On May 22, 2020, Pakistan International Airlines Flight PK 8303 crashed into a residential area close to Karachi Airport. Nearly 100 people lost their lives. The aircraft on this flight was an Airbus A320, with the registration AP-BLD.
This crash has stimulated the usual debate and speculation. When the full story is known there is a good chance that this accident will prove to be one of the most appalling cases of pilot error ever in a commercial aviation disaster. There have been numerous accidents as a result of blatant pilots' errors, but they were usually part of a chain of events involving one or other external cause (the weather, a technical malfunction of some sort, a difficult approach / terrain). Incredibly - and tragically- it appears that the pilots attempted a landing having omitted to deploy the landing gear after flying in on a 'high and hot' approach - referred to by the professionals as 'unstablized', possibly unaware that their speed exceeded the Airbus limits for lowering the undercarriage on the A320 (VIe speed). Coming in too fast over the threshold the aircraft perhaps 'floated' too far along the runway but when the engines hit the runway and scraped along the ground, the pilots - one of whom had 17,000 hours in his log-book - almost 'instinctively' attempted to lift off and go around. Or perhaps they were simply running out of runway at that stage with no means of slowing or braking. Having damaged the engines, both power plants then failed during the go-around and the aircraft' glided' down at a steep angle of attack into a residential area close to the airport.
but there are so many questions and much speculation;
- how did the flight crew manage to not hear the cacophony of noise being made by the alarms warning that the gear was not deployed. Complacency ? didn't bother with the check-list? stuck in the 'zone' ?
- why did the tower not warn them about their gear ?
- was this a 'failed' go-around, gear being retracted too late and the sink-rate taking the aircraft onto the tarmac ? This scenario is examined in detail in the second video below.
Juan Browne on the 'blancolirio' youtube channel has some of the best analysis but here you can watch a carefully compiled simulation by 'Captain Mayday' ...a single click to view
Below; first CCTV image screen-shot from "Captain Mayday" video on youtube
- ADS-B Transponder Data from Flight 8303 (source: Flightradar24.com)
- Eyewitness pictures (source: different media)
- ATC transmission of flight PK8303
- Airbus A320 Standard Operating Procedures
- Airbus A320 system and failures simulation
- The simulation is based on the Airbus A320 from FSLabs for Prepar3d
