Pakistan plane crash that killed 98 blamed on ‘human error’
ISLAMABAD A commercial plane crash that killed 98 people in the southern Pakistani city of Karachi last month was primarily due to human error, according to an interim investigation report into the disaster.
Pakistan’s aviation minister read out parts of the report and presented it to Parliament in the capital Islamabad on Wednesday. “According to the initial investigative report, the pilot and the [air traffic] controller both did not adopt the proper procedure,” said Ghulam Sarwar Khan.
The initial report was based on data from the aircraft’s digital flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder, decoded by investigators in France earlier this month, days after the May 22 crash. The report’s accuracy has been disputed by the country’s main pilot’s body, the Pakistan Air Line Pilots Association (PALPA), according to a spokesperson. Pakistan International Airlines flight PK8303 crashed into a residential neighbourhood in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, after an earlier aborted landing attempt, falling two kilometres (1.24 miles) short of the runway at the Jinnah International Airport. Khan said the aircraft had been approaching the runway at an unsafe approach angle after ignoring air traffic control warnings to lower its altitude while still 10 nautical miles (18.5km) from the runway. The pilot deployed his landing gear at that point, but flight data shows the gear was retracted again five nautical miles (9.3km) from the runway. The aircraft scraped the ground on its aborted landing, the engines hitting the runway at least three times, initial reports indicated. “On one side, the pilot ignored the controller’s advice, and on the other side the controller did not tell the pilot about the damage to his engines after they scraped [the ground].” The pilots then attempted to go around for another landing, but the plane was not able to gain altitude as its engines failed, causing it to plummet to the ground into the Model Colony residential neighbourhood.
(Al Jazeera)