PIA Accident Investigation Reports

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Adnaan786
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PIA Accident Investigation Reports

Post by Adnaan786 »

Aslamalaikum,

I've been searching the net trying to get some accident reports involving PIA aircraft. Anyone know any good sites??

Thanks.
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Abbas Ali
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Post by Abbas Ali »

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B777240ER
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Post by B777240ER »

There is also

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/Airline/AL%20Pa-Pd.htm <- for the dates, location and aircraft involved.

http://www.planecrashinfo.com/database.htm For more detail
Adnaan786
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Post by Adnaan786 »

Thanks.

Does anyone know the circumstances of the Kathmandu accident??

Was it pilot error, or are there other contributory factors, eg weather, ATC....etc?

Also I understand there was another crash at the same airport a few weeks prior, any more info on this?



Thanks in advance.
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Post by AP-BGL »

According to the reports on the websites, ATC told crew to maintain particular height/speed but they were not on the asked altitude so the accident happened, rest you can read in the website provided by Abbas Bhai and B777240ER.
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Post by Adnaan786 »

Yes, they didn't maintain the correct approach profile. They were supposed to descend in steps, but missed out a step and so descended below the altitude they were supposed to be at:

They missed out the the step from 10000ft to 8000ft, so instead went from 10000 ft straight to 6000ft. There was a peak in-between.


Was pilot error the sole cause though??
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Post by Abbas Ali »

Adnaan786 wrote:Does anyone know the circumstances of the Kathmandu accident??

Was it pilot error, or are there other contributory factors, eg weather, ATC....etc?
Here's PIA A300 Nepal crash article from Flight International magazine in forum member Amaad Lone's collection.
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Adnaan786 wrote:Also I understand there was another crash at the same airport a few weeks prior, any more info on this?
That was Thai Airways Airbus A310-300.
Thai A310 crash info on Aviation-Safety.net

Another website with some info about last moments of ill-fated Thai A310
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Adnaan786
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Post by Adnaan786 »

Thanks for clearing that up Abbas Bhai.
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Post by PALPA »

I have heard the CVR of PK268 it was a pilot error, the captain was very well known to me a very outstanding man who had changed in his final days, May God bless him and may his soul rest in peace.


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Post by Boeing 787 »

Capt.Hasan can you tell me the name of the pilot and what do you mean by "pilot changed in his final days". Moreover, did the pilot attempt to save the aircraft.
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Post by PALPA »

Yes brother,
His name was Capt.Hassan Akhtar,according to the cvr he did try to apply max power when GPWS was activated ! but it was to late and regarding his final days i mean to say there was lot of inclination towards religion as he had changed after his last umrah flight.Let me tell you that he was VERY GOOD PROFESSIONALY and secondly he was one of the most handsome pilot i had ever seen in my career while flying with PIA.
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Post by R.F. »

The crew of that illfated flight was: The Pilot in command Capt. Iftikhar Junjua, First Officer Hassan Akhtar, and Flight Engineer Ashraf.

The final findings were pilot error and the contributive factors were the facilities and the ATC kathmandu which still hasn't changed much except that now they have a radar coverage within the TMA (Terminal Area).
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Post by Abbas Ali »

Thank you PALPA and R.F. for sharing info.

Volume 3 of the book titled Air Disaster has a chapter on Thai and PIA accidents in Nepal. I have copied some info and scanned diagrams from this book for forum members and visitors.

A second Kathmandu tragedy

History has a painful tendency to repeat itself. But rarely does it do so as swiftly it did in Nepal, only 59 days after the loss of HS-TID (Thai Airbus A310-300), when the Sierra Approach to the Tribhuvan International Airport’s Runway 02 claimed another Airbus victim.

The pitiful scatter of Thai wreckage had been abandoned by the investigators on August 19, but the Nepalese Investigation Commission was still hard at work piecing together the events that led to the disaster.

Even while HS-TID’s CVR and FDR were still yielding their data to investigators in Ottawa, on September 28, 1992, AP-BCP, an A300B4 belonging to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), was joining the Sierra VOR/DME 02 approach to Kathmandu. Operating as flight PK-268 from Karachi, this larger Airbus had a crew of 12 and carried 155 passengers.

The weather, even so late in the monsoon season, was similar to that of July 31, with a low overcast, drizzle, poor visibility and little or no wind. Descending in cloud on the 202° VOR radial at around 2.30pm local time that afternoon, the Airbus flew directly into the densely wooded southern side of the fan marker hill at an elevation of 7300ft (3000ft above the airport), only a few hundred feet below its summit. There were no survivors.

The much less forbidding and far more accessible crash site of the PIA Airbus only 9.16 DME short of the VOR on the Sierra approach track, enabled investigators to quickly determine that the A300 was established in its landing configuration, with slats, flaps and undercarriage fully extended, and that it was under power and on track.

In this instance the aircraft was an early model A300B4, with conventional control systems, traditional avionics and a three crew flight-deck, and the investigators could find no technical reasons that could have contributed to the accident.

There was no CVR record of flight-deck conversation, but the crew had not reported any problems.

But having acquired the correct final approach track, which it subsequently maintained, the aircraft had begun its descent in an altitude profile that was consistently “one step ahead” of the published DME descent profile.

As a result, the Airbus was more than 1000ft lower than the minimum altitude prescribed by the published DME steps for the Sierra approach when it struck the hillside. The A300's descent profile appears on the accompanying diagram, together with that of the Thai A310.

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Scanned from Air Disaster – Volume 3 - (Abbas Ali Collection)

ATC recordings showed that at 16 DME the A300 crew misreported their height by 1000ft (the lower of the two aircraft’s initial approach profiles shown in the diagram). A further transmission from the Airbus at 10 DME, the start of the Sierra Approach, advised they were at 8200ft – where the required safe minimum was in fact 9500ft. “Within seconds” an alert tower controller challenged the Pakistani crew for an altitude check – but it was already too late. That an error was made by the PIA crew seemed beyond dispute.

Final reports on both accidents were released within weeks of each other in June and July 1993, and the part played by the Kathmandu controllers was perhaps the best summarized in that on the PIA disaster: “Some air traffic controllers at Kathmandu had a low self-esteem and were reluctant to intervene in piloting matters such as terrain separation.”

This was not only reinforcement of conclusions drawn from the Thai crash. Misreading poorly-designed approach charts was obviously also a factor in the loss of the A300, viz: “… the pilots failed to follow the published approach procedure …”. And “… the inevitable complexity of the [Sierra VOR/DME] approach and the associated approach chart” were “contributory causal factors”.

The flight profile diagrams in this chapter include extracts from the two different charts used in the Kathmandu disasters, showing the benefits and limitations of two varying interpretations of the DME descent steps. They provide a comparison of the graphic styles – and perhaps some understanding of how the PIA crew could misread a chart so fatally.

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December 13, 1991's commercially available Jeppesen-Sanderson approach chart for Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu, Nepal. Jeppesen-Sanderson approach chart exactly like this one was used by the crew of ill-fated PIA Airbus A300B4. The Nepalese Commission’s report criticized Jeppesen-Sanderson approach chart for its method of showing the vertical profile of the approach. - Scanned from Air Disaster – Volume 3 - (Abbas Ali Collection)

The approach chart used by the Pakistani crew was particularly criticized for its method of showing the vertical profile of the approach. “The minimum altitude at some DME fixes was not directly associated with the fix,” the Nepalese Commission’s report declared. And Pakistan International Airlines’ own report recommended that ICAO “should review the conventions of commercial approach charts with a view to encouraging standardization and reducing chart clutter”.
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