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

[PakFactor]

OK guys, I have lost a few distant relatives in this crash. Husband, wife and 2 children.

Inna lillah e wa inna ilaihe raji'un.

@PakSword @PanzerKiel

My condolences brothers, today is truly a very sad day in Pakistan, may Allah grant theM Jannah in the here after and Allah give patience to the rest of the family.

 

[aakalim]

Theses seem to be scrap-off.
It didn't entirely land on its weight, so it was able to take off.

It is possible that the decision to "go around" was taken before the engines hit the ground. This all could have happened so fast that the pilot had no time to adjust and by the time he realized that engines have been damaged, he had already pulled up.

 

[loanranger]

The thing that I still can’t figure out is if the landing gear failed before 1st landing. Because you can explain landing gear problems after aborted landing since engine scraping runway causing hydraulic fluid to leak out which would cause landing gear to stop working later.

But if landing gear wasn’t working before 1st attempt, then that is a mystery since the plane’s engine did not yet scrape the runway when it was coming for 1st attempt. That happened after the pilot already reported landing gear issues. So the hydraulic failure caused by scraping the engine made the problem worse but didn’t start the original problem.

In my opinion...
The landing gear collapsed on impact thus causing scraping just after the first attempt.
Subsequently various problems with hydraulics came about.
Lets wait for the report to come out. Only that will tell.

 

[TheNoob]

It is possible that the decision to "go around" was taken before the engines hit the ground. This all could have happened so fast that the pilot had no time to adjust and by the time he realized that engines have been damaged, he had already pulled up.

Exactly.
So many things we don't know yet.

This is the best scenario.

 

[JonAsad]

And the airport did not have the CCTV, recording the inbound and outbound planes?

 

[Aspen]

Exactly.
So many things we don't know yet.

This is the best scenario.

I still think this is probably it

Alright guys here is my revised theory:

1. Plane comes in for 1st landing attempt
2. Landing gear extends down but does not fully lock
3. Pilots have no idea that gear is faulty
4. When plane lands, gear is unstable, engines hit ground
5. Engines scrape ground causing black skid marks
6. Pilot immediately goes around
7. Plane goes around for 2nd landing attempt
8. Plane circles in air for 7 minutes between landings
9. During these 7 minutes, hydraulic fluid and oil is rapidly leaking out from pipes that were scraped on bottom of engine. Fuel is NOT leaking out.
10. Total loss of hydraulic failure after all hydraulic fluid leaks out from ruptured hydraulic pipes on bottom of scraped engine, flaps stop working and landing gear issues get worse. White smoke in PSPK picture is hydraulic fluid leaking out of bottom of the scraped engine.
11. Ram Air Turbine or manual gear drop deployed to solve landing gear issue.
12. All oil rapidly leaks out from oil sumps on bottom of scraped engine, both engines shut down without oil, plane now becomes glider with no thrust. Fan blades in engine are intact which means engines were not running when plane crashed.
13. Since both engines stop working, plane rapidly loses altitude during approach and crashes.
14. Plane was only leaking hydraulic fluid and oil, not fuel so there is plenty of fuel left when plane crashes causing massive fireball.

 

[aakalim]

And the airport did not have the CCTV, recording the inbound and outbound planes?

They probably have it but i doubt they will release it to the public before they complete the investigation.

 

[Safriz]

 

[Yaseen1]

 

[Bil]

I was wondering the same, why this couldnt have happened?

 

[Aspen]

Yeah but these guys knew their gear was stuck because they flew past ATC tower and ATC told them it did not come down at all.

PIA pilots probably had gear down but it didn't lock because of technical or maintenance issue, so you really don't know what will happen until you hit the ground. There's really no way to tell if gear is locked just by looking at it, you kind of have to trust it when its down. I'm surprised KHI ATC didn't say anything to pilots about their plane scraping the ground. Maybe they didn't notice?

 

[Yaseen1]

there should be cameras on outside body of plane which provide video or image to pilot inside about whether wheels for landing are properly functioning and moved out in proper manner

Yeah but these guys knew their gear was stuck because they flew past ATC tower and ATC told them it did not come down at all.

PIA pilots probably had gear down but it didn't lock because of technical or maintenance issue, so you really don't know what will happen until you hit the ground. There's really no way to tell if gear is locked just by looking at it, you kind of have to trust it when its down. I'm surprised KHI ATC didn't say anything to pilots about their plane scraping the ground. Maybe they didn't notice?

 

[aakalim]

Yeah but these guys knew their gear was stuck because they flew past ATC tower and ATC told them it did not come down at all.

PIA pilots probably had gear down but it didn't lock because of technical or maintenance issue, so you really don't know what will happen until you hit the ground. There's really no way to tell if gear is locked just by looking at it, you kind of have to trust it when its down. I'm surprised KHI ATC didn't say anything to pilots about their plane scraping the ground. Maybe they didn't notice?

Doesn't the aircraft give any warning that the gear did not lock? There has to be some warning or an alarm.

Also, the ATC did ask the pilot if they wanted to belly land, suggesting they did notice them trying to belly land the first time.

 

[Aspen]

Doesn't the aircraft give any warning that the gear did not lock? There has to be some warning or an alarm.

Also, the ATC did ask the pilot if they wanted to belly land, suggesting they did notice them trying to belly land the first time.

There's a generic warning about landing gear but it doesn't tell you the difference between stuck and not locked.

If gear gets stuck and doesn't come down at all or gear does come down but doesn't lock, it will be the same warning, no way to tell the difference.

Gear that comes down but isn't locked is worse because it looks like like normal but in reality its not safe to land and that's what happened on this flight.

Gear that gets stuck is actually better because you know for sure that it's stuck since ATC can tell you from the outside if its not coming down and you don't have to guess what will happen when you land since you know for sure it will be a belly landing.

With gear that doesn't lock, you don't know if its a false warning or if the gear really isn't locked since it looks normal from outside. If you treat it like a normal landing and gear unlocks and collapses, then it becomes a belly landing and hard impact. If you're not expecting it, this can surprise the pilot and cause a go around since it's not a "true" belly landing with gear down even if it fails to lock.

The problem with unlocked gear is that you have to know its unlocked way before you land so you can prepare to make a split second decision. You don't know until literally the second the plane hits the ground whether the gear holds or not. With a wheels up landing where gear is stuck, you don't have to make any decision, you just do a belly landing and that's end of it since there's no other option. With gear unlocked, you have to make a split second decision right as plane lands whether to do a belly landing if gear collapses or do a normal landing if gear holds. There is a lot of uncertainty in this, and that is if you're expecting it. If you're not expecting it like in this incident, then its even worse because the first time you realize gear is unlocked, you already hit the ground and then its too late to make correct decision because it will be a knee jerk stress reaction. Knee jerk reaction to any problem while landing is to abort, but belly landing is the one scenario where it is actually the opposite, you have to stay on the ground and go against your instincts to abort. The problem is, you can only do this if you're expecting a belly landing which the pilots weren't, and thus they went around when it would've been safer to continue the landing. If the pilots knew that gear collapse would cause a belly landing, they probably would not have gone around. But again that's the problem, with gear that fails to lock, there's really no way to know for sure until you hit the ground and even then, you have to be expected gear collapse to react to it correctly. If pilot is surprised that gear collapses, they will not realize that it has actually become a belly landing requiring them to do full stop since there is no way for them to know if ATC doesn't tell them since they are inside cockpit. Since ATC didn't tell them their gear collapsed and there's no way for pilots to know, in a surprise situation where they did not expect belly landing in advance they would follow their training which is to abort landing and go around.

Takeaway here is really 2 things:

1. If ATC told pilots their gear collapsed when they touched down and to do a full stop belly landing instead and to not go around, this incident could probably have been avoided. However, it looks like pilots aborted almost immediately with 1-2 seconds so pilots would not have had to time to hear ATC and it would be too late to stop abort anyway.

2. What really should've happened is that ATC should've told pilots to not go around if their gear collapses few minutes before landing so pilots have time to prepare. If unlocked gear was false warning, great safe landing. If gear collapses, then worst case, its a belly landing, plane doesn't go around, everyone survives, plane gets scrapped. This is the only way to ensure a 100% safe landing.

In 99% of landings, if you have problem then you go around. 1% of landings when your gear is unlocked and you don't know what will happen, you don't take risk of going around. You go for one belly landing attempt and whatever happens happens. Going around with unstable gear is the one and only situation where a go around is always more dangerous than landing. You really have to fight against your instinct in this situation. With unlocked gear, you should never do more than one attempt and you must assume it will be a belly landing where gear collapses and you cannot go around because it is the safest option. The plane will be ruined but everyone will survive. If it turns out to be false warning, then no problem, its a normal landing.

But if warning is real and you ignore it and go around, you take a big risk that will you will crash before you reach the runway again and that is exactly what happened in this incident. If you are very lucky, even after going around, you may still make it back to land safely the next attempt but only if you know the gear collapsed and caused hydraulics and oil to start leaking which pilots probably didn't. You would have to be trained in advance to know you have very little time before oil and hydraulics leak out in a situation where you hit ground and abort to make a safe 2nd landing attempt since you may only have 5 minutes or less to do 2nd attempt. The second the engine hits ground is the second hydraulic fluid and oil start leaking and that is when countdown timer starts until it runs out. If you abort after hitting the runway, you must be trained to immediately start that countdown timer in your head so you can make it back to runway as quickly as possible before oil and hydraulics run out. If you don't know that time is critical in such a situation, you will take longer to get back to runway than if you were trying to hurry up. If pilots knew time was critical and had started their turn even 10 seconds earlier, it would probably have been a safe landing because engines shut down very close to the runway, just a few hundred feet away from runway. Turning back even 10 seconds earlier could have made the difference between life and death but pilots did not have sense of urgency because they aborted not knowing how severe gear collapse problem really was. They seemed relaxed on ATC almost until very end, acting sooner could have saved it. In such a time urgent situation where hydraulics and oil were leaking out rapidly after an abort, it would have been much faster, quicker, and safer to do a 180 turn immediately and land from the opposite direction than to do 360 and full circle which takes double the time.

 

[Avatar]

It was an unfortunate technical error that has an extremely low probability. Just sheer bad luck.