Ansett New Zealand Flight 703
| Ansett New Zealand Flight 703 | |
|---|---|
 An identical aircraft from the airline |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Controlled flight into terrain |
| place |
Tararua Ranges , New Zealand
|
| date | June 9, 1995 |
| Fatalities | 4th |
| Survivors | 17th |
| Injured | 17th |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type |
 de Havilland Canada DHC-8-102
|
| operator |
Ansett New Zealand
|
| Mark |
ZK-NEY
|
| Departure airport |
Auckland Airport , New Zealand
|
| Destination airport |
Palmerston North Airport , New Zealand
|
| Passengers | 18th |
| crew | 3 |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On June 9, 1995, a de Havilland Canada DHC-8-102 crashed on Ansett New Zealand Flight 703 (flight number IATA : ZQ703 , ICAO : NZA703 ) shortly before landing at Palmerston North Airport . Four people were killed and 17 injured in the accident.
plane
The aircraft affected was a de Havilland Canada DHC-8-102 , which was eight and a half years old at the time of the accident. The machine with the serial number 055 was the 55th machine of this type from ongoing production in 1986 at the De Havilland Canada plant at Toronto / Downsview Airport and initially received the test aircraft registration C-GFRP , with which it was on November 26, 1986 completed its maiden flight. On December 2, 1986, the machine was initially delivered to Ansett New Zealand , a subsidiary of Ansett Australia , which it has operated since then at its subsidiary Ansett Newmans until it was absorbed by Ansett New Zealand in mid-1987. The machine was operated continuously with the aircraft registration number ZK-NEY . The twin-engine short-range aircraft was equipped with two turboprop engines of the type Pratt & Whitney Canada PW120A equipped. By the time of the accident, the aircraft had completed a total of 22,154 operating hours, which accounted for 24,976 take-offs and landings.
Passengers
The flight from Auckland to Palmerston had taken 18 passengers, of whom 17 were New Zealanders and one was a citizen of the United States .
crew
There was a three-person crew on board, consisting of a flight captain, a first officer and a flight attendant.
The 40-year-old flight captain was hired by Ansett New Zealand in April 1987. Until October 30, 1994, he was the first officer in the cockpit of the Boeing 737-200 and BAe 146 aircraft. Before that, he had 500 hours of flight experience in Swearingen Metro SA 227 machines , 100 of them as a pilot flying. It was not until October 1994 that he was trained for the De Havilland DHC-8. He had 7,765 hours of flight experience, 273 of which he had completed in the cockpit of the De Havilland Canada DHC-8-100.
The 33-year-old first officer was hired by Ansett New Zealand in November 1994. Before that he had successfully completed a course to fly the De Havilland Canada DHC-8. He had previously spent five years in the passenger flight operations in Papua New Guinea machines of the De Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter , Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander , Embraer 110 and Beechcraft King Air 200 flown, and he in some 4,000 hours of flight experience as a single pilot Had completed an instrument flight . Before joining Ansett New Zealand, he had little experience of flying with another pilot in the cockpit. The first officer had 6,460 hours of flight experience, 341 of which he had completed in the cockpit of the De Havilland Canada DHC-8-100.
The composition of the cockpit crew was therefore unfavorable because both pilots were relatively inexperienced with the type of aircraft, although the machine and type of aircraft used by Ansett New Zealand were by no means new.
Course of the flight and course of the accident
Regularly scheduled domestic flight took off at 8:17 pm from Auckland Airport . When approaching Palmerston North Airport , the pilots were given clearance to land on runway 25. In order to achieve this, the pilots flew the machine in a right turn. While the first officer was working through the landing checklist, the master interrupted him several times and instructed him to skip individual points on the checklist and to extend the landing gear. When the landing gear was extended, the right main landing gear did not extend completely, which is why the first officer extended it manually using a hydraulic pump. The engines were already in idle, which corresponded to the usual procedures, but the machine sank increasingly below the minimum descent altitude. The Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) issued an alarm signal about the approach to the ground, but the master did not react to it in time. At 9:22 a.m., at a point it should have passed at an altitude of 2,650 feet (about 810 meters), the machine was at an altitude of 1,272 feet (about 388 meters) in hilly terrain in the Tararua Ranges flown. Sheep grazed on the rounded hills, three of which were killed in the accident.
Victim
Two passengers and the flight attendant died in the impact. The two pilots were seriously injured. Of the surviving passengers, 12 suffered serious injuries and three were slightly injured.
The passenger Reginald John Dixon had tried to free two passengers trapped at the wing root after leaving the plane . A small fire next to the demolished engine suddenly kindled like a blazing flame to a larger fire, with Dixon suffering severe burns, from which he died twelve days after the accident as the fourth fatality. Dixon was later posthumously honored on October 23, 1999 with the New Zealand Cross , New Zealand's highest award for civil valor.
root cause
The accident investigators criticized the fact that the master had not ensured that the aircraft achieved and maintained the required approach profile during the instrument flight during the non-precision approach. The captain had insisted on his decision to extend the landing gear without breaking off the instrument approach, which distracted him from his main task of flying the aircraft. While the first officer was trying to rectify a malfunction in the landing gear, distracted by the pilot and on his instructions, he did not carry out the checklist in the correct order. In addition, the warning from the ground proximity warning system was issued too late.
The accident investigation also showed that the GPWS should have sounded earlier before the impact, but it did not. The flight captain stated after the accident that the altimeter display had dropped 1,000 feet at once 4.5 seconds before the impact. Investigations into a possible malfunction of the altimeter revealed that the antennas of the radar altimeter, which sends a signal to the GPWS, had been painted over during maintenance, which may have impaired the ability of the GPWS to give an early warning of an impending ground approach. The investigative commission later commented that the paint on the antennas did not block or reflect the signals. The radar antennas are clearly marked with the notice "Do not paint", although in this case no attention was paid to the notice when painting the machine. When the radar altimeter of the accident machine was checked on a test stand, the unit worked perfectly.
swell
- Report 95-011 de Havilland DHC-8 ZK-NEY Near Palmerston North 9 June 1995 , Transport Accident Investigation Commission of New Zealand , March 17, 1997.
- Accident report DHC-8-100, ZK-NEY , in the Aviation Safety Network
- Operating history DHC-8-100, ZK-NEY on planespotters.net
Individual evidence
- ^ Recipients of the New Zealand Cross , New Zealand Defense Force
- ^ New Zealand officials examine delayed crash warning , Flightglobal, August 20, 1997.
Coordinates: 40 ° 20 ′ 0.1 ″ S , 175 ° 48 ′ 0.3 ″ O