[Aditya]

A Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) aircraft crashed near Karachi (Pakistan) on May 22, 2020 killing ninety-seven out of the ninety-nine people on board. Two people have survived the crash.



The Airbus A320 aircraft (Flight PK-8303) was on its way from Lahore to Karachi, when its engines are reported to have failed. The aircraft then crashed into a housing area at Jinnah Garden, located close to Karachi airport. The people on the aircraft included thirty-one women and nine children. While ninety-one were passengers, eight were crew members.

Many houses were damaged in the crash and at least 11 people on the ground are reported to have suffered injuries.



The A320 had entered service in 2004 and was being flown by China Eastern Airlines till 2014. It was then entered into PIA’s fleet. It had had carried out eight flights since March 21, 2020, when Pakistan had restarted flight operations after the lockdown enforced due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic was eased.

Source 1

Source 2

Note: Aircraft image used for representation purpose only. Source

[Keeleri_Achu]

May their souls rest in peace. Quite strange that it happened on the 10th anniversary of Air India Express 812 crash. I saw a couple of videos in YouTube and people have already started jumping to conclusions even before a preliminary inquiry (flock of birds) or before retrieving the black boxes.

CCTV footage of the crash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQrb85Sug9k

ATC Recording

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uA5PF3JMHdo

[hydraulicsteer]

The survivors are from the front seats (not the pilots sadly). This is unusual for plane crashes where most casualties are always from the front. One probable reason for this could be the high nose up position with which the plane was traveling to slow down the descent rate so as to reach the runway which was just a mile away.

[SmartCat]

Both engines failed. Some analysts are wondering if long lockdown period (Eg: improper storage & maintenance by engineering crew) has something to do with this crash.

[AlphaKilo]

RIP the poor souls both on board and on the ground. They did a go around in the first place, but why? Anyhow, sad to lose people, many of them must be returning homes for festival season.

[skanchan95]

There seems to be some sort of soot/damage on the underside of both engines and the aircraft's RAT deployed.



This pic apparently is minutes before the crash.

Very tragic as many of them were heading home for the first time after lockdown was lifted and flights resumed in Pakistan. RIP to the passengers and crew and speedy recovery to the survivors.

[Reinhard]

RIP the unlucky souls. Many may have been returning for the Eid weekend with families. Similar sorrow for the locality in which the plane crashed.

Looking at the video the final moments seem a simple scenario where the plane lost altitude rapidly due to both engines being out. The attitude clearly shows the pilots were desperately trying to keep the plane airborne with nose pointing upwards. It was still pretty well maintained on horizon plane. Had there been a clearer land / wide road there, they might just have been able to crash it safer with lot more survivors. Drawbacks of having dense populations around airports!! Kudos to their efforts in last moments. Of course with lack of thrust, this also means the plane looses airspeed faster and starts loosing altitude as well. Catch 22.

Both engines failing / flaming out together on a modern passenger jet is a very rare scenario, even if poorly maintained! I was wondering if there was a fuel miscalculation & it just ran out of fuel. But the ghastly fireball at the end of the sad crash tells there seems to be quite a bit of fuel still onboard.

I hope there is useful data on the CVR and FDR. If recoverable these might provide a simple conclusion & closure to the grieving families.

[fhdowntheline]

An interesting analysis of the incident based on initial data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwfkN5M-bSY

Looking at the engine underside scrape , it appears to be a go-around that was initiated a bit late and there seems to be a clear impact. You can hear unsafe landing gear sounds apparently during the ATC communication, and then the plane struggling to reach 3000. Why did the pilots not go around much earlier ?Was is something to do with the plane doing an open descent with idle thrust ?

[vigsom]

Originally Posted by Aditya

The A320 had carried out eight flights since March 21, 2020, when Pakistan had restarted flight operations after the lockdown

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

Looking at the engine underside scrape , it appears to be a go-around that was initiated a bit late and there seems to be a clear impact. You can hear unsafe landing gear sounds apparently during the ATC communication

Feel very very sorry for all those who perished in this accident; heartfelt condolences to their families.

The landing gear is deployed much much before landing and gives the crew in the flight deck ample time to do a go around even before the short final.

There is an incident involving AirTransat 236 flying several 100 miles without both engines and with the RAT deployed.

Soliciting views of pilots on the forum !!!

[saket77]

As per the details we have till now, it looks like either the pilots deployed the landing gear too late (or may be they didn’t deploy it at all) or there was a system failure during deployment of the same. Next the alarm sounds up in the cockpit cautioning the pilots that the landing gear has not been deployed which is clear in the ATC recording; pilots realise the mistake/ failure and decide to do a go around. They scrap the plane’s belly on the runway during this haste and damage the engines. Somehow they are able to climb to probably 2000 ft. before the engines finally give up and stall. The plane goes down before reaching the runway.

Undamaged engine blades apart from the deployed RAT point to the fact that they weren’t running at the time of hitting the ground and the explosion after crash makes the abundance of fuel apparent. The alleged last images of the aircraft show some damage under the engines.

Yes, I’m guessing it and the real thing will come out after the investigation, of course.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Reinhard

The attitude clearly shows the pilots were desperately trying to keep the plane airborne with nose pointing upwards. It was still pretty well maintained on horizon plane.

Thats not so simple. Nose pointing upwards doesnt do much good to the situation and will make things worse since it reduces the airspeed which then results in a stall. In fact if you see the way the plane drops in its final moments, the sink rate is pretty high and this was not a glide if you compare to other incidents. Too sad a sight especially the damage on the ground.

[Reinhard]

Originally Posted by Reinhard

Looking at the video the final moments seem a simple scenario where the plane lost altitude rapidly due to both engines being out. The attitude clearly shows the pilots were desperately trying to keep the plane airborne with nose pointing upwards. It was still pretty well maintained on horizon plane. Had there been a clearer land / wide road there, they might just have been able to crash it safer with lot more survivors. Drawbacks of having dense populations around airports!! Kudos to their efforts in last moments. Of course with lack of thrust, this also means the plane looses airspeed faster and starts loosing altitude as well. Catch 22.

Originally Posted by audioholic

Thats not so simple. Nose pointing upwards doesnt do much good to the situation and will make things worse since it reduces the airspeed which then results in a stall. In fact if you see the way the plane drops in its final moments, the sink rate is pretty high and this was not a glide if you compare to other incidents.

That's exactly what I've mentioned if you read my post to end

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by fhdowntheline

An interesting analysis of the incident based on initial data.


Looking at the engine underside scrape , it appears to be a go-around that was initiated a bit late and there seems to be a clear impact. You can hear unsafe landing gear sounds apparently during the ATC communication, and then the plane struggling to reach 3000. Why did the pilots not go around much earlier ?Was is something to do with the plane doing an open descent with idle thrust ?

Excellent video! From that, it seemed to me that the primary failure seems to be that of the landing gear not getting deployed on the first landing attempt, and the mishandling by pilots of that situation.

[srini1785]

RIP .

Is there any Shelf-Life kind of parameter for the landing gear. For example the gear needs to retract after standing a maximum of so and so hours etc. Sorry for asking since i am a noob in aeronautics.

[vharihar]

Originally Posted by srini1785

RIP .

Is there any Shelf-Life kind of parameter for the landing gear. For example the gear needs to retract after standing a maximum of so and so hours etc. Sorry for asking since i am a noob in aeronautics.

I don't think so, but the aviation experts can correct me.

But long periods of idle with improper reinstatement procedures can cause problems. See the following video:

https://youtu.be/la0EWKXDhbQ

Pitot tubes (which measure airspeed) blocked by a *bug* (black & yellow mud Dauber), can you believe that?!?!

Apparently pitot tubes blockage can happen when aircrafts are lying idle for long. The present lockdown is an example I'd think! I sure hope all necessary steps have been taken in India in protecting grounded planes, and hope proper checks will be followed when they're reinstated.

Sometimes I feel the LG Polymers accident 2-3 weeks ago, is also probably bcoz of lapses in this regard, in a non-aircraft context. Something got missed somewhere bcoz of long lockdown and so many people died, sad! Just my theory.