One of the two people to survive a plane crash in Pakistan that killed 97 people has described jumping from the burning wreckage of the aircraft after it crashed into a residential area.

The Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) plane came down among houses yesterday afternoon after both engines failed as it approached Karachi airport, the airline said.

Its wings sliced through rooftops, sending flames and plumes of smoke into the air as it crashed onto a street.

Commercial flights in the country resumed only days ago, ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, after planes were grounded during a lockdown over the coronavirus pandemic.

"After it hit and I regained consciousness, I saw fire everywhere and no one was visible," Mohammad Zubair, 24, said from his hospital bed in a video clip circulated on social media.

"There were cries of children, adults and elderly. 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."

Mr Zubair had suffered burns but was in a stable condition, a health ministry official said.

The airline named the other survivor as the president of the Bank of Punjab, Zafar Masud.



The health ministry for Sindh province, where the southern port city of Karachi is located, today confirmed that all 97 bodies recovered from the crash site had been on the plane.

At least 19 had been identified so far, while DNA testing was being carried out at the University of Karachi to help name the rest of the victims.

A local hospital earlier reported it had received the bodies of people killed on the ground.

The disaster comes as Pakistanis prepare to celebrate the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan and the beginning of Eid, with many travelling to their homes in cities and villages.

A PIA spokesperson said air traffic control lost contact with the plane travelling from Lahore to Karachi just after 2.30pm local time.

The pilot made a desperate mayday call after announcing "we have lost engines", according to an audio recording confirmed by the airline.

PIA chief executive Arshad Mahmood Malik described the Airbus A320 as one of the safest planes.

"Technically, operationally everything was in place," he said, promising an investigation.

Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said the captain, Sajjad Gull, had been described by the airline as a senior A320 pilot with extensive flight experience.

The plane had first entered service in 2004 and was acquired by PIA a decade later and had logged around 47,100 flight hours, Airbus said in a statement.

Residents were the first to sift through the charred and twisted wreckage strewn in search of survivors, with witnesses reporting the cries of a man hanging from the plane's emergency exit door.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan said he was "shocked and saddened" by the crash, tweeting that he was in touch with the state-owned airline's chief executive.

"Prayers & condolences go to families of the deceased," he wrote on Twitter.

The Pakistan military said security forces were deployed to the area and helicopters were used to survey the damage.

Pakistan has a chequered military and civilian aviation safety record, with frequent plane and helicopter crashes over the years.

In 2016, a PIA plane burst into flames after one of its two turboprop engines failed while flying from the remote north to Islamabad, killing more than 40 people.

The deadliest air disaster on Pakistani soil was in 2010 when an Airbus A321 operated by private airline Airblue and flying from Karachi crashed into the hills outside Islamabad as it came in to land, killing all 152 people on board.

An official report blamed the accident on a confused captain and a hostile cockpit atmosphere.

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/...-air-crash-survivor/

A hell of a thing to live through.

quote:

after both engines failed as it approached Karachi airport, the airline said.

The pilot made a desperate mayday call after announcing "we have lost engines", according to an audio recording confirmed by the airline.

"Technically, operationally everything was in place," he said, promising an investigation.


An official report blamed the accident on a confused captain and a hostile cockpit atmosphere.

https://www.rte.ie/news/world/...-air-crash-survivor/

WTF? Both engines failed? Confused Captain? Hostile work environment? What kind of horse puckey is this?

I'm glad I'll never fly with such an operation, I'm glad Americans have very well trained operators.
.

I cannot imagine the horror.

Both engines? Sounds like they ran out of fuel.

No engines.

No height.

No hope.

RIP all those lost.

My synopsis of Juan Browne 'Blancolirio' youtube report on the crash. Jaun has 2k hours in the Airbus.

You can hear the gear malfunction beeper in the background of one transmission from the plane.
First landing attempt, wheels up, scraped the engines on the ground.
Pilot attempts a go around but the damaged engines fail.

In hindsight... perhaps he should have slid to a stop on the belly instead of attempting a go around and hoping to resolve the gear problem.

Juan preliminary report.
https://youtu.be/AwfkN5M-bSY

^^ I read the same thing. Terrible if he belly landed the plane and then took off again after that and crashed.

quote:

Originally posted by OKCGene:
WTF? Both engines failed? Confused Captain? Hostile work environment? What kind of horse puckey is this?

I took the confused Captain and the hostile work environment to refer to the cause of the crash in 2010 of the Airbus A321.

This is just me, but I think I will stick to flying U.S., Canadian, and a few European carriers on the extremely few times that I fly.

quote:

Originally posted by cparktd:
My synopsis of Juan Browne 'Blancolirio' youtube report on the crash. Jaun has 2k hours in the Airbus.

You can hear the gear malfunction beeper in the background of one transmission from the plane.
First landing attempt, wheels up, scraped the engines on the ground.
Pilot attempts a go around but the damaged engines fail.

Juan also notes that on the attempted TOGA the Ram Air Turbine could be seen automatically deployed, indicating the loss of electrical power as both engines failed.

Why was that Gear Unsafe Condition warning not heeded? Was it already too late in the approach?

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
Why was that Gear Unsafe Condition warning not heeded? Was it already too late in the approach?

I'm not a pilot. So don't take my word on anything. But I watched Juan's You-tube video and I came away thinking that the crew failed to lower the gear on the initial approach. And when they finally realized their error it was too late to abort and they scraped the engines on the runway.

The gear unsafe warning sounded AFTER the initial, failed approach. The pilot was already attempting to go around when he requested permission. The co-pilot was attempting to lower the gear during the second attempt but was unsuccessful do to the damage that the aircraft sustained on the first landing attempt.

What I don't understand, and again I'm not a pilot, is how you could miss lowering the gear in a aircraft as advanced as an Airbus. I understand it would be easy to miss on less advanced aircraft. But I would think that an Airbus would make it painfully clear your gear was up past a certain point on approach.

I would think that an aircraft as advanced as an Airbus would prevent you from entering a landing configuration with the gear up.

That is a terrible disaster. Many survived only to die in the plane on the ground? Only two could get out? Did it explode? I am guessing so. A fuel explosion probably.

quote:

Originally posted by old rugged cross:
That is a terrible disaster. Many survived only to die in the plane on the ground? Only two could get out? Did it explode? I am guessing so. A fuel explosion probably.

The plane crashed in a residential area. There was an explosion (caught on a CCTV) and subsequent fire.

Ok, never mind. Definitely not a running out of fuel situation.

The word in Pakistan is just what it appears; no gear for the initial approach, with an attempted go-around after a dual-engine strike.

Having spent some time in that part of the world, and in Karachi, I have to say that this isn't very surprising.

quote:

Originally posted by Broadside:

quote:

Originally posted by kkina:
Why was that Gear Unsafe Condition warning not heeded? Was it already too late in the approach?

I'm not a pilot. So don't take my word on anything. But I watched Juan's You-tube video and I came away thinking that the crew failed to lower the gear on the initial approach. And when they finally realized their error it was too late to abort and they scraped the engines on the runway.

The gear unsafe warning sounded AFTER the initial, failed approach. The pilot was already attempting to go around when he requested permission. The co-pilot was attempting to lower the gear during the second attempt but was unsuccessful do to the damage that the aircraft sustained on the first landing attempt.

What I don't understand, and again I'm not a pilot, is how you could miss lowering the gear in a aircraft as advanced as an Airbus. I understand it would be easy to miss on less advanced aircraft. But I would think that an Airbus would make it painfully clear your gear was up past a certain point on approach.

I would think that an aircraft as advanced as an Airbus would prevent you from entering a landing configuration with the gear up.

Edit: Juan Browne did a follow-up video yesterday. In it I believe he said that the malfunction beeper was on the initial approach.

The flight descended on final approach from 9,000' to 3,500 in two minutes, at which point they were reported five miles from touchdown. They should have been at 1,700.'

The controller recognized that they were too high for the approach, and gave them a vector: they were directed to turn left to a heading of 180: he was going to vector them back around for another approach. The crew declined, saying "we are established on the ILS 25L." The controller allowed them to continue.

I have had slam-dunk arrivals at Karachi before (meaning we weren't cleared for a lower altitude until close to the airport), and it's often up to the pilot to prompt ATC to get down, rather than air traffic control getting the pilot lower. Much of the arrival procedure provided doesn't give any, or gives little vertical guidance, but the final approach path is a standard 3.0 degree guidance. They were well above that.

Shortly after passing 3,500,' they were cleared to land, passing through about 1,200.' They reported a go-around two minutes later, and two minutes after that, reported loss of bth engines, while descending again through 2,000' (having achieved just over 3,000' on the go-around). Their impact was about three quartes of a mile from the threshold of runway 25L, just inside the boundary of the populated area. Another 200 yards or so, and they'd have been in no-man's land, outside the colony walls, where there was no surface population.

With the rapid dive for the final approach and what could only be a rapid configuring for landing, and given that the crew did not report a problem prior to landing (only after), it's evident from the initial data that the crew simply failed to lower the gear. The left engine struck the ground 4,500' from the runway threshold, and the right engine 5,500 from the threshold, and at that point a go-around was initiated (remembering it can take up to six seconds to get power established and the airplane climbing again, assuming no damage. There was damage.

On final, the crew should have been doing 1,000 feet per minute descent; they were doing close to 4,000 feet per minute descent to the final approach fix. All airlines operate under stable approach criteria, which requires the airplane to be configured for landing and on speed by the final approach fix (or for some operators, by 1,000. This crew was beyond the final approach fix when they were still racing to get down, far from stable, not configured, and clearly not having satisfied the before landing checklist. They should have taken the vector.

I would rate Pakistan as one of the most difficult places on the planet to understand controllers, and have heard some fairly adversarial exchanges between controlles and pilots in the past. In addition, it seems that the enroute controllers and terminal controllers don't communicate much. It's not uncommon there for communications to fail. Not all parts of the country are friendly toward one another, either.

While much of the world has moved on from dictatorships in the cockpit, in which the captain rules with an iron fist (literally, in some cases, slapping or punching the First Officer who dares talk back or disagree), there are still a number of places that aren't so enlightened. Additionally, there are many places around the world in which both crew have very little experience, and virtually none outside of their home environment, or their one employer. It's not uncommon to have new pilots at those airlines with only a few hours of flight time and a fresh commercial pilot certificate, with the dictator captain doing three jobs; his, the first officers, and playing nanny, too. An adversarial cockpit environment in a prior incident is no surprise at all; a clearly-rushed and behind-the-ball environment here isn't, either.

The pilot's response was probably a shrug and a dismissive "Inshallah".

In many Middle Eastern/SW Asian cultures, "Inshallah/If Allah Wills It" is a way of life. As in, "If God wants it to work out, he'll make it happen... So I don't need to take it very seriously or put much (if any) effort into it."

That's fine when it comes to making plans for dinner with a friend. When it comes to highly technical things like building construction, machine maintenance, and flight training/protocols, that mindset gets people killed.

(It's the same mindset that causes local soldiers to spray fire blindly towards the enemy. There's no need to aim, because if God wants the bullet to hit the enemy, he'll make it happen.)

quote:

Originally posted by sns3guppy:
On final, the crew should have been doing 1,000 feet per minute descent; they were doing close to 4,000 feet per minute descent to the final approach fix. All airlines operate under stable approach criteria, which requires the airplane to be configured for landing and on speed by the final approach fix (or for some operators, by 1,000. This crew was beyond the final approach fix when they were still racing to get down, far from stable, not configured, and clearly not having satisfied the before landing checklist. They should have taken the vector.

So, I assume that if you do something like this the aircraft starts screaming at you with all types of alarms. I guess it would be easy to miss the one that is screaming at you to lower the landing gear.

Reports have come out they landed with the gear down and in proper position. They landed long because of the unstable approach and bounced several times before making the decision to go around. Unfortunately, the FO raised the gear during the process of bouncing and the engines contacted the runway before the go-around was "achieved". That is why there is evidence of scraping underneath the engine nacelles. There's no telling how long they remained running after the go around before finally ceasing to operate. The black box should reveal that.

Here is Juan's update of the incident. He does a good job of explaining how the engines would have been damaged and FUBR by contact with the runway.