Avianca flight 011
| Avianca flight 011 | |
|---|---|
 Avianca had rented the crashed Boeing 747 from SAS Scandinavian Airlines |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | controlled flight into terrain |
| place | approx. 12 km southeast of Madrid-Barajas airport |
| date | November 27, 1983 |
| Fatalities | 181 |
| Survivors | 11 |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Boeing 747-283B Combi |
| operator | Avianca |
| Mark | HK-2910X |
| Departure airport | Charles de Gaulle Airport , Paris |
| 1. Stopover | Madrid-Barajas Airport |
| 2. Stopover | Simón Bolívar Airport , Caracas |
| Destination airport | El Dorado Airport , Bogotá |
| Passengers | 173 |
| crew | 19th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
On November 27, 1983, a crashed Boeing 747 on Avianca Flight 011 ( Flight number : AV011) near the Madrid-Barajas airport after the engine the maximum elevation figure had fallen below. 181 inmates were killed in the accident; 11 passengers were seriously injured. After the plane disaster in Tenerife, the incident is the second most serious plane crash in Spain to date .
Flight route and occupants
Avianca opened a liner service from Bogotá via Caracas , Madrid and Paris to Frankfurt in the 1950s. The last leg to Frankfurt was not served on November 26, 1983 for organizational reasons, so the return flight to Colombia began on that day in Paris. The start there was delayed by 80 minutes because 55 passengers were expected from Frankfurt whoarrivedon a Lufthansa scheduled flight.
On the section to Madrid, the machine carried 169 passengers, including numerous artists, intellectuals and the writers Jorge Ibargüengoitia , Ángel Rama , Manuel Scorza and Marta Traba , who traveled to a literary congress in Bogotá. The crew consisted of 19 people. There were also four other crew members on board who were off duty on the first leg of the flight.
the accident
The Boeing 747-283B Combi took off from Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle Airport at 10:25 p.m. and climbed to a cruising altitude of just under 11,300 meters (37,000 feet ). The machine was handed over to the Spanish air traffic control at 11:31 p.m. and received route clearance for the Campo Real radio beacon (VOR CPL), which was located southeast of Madrid Airport. The flight there should be via Pamplona , Barahona and Castejón. The crew were given permission to descend to 5,800 meters (19,000 feet) 15 minutes later. When the aircraft flew over Barahona at 11:52 p.m., air traffic control requested the pilots to go directly to the CPL radio beacon and continue the descent to 2,800 meters (9,000 feet). Four minutes later, Madrid approach control took over flight control.
When the aircraft reached the specified altitude at 00:00, the crew received clearance for an ILS approach to runway 33. The aircraft then sank to 1,220 meters (4,000 feet). One minute later, the pilots were asked to continue their approach to runway 33 via the VOR CPL and to contact the Madrid control tower . At that time, the machine was about 13 kilometers (7 NM ) north of the rotary radio beacon. Immediately afterwards, the master initiated a right turn and left the usual approach route. The Boeing 747 went on a westerly course of 284 degrees with its landing gear extended and headed directly towards the outer marker transmitter ( NDB ) of the ILS glide path. Meanwhile, the autopilot- controlled machine continued to sink at about 380 meters (1,250 feet) per minute.
The Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) triggered a ground proximity alarm at 00:06:05, to which the pilots did not react correctly. Instead of going into a climb , they deactivated the autopilot and reduced the rate of descent only slightly. At 00:06:19, there was first ground contact at around 750 meters above sea level (2,247 feet MSL ). With a speed of about 265 km / h (142 knots ) the Boeing 747 brushed a ridge with the outer right engine and several wheels of the main landing gear. The right wing cut through a tree and was damaged. The aircraft began to roll to the right and three seconds later the main landing gear hit a second hill. The machine covered a further 360 meters, its bank angle increasing. The right wing hit the ground six seconds later and was torn off. The plane then turned on its back, shattered into five major pieces and went up in flames. The 11 surviving occupants sat at the fracture points in the fuselage and were thrown out of the cabin.
Cause of accident
The approach procedure for runway 33 provided for an overflight of the CPL radio beacon at an altitude of at least 1,220 meters (4,000 feet). The machine should then have slewed on a course of 297 degrees to intersect and turn onto the ILS glide path. The minimum flight altitude on the outer marker transmitter of the ILS was given as 3,282 feet. The crew did not comply with the correct approach procedure or the prescribed minimum flight altitudes.
The copilot responsible for navigation already seemed unfocused above Barahona . He confused the frequencies of the radio beacons in Barahona and Castejón with one another, so that the crew misjudged their position for the first time. The pilots were informed by air traffic control that they had passed Barahona and should now set a direct course to the rotating radio beacon CPL (VOR CPL). The co-pilot was unable to enter the coordinates of the radio beacon into the inertial navigation system, so the master had to take over this task. The crew then forgot to activate the navigation mode of the autopilot , as a result of which the previous course was maintained for a further three minutes.
While the aircraft was approaching VOR CPL from the north, the co-pilot went through the approach procedure for runway 33. The captain asked him to state the prescribed minimum flight altitude on the outer ILS marker transmitter, whereby the co-pilot made a number reversal: Instead of 3,282 feet, he stated 2,382 feet, which corresponded to a height difference of around 300 meters. According to this information, the master continued the descent, although the aircraft was supposed to remain at 4,000 feet until VOR CPL. In order to reduce altitude more quickly, the captain reduced the flight speed. To do this, he set the flaps to 10 degrees and extended the landing gear.
Immediately after the approach control had given the instruction to contact the control tower, the master turned to a westerly heading. The aircraft left about 11 km (5.8 NM) north of the VOR CPL the prescribed route and held on the outer marker (outer marker) to. The reason for this remained unclear. The investigators suspected that the pilots navigated exclusively with the radio compass (ADF) and ignored the distance display to the radio beacon CPL or that it provided an incorrect value. The GPWS triggered an alarm at 00:06:05 and indicated the approach to the ground. The captain deactivated the autopilot nine seconds later, but continued the descent manually. The first ground contact occurred 14 seconds after the alarm was triggered.
In addition to the behavior of the crew, the investigators also criticized the operation of air traffic control. The aircraft was handed over from approach control to the control tower without a position comparison being carried out. The pilots received several requests to continue the descent in the direction of the rotary radio beacon CPL, but they were not given any altitude information. The air traffic controllers assumed that the crew did not need this information because all approaches to runway 33 were made via the VOR CPL and a minimum altitude of 4,000 feet applied there. The approach control lost radar contact with the aircraft before the course change was initiated , but did not inform the crew or the control tower that the radar monitoring had ended. The course deviation and the accident of the aircraft thus went unnoticed. The air traffic controller in the control tower tried several times to establish radio contact with the pilots and only triggered an alarm at 12:19 a.m.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i ICAO Aircraft Accident Digest 1983 (No. 30), Circular 196-AN / 119, pp. 105 - 141 (PDF)
- ^ A b David Gero: Aviation disasters - accidents with passenger aircraft since 1950 , Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 978-3-613-01580-7
Coordinates: 40 ° 24 ′ 12 " N , 3 ° 26 ′ 57" W.