Karachi: The Pakistani airliner that crashed into houses close to Karachi airport on Friday last had aborted an initial attempt to land a few minutes earlier without its wheels extended, officials said. An extraordinary sequence of events led to the loss of 97 lives, with only two passengers aboard the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight surviving when the Airbus A320 came down a mile from the runway in the densely populated Model Colony neighbourhood and burst into flames. Nineteen houses were damaged but only four people on the ground were injured.
The two survivors were sitting in the front part of the plane: Zafar Masud, president of the Bank of Punjab, and Mohammad Zubair, an engineer. Zubair, 24, in the 10th row, said that after the crash he could hear passengers screaming as fire engulfed the cabin. “After it hit and I regained consciousness I saw fire everywhere,” he said from his hospital bed. “The cries were everywhere and everybody was trying to survive. I undid my seat belt and I saw some light and tried to walk towards it. Then I jumped out.”
Pakistani civil aviation officials and the airline confirmed that Flight PK-8303 had in the final seconds aborted a first attempt to land, without its undercarriage extended. The pilots applied power to “go around” but before it could climb away, its two engines scraped along the runway gouging a trail for hundreds of yards.
Captain Sajjad Gull, one of PIA’s most senior pilots, began bringing the plane around for a second attempt but the damaged engines failed three minutes later. Only just before hitting the ground did the crew declare an emergency and report the engine failure. Pilots piecing together the evidence have suggested that the crew neglected to extend the wheels because they were distracted by the stress of an unstable approach. Their focus on a difficult landing may have caused them to ignore an automated chime that alerts pilots to a wrong landing configuration.
“The warning signs are clearly audible during the conversation between the captain of Flight PK-8303 and the controller,” said Sumanta Roy Choudhury, a veteran Indian pilot. “The pilot does not report an emergency and prepare for a belly landing. Instead, there is a missed approach.” Mohan Ranganathan, an air safety expert, said that the pilots would have realised the lack of undercarriage when the aircraft failed to slow down normally just before touchdown. “He then might have decided to go around but the engines probably spooled up slowly and the underside came in contact with the runway,” he said.
More than five minutes from touchdown on their original approach, controllers twice pointed out to the pilots that their descent was far too steep and asked if they wanted to go around. One of the pilots declined, saying: “We are comfortable. We can make it.” The pilots failed to follow standard procedure and declare an emergency after the strike, according to the recordings. They only acknowledged a problem when the controller noticed they were failing to maintain 2,000 feet altitude. He asked them to “confirm you are going for a belly landing”. By then it was too late.
