Scheduled 14 CFR Non-U.S., Commercial
Accident occurred Friday, May 22, 2020 in Karachi, Pakistan
Aircraft: AIRBUS A320, registration:
Injuries: 97 Fatal, 2 Serious.
The foreign authority was the source of this information.
The government of Pakistan has notified the NTSB of an accident involving an AIRBUS A320 with CFM56 engines that occurred on May 22, 2020. The NTSB has appointed a U.S. Accredited Representative to assist the government of Pakistan's investigation under the provisions of ICAO Annex 13.
All investigative information will be released by the government of Pakistan.
ISLAMABAD — A Pakistani-led investigation into a deadly air crash Friday will examine whether the jet’s engines were damaged in an aborted first landing, causing a loss of power when the plane circled around for a second landing, officials familiar with the probe said.
Initial evidence suggests the engines of the Pakistan International Airlines jet made contact with the runway in Karachi when the pilot attempted to land without landing gear deployed, the officials said. Marks on the runway indicate the engines were dragged along it, while flight-altitude data and eyewitness accounts say that the plane took off again, they said.
The Airbus A320 never made it back to the runway, striking a residential building near the Karachi airport. The crash killed all but two of the 99 people on board and injured several on the ground.
Pakistan International Airlines, the national carrier, has struggled financially for years. It has seen three planes destroyed in crashes since 2006, including Friday’s accident.
Arshad Malik, chief executive of Pakistan International Airlines, a former air force officer, has declined to comment on the cause of the crash until he sees the findings of the full investigation, which are supposed to be delivered within three months.
The “black box” flight-data recorder was found Friday, but the voice recorder hasn’t been located. The investigation is expected to get technical assistance from Airbus, and the engine manufacturer CFM.
“This will be a totally free and fair inquiry,” Ghulam Sarwar Khan, the aviation minister, said Saturday. “There will be action against whoever is held responsible.”
The investigation team is composed of three air force personnel and one representative of the industry regulator.
Imran Narejo, of the Pakistan Airline Pilots Association, questioned the independence of the inquiry, criticizing the absence of a commercial pilot or international experts.
He described the information coming out as premature, and expressed concern the pilots’ perspective may not be given proper consideration.
“Dead people don’t talk,” said Mr. Narejo.
The investigation will examine the technical and mechanical performance of the aircraft—one of the world’s most widely flown models—and decisions made by the crew that appear to have contributed to the crash, according to the officials who are familiar with the investigation.
The investigation will also try to determine whether the pilots had been fasting, for as long as 10 hours before the crash in this case, as part of the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. Pakistan International Airlines prohibits pilots from fasting when they are scheduled to fly so that their performance isn’t impaired. Low blood-sugar levels can cloud judgment.
The one-and-a-half hour flight appeared to be uneventful until the aircraft approached Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport just before 2:30 p.m.
According to officials familiar with the investigation, the probe will examine why the pilot approached the airport at an unusually steep and rapid descent. In a publicly available tape of air-traffic control’s communication with the pilot—confirmed by the airline—the control officer raised concern several times about the plane’s trajectory.
The pilot responded that he was “comfortable.” When the plane reached 5 miles from the runway, it was at 4,000 feet, flight data shows. That is higher than a prudent altitude at that point, experts said.
J.F. Joseph, head of Joseph Aviation Consulting, which is based in Texas and advises on aviation matters, said it was puzzling why the pilot didn’t abort the first approach when he saw he was too high.
“What was the sense of urgency which pushed the pilot to brush aside all protocols?” Mr. Joseph said.
Instead, the pilot continued descending, apparently unaware that the plane’s landing gear wasn’t extended, perhaps distracted by dealing with the steep approach, according to the officials. The plane is equipped with alarms to warn pilots that the landing gear isn’t extended as it nears the ground, the officials said.
Investigators will also probe why the tracking of the plane wasn’t handed from air-traffic control, which was following its initial path on radar, to personnel in the control tower, who might have been able to see whether the plane’s landing gear was retracted, the officials said.
Marks on the runway indicate the plane made contact with the ground during the initial landing attempt, including one or both engines, according to the officials. The first contact appears to be half way down the runway, with the left engine, an official said, while the right engine seems to have touched further down.
An amateur photograph of the plane once it got airborne again, which is regarded as a credible image by officials, seems to show black marks along the underside of both engines.
If the pilot did come down on his engines, he could have cut the power and let the plane slide to a halt, experts said. Instead, he powered full throttle and got airborne again to make another attempt to land.
The plane was told by air-traffic control to climb to 3,000 feet, according to the audio recording, but couldn’t maintain that altitude.
At that point the pilot told the controller “we have lost engines.” Shortly afterward, a voice from the cockpit said, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”
Video footage from a security camera mounted on a rooftop and available on aviation websites shows the aircraft nose up and tail down—apparently gliding powerless. The landing gear looks to be extended as it approaches the airport the second time in the video, officials said.
The plane was over a residential area built on the approach path to the runway, with apartment blocks and houses, some four floors high, packed together. The investigation will examine whether those homes were built legally, the officials said.
The plane’s tail hit a building, video shows. The aircraft then fell onto the roofs of homes, breaking apart and catching fire.
ISLAMABAD — Rescuers recovered 97 bodies Saturday from the wreckage of a crashed Pakistan International Airlines domestic flight, which the pilot had said lost power.
The plane crashed Friday as it reached the southern city of Karachi, slamming into a residential area on the edge of the airport. The flight was carrying 99 passengers and crew. Two passengers survived and weren’t badly hurt, an escape described as “miraculous” by authorities.
Many of the passengers had been on their way to see their loved ones for the Muslim festival of Eid, which falls this weekend, officials said.
On Saturday, the provincial government said it had found 97 bodies. Residents of 25 homes on the ground that were damaged by the crash were relocated, said the military, which is helping with the debris-clearance operations.
Among the dead was one American, according to the airline and the State Department.
The plane flew into the roofs of low-rise apartment blocks and homes of a middle-class neighborhood, breaking the aircraft up. Fires broke out on the ground. Rubble from the buildings and plane parts littered the narrow streets of the area. Authorities said no residents were killed, but some were injured.
“The pilot tried his best to get the plane to the runway,” Ghulam Sarwar Khan, the aviation minister, said Saturday, visiting the site of the crash. He said when the pilot realized he wasn’t going to make it, he steered the plane down amid the buildings in a way to do “minimum damage.”
Many of the bodies of people on board were burned beyond recognition, rescuers said. The provincial government said Saturday morning that 19 of the dead have been identified so far. It asked relatives to come forward to give DNA samples to identify more victims.
An investigation into the crash has been launched, with a four-member team named by the government to run the probe.
The pilot radioed in an emergency before the crash, the airline said.
“We have lost engines,” the pilot told air-traffic control just before the plane went down, according to a voice recording played on local television channels that was confirmed as authentic by the airline.
The control tower then asked the pilot to confirm that the plane would be making a belly landing—indicating that the aircraft had also been unable to deploy its wheels to land. The air-traffic controller told the pilot that a runway was available for the plane.
“Mayday, mayday, mayday,” came the response from the pilot.
The plane, an Airbus A320, had come from the eastern city of Lahore and was due to land at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi at around 3 p.m. local time on Friday.
Arshad Malik, the chief executive of Pakistan International Airlines, said Friday the plane was on its final approach to the airport and cleared by air-traffic control to land. But the pilot decided to circle around for another attempt.
It was on that second approach that the plane lost height before crashing into the buildings near the airport, video footage run by local channels showed.
While announcing an inquiry, Mr. Malik declined to speculate about the cause before the investigation’s findings are known. He said that planes are allowed to take off only after undergoing technical safety checks.
One of the men who survived, Mohammad Zubair, suffered burns to his hands and feet but was well enough to give media interviews from a hospital bed on Friday.
He told reporters that on the first landing approach there were some shudders to the plane and the aircraft flew back upward. After a number of minutes, the pilot again announced that he would land.
Mr. Zubair said in the interviews that he was never aware of a problem.
The next thing that Mr. Zubair remembered, he said in the interviews, was fire all around and people screaming. He saw daylight coming in from one spot in the fuselage, undid his seat belt and scrambled toward it, escaping the wreckage, he said.
Imran Narejo, of the Pakistan Airlines Pilots’ Association, cited what he said appeared to be a failure of the landing gear on the first approach and engine failure when the plane attempted to land a second time.
The other survivor, Zafar Masud, is president of a local bank, Bank of Punjab. Local television footage showed residents carrying Mr. Masud, who appeared to be conscious, away from the site. His family, after visiting him at the hospital, said he was talking and had a fractured elbow. Bank of Punjab said that he had “sustained injuries but is out of danger.”
A spokesman for Airbus SE said Friday that “we are aware of the reports about an accident involving a passenger aircraft in Pakistan. At this time we have no further details.”
The aircraft, an earlier generation of Airbus’s popular A320 narrow-body jet, was powered by engines manufactured by CFM International, a joint venture between General Electric Co. and France’s Safran SA, the plane maker said.
The aircraft first entered service in 2004. It has been in operation with Pakistan International Airlines since 2014, Airbus said.
Airbus said it was providing technical assistance to investigators in Pakistan and France under international air-accident investigation rules.
A spokesman for CFM said Friday it was aware of reports of the crash and is “closely monitoring the situation.”
The airline, which initially said 98 passengers and crew were on the flight but later corrected that to say there were 99 people, said Friday that it was in touch with both Airbus and the engine manufacturer.
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