PIA A320 crash into residential neighborhood in Karachi

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/south-asia/article/3085699/pakistan-crash-plane-carrying-more-100-people-goes-down

PIA A320 crashes while landing in Karachi

The incident occurred just days after Pakistan resumed commercial flights following coronavirus lockdown

 

Juan Browne, a pilot for AA , has posted on YouTube a well done analysis of the PIA 320 crash with in-flight photos that show heavy damage to the underside of both engine nacelles from a "rescued" wheels up landing on the first attempt. The RAT is also deployed, indicating loss of systems. The engines quit before the go around was completed and post crash photos shows a lack of rotational blade damage to the intake compressors. Big screw up.

 

Third world airlines are really scary.

 

Apparently, there is a lot of important stuff at the bottom of the nacelle, including the high pressure fuel pump.

 

So, are they going to ground all of the A320’s like they did the MAX?

 

Big difference between "hidden design flaw" and "flew the plane into the ground, broke the engines, and lifted off again"

 

I'm not familiar with CFM56 layout but most engines do have system drives on the bottom of the engine. I would imagine that there could have been some engine case deformation also.

 

Guys must have been deaf not to hear that gear warning horn.

But then one F-105 pilot I knew said "That horn was making so much noise I could not hear myself think" as he landed gear up.

 

Listening to the video while the pilot was announcing his first approach you can hear the landing gear warning horn beeping in the background.

 

I only heard it once in my career and it was in an F-111F. I was expecting it, since the AC had done everything backwards (flaps and slats down first), and merely told him "You might want to put the gear down" when the horn went off.

 

Cause of the 3 accidents was pilot error. Contributing factors were different.
My opinion of course...

 

Especially since the fault had occurred on one of the crash aircraft before and they were able to figure it out. Too bad maintenance did not fix the issue.

 

Do we know the definite reason for the aborted first landing attempt? Was it an issue prior to the engines contacting the ground or was the landing aborted because of the engines touching the ground? Would the landing gear alarm sound if the lever was put into the down position and the gear failed to deploy somehow? They should be able to open via gravity alone and rear gears lock by rolling the plane both ways (front locks via air resistance pushing it back).

 

The video clearly shows heavy damage to the undersides both engine nacelles and the RAT deployed after the first attempt to land. Audio of the pilot while making that approach clearly has the sounds of the landing gear warning horn beeping indicating that the gear was not down or that there was a malfunction. To me, that would indicate a go around. I'm not a professional airline pilot so those are my personal impressions.

 

With the handle down and the gear still up, you should still get the gear warning horn as well as red lights in the indicators. Often it takes quite a bit of time to get the gear down using alternate/back-up extension, and even longer to get a down and locked indication.

 

I just looked at another link and it had an illustration of the accessory drive gear boxes on the lower sides of the CFM-56 and from what I can discern, if there were a ground strike of any force, it would wreck the gear boxes and disable hydraulics, electrical, fuel, and anything else that they drove. That is why the RAT was automatically deployed. Again, my impressions.

 

Also, if you look at the video of the plane going down short of the runway on it's second attempt with engines out, the gear is clearly down.

 

Always good to get the gear down for the second landing.

 

There is already an animation out:

 

That is exactly what I have heard from some A320 pilots.

 

There are several big errors in that animation. That we already know about.

 

The P&W JT3, JT4, and JT8 have a centrally located accessory drive that protrudes enough to cause the belly in the nacelle loft. Ground contact would have wiped that out as well as a lot of the high stage compressor case. I supervised the systems installation drawings on these engines and I got to know them pretty well but sometimes my memory loses some of the details.

 

Of course, on the 737-300 and subq, the low ground clearance required all the accessory drives to be moved to either side of the CFM56s, so if they had done this with one of those aircraft, they might have gotten away with it. But the A320 never had that ground-clearance problem.

 

https://whdh.com/news/almost-1-in-3-pilots-in-pakistan-have-fake-licenses-aviation-minister-says/

 

AAIB preliminary report is here.

https://www.caapakistan.com.pk/Upload/SIBReports/AAIB-431.pdf

With the data from the FDR. Sadly it isn’t very confidence inspiring.