Pilot of crashed PIA jet ignored warnings thrice: Report
The pilot of the ill-fated Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, which crashed last Friday in Karachi killing 97 of 99 passengers onboard, had ignored three warnings from air traffic controllers (ATC) about the altitude and speed of the aircraft before landing, it emerged on Tuesday. Photo: Pakistan Today. Sketched by the Pan Pacific Agency.
KARACHI, May 26, 2020, Pakistan Today. The pilot of the ill-fated Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight, which crashed last Friday in Karachi killing 97 of 99 passengers onboard, had ignored three warnings from air traffic controllers (ATC) about the altitude and speed of the aircraft before landing, it emerged on Tuesday, Pakistan Today reported.
According to a media report, which cited an ATC report, Captain Sajjad Gul, the pilot of PK-8303 flight of Airbus A-320, said that he “would handle the situation” before the aircraft crashed into a narrow residential street, bringing significant damage to houses in a densely-populated neighborhood.
The Karachi-bound jet was 15 nautical miles from the Jinnah International Airport, flying at an altitude of 10,000 feet above the ground instead of 7,000 when the ATC issued its first warning to lower the plane’s altitude.
However, the report said, instead of lowering the altitude, the pilot responded by saying that he was satisfied. When only 10 nautical miles were left till the airport, the plane was at an altitude of 7,000 feet instead of 3,000 feet, it said.
The ATC issued a second warning to the pilot to lower the plane’s altitude. The pilot responded again by stating that he was satisfied and would handle the situation, saying he was ready for landing.
The report said that the plane had enough fuel to fly for two hours and 34 minutes, while its total flying time was recorded at one hour and 33 minutes.
The investigators are trying to find out if the crash is attributable to a pilot error or a technical glitch.
‘ENGINE SCRAPPED RUNWAY THRICE’
According to a previous report prepared by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), the plane’s engines had scraped the runway thrice on the pilot’s first attempt to land, causing friction and sparks recorded by the experts.
When the aircraft scraped the ground on the first failed attempt at landing, the engine’s oil tank and fuel pump may have been damaged and started to leak, preventing the pilot from achieving the required thrust and speed to raise the aircraft to safety, the report said.
The pilot made a decision “on his own” to undertake a “go-around” after he failed to land the first time. It was only during the go-around that the ATC was informed that landing gear was not deployed, it said.
“The pilot was directed by the air traffic controller to take the aircraft to 3,000 feet, but he managed only 1,800. When the cockpit was reminded to go for the 3,000 feet level, the first officer said ”we are trying”,” the report said.
Experts said that the failure to achieve the directed height indicates that the engines were not responding. The aircraft, thereafter, tilted and crashed suddenly.
The flight crashed at the Jinnah Garden area near Model Colony in Malir on Friday afternoon, minutes before its landing. 11 persons on the ground were injured.
The probe team, headed by Air Commodore Muhammad Usman Ghani, President of the Aircraft Accident and Investigation Board, is expected to submit a full report in about three months.
According to the PIA’s engineering and maintenance department, the last check of the plane was done on March 21 this year and it had flown from Muscat to Lahore a day before the crash.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the government had allowed the limited domestic flight operations from five major airports — Islamabad, Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta — from May 16.
Share it
| 
| 
| 
| 
|