Posted on 05/28/2020 2:00:56 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
At no point did the pilots say they had a problem with their landing gear or any other type of emergency, according to the radio calls.
A deadly plane crash in Pakistan is prompting questions about how the crew could touch down without landing gear when their sophisticated jetliner was bristling with equipment to prevent pilots from doing just that
"It is unbelievable to me that an airline crew on a jet like an Airbus, with all the warning systems, would attempt to land the plane without the gear extended," said John Cox, an aviation safety consultant who formerly flew the A320 as a U.S. airline pilot.
It's not yet clear why the two jet engines quit after functioning well enough for about two minutes to lift them about 3,000 feet (915 meters) above the runway. Engines have become so reliable that losing two at the same time is almost always because of some common factor, such as damage from hitting a runway or a problem with the fuel supply.
"We are comfortable. We can make it," the pilot can be heard telling the controller, according to a recording of Karachi's air-traffic radio posted on the LiveATC.net website.
"Sir, we have lost engines," a pilot said. Then, 30 seconds later, he said, "Mayday. Mayday. Mayday."
(Excerpt) Read more at ndtv.com ...
The “gear up” tone can be heard in the background in the plane’s transmission to ATC. Clear as a bell. One theory is they were coming in way too fast, and in the airbus the gear will not deploy over a certain airspeed.
CC
it appears the gear is down.
YES! on the second attempt.
More here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ0LY7ma1cA
You should land a jet that size in FS at around 140kph to make a nice safe landing. Faster makes it harder to stop in time depending on the length of the runway. 327 KPH is out of the question and I think it may be a mistake in the article.
As an avid and lifelong sim-pilot I’ve landed many jumbo’s in my time.
Get-there-itis again. He was too high on the approach and the controller warned him repeatedly, but he didn’t want to go around. After a very steep descent reached the runway traveling too fast and the gear would not deploy. Scraped the engines, damaging them. Had to go around anyway, but couldn’t gain much altitude with the now malfunctioning engines. Managed to turn and line up with the runway again, but the engines failed. You could see him madly trying to pull the nose up just before impact. Looks like pilot error all the way.
Both engine nacelles scraped the runway with the landing gear NOT lowered. The engine accessory gearbox which drives the fuel pumps, etc, is on the lower portion of the engine. These were likely damaged when the engines hit the runway - twice - and caused both engines to fail.
PAKISTAN INTERNATIONAL AIRLINES #8303 UPDATE #2 23 May 2020
Pakistan International Airlines #8303 Runway Evidence- Update #3 24 May 2020
And maybe not?
... found something in the net about the crew experience: The Captain had more than 17000 hours of flight experience, more than 4700 hours of it on the A 320. The First Officer had more than 3000 hours of flight experience, most of them on the A 320 - obviously not new on his job, too. The Captain was Pilot flying, the First Officer Pilot monitoring. How can something like this happen to a Pilot with more than 17000 hours of flight experience?
From the link in #22
That is the crash, not the runway approach
The fireman holding the hose has a guy strapped to his back!
ALLAHU Jackbar!!!
Flying while Muslim.
belly scrape
My uncle did that once, his Piper was not going quite that fast. As an air traffic controller in the Marine corps one phrase about 5 miles out was wheelsdown.
I keep mine at 60fps. Smooth as butter.
3rd-world idiots playing with 1st-world toys?
Oh, yah...and they have nukes, too
You realize you landed with the gear up when it takes full power to taxi to the gate.
“muzzie pilots are not good at landings.”
They are very good at flying straight, ignoring the radar.
If you are interested in learning the facts about this crash, there is a youtube.com blog that goes by the name Blancolirio. It is run by Juan Browne, a long time commercial airline pilot. He has had three highly detailed reports on what transpired on that flight.
He does not draw conclusions, only presents the facts. In my opinion it likely will be determined to be pilot error as the plane was far above both the landing altitude and speed prescribed for that airport, and that the landing gear did not drop down because the plane was going too fast. Then the bottoms of both engines hit the runway as he attempted to take back off. It may well be that he was one hot shot pilot who made one last fatal mistake that resulted in the deaths of 100 people.
BFL
The gear were deployed above 10,000 ft and at high speed causing an alarm that they were not locked. The alarm was ignored or silenced. Photos from the ground show the gear down on final approach. One of 2 things then happened. Either they actually touched down and got a new gear unlocked alarm, or they decided the first alarm was correct and tried to initiate a go around. They then raised the gear and increased engine throttles, but the engines could not spool up fast enough. By this time they were halfway down the runway with the gear up and stowed. They then bounced along the runway 3 times hitting the engine nacelles each time, before finally gaining enough speed to climb out before reaching the end of the runway. They radioed to go around. By that time the damaged engine transmissions began to seize causing the engines to slow to the point that the aircraft stalled. They crashed before returning to the airport.
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