort of class-ridden cockpit many years ago, it didn't work out well for them in terms of accident rate. Second Officers required by union rules to be in the cockpit, but not really allowed to do anything. First Officers who couldn't question the (usually ex-WW II Bomber or Transport Command) Captain.

The Staines accident appears to be a result of 'defer to authority'.

Interesting pilot's perspective on the different cultures between BEA and BOAC here:

http://www.vc10.net/Memories/Didntwanttofly.html

During my period in BEA only one airline crashed more often and that was Aeroflot.

Korean Air was another one. They developed an appalling accident record when they expanded their operations in the 80s and 90s, it boiled down to a culture where authority is deferred to and many of their pilots were ex-military where authority was completely unquestionable. So many "highly qualified" Korean Air captains flew perfectly serviceable aircraft into the terrain and the first officers just sat there. They've made a huge effort to change their culture since.

What is going on in southern Asia is pretty worrying, if people are prepared to bribe their way through written exams, maybe their families are prepared to offer much bigger bribes to pass check rides? PIA and Air India should be banned from EU airspace until their regulators can demonstrate that they can, well, regulate.

Nijmegen · 27-06-2020 2:27pm

We know corruption is endemic in these countries, I guess why not extend it to the cockpit, the maintenance supply chain... I wouldn't be quick to fly with one of these carriers, to be honest.

Jack1985 · 30-06-2020 3:52pm

1123heavy wrote: »

...I take grave issue to sharing the skies with these people and would like for them to be banned into Europe. I also don't believe the numbers quoted by the minister, the true numbers are always higher than what they admit to (who can pay the bribe to get passed as 'genuine'?).

The whole thing is clearly rotten from top to bottom and they have no business carrying passengers in Europe, authorities need to act, now.

EASA have issued a ban this afternoon to PIA for a minimum period of 6 months.

Belfast · 30-06-2020 11:37pm

vicwatson · 03-07-2020 8:36am

Jack1985 wrote: »

EASA have issued a ban this afternoon to PIA for a minimum period of 6 months.

Yet there was a PIA into MAN yesterday

JohnC. · 03-07-2020 8:56am

vicwatson wrote: »

Yet there was a PIA into MAN yesterday

Can they continue to fly while they appeal? I don't know if they have appealed, but I imagine they would.

Cloudio9 · 03-07-2020 9:12am

JohnC. wrote: »

Can they continue to fly while they appeal? I don't know if they have appealed, but I imagine they would.

I think repatriation flights are exempt.

Foggy43 · 03-07-2020 11:51am

Cloudio9 wrote: »

I think repatriation flights are exempt.

Yes I agree. There would have been crews here in the UK that needed to reurn to Pakistan.

Pakistan Airlines flight PK8303 (A320) Crashes in Karachi

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