Some of you may remember the accident of Air Niugini flight 73, which crash landed in water on approach to Chuuk, Micronesia, on September 28, 2018.
The plane had a total of 47 people onboard, including 12(!!!) crew and 35 passengers. Unfortunately one passenger died in the incident and six were seriously injured.
The crash report of the incident was released this past week by the Accident Investigation Commission of Papa New Guinea. The plane landed about 460 meters short of the runway, and poor visibility due to bad weather led to the pilots relying on their instruments.
The report is pretty damning of the pilots’ performance. They repeatedly ignored warnings, didn’t properly brief for the approach, didn’t adhere to checklists, the co-pilot was ineffective by letting the captain make mistakes, etc.
One of the interesting things to come from this incident is that an engineer happened to be seated in the jumpseat, and he was filming the approach. He was doing this with a cell phone, presumably for fun, though it turned out to be a key piece of evidence in this incident.
Here’s a full screen video of the incident without any sound:
Meanwhile here’s the best quality video I could find with sound:
I mean… wow. This really makes you wonder what the pilots were thinking, especially as there were 17 enhanced ground proximity warning system (EGPWS) alerts, including eight “sink rate” and nine “glideslope” warnings.
@Rob B:
"The captain and pilot in command was a 52-year-old Papua New Guinean male who had 19,780 flight hours, including 2,276 hours on the Boeing 737.[3]:7 The first officer was a 35-year-old Australian male who had 4,618 flight hours, with 368 of them on the Boeing 737."
Continuing below minima is a cardinal sin.
Obviously they weren’t visual with the approach lighting at any stage when crashing so far short of the runway.
Indeed should be charged with manslaughter due to gross negligence.
One must ask the question.... where are the pilots from? Where did they receive their "training"?
Yet another accident where carry-ons are an issue: "A couple of passengers stated in their response to the written questionnaire that they were annoyed that a cabin crew member at the over-wing exit forced them to leave cabin baggage in the aircraft. However, despite the instruction, several passengers still egressed the aircraft with their bags. [...]" (p. 33)
"There were two notable instances where the removal of baggage by passengers slowed the egress. One...
Yet another accident where carry-ons are an issue: "A couple of passengers stated in their response to the written questionnaire that they were annoyed that a cabin crew member at the over-wing exit forced them to leave cabin baggage in the aircraft. However, despite the instruction, several passengers still egressed the aircraft with their bags. [...]" (p. 33)
"There were two notable instances where the removal of baggage by passengers slowed the egress. One passenger stopped inside the aircraft and leaned out the right aft over-wing exit to pass a carry-on bag to a US Navy diver standing on the wing assisting the evacuation. That diver first threw the bag to the divers in the rubber inflatable boat before assisting the passenger from the aircraft. When the passenger was on the wing, he removed his life jacket and he was then observed to be wearing a shirt with US NAVY printed on it. He remained on the wing for a short time trying to assist the US Navy divers evacuate passengers, cabin crew and the Load Master egressing via the same over-wing exit, which gave the appearance that he was part of the US Navy rescue group. [...] Another instance was where a passenger who had egressed the aircraft with cabin baggage (a backpack) was assisted by the US Navy divers to re-enter the aircraft and move forward to retrieve his shoes." (p. 34)
I couldn't see the view that the F.O. had when he called visual on the runway. As a pilot, I can tell you I'd have hit the TO/GA switch on the throttles and gone around. I believe it's the PIC that said he was going to just keep going at one point. Wrong answer buddy, you don't have visual then you go around. Totally preventable accident and complete negligence on the part of the crew.
Here's a better version of the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oe6_fqrSmI
Should be “glideslope” as a warning they are below the correct approach path on the ILS rather than “flight’s low”.
required to go around at first "sink rate" from GPWS.
pilots should be criminally charged.
The sad part is that Papa New Guinea is able to investigate accidents quicker than the US NTSB, and they managed to issue a final report much sooner than the NTSB would have.
F.O. likely was looking down through the layer and subsequently lost visual contact as they entered the layer. Go-around indicated just for that alone.......
At minimums, the first officer (I think) says "Visual, one red, three whites" implying that he can see the runway, a requirement to descend below minimums instead of flying a missed approach. Yet I can't see anything out the window. Was he lying? If they actually had a visual of the runway, how would they have landed so short? Very bizarre.