[SuperSuri]

The plane had tried a landing before but could not due to some altitude and speed issues and scrapped the lower parts of the engine. Hence the black marks below the engines. After the unsuccessful attempt they would have tried giving engines a full throttle to gain momentum to gain some altitude, which might have triggered the failure. I get to know all the above points as I follow flying beast on YouTube. The gentleman himself is an experienced pilot.

Link to the video:

https://youtu.be/bM9ZrliDkNA

[Dry Ice]

Originally Posted by SuperSuri

I get to know all the above points as I follow flying beast on YouTube. The gentleman himself is an experienced pilot.

This has already been posted and discussed, please check the last few pages.

Previous Post

[Jeroen]

There are so many unknowns. Everybody overlooks the most important one: how it all begins to unfold. How did they get themselves in so much trouble. Why were they so high on their first approach? Why did they not initiate a go around earlier?

For me that is fundamental, the rest will follow suit.

ATC reminds them three times and each time they confirm they are able to handle the situation. Something was amiss already at this stage of the flight. Were the pilots facing any problems with the plane, any problems with their altimeters, poor piloting,CRM issues? We have no clue at this point in time.

The black box and voice recorder will tell.

Jeroen

[fhdowntheline]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

In that case, these photos would confirm the engines touched the runway before the first GA:

The runway inspection essentially confirmed the observer pictures. If there was no basis to observe, would this have come out so quickly into the mainstream media? This could have all been buried under a vague “technical fault” or “engine fire “or something like that. Remember we initially heard ATC transcripts saying pilot had a “technical problem”. Then that engine underside photo came up on the Internet.

[V.Narayan]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

.... Everybody overlooks the most important one: how it all begins to unfold. How did they get themselves in so much trouble. Why were they so high on their first approach? Why did they not initiate a go around earlier?

For me that is fundamental, the rest will follow suit.

Wise words. Exactly my thoughts. The second landing attempt was merely a consequence of events in the first landing. What they did or did not do in the first landing attempt pretty much pre-determined what could follow.

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by V.Narayan

Wise words. Exactly my thoughts. The second landing attempt was merely a consequence of events in the first landing. What they did or did not do in the first landing attempt pretty much pre-determined what could follow.

Looks like the first approach was hot and high. At 5 miles on ils they were 3000 feet possibly chasing a false glideslope? The speed at 300 feet above runway was 215 kts and on runway was 187 knots (about 40/50 knots above normal landing speed and close to tyre limit speed of 195 knots). This extremely high energy may have resulted in a bounced landing plus a long float, first bounce was at 4500 feet down the runway, following which a go around was conducted. This much is a fact based on flight radar data and path analysis. What happened in a go around is a speculation (single engine/dual engine flame out (the ram air turbine will not auto deploy if a single engine fails, it's deployed automatically only in case of dual engine failure). The theory of an engine contact on runway is speculative until firm confirmation by the authorities (unlikely if landing gear is deployed).

[balenoed_]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

This extremely high energy may have resulted in a bounced landing plus a long float, first bounce was at 4500 feet down the runway, following which a go around was conducted. The theory of an engine contact on runway is speculative until firm confirmation by the authorities (unlikely if landing gear is deployed).

Some logical assumptions on this floating around in discussions on the internet:

The L/G was probably down during 1st attempt. GA was opted to avoid runway overshoot due to high altitude approach leaving the plane to 4500 ft from threshold. And in the GA process, the Gears Up selection was too early while engines were trying to lift up the craft. And the plane sank to drag the engines on the ground (3 times - there are 3 marks), before it finally took off.

Why was it hot and high in the first place - need the investigations to commence and the CVR, FDR transcripts to come out.

[AirbusCapt]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

Some logical assumptions on this floating around in discussions on the internet:

The L/G was probably down during 1st attempt. GA was opted to avoid runway overshoot due to high altitude approach leaving the plane to 4500 ft from threshold. And in the GA process, the Gears Up selection was too early while engines were trying to lift up the craft. And the plane sank to drag the engines on the ground (3 times - there are 3 marks), before it finally took off.

Why was it hot and high in the first place - need the investigations to commence and the CVR, FDR transcripts to come out.

The last video of the crash clearly shows the gear down when it sank into the houses. How do we explain it? The attitude and sink rate appear like a power on stall rather than both engine loss crash. Yes we need to wait for the dfdr and CVR, especially with the murmurs that the Pakistani authorities are planning a cover up.

[norhog]

I follow this gentleman on the YOUTUBE and seems quite a good opinion, not much speculation and fact based.

https://youtu.be/AwfkN5M-bSY

https://youtu.be/EFhGnCOtcc8

https://youtu.be/OZ0LY7ma1cA

[Jeroen]

From PPRuNE: With the help of some more data as collected by flightRadar 24, somebody has been able to come up with a more detailled altitude/speed profile

This is how it all unfolded, Too high, too fast,



Again, it is crucial to understand why they continued this descent and subsequent approach and landing. They tried to land at approx 50-60 knots over the normal landing speed for this landing weight.

They touched down 4500ft from the threshold, which is way to far, which leaves you not enough runway, certainly not at these speeds.

Crucial to understand what was going on in the cockpit leading up to this first landing. Tunnel vision, cognitive overload, task saturation, or maybe they had a malfunction. What is remarkable that at no point the crew via ATC or their apparent action (or lack thereof) seems to be aware of them being high and fast right down to the moment they tried to land the plane halfway on the runway!

Jeroen

[NiInJa]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

What is remarkable that at no point the crew via ATC or their apparent action (or lack thereof) seems to be aware of them being high and fast right down to the moment they tried to land the plane halfway on the runway!

Jeroen

Let me first clarify that I am complete noob when it comes to aviation, I just follow a lot of crash investigations and listen to audio recordings on internet.

Somehow, when listening to the communication between the pilot of PK8303 and the ATC , something seems terribly off. There seems to be a lot of confusion going around with the ATC telling pilot about heading and pilot responding (with a little frustration in his voice) that he is aligned properly,or
be it the altitude which the ATC reminds, or for some reason the pilot seems too pre-occupied to communicate much information over to the ATC. Again, I can't think of what goes on in a pilot's mind when the situation is like this and the highest priority is to aviate, but am I the only one who feels something amiss in the communication ?

[balenoed_]

There is actually something fishy about all these.

Why the ATC-Cockpit transcripts happened during the first landing attempt not out? Does that not get recorded, just like the ones what we heard during the second fatal attempt?

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

There is actually something fishy about all these.

Why the ATC-Cockpit transcripts happened during the first landing attempt not out? Does that not get recorded, just like the ones what we heard during the second fatal attempt?

Nothing fishy about these. ATC-Cockpit transmission are all out unencrypted on simple VHF radio. Anybody with a radio that can tune to the right frequency can listen in. And lots of people do, some even stream it on the the internet too.

What is missing you think? If a pilot decides to do a go around he might not even inform the tower. The tower will follow them visually and they can see its going around, they will wait until the pilots contact them again.

A Go around is a high workload situation and by all accounts these guys must have been stressed to the max. Always fly the plane first, communicate comes second. No use calling pilots who are busy trying to recover from what looks like a messed up approach.

Technically a go around under IFR conditions there is no communication between tower and pilot necessary. There is a so called published missed approach procedure that the pilots need to execute. So they know which direction, altitude, turn etc. (In fact that procedure will be programmed in the Flight Management Computer, when the pilot hits to Go Around button, the plane (when on auto-pilot) will fly that procedure automatically.

All known in advance. If you have time and feel inclined, you would tell the tower you are going “missed”. That is all they need to know, but even without that communication they know where you are going. Only when you can’t execute on the missed approach and need to deviate it would be advisable to inform the tower.

Jeroen

[AirbusCapt]

Some more information coming in as the days progress. It's confirmed that it was a hot and high approach. Surprisingly the first of the two approaches, the landing gear was not lowered. No indications of a malfunction was either discussed nor atc informed. They touched down at 4500 feet, the engines indeed scrapped, the aircraft tried to perform a go around, there was 2 more bounces and scrapes and then they were airborne. The idea was to make a left hand circuit for runway 25l but the aircraft crashed on left base turn.

May well be the case of forgetting the gear (no idea if egpws warning sounded/was ignored), and only post touchdown did the crew realise the goofup and then they decided to go around instead of skidding to a stop.

https://youtu.be/OZ0LY7ma1cA

[Jeroen]

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

Some more information coming in as the days progress. It's confirmed that it was a hot and high approach. Surprisingly the first of the two approaches, the landing gear was not lowered.

New?, confirmed by who? The video is 2 days old and has been shared a billion times on the net already.

Originally Posted by AirbusCapt

(no idea if egpws warning sounded/was ignored), and only post touchdown did the crew realise the goofup and then they decided to go around instead of skidding to a stop.

The unfortunate fact is that pilots have ignored warning signals before. Not necessarily on purpose, but because they were concentrating to hard at the task at hand. (e.g. landing), which leads to tunnel vision, task saturation etc. The human brain can only process so many different inputs.

Here is an interesting video showing exactly this very phenomena on a single prop engine. At around 0;30 an alarm goes off, notifying the pilot he has not lowered the gear. He and the guy sitting next to hi, completely ignore the warning, up to the moment the land and are completely taken by surprise then as they land belly up on the runway!

Task saturation is a well known problem for pilots. You might read that the pilot got behind the curve. What does means that the pilot is so busy doing whatever he is doing he/she fails to take notice of other aspects of the aircraft/crew/flying that also need attention.

Recognising task saturation yourself is very very tricky. I was taught whenever you feel rushed, try and stop doing what you are doing, stabilise the situation, buy time, take a deep breath and re-evalute. Whatever you are doing, stop doing it. So if you feel rushed into a landing, for whatever the reason, go around, do a 360 early on, rethink, re-position and start fresh from the start.

Of course, we have no idea what was happening in the cockpit yet. We have to wait for the black box and voice recorder read outs.

Jeroen