Pakistan Airlines flight PK8303 (A320) Crashes in Karachi

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.......

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 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.

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

He has several videos on the crash.

More info on Accident.

PIA #8303 UPDATE ATC REPORT!

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.?