Bengaluru: It was a twin tragedy Friday as a Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) flight from Lahore to Karachi crashed into a residential colony just when it was about to land.
The accident involving Flight PK8303 took place just ahead of Eid and as Pakistan began to resume domestic aviation operations after a lockdown imposed to check the spread of Covid-19.
While two of the plane’s 99 passengers, including crew members, miraculously survived the crash, there were reports of multiple casualties on the ground.
Over 24 hours after the crash, aviation experts told ThePrint they were wary of discussing its exact cause, saying data is yet to be recovered from the flight box recorders and it is too early to suggest anything.
However, amateur aviation enthusiasts and expert forums cited images of the aircraft from its final moments, and an unverified recording of the pilot’s conversation with air traffic control (ATC), to make certain deductions.
They claimed the plane struggled to deploy its landing gear and both its engines appeared to have failed.
According to one of the two survivors, the aircraft, an Airbus A320-214 that was built in 2004 and was being flown by PIA since 2014, was on its second landing attempt when it crashed.
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Theories doing the rounds
The plane that crashed was acquired by PIA from the Irish-American aviation giant GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS) on dry lease for six years.
Flight PK8303 crashed around 2.45 pm local time, around the time it was scheduled to land at Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, after a less-than-two-hour flight from Lahore.
A PIA spokesperson reportedly confirmed Saturday that the plane’s flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder had been recovered from the crash site.
While the recorders have been handed over to the authorities overseeing the inquiry into the crash, aviation enthusiasts have been parsing images and footage of the flight’s last moments to make certain estimates about the cause.
The plane is believed to have attempted a landing, and crashed during a second attempt.
A civil aviation official has been quoted as saying that the plane may have had difficulty lowering its undercarriage — the wheels and other equipment that aid landing and take-off — due to a technical fault. Images posted on social media indicate what seem to be scorch marks under the engines, without the landing gear lowered.
Before crashing, the plane sent out a mayday call, which in aviation parlance translates to a distress signal, according to a purported audio recording of the last few minutes of conversation between one of the pilots and ATC. The recording was posted on aviation monitoring website atc.net and also did the rounds on social media.
https://twitter.com/HinaRKharal/status/1263788851069419522
The plane’s first approach towards the runway was abandoned because of problems with the extension of the nose landing gear, said a report about the accident in The Aviation Herald, which publishes reports on aviation-related matters.
In the recording, which is yet unverified, the pilot is heard saying that the flight had “lost engine” or “lost engines” (it is yet unclear what he was saying exactly).
When ATC asked if they were going to perform a “belly landing”, he responded with, “Mayday, mayday, mayday!”
Before this, the recording suggests, the ATC had cleared the flight for 3,000 feet and then alerted pilots that the flight was dropping altitude. The recording also reflects a repeated “ding” sound in the background, which experts say is triggered when there is trouble extending the landing gear.
Another factor that experts are citing to back the engine-failure theory is that images showed the flight’s Ram Air Turbine (RAT) deployed.
RAT is a wind turbine that is usually deployed automatically if both engines fail, so it can generate power through spinning blades. Amateur plane spotters also claimed to spot a little smoke emanating from the engines.
Our hearts weep with some terrible news coming out of Karachi today. Here is AP-BLD in it's final moments, attempting a go around after it's first attempt of belly landing. A little smoke can be seen from engines as well.#PlaneSpottersPakistan #avipak #planecrash #karachi pic.twitter.com/eOKiCAeRu7
— Plane Spotters Pakistan (PSPK) (@PlaneSpottersPK) May 22, 2020
According to a report in The Guardian, the plane was fitted with engines built by CFM International, co-owned by General Electric and France’s Safran.
One of the survivors, Muhammad Zubair, said there was a 10-15 minute gap between the first landing attempt and the subsequent one, saying the flight was smooth with no indication of an imminent crash.
The other passenger who survived was Zafar Masood, president of the Bank of Punjab.
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