PIA plane crash near Model Colony Karachi with 93+ on board

[MastanKhan]

I worked out altitude data. Based on this data, here is what I found:

8,000 feet 3 minutes from touchdown

3,500 feet 5 nm from runway

1,500 feet 4 nm from runway

1,300 feet 1 minute from touchdown

nm=nautical miles

fpm = feet per minute descending

35,000 feet to 10,000 feet in 13 minutes (1,900 fpm descent)

10,000 feet to touchdown in 4 minutes (2,500 fpm descent)

10,000 feet to 2,000 feet in 120 seconds (4,000 fpm descent)

8,000 feet to 2,000 feet in 90 seconds (4,000 fpm descent)

8,000 feet to 1,300 feet in 120 seconds (3,300 fpm descent)

Possible explanation for why pilots forgot the gear:

Can someone tell me if this is possible?

1. Plane is at 35,000 feet.
2. ATC tells plane to descend to 10,000 feet
3. Plane descends to 10,000 feet
4. ATC tells plane to descend from 10,000 to waypoint
5. Pilots take too long to start descending and then rapidly dump altitude to descend in order to meet waypoint since they have less time
6. Pilots continue rapid descent dumping altitude quickly. At 8,000 feet, they were 3 minutes from runway, at 1,300 feet they were 1 minute from the runway. So they descended 6,000 feet in 90 seconds.
7. Plane approaches waypoint at too high an altitude.
8. At 5 nm waypoint from runway, plane should be 1,700 feet, but it was actually at 3,500 feet (too high).
9. ATC offers pilots a circling vector so they can circle and dump excess altitude and approach waypoint a 2nd time at a lower altitude.
10. Pilots decline ATC’s offer for circling vector to burn off and dump excess altitude, they tell ATC they can make ILS 25L from their current altitude 3,500 (which is too high).
11. Plane was 3,500 feet at 5nm, 1,500 feet at 4nm. So they dumped 2,000 feet in 1 nm.
12. During this rapid descent, pilots tried to lower gear earlier than usual to reduce speed and dump altitude.
13. Pilot moves gear lever in cockpit in down position for gear down, but plane was going too fast to extend the gear so pilots got an overspeed warning, indicating gear cannot extend while plane is going faster than 260kts, but lever does not move back to up position, lever stays in down position even though overspeed warning means the landing gear is actually in up position.
14. Pilots complete landing checklist, lever in down position indicates that gear is down as normal. Cockpit gear lever in down position at approach speed near runway also means that no EGPWS alarm would not be going off, when in reality the overspeed warning earlier means the landing gear is actually still in up position. Since gear overspeed warning only sounds when plane is faster than 260kts, the plane would be slower than 260kts near the runway and the gear overspeed warning would have turned off. Since cockpit gear lever is in correct down position as normal, and lever in down position means EGPWS thinks gear is down, EGPWS alarm is not going off. In reality, the gear overspeed warning earlier in the flight was ignored by accident because the pilots should have moved cockpit gear lever back in up position immediately after getting overspeed warning, slow down below 260kts, and then try second time to move gear lever into down position again at a lower speed. The gear lever does not automatically move back up if you get an overspeed warning, so if you forget to immediately put the lever back up when gear fails to go down, later you will think that gear lever is correct as showing gear down when it is actually wrong and gear is up. After several minutes, pilots may have forgotten that they never tried to lower the gear again a second time after the gear overspeed warning and thought it was already down based on the fact that gear lever in cockpit was in correct position (which they forgot to move back up since overspeed warning meant gear did not go down) and no EGPWS alarm was going off. In reality, since the gear lever did not automatically move back up when overspeed warning failed to extend gear, pilots thought their landing gear was down when it was actually in up position.
15. Approaching runway, everything looks normal, gear lever is down, no alarms are going off.
16. Plane hits the ground with landing gear up

It turns out the theory that the plane had gear down and then bounced and aborted a hard landing, retracted gear early, and scraped engine is wrong. Gear retraction takes 8 seconds so if plane had retracted gear after bounce but before TOGA thrust kicks in, it would have bounced back down in 1-2 seconds while gear retraction takes 8 seconds. There would not have been enough time for landing gear to fully retract in only a 1-2 second bounce. Landing gear doors would have been ripped off at the same time the engines scraped the ground like in Smartlynx incident in Estonia. We know from PSPK pictures that landing gear doors are clean, there is no sign of any damage or ripped landing gear doors. So this means only way it could have no damage to landing gear doors is if landing gear was never deployed in the first place, and only engines scraped ground. The very long skid marks on runway could be either because TOGA took a long time to spool up since friction would make it hard to get airborne again, or alternatively it could be because TOGA in Airbus is not a button like in Boeing, you have to push throttle levers all the way forward to activate TOGA, if you only moves throttle partially, it will not activate TOGA. So this could have delayed response by a few seconds.

Huge question is why did ATC not say a word if they saw a plane coming for approach with no landing gear?

Hi,

The reason the control tower was not involved was because of the height and speed of the aircraft the ATC had not handed the aircraft over to the ground control tower---.

The landing gear did not come down was because the speed was above 250 knots where landing gear wuld not deploy---.

The not deployed landing gear chimes were on warning the pilot that the gear is not down---.

The question is what was the hurry to the pilot to descend so fast and land rather than going around and coming back---.

This is the crucial question---we understand that the Pilot was " hot dogging " the aircraft---but why and what caused him not to heed the warning of the air controller to go around---.

The other thin is---there were no other flights in the skies---no flights backing up---no worries of delays or late departure---what was the reason the pilot decided to land the first time---?

 

[Thorough Pro]

@MK you are being too judgemental and rude, the whole story is not even out yet.

The situation will be a lot clearer if the last 15 minutes of communication between the pilot and ATC is released without any edits. what's released only gives half the picture and creates a lot of confusion

Hi,

Only the Pilot failed---.

The Controller can only request information---.

More info coming out suggests that where the aircraft was supposed to be at 7000 ft it was at 10000 ft

close to the runway where it was supposed to be at 1000 ft---it was at 1500 ft and then off course the speed---.

It was till this information came out---all points towards PILOT ERROR---.

Tower has no blame---visibility clear---.

Only and only one aircraft possibly in the air flying over whole of pakistan and the Pilot botched the landing---and smashed the aircraft into the tarmac multiple times---.

 

[Aspen]

Hi,

The reason the control tower was not involved was because of the height and speed of the aircraft the ATC had not handed the aircraft over to the ground control tower---.

The landing gear did not come down was because the speed was above 250 knots where landing gear wuld not deploy---.

The not deployed landing gear chimes were on warning the pilot that the gear is not down---.

The question is what was the hurry to the pilot to descend so fast and land rather than going around and coming back---.

This is the crucial question---we understand that the Pilot was " hot dogging " the aircraft---but why and what caused him not to heed the warning of the air controller to go around---.

The other thin is---there were no other flights in the skies---no flights backing up---no worries of delays or late departure---what was the reason the pilot decided to land the first time---?

Short version of story is basically this:

The pilots started descending late and were too high when they hit first waypoint. The hurry to descend was because they were at a very high altitude considering that they were just a few miles from the runway and you have to hit certain waypoints on the approach path at the correct altitude. Since they started descending late, they had a limited window of time as they got closer to the runway as they will have to reduce altitude faster than if they had started descending earlier. It is actually very normal to be too high on descent, it happens to pilots everyday. This can be caused because of various reasons like other planes passing below before you get cleared to descend into busy airspace like Karachi. The solution is usually to go into a holding pattern to get lower before you enter runway approach. ATC offered a delay vector to circle and burn off speed and dump excess altitude but pilots continued saying they are comfortable and can make ILS 25L direct. To be honest, I don't know why the pilots wanted to continue such a steep descent instead of taking their time and using the circle vector that ATC offered them. They proceed to dump altitude very rapidly, from 8,000 feet to 2,000 feet in 90 seconds. 5 miles from runway, they were at 3,500 feet when they should have been at 1,700 feet. They wanted to deploy gear earlier than usual to create drag and slow down and dump excess altitude. To lower gear, there is a gear lever in the cockpit and you have to move this gear lever to down position which they did. But they got overspeed warning because you cannot deploy gear when you are going faster than 260kts which they were. Overspeed gear warning means the gear failed to extend, but the gear lever does not automatically move back up. So in the cockpit, it would look like gear lever is still in correct position, but in reality, gear never lowered because of overspeed warning. Standard SOP if you get overspeed gear warning is to immediately move gear lever back up, slow down below 260kts, and try to extend gear again 2nd time. But the pilots did not move gear lever back up immediately after they got overspeed warning and after a few minutes forgot to try extending gear a second time since gear lever was in down position like normal. Plane was landing very fast and touched down halfway along the runway. The first time they realized the gear was up was when they hit the ground which would have been a big surprise, and pilot instinct is to pull up and abort a bad landing which is what they are trained to do. Since the plane was already coming in very fast and touched down halfway along the runway, pilots were already thinking about going around even before landing, and with half the runway left, they knew they would overshoot the end of the runway if they tried to stop so they aborted instead.

I agree if ATC told pilots to do a full stop even if it meant going off the runway would have saved it.

5 ways PK8303 could have been saved:

1. If Pilots took delay vector to circle and dump excess altitude
2. Checking 3 green lights for landing gear down
3. If ATC told pilots to do full stop on runway
4. Doing a faster 180 approach to 7R instead of long 360 circle back to 25L
5. On 2nd attempt, doing a belly landing or dropping gear at absolute last second to reduce drag and glide as far as possible after both engines failed. British Airways Flight 38 retracted gear to reduce drag after it lost both engines and successfully managed to just barely glide over some houses before it hit runway. Dropping gear too early increases drag and makes it harder to glide further. Considering how close it got to runway, keeping gear retracted longer on 2nd attempt would very likely have been enough for to it glide all the way back to the runway safely.

 

[Aspen]

In the graph below, the orange line shows altitude and the blue represents how fast it is descending or ascending. For example, -4000 means the plane was descending at 4000 feet per minute at that exact second. 4000 means the plane was ascending at 4000 feet per minute at that exact second. The blue area on the left side of the graph shows the descent to 1st landing, the farther down the blue goes, the faster the descent was at that specific second. The blue area starting at 9:34:53 is when the plane aborts and starts ascending again, at 9:36:33, both engines fail and plane starts descending again during circle back to 2nd attempt to land when it crashes at the end.

 

[Aspen]

Flight timeline

9:32:53: Plane is at 2,000 feet and is descending at 7,000 feet per minute for 5-10 seconds

60 seconds later

9:33:53: Plane reaches 1,000 feet, speed is still too fast

40 seconds later

9:34:33: High speed landing, first touchdown is halfway down the runway

20 seconds later

9:34:53: Plane aborts as TOGA power kicks in, begins climbing again

60 seconds later

9:35:53: Both engines fail, plane continues climbing for about 30 seconds

30 seconds later

9:36:23: Plane starts losing altitude

4 minutes and 10 seconds later

9:40:03: Plane crashes

From abort to crash, plane was in the air for total 5 minutes 10 seconds

Really good analysis, for people who don't want to read my long post, this is basically the same thing I am saying. You might have to skip first few minutes until they starting talking about PIA.

 

[Ahmet Pasha]

Airbus does not allow landing gear to deploy if the aircraft is faster than 260kts. He was probably too fast, LG didn't deploy, he hit 25L hard, scraped engines, should've stayed down instead of a go around all over again(especially bcz pilot was already having engine trouble for the first landing).

He probably ignored LG failure warning because of first engine failure prior to landing attempt.

Politically motivated ground crew might be behind the first engine failure.

P.S
Seemed like a clear day. Don't know why they were doing a vls approach instead of vfr.

 

[Raider 21]

Sarcastic much? 2 pilots in the cockpit making the same mistake? For both of them to actually miss the landing gear not deployed warning has a statistical possibility bordering on 1 in a billion. The ECAM displays a L/G NOT DOWN warning after passing 750ft and for both pilots to miss it is either monumental stupidity or that it didn't happen in the first place.

ECAM will clearly show L/G status, WARNING and MASTER CAUTION would be lit as well. Apparently there are skid marks on the runway so they may really would have touched down before trying a go around. The survivors though never mentioned that. But if it were the case, I gotta hand it to the crew that other than crashing fatally, they managed to get airborne after touching the runway. Never seen anything like this, and really amazed at how ATC Karachi were not very concerned, might be a normal sight for them or unconcerned.

Pakistani tv is showing images of scrape marks on the Karachi runway, purportedly caused by the engines of PIA flight #PK8303.
The photos confirm the A320 made a go-around after the engines touched the runway. The ATC was also mentioning a belly landing.

PIA Airbus A320 (aircraft registration AP-BLD) engines scrape marks on Karachi Airport Runway 25L.

The RAT was deployed confirming that both engines failed.





watch the video above, many things will be clear....

The marks are too close for the engines positioned on the aircraft

 

[Secularindian]

Crash explained by desi vlogger
For Indian and Pakistani
Simple language

 

[Fawadqasim1]

How they (trained and seasoned pilots) failed to gauge their approach speed which was allegedly above 260 nauts

 

[Aspen]

Couple of observations:

1. One possible explanation for why pilots started descent late and were higher than they were supposed to be at waypoint is that they input runway 7R into FMGS instead of runway 25L. 7R approach will continue cruise altitude for longer than 25L approach. If they were following 7R path input on FMGS, they would still be at a higher altitude than the 25L waypoint where they should already have started descending and be much lower. Maybe they realized their mistake of putting in wrong runway into FMGS and rushed approach when they realized they should already have started descending much sooner.

2. If pilots put gear lever in down position but landing gear cannot extend while plane is going faster than 260kts, does it automatically go down when plane goes below 260kts or do pilots have to do it again a 2nd time? If pilots select gear lever down above 260kts and then slow down, if the gear deploys automatically to match the gear lever under 260kts and gear never lowered at all, does that mean the plane never slowed down and was always going above 260kts when it hit the runway? Because in automatic gear extension below 260 to match down lever position, only explanation I can think of is that pilots never slowed below 260kts on 1st landing so gear did not extend. When both engines failed later after go around, plane slowed below 260kts and gear automatically extended without pilot command since it was set to this position originally before 1st landing when they were overspeeding. If pilots noticed that gear was being extended after both engines failed, they could immediately have retracted it because gear down position causes a lot of drag which makes it harder to glide to runway without engine power. It is very likely that if gear automatically extended after go around and pilots acted quickly to retract it so they could keep gliding further, they could have made it all the way to the runway. On a side note, some of the warnings in cockpit could have been overspeed not just for gear but also flaps. 260kts is max speed when you cannot deploy gear but I think there is also a speed where you cannot deploy flaps if you are going too fast as well.

3. Who is it that actually cleared the plane to land? I find it amazing that ATC could clear it to land if they saw the plane missing gear down. More likely is that it actually wasn’t even ATC who cleared the plane for landing in the first place. On tape recording, it sounds like Karachi Approach control gave plane direct clearance to land from waypoint because it is the same person talking from ground for the entire tape recording. Karachi Approach control is a building with no windows. So there may not have been anyone in KHI ATC tower who was specifically looking at or monitoring this plane since Karachi Approach control gave the direct clearance. So no one in ATC tower would have spotted that plane is coming in without gear. Sounds like a huge safety mistake on part of Approach Control, they should have handed it off to ATC instead of giving a direct runway landing clearance to pilots since Approach Control is in a windowless building while ATC can see the plane clearly.

 

[Enigma SIG]

ECAM will clearly show L/G status, WARNING and MASTER CAUTION would be lit as well. Apparently there are skid marks on the runway so they may really would have touched down before trying a go around. The survivors though never mentioned that. But if it were the case, I gotta hand it to the crew that other than crashing fatally, they managed to get airborne after touching the runway. Never seen anything like this, and really amazed at how ATC Karachi were not very concerned, might be a normal sight for them or unconcerned.


The marks are too close for the engines positioned on the aircraft

Well after listening to the latest about the height/speed data; i'm wondering why the pilot coming in hot? Even if L/G wasn't engaged it is strange that he decided to touch the runway after 5000ft or so. PIA needs to make public the full cockpit voice recorder for the last half an hour.

 

[Raj-Hindustani]

Why Pilot ignored 3 warnings from Air Traffic Control?

PIA plane crash: Pilot ignored 3 warnings from Air Traffic Control to lower altitude
https://www.geo.tv/latest/289719-pi...gs-from-air-traffic-control-to-lower-altitude

 

[Blacklight]

The marks are too close for the engines positioned on the aircraft

So brother what are these marks made by then?

 

[Maarkhoor]

@Aspen

 

[litman]

it seems the experienced pilots become over confident and breech SOPs which sometimes end up in a disaster. so far it seems that the pilot with 17000 hours of flying experience get overconfident during the landing. the last F-16 crash of the PAF was also a pilot error. the pilot was a highly experienced and decorated and he executed the maneuvre at a low altitude and then couldnt recover the jet. it seems the current lot of "experienced" pilots in aviation in pakistan need a huge stick and they need to be disciplined.