Hapag-Lloyd flight 3378

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Hapag-Lloyd flight 3378
Airbus A310-304, Hapag-Lloyd AN0835430.jpg

The D-AHLB aircraft that crashed in 1992

Accident summary
Accident type Lack of fuel
place Vienna, Schwechat Airport
date July 12, 2000
Fatalities 0
Survivors 151 (all)
Injured 26 (easy)
Aircraft
Aircraft type Airbus A310-304
operator Hapag-Lloyd flight
Mark D-AHLB
Passengers 143
crew 8th
Lists of aviation accidents

Hapag-Lloyd flight 3378 was supposed to fly from Crete to Hanover on July 12, 2000. The inserted Airbus A310-300 but had to because of a non retractable landing gear and an ensuing fuel shortage in Vienna emergency landing and was seriously damaged.

Aircraft

The Airbus A310-300 used on Hapag-Lloyd flight 3378 with the production number MSN 528 and the aircraft registration D-AHLB was handed over by Airbus to Hapag-Lloyd on January 10, 1990 and has been continuously operated by it since then. At the time of the incident, he was a good ten years old.

Course of the accident

After taking off from Chania Airport (Crete), one of the two main landing gears could not be retracted. The flight captain tried to reach a German airport with the landing gear extended, despite increased fuel consumption, possibly to save maintenance costs and to transport the passengers to Hanover more conveniently and more cheaply. Because the landing gear was extended during the entire flight, the fuel consumption was about 60% higher than in the original fuel calculation .

Initially, Munich ( EDDM ) was planned as an alternate airport. During the flight, however, it became apparent that even Vienna ( LOWW ) could only just be reached with an alternative landing (divert). In practice, for safety reasons, one usually opts for a much closer destination - this is often the departure airport. The nearest major airport would have been Athens ( LGAT ), a half-hour flight from Crete.

At an altitude of 25,000 ft (7600 m), 40 NM (75 km) abeam of Zagreb , a warning signal reported that the emergency fuel reserve of 1,600 liters was not reached. At 12:43 p.m. the flight captain decided to land in Vienna, which was still 120 NM (220 km) away. However, the pilots did not declare an air emergency . Only when the engines failed at 1:20 pm 12 NM (22 km) in front of the runway at an altitude of about 4000  ft (1,200 m) did they send an emergency message (declare emergency - "out of fuel").

One engine could be started again for a short time so that the airfield could still be reached, but not the runway. At 1:25 p.m. the end of one wing of the aircraft touched the ground for the first time about 660 meters from runway 34, as a result the left main landing gear failed, the machine skidded through the runway approach lights and was severely damaged on the landing gear, engines and fuselage. Of the 143 passengers, 26 were slightly injured during the evacuation after the emergency landing.

Causes and aftermath

According to the investigation report, the reason for the fact that the landing gear could not be retracted correctly was to be traced back to an insufficiently secured lock nut for the fastening and adjustment of the landing gear retraction hydraulics during maintenance. Due to this inadequate security, the fine adjustment “wandered” during the following 2000 landings. Overall, the adjustment error accumulated to 10 mm, which meant that the locking position could no longer be reached after retraction.

For the fuel calculation, as prescribed for routine operation, the flight captain relied on the displays of the Flight Management System (FMS) in the cockpit, which, among other things, shows the remaining flight time, fuel consumption, excess and reduced consumption compared to the flight plan and forecasts for the remaining Indicates range with the remaining fuel. The actual amount of fuel still in the tank is used to calculate the forecasts. After the start, the FMS indicated that the fuel would reach Munich. Since the FMS did not take into account the increased air resistance caused by the extended landing gear for its forecasts, it did not recognize the increased fuel requirement and the FMS fuel forecast was incorrect (too large remaining range displayed). Because of the faster decrease in the amount of fuel, the FMS showed an ever shorter remaining flight distance in its constantly updated calculations.

After the A310 was recovered by a Viennese crane company and the airport fire brigade, the wreck was parked in front of the hangars by Austrian Technik . The next day, the logo on the vertical tail unit was painted over in white. The wreck was later bought and cannibalized by Flight Director , an American company specializing in the resale of aircraft parts. Until this work was completed in January 2001, it was temporarily given the US registration number N528FD.

The flight captain's license was revoked and he was sentenced to six months suspended prison sentence for dangerous interference with air traffic.

Similar incidents

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. airfleets.net - Entry on the Airbus A310-300 of Hapag-Lloyd Flug with the registration D-AHLB (English) accessed on June 4, 2011.
  2. Investigation report, aircraft accident with the Airbus A310 motorized aircraft on July 12, 2000 at Vienna-Schwechat Airport, Lower Austria, p. 7 , Accident Investigation Center, Aviation Department, Federal Transport Authority, Vienna, Austria (PDF document).
  3. Accident report Airbus A310 D-AHLB , Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on December 2, 2016.
  4. N528FD Flight Director Airbus A310-300. Planespotters.net, accessed December 11, 2017.
  5. That's because of your dominance. Gisela Friedrichsen im Spiegel , May 17, 2004, accessed on July 3, 2016.
  6. ^ Judgment against Hapag-Lloyd pilots due to crash landing in Vienna is final. Press release Hanover Local Court, May 13, 2005 ( Memento from July 23, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).