Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303

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Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303
Pakistan International Airlines Airbus A320-214 AP-BLD (2) .jpg

The accident machine on December 15, 2015 in Faisalabad
Accident summary
Accident type Wil be inspected
place Karachi
date May 22, 2020
Fatalities 97
Survivors 2
Injured 2
Fatalities on the ground 1
Injured on the ground 4th
Aircraft
Aircraft type Airbus A320-214
operator Pakistan International Airlines
Mark AP-BLD
Departure airport Lahore- Allama Iqbal International Airport (LHE / OPLA), Pakistan
Destination airport Karachi / Jinnah International Airport (KHI / OPKC), Pakistan
Passengers 91
crew 8th
Lists of aviation accidents

Pakistan International Airlines flight 8303 was a national scheduled flight from Lahore to Karachi that crashed on May 22, 2020 while approaching Karachi / Jinnah International Airport (KHI) in Pakistan . According to the flight manifest, 91 passengers and eight crew members were on board the machine, many of whom flew home to their families on the occasion of the festival of the breaking of the fast . The plane crashed into the Model Colony residential area in the Korangi administrative district , which forms part of the city of Karachi , in Sindh province . The crash claimed 98 lives. 2 passengers and 4 people were also injured on the ground.

plane

The crashed Airbus A320-214 with the aircraft registration AP-BLD was manufactured with the serial number 2274. It had completed its maiden flight on August 17, 2004 and, by the time of the crash, had 47,124 flight hours and 25,866 flights. The aircraft was delivered on September 17, 2004 to China Eastern Airlines , which had leased it from the leasing company GECAS until June 2014 . From October 30, 2014, Pakistan International Airlines started using the Airbus leased by GECAS. The aircraft was equipped with two CFMI CFM56-5B4 / P9 engines.

Since the last technical check on March 21, 2020, the aircraft had been on the ground for a long time due to the COVID-19 pandemic and only made eight flights before the crash.

Flight history

The plane took off from Lahore at 13:05 local time and was scheduled to land in Karachi at 14:35 local time. Four minutes before the planned landing, the machine was still at an altitude of 10,000 feet. The crew then deactivated the autopilot , extended the spoilers and initiated a steep descent at a rate of more than 3,000 feet / minute in order to get onto the intended glide path of runway 25L. The landing gear was extended at 7,200 feet, approximately 10.5 miles from the runway . The aircraft missed the 2100 foot glide path at 6.1 miles at an altitude of 3500 feet. Approach control instructed the pilot to abort the approach (“turn left heading 180”), but the pilot continued to fly. At 1740 feet he retracted the landing gear together with the spoilers. Automatic warnings such as "pull up" or "low gear" (low height without landing gear) of the aircraft were ignored.

The crew asked for clearance to land at the approach control. Instead of forwarding the aircraft directly to the landing frequency, the approach control asked the landing frequency by phone and then transmitted the landing clearance to the pilots without noticing that the landing gear of the aircraft was not extended.

The first touchdown took place about 4,500 feet behind the landing threshold , the landing speed of almost 200 knots instead of the usual 135 knots, well above the limit of this type of aircraft. When touching down, the machine hit the engines, which were damaged. The Airbus hit the runway twice more, the landing was then canceled. Shortly thereafter, at 14:35, the crew reported that they have a traffic pattern will fly to the left, and asked for approval for a new ILS -Anflug to runway 25L. About five minutes later, while the aircraft was on the opposite approach, both engines failed, whereupon the ram air turbine (RAT) went out and provided the necessary hydraulic pressure. The pilots reported Mayday , whereupon air traffic control gave them clearance for runways 25L and 25R. The aircraft turned on its final approach and crashed into the residential area about 1,350 meters before the landing threshold of runway 25L.

According to METAR , the visibility conditions were good shortly before the planned landing, the wind was blowing from 240 ° with 11 knots. The crash was recorded by a surveillance camera . Another shot of the machine, which was taken shortly before the crash, showed the Airbus with its landing gear retracted and the RAT extended, the undersides of the engine cowlings seemed to be covered with a black, soot-like layer.

Victim

There were a total of 99 people, eight crew members and 91 passengers on board. Two people survived injured, 97 people died. The fatalities included 96 people of Pakistani nationality and one US citizen. One of the victims was the Pakistani model Zara Abid .

Although the plane crashed in a heavily populated district and dozens of houses and several cars were damaged, initially there were no deaths on the ground and only eight injured. Ten days after the crash, a 13-year-old girl from the housing estate who was badly burned in the accident died.

examination

The two flight recorders were found and recovered shortly after the crash, with the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) initially only finding the outer shell. The storage unit was only found five days later and brought to France for investigation. The French Aircraft Accident Investigation Authority (BEA) was able to successfully read the data from both flight recorders and start data analysis.

Two days after the crash, there were press reports in which an official from the Pakistani CAA announced that the aircraft probably touched the runway on the first approach without the landing gear extended, as a result of which the engines were damaged. The runway was found around 2500 feet (760 meters) in length, most likely from the engines.

According to a PIA press spokesman, the landing gear was not or not fully extended on the first approach. The cockpit crew was mentally may not be a belly landing set and led the go-around one only when she found touching the runway with the engines.

During the traffic pattern for the new approach, both engines failed because they were probably damaged on contact with the runway. The plane then lost altitude too quickly, so that it was no longer possible to return to the airport.

A preliminary investigative report by the Pakistani Aircraft Accident Investigation Board (AAIB) was released on June 24, 2020. This burdened the two pilots heavily: apparently they were so distracted by an intensive conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic on their first approach that they touched down on the runway with their landing gear retracted despite multiple visual and acoustic warning signals from the EGPWS . The advice of air traffic control to abort the approach because of excessive speed and altitude had also been ignored.

Similar incident

The air accident of a Boeing 727 of Iran Air in Rasht on June 9, 1996 occurred in similar circumstances: For a training flight one was Boeing 727 of Iran Air in the airport Rasht placed despite sounding, warning with the landing gear retracted and subsequently restarted. Due to the design, in this case it was not the engines, but the underside of the fuselage that dragged over the runway. During the flight of a traffic pattern, there was also a loss of control, but in this case due to a fire on board.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Flight Manifest ( English ) Geo TV. May 22, 2020. Accessed May 22, 2020.
  2. ↑ Michael Safi, Harriet Sherwood: Middle East fears a coronavirus surge amid Eid celebrations. In: The Guardian . May 24, 2020, accessed on May 25, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Crash: PIA A320 at Karachi on May 22nd 2020, impacted residential area during final approach. In: The Aviation Herald . Retrieved May 26, 2020 (English).
  4. ↑ PK8303 Crisis statement page. Retrieved May 22, 2020 (English).
  5. ↑ https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/pakistan-zügeger-plane-from-lahore-crashes-near-karachi-report/articleshow/75891368.cms
  6. ↑ Pakistan International Airlines AP-BLD (Airbus A320 - MSN 2274) (Ex B-6017) | Airfleets aviation ( English ) Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  7. ↑ a b Aircraft accident data and report Pakistan International Airlines 8303, Karachi in the Aviation Safety Network (English), accessed on May 22, 2020.
  8. ↑ a b c d Crash: PIA A320 at Karachi on May 22nd 2020, impacted residential area during final approach, both engines failed as result of a gear up touchdown. Retrieved July 7, 2020 .
  9. ↑ http://www.al-nasir.com/www/PVA/ChartLib/Karachi/Jpp_Karachi13_VOR_DME_25LR.jpg
  10. ↑ https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/PK8303-Altitude-and-IAS.png
  11. ↑ https://twitter.com/KarachiWok/status/1263864005266980867
  12. ↑ BREAKING A PIA Pakistan International # PK8303 A320 has crashed near Karachi airport , Air Live on May 22, 2020.
  13. ↑ Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303 Crash Victims (2020) , accessed May 25, 2020.
  14. ↑ Model Zara Abid dies in a plane crash on n-tv.de, accessed on May 25, 2020.
  15. ↑ Shazia Hasan; Azfar-ul-Ashfaque: Girl injured on ground when plane crashed loses battle with burns , Dawn from June 2, 2020.
  16. ↑ Work on flight data of crashed Pakistani airliner to start June 2 in France. In: Reuters . May 30, 2020, accessed June 1, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Tweet BEA: flight recorder. In: Twitter . Bureau d'Enquêtes et d'Analyses pour la sécurité de l'aviation civile , June 2, 2020, accessed on June 5, 2020 (English, French, with 8 photos).
  18. ^ Preliminary Investigation Report. (PDF; 2.4 MB) Accident of PIA Flight PK8303 Airbus A320-214 Reg No AP-BLD crashed near Karachi Airport on 22-05-2020. In: Pakistani AAIB. June 22, 2020, accessed June 24, 2020 .
  19. ↑ Pilots talk about Corona and forget the landing gear - 97 dead. In: welt.de. June 24, 2020, accessed June 25, 2020 .

Coordinates: 24 ° 55 '  N , 67 ° 11'  E