[Music] a gear up Landing followed by a dual engine failure two of the most rare emergencies in the airline world combined in one flight aircraft today are built specifically to warn pilots and to stop things like this from happening so how come it did anyway the answer to this will be told in one of the most shocking accidents in modern history stay tuned what is the actual core of Aviation safety if we have to strip down all of the rules regulations procedures checks and everything else that makes Aviation so safe then what are we actually left with well I think that at the bottom of everything sitting as the unshakable Foundation of Aviation safety is individual responsibility and professionalism and it is with that in mind that I want to start this story which has shocked me deeply and I think you will be as well on the 22nd of May 2020 a Pakistan International Airlines crew was getting ready for a recently short domestic flight from laor in Pakistan over to Karachi this would have been a very standard flight if it wasn't for the fact that it happened in May of 202 20 meaning that the whole world was in the grip of the covid-19 pandemic this meant that there were strict lockdowns in place in Pakistan and this flight was one of the only flights that was still being operated on top of that it was also taking place during the holy month of Ramadan meaning that most of the crew members were fasting for those of you who are unfamiliar with this Muslim custom it includes not eating or drinking between Dawn and Sunset and this flight was scheduled at around 1300 local time which would have been around standard launchtime we have very little information about how the two pilots spent the day before this flight but they had both flown significantly less than normal during the preceding 30 days the captain had flown 10 and a half hours during the 72 hours before this flight meaning that at least he shouldn't have been Rusty but the first officer had not flown anything for an unknown amount of time in any case it was with this background that the two pilots met up in the crew room in lore to start planning for the flight the weather was looking quite okay with only some thunderstorms aspected in lore much later in the afternoon and at their destination Karachi the visibility was okay with lights to occasionally Gusty winds from a southwesterly direction and no clouds detected a really nice day for flying in other words the pilots continued by checking through the NOS as well as their flight plans but nothing looked out of the ordinary they then continued over to brief their six cabin crew members who they were going to work with and then they all walked together out to watch the aircraft so who were these two pilots that were going to fly together then well the captain had just turned 58 and had been working with Pakistan International Airlines for over 24 years he had a valid medical and license at the time and over 17,250 hours of Total experience as part of those just under 4,800 hours had been flown on the Airbus A320 on which they were now going to be operating he had Al recently been appointed as a standard inspector on the airb a 320 Fleet meaning that he was seen as someone that was suitable to make sure that other Pilots were following the standards expected when operating on this aircraft and that's worth keeping in mind but one really interesting tidbit for this story actually has to do with how the captain had managed to join the airline in the first place because when he applied back in 1996 he had been required to go through a psychological evaluation like all of us Pilots have to do he ended up failing that assessment with let's say a far from flattering evaluation from the airline psychologists they said that he was of bossy nature firm dominant and overbearing he had below average intelligence and he tends to have little regard for the authority he also had low mechanical comprehension with low comprehension of spatial relations and his level of stress tolerance was also quite inadequate now that evaluation would have flattened almost anyone and also likely pushed them towards another choice of career but not this guy he instead asked for a second opinion from five other psychiatrists three of them from the UK who all gave him a green light to continue as a Cadet the problem for him though was that the Pakistan International Airlines had stopped allowing second opinions at that point so what did he do well he complained to the Federal Ombudsman since the application that he had filed had been filed before this change had taken place the Ombudsman actually sided with him and he was therefore allowed to start his training but I want you to keep that initial assessment in mind when you hear the rest of this story the first officer was 33 years old and had substantially less experience than the captain he had joined the airline about 10 years before and during those 10 years he had only flown just under 2,300 hours the majority of which about 1,500 hours or so on the Airbus A320 we don't know much about the first officer but we do know that he had received some negative feedbacks during his initial training which had held him back from being upgraded from Second Officer to First officer but after 2015 his training history was pretty clean having said that though given his limited experience and the fact that he was now going to be flying with a much more senior standard pilot we can assume that the power gradient in the cockpit was probably quite steep in any case as the whole crew were now walking out to watch the aircraft the pilots decided that the first officer was going to be Pilot Flying for this flight this meant that the captain was going to be in charge of doing the walk around but before he started doing that he went inside the cockpit to look through the technical log book the aircraft that they were going to fly was a 16-year-old Airbus a 32200 equipped with two cfm56 high bypass turbofan engines and those engin will play a very important role in this story before this flight the aircraft had only been flying very infrequently due to the ongoing pandemic but it had been maintained to the standard of the manufacturer and was in a generally good condition so when the cabin crew had finished their security checks and boarded the 91 passengers that they were expecting they closed up the doors and the pilots asked for push and start everything according to normal procedures at time 130 5 and 30 seconds Pakistan International Airlines flight a303 started accelerating down the runway and soon took off normally climbing up towards their destination during the climb one of the cabin crewp called up the pilots and asked if they were interested in a light snack but they both politely declined remember they were still fasting now they soon reached their planned cruising altitude flat Lev 340 or 34,000 ft where they were scheduled to stay for their about 45 minute long cruise segment and from The Voice transcripts it looks like the pilots were getting along reasonably well discussing the pandemic and how it was affecting their lives pretty much exactly like we all were doing back then but it was when they were getting closer to the top of the scent that the first clues of what was ultimately going to cause this accident started to appear and I will tell you all about that after this when I was researching for this video I ran into a problem a bunch of the websites that I wanted to use to verify the script were Geo blocked from my location but luckily I had nordvpn today's sponsor to help me out with that you see Nord is a tool that we rely on almost every single day to enable us to create the stories that we tell here on the channel and also to make sure that we can do so safely with Nord you can transcend borders easily with a single click on your device and it can also help you to unlock some serious discounts on things like car 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expect the ILS approach for Runway 25 left after that now since the first officer was Pilot Flying it was his duty to prepare the aircraft for the coming approach and also to complete the approach briefing but as the top of descend started getting closer there was no signs of any approach preparations being done instead the pilots just kept chatting away about some other non-operational stuff now just for context here in my Airline we typically start preparing for the approach about 100 nautical miles before we are expected to start ascending and we do that because there are actually quite a lot of things that needs to be done the pet flying would normally then hand over the controls to the pet monitoring meaning that the PM would be in charge of both the radio and the controls during this period which would allow the pet flying to concentrate on preparing all of the radios courses flight management computer and the minimas once that had been done the pet flying would then give a comprehensive briefing to the pet monitoring pointing out any potential threats during the descend and how to deal with them after that the arrival procedure should be discussed what type of approach they were planning on flying and how to properly fly that approach including the missed approach procedure followed by The Landing distance calculations and the expected taxi routings of course this type of briefing can be shortened down slightly if the pilots are very familiar with the airport or if it's the second time that they're arriving to that same airport that day but it can never be completely removed having a shared picture of what is about to happen is super important as noticing any deviations will then be much easier accurate preparations and briefings are actually some of the cornerstones in a well functioning crew resource management but in this case the pilots instead just kept chatting away about non-operational stuff without seemingly any intention on completing that approach briefing so you might be wondering then if they didn't do this setup and brief then how was the approach set up at all well it is likely that one of them probably the first officer actually did this quietly on his own as their discussion continued now the routing including the expected standard arrival route and approach would have been entered into the FMC already on the ground and they had now gotten that confirmed by the controller as well but without the proper briefing and a check of all of the included parameters things can easily get missed as we will soon see so the approach briefing was never completed and at time 14:15 local time the first officer contacted the controller and requested an issue descent now frequent viewers might have noticed that it should have been the captain not the first officer that requested descent since the captain was the pilot monitoring but this would not be the first nor the last departure from standard operating procedures on this flight anyway the Kachi controller answered the request and cleared them to descend initially to flight level 100 and on Pilot's discretion proceed direct a point called mle which the first officer also read back and now came another flagrant disregard for correct procedure you see after an altitude clearance has been received the pilot flying should set the new cleared altitude in the FCU and then call out set the pet monitoring should then verify that the value entered was the same as he or she heard and if that was the case then he or she should respond flight level 100 checked by doing it this way there is very little chance of someone making a mistake because of a Mard clearance and if that still would happen well then this procedure would pick it up and a level bus could be avoided this is a super important procedure which we trainers Hammer into our students on a daily basis but it didn't happen here instead the FCU was just updated to flight level 100 but there were no call outs from any of the pilots the second part of the clearance included what is known as a direct routing to a point called mackley and this point was situated on the extended center line from Runway 25 left mackley was about four nautical miles away from the Final Approach point sain where the aircraft was expected to be at 3,000 ft in order to be able to start ascending down towards the runway now these type of direct routings are very common and especially during the pandemic when there was almost no other traffic around it would have been something that the pilots should have anticipated now we Pilots normally love these type of directs as they essentially are shortcuts but they do also represent a potential challenge like I mentioned before the aircraft flight management computer will calc a top of descent based on the most economic idle descent profile but that profile will assume that the aircraft have exactly as many track miles to achieve this descent as the pilots have programmed into the FMC so if a shortcut like this is received this can actually cut away quite a lot of these available track miles meaning that the aircraft would end up being high on profile now that's normally not really an issue we can always use speed brakes or allow the aircraft to speed up to get rid of some of that extra energy but interestingly enough that didn't happen here when the first officer started descending he activated the aircraft's managed descent mode which would just follow the pre-programmed profile and even though they had now received a quite substantial shortcut the aircraft started descending with about 1,000 ft per minute meaning that it was still calculating with a few more miles of level flight before starting to descend along that calculated path now this should have been a red flag for the pilots as it indicated at the the aircraft was still assuming that it had plenty of track m still to run when that was obviously not the case there are basically two reasons why the flight management computer would react this way and the first is that there is a waypoint with a at or above altitude restrictions somewhere along the Route which would then Force the aircraft to stay up high but that wasn't the case here the other reason is that there is a procedural holding pattern programmed into the route at some point which was the case here but since the pilots had not done an approach briefing they hadn't noticed that and since that was now the case there were still plenty of track Ms inside of that holding that the FMC was calculating with but of course flying a holding is not normally what we Pilots want to do now we want to try to intercept the ILS as soon as possible and take advantage of that shortcut that we just got to save on both time and Fuel and air traffic control will almost in all conditions also expect us to do just that this by the way is why we Pilots always try to keep manual check on how many track miles we have left to go and how far we are actually away from The Landing Runway because if we take our altitude in thousands of feet and then multiply that by three then we will get a rough estimate of how many miles that we will need and if the available miles are less than that well then we know that we need to start doing something about it not blindly trusting the FMC but instead making manual backup calculations is the kind of airmanship that we are being paid to do the aircraft continued descending down toward Karachi and the time 141 18 and 36 seconds the aircraft intercepted its calculated path this meant that the thrust was reduced back to idle and that The Descent rate increased to about 2,400 ft per minute to follow the path Air Traffic Control now came back in and cleared a flight to descent to 5,000 ft which was read back by the crew but again there were no formal procedures followed when it came to actually setting this new altitude in the FCU now I know that I keep pointing these details out which might feel like very minor to a casual Observer but the thing is that they are actually really really important seconds after the crew had received that latest descent clearance a faint click could be heard on the cockpit voice recorder this sound was similar to the sound of one of the push buttons on the audio control panel being pressed down after that air traffic control tried to call the aircraft seven times including two calls from a company aircraft but without receiving any answer back from flight a303 finally the aircraft did get back in contact but only after the controller had called them up twice on the emergency frequency 1 to1 dimal 5 now the most likely reason for this prolonged loss of communication event was that the crew had assumed a hand over to the next frequency after that last altitude clearance and that they had mistuned the next frequency before they just switched over after they had made this ad hoc switch the pilots just contined discussing their nonrelevant issues and this was likely the reason why they didn't notice that the frequency had gone completely quiet it should be mentioned here that we almost never switch to a new frequency in the air unless we are clearly handed over by the previous air traffic controller so the fact that they did this anyway is just another indication of severe complacency by these two pilots and it was about to get much much worse the aircraft now continued its descent and since no one had removed the holding pattern from sabon the aircraft was still assuming that it would be executing that hold this meant that the track miles calculated by the flight management computer was 23 nautic miles longer than the actual distance that they had available that this would have been clearly shown in various ways including an initial white left turn arrow indicated on the navigation display and the fact that Sabin appeared twice in the flight management computer with a wide hold written in between the expected initial FMC altitude at Saban was set to 8,900 Ft this was way too high for a straight in approach the absolute maximum altitude the aircraft should have had in order to be able to fly straight in would have been around 5,000 ft or so but neither of these things were noticed by the crew the aircraft was now handed over to the Karachi approach controller and at time 1425 and 54 seconds this new controller cleared flight 8303 to descend to 3,000 ft on Q Ag 10004 and he also cleared them for approach again the FCU altitude setting procedure was completely disregarded as well as the confirmation of the correct cage setting but at least the first officer now armed the outop pilot approach mode meaning that the aircraft would capture the localizer and glide slope beams whenever they became available but even though they were now cleared for a straight in approach the aircraft just continued in its managed descent mode without any effort by the crew to increase The Descent rate meaning that they were now about 5,000 ft higher than they should be so what could the pilots have actually done here then well to be perfectly honest this was still far from a dangerous situation the fact that they weren't doing anything suggests that neither of the pilots had yet figured out that they were extremely hot and high but when they did they would have had a very easy solution just fly that holding pattern that the FMC was calculating with this would have added about 5 minutes to the flight and would have felt quite unnecessary but no one would have complained it wouldn't have used that much extra Fuel and the landing time would have been exactly the same as they had already calculated with mistakes like this happens from time to time and they're not a big deal as long as you deal with them in a rational and safe matter the aircraft soon passed mle which was the point that they had been cleared to and after that came sabon with its computed holding the aircraft was at 9,363 FT when it passed mle with a speed of about 250 knots and in clean configuration since they were now on the extended Cent line and the approach mode had been armed the localizer was now captured and started guiding the aircraft towards the runway when the localizer captures it disengages any previously selected horizontal mode so this meant that the aircraft would now disregard the hold even if it was still left in the FMC the approach controller who had now already cleared them for the approach looked down onto his radar screen and realized that the flight looked impossibly high twice as high as they should be he therefore called them up and asked Pakistan 8303 confirmed track miles comfortable for descent and the captain just responded airm now this was a clear indication of what the controller thought of the matter and for any pilot who hears those words it should serve as an immediate prompt to start looking over their situation and try to figure out what was going wrong the captain must have also done so here and realized to his horror that they had forgotten to remove the holding at Sabin he now called out oh what has happened stop stop oh no take out the hold take out the hold take out the hold the first officer responded um hold taken out should we report the issue indicating that he had followed the captain's orders but that he also realized the severity of their altitude situation and that they might need more track miles and here ladies and gentlemen is where the first decision is taken that will ultimately lead this aircraft into disaster because instead of just realizing the hopelessness of this situation and either asked to join the hold or ask for delaying vectors the captain responded no uh this could be due to the hold just tell Karachi approach established on localizer the first officer agreed and also pulled out the altitude knob on the FCU changing the outo pilot descent mode from managed to open the sand in that mode the aircraft would stop following the flight management computed Po and instead descend with idle thrust according to the selected speed now since the actual speed was slightly higher than the commanded 245 knots this meant that the aircraft initially actually slowed down its descent to achieve that requested speed and at the same time the first officer also activated the speed brake the aircraft was at 14.8 nautical miles away from the runway at this point with an altitude of 9,210 Ft meaning that they were close to the 6° Glide slope rather than the 3° where they should have been and that fact will soon have consequences now there was actually a standard operating procedure available in the airline for approaching the Glide slope from above that instructed the pilots to use vertical speed with a maximum value of minus 1,500 ft per minute to try and intercept the Glide but that was clearly not going to be enough here so with the speed brakes activated and they open descent mode the aircraft now started descending significantly faster and again without any correct FMA callouts or coordination from the crew at the same time the Karachi Tower controller had also realized that the incoming aircraft was really really high he called up his colleague the approach controller and told him sir it's too high and the approach controller who had already seen this for quite a while responded Yes it's too high I'm observing it and I will give it an orbit a few seconds later he then called up the aircraft and asked Pakistan 8303 report level passing the captain responded out of 75 for 3,000 now the real altitude was actually 7,700 ft meaning that the captain now wanted to make it look less than it actually was clearly showing that he was aware of the issue at this point the aircraft overflew the initial approach Point Sabin at an altitude more than twice as high as published there was no conceivable way for this approach to become stabilized at this point but for some crazy reason the pilots just kept pushing on as they paed 10 nautical mil on Final the controller again prompted them about the distance clearly to show that the altitude that they were at was completely inappropriate for that distance but the captain again just responded no problem sir and continued now so far although the aircraft was insanely High the crew hadn't yet started breaking any limitations but that was soon about to change now some of you might be asking here wasn't this Captain an Airbus A320 standard pilot where was his standards and that's a very fair question in the later investigation the captain's operational flight data monitoring ofdm file was examined and what was found in that was truly horrifying first of all Pakistan International Airlines had only managed to capture about 5% of their flights up to that point which was really really poor but when the captain's file was scrutinized multiple approaches relating to high speed high Path High rate of descent long flares and even gpws warnings were uncovered meaning that this type of approaches that he was now flying was nothing new for him rather the opposite and that I'd give you a bit of an explanation to what was about to happen at time 1431 and 39 seconds someone in the cockpit selected the landing gear down we don't know who did that since once again there was no verbal communication about it and no crosscheck of speeds or anything else but my guess is that this was done by the captain as he was the one that was now pushing this approach forward with the first officer just kind of passively trying to figure out what was going on since the aircraft was still descending in the open descent mode the extra drag provided by the gear required the aircraft to pitch the nose down in order to continue with the sected speed and this led to an increase in vertical speed to about 7,500 ft per minute only seconds after the gear had been selected down the approach controller again tried to get the crew to realize their position by telling them sir or orbit is available if you want meaning that the crew could make a 360° turn to lose some altitude but the captain just told the foo say it's okay and the first officer transmitted negative sir we are comfortable we are going to make it again if the first officer was P of flying he should not have been making the radio calls here and the whole operation at this point was just very disorganized when people are put in a highly stressful situation especially one where things are happening seemingly outside of the person's control and in an accelerated way it's not uncommon that the person becomes passive and just kind of follows the flow this seemed to be really the case with the first officer but it also likely that the captain even though he was the one that driving this whole crazy approach now also started losing his situational awareness since things were happening so fast and so far outside of normal operations anyway now something else happened that will have a huge impact on this story at time 1432 and 18 seconds the aircraft blasted through 4,817 ft with a vertical speed of around 4,200 ft per minute since the selected altitude in the FCU was 3,000 ft the outo pilot now calculated that it was time to start reducing The Descent rate to capture the altitude and it therefore engaged in altitude mode this was not noticed nor called out by the crew but at least the selected speed was now reduced to 230 knots as as this was happening the captain could be heard saying he would be surprised that we have done this likely referring to the controller and this indicates that he was actually quite pleased with himself and where the aircraft now was like if this was something to be proud of but just as if he had heard that remark the approach controller now came back in with a direct order Pakistan 8303 disregard turn left heading 180 because he had now likely had enough with this crazy maneuver where he could see that the aircraft still was at a 6° Glide slope and they wanted to give the crew some extra track miles whether they wanted it or not but do you think that the captain listened no the aircraft just continued and 8 seconds later someone responded sir we are comfortable now and we are out of 3,500 for 3,000 established on the ILS 25 left but how was that possible just a few seconds earlier the aircraft was leveling off at 3,000 ft and they were still way above the Glide slope so how come they were now fully established well what had now happened was that since the aircraft was so high it was now flying between the 3° and the 9° Glide slope in that region the two radio lobes from the Glide slope antenna interfered with each other causing perturbations which the Glide slope receiver in the aircraft interpreted as the Glide slope captured this was very unfortunate because this meant that the level of at 3,000 ft which which would have otherwise saved them now didn't happen and instead the aircraft started pitching down like crazy to follow the 3° Glide slope thousands of feet below them now before you start saying that the aircraft systems should have been able to figure this out you have to remember that we have limitations procedures and guidelines for a reason it's almost impossible to build systems designed to handle gross misconduct from the pilots and in this case they should have never been in this position in the first place as a response to the call from the crew the approach controller now came back with a Stern instruction negative turn left heading 180° which is pretty hard to misinterpret but the crew from flight a303 again just responded sir we are established on ILS 25 left and then completely disregarded this direct instruction 8 seconds later as the aircraft passed 3,90 ft with 5.7 mil to go the speed was 242 knots with 225 selected but with a terrifying pitch of min 12.6 de at this point flap config 1 was selected likely to try and add some drag and slow the aircraft down but since it was still diving trying to align with the Glide slope that was still well below them this was completely fruitless the maximum speed for flap extension was 230 knots and since their actual speed was now 12 knots higher than that an over speed M the warning coupled with the oral crickets and ecam warnings now activated almost simultaneously the pitch of the aircraft dipped below 13° nose down which is defined as an upset attitude and also the limit for what the Airbus autopilot will allow the autopilot therefore disconnected and this was accompanied by a separate autopilot off warning now none of these warnings were called out by any of the pilots and instead the approach just continued manually this must have been a terrifying experience for the first officer because a normal no attitude approach is between minus1 to plus one degree so with the minus 13.7 de that they were now flying this would have looked like nothing else that he had ever seen But now there were several warnings blaring in the cockpit and this was only the beginning but the sequence of These Warnings will actually become super important for explaining one of the most common questions about this accident but I'll get to that later you see when warnings appear in the cockpits there is only so much different sounds and visual inputs that a person can process especially on the stress and the aircraft manufacturers knows this because of that the warnings are prioritized and only the most urgent audio warnings are played at any given time now all of the warnings will be shown on the ecam and any Associated lights will still be illuminated but that rarely helps since a situation requiring multiple warnings is by its very definition a stressful one remember that only 5 seconds after the outo pilet disconnected the first ground Pro imity warnings were triggered by the aircrafts Now Incredible descent rate they included an oral sink rate followed by two pull up and to put this into perspective any pullup warning must be followed by an immediate execution of the terrain Escape maneuver there is absolutely no wiggle room here the pilots must initiate an immediate pull up followed by several other actions designed to safeguard the aircraft's terrain separation but what do you think happened in this case well none of the pilots even called out the gpws warnings and the terrain Escape maneuver was not initiated but the first officer did actually start to input some nose up commands on his side stick that meant that The Descent rate went fromus 7,400 to minus 2,000 ft per minute over the next 10 seconds and also and this is really important the gear was selected up as well as the speed brake retracted now none of these actions were called out by whoever did them but given the fact that it was the first officer who started pitching up that would suggest that it was likely he who also retracted the gear and the speed brakes most likely in an attempt to stop the approach now retracting the gear yourself when you're Pilot Flying is super super strange but then again nothing was really working as it should in this cockpit and things were still not over at time 1432 and 58 seconds Karachi approach cleared Pakistan Airlines flight a303 to land on Runway 25 left so even though the gear was now up and The Descent rate had moderated the approach was still being continued with the speed hovering at around 235 knots and it was now that the next critical thing happened because someone now selected the flaps out to First the config two and then the three position obviously the speed was still higher than the maximum even for config one so when config 2 and three were selected these just activated more Master over speed and red ecam warnings and it's unlikely that the flaps actually started moving much but the final report didn't really specify that but what this all meant was that as the aircraft passed about 1,100 ft it seems like a split had now developed in the cockpit because the first officer who had likely retracted the gear and the speed brakes now suggested that they should do an orbit and actually also started executing that but the captain who had heard the landing clearance and also likely was the one who had C the flaps into the landing configuration responded no no leave it and he also now pressed the priority button on his side stick to take over the controls but of course without calling out that he was actually doing so so what was now happening was a cockpit with two pilots who were not sharing the same mental picture of what was going on nor of what should be done there were still multiple warnings going off together with M caution lights and the speed and altitude was still way too high for safe landing to be attempted basically this was the definition of chaos if ever there was an approach which needed a go-around this was it but instead the captain just pressed ahead the pitch was now manually lowered to minus5° giving a descent rate of around 1,800 ft per minute the speed was 220 knots likely increasing and they were more than two dots high on the Glide slope as they passed the landing gate of 1,000 ft this is where they should have been stabilized on speed altitude and trust with all checklists complete in order to be able to continue the approach but since none of the other standard operating procedures had been followed neither was this one I also think it's super important to point out here that the captain had likely been the one who had initially lowered the landing gear much earlier out on this approach and he had now switched over to become Pilot Flying but it was likely the first officer who had brought the gear up was he was Pilot Flying and none of them had verbalized any of these actions no completed the landing checklist so given the extreme stress and confusion which now dominated this cockpit it is very possible that none of them were actually sure in what configuration the aircraft actually was and that brings us down to the very last available barrier built specifically to try and avoid disaster and that's the aircraft's various Warning Systems as the aircraft descended through 750 ft radio with flaps config 3 selected but the gear not down the ecam landing gear not down warning was triggered together with a red arrow next to the landing gear selector but since there were already several other Cricut warnings already triggered this new warning likely didn't add enough new stimulus to draw the Pilot's attention none of them had been dealing with the other ecam warnings up until this point and in the confusion and stress it's unlikely that they would have noticed this red arrow either but of course there still was one more system a system who definitely should catch their attention and that was the ground proximity warning system you see it included a verbal too low gear warning which could wake a t the pilot if it was activated so surely this should be enough shouldn't it well as I mentioned earlier The Warning Systems will prioritize different warnings depending on their severity and flight phase this was also true for the gpws system who now was faced with a choice as the aircraft continued barreling down toward the runway the system could feel that The Descent rate was way too high and that they were too close to the terrain it could also feel that the landing gear was not extended but given that the speed was still over 190 knots at that point this fact was disregarded since it didn't make any sense that anyone would try to land from that speed so instead the first too low terrain caution started as the aircraft descended to 500 ft and this was done followed by pull up warnings several too low terrain warnings more sink rate pull up and too low terrain but no too low gear These Warnings continue to blare basically all the way down to 24 ft over the runway which is where all warnings were inhibited by the sign the aircraft now roared in over the runway still at a speed of over 200 knots and with the landing gear still retracted this insane speed obviously costed it to overshoot the entire higher touchdown Zone and as the aircraft descended down through 7 ft the captain selected full reverse on both engines now those of you who saw my last episode know that the reverses will not activate until the weight on Wheel switches on the main landing gear struts are compressed and since those were now neatly tucked away in the retracted position this was not going to happen but the fact that the captain selected them while still Airborne was another sign of his complete disregard for procedures at time 1434 and 28 seconds both the aircraft engine cells touched down about 4,500 ft into Runway 25 left this obviously caused terrible vibrations inside of the cabin and Sparks immediately started shooting up as the concrete started grinding into the metal underside of the engines in the cockpit the captain reacted by pushing his stick fully forward and also by applying Max manual braking but since the gear was still retracted this didn't help much at all the engine the cells continued bouncing on the runway surface touching down a total of four times during the next 16 seconds but the aircraft didn't decelerate much throughout this time the first officer was giving 2/3 pitch up commands on his side stick indicating that he was wanting to go around while the captain continued giving full nose down input on his side which meant that the inputs were averaged at a slight nose down input of course the engines were not designed to take up the amount of load that they were now subjected to but the high speed meant that the full weight of the aircraft didn't push down on them either something that would have likely caused them to just Shear off but on the unders side of the engines the auxiliary gear boxes and the transfer gear boxes are located and this was the area where the concrete was now grinding in the right engine engine number two remained in contact with the runway the longest and at time 1434 and 37 seconds with the reverses still selected in full reverse trust this C an engine number two fire warning to suddenly erupt in the cockpit at the same time the number two engine also started spooling back and its generator now failed causing an electric system switch over to engine number one this was clearly catastrophic but at least they were still on the runway and therefore Clos to Emergency Services had they just stayed in this configuration they would have likely overshot the runway but at least they would have been with a decent chance of survival but that was sadly not to be about 14 seconds after the initial touchdown the first officer cried out take offic sir and in the confusion the captain just followed that advice he now stopped applying braking then moved the trust levels from Full reverse into the toga mode like I said before the reverses had never really activated since they didn't feel the ground mode but this action the fact that he chose to go around after having selected reverse trust was still another huge neglect of standard operating procedure leers especially since the fire warning was now also blaring in the cockpit the number one engine now responded and started spooling up and since the speed was still around 160 knots at this point the aircraft almost immediately got Airborne as soon as the captain started pulling back on his side stick the number two engine had like I said before failed during scraping against the ground but now it went into an out to start mode to try to get back online again as the aircraft climbed through 59 ft the first officer selected the flaps in to config 2 which was the go around setting and the climb initially continued Straight Ahead interestingly though since the speed was now below 190 knots the gpws system now called out too low gear and this caused one of the pilots to immediately move the gear selector down and then a couple of seconds later back up again now the gear never started extending during this event but it shows how powerful that warning can be if it comes at the right time the first officer now called up katri approach and declared that they were going around and down on the airport everyone had seen the huge Sparks from the Bell Landing so a full emergency had already been declared engine number two now slowly started recovering again and when it did it started indicating some quite big vibrations the crew started accelerating and retracted all of the flaps but if they would have looked down onto their engine displays they would have seen that the engine oil levels on both engines were Now quickly dropping you see the fact that the housing on the UND side of both of these engines had now been sanded down into two huge holes meant that all of the engine oil was now gushing out through those holes and even though these engines had shown incredible resilience up until this point they were now operating on borrowed time but the pilots were so far completely unaware of this as they climbed through 500 ft the thrust was reduced back to Max continuous thrust for a few seconds before being pushed back up into toga again both engines responded accordingly to this command but they were also showing very high levels of vibration the captain now selected open climb and moved the trust levers into the climb detent but as the aircraft climbed through around 12200 ft first engine number two then engine number one low oil pressure warnings were triggered and those came also together with the associated Master caution warnings and crickets this was just cancelled by the crew and at 2,160 ft outop pilot one was connected as the aircraft continued climbing toward 3,000 ft Karachi approach now called up the aircraft and cleared them to turn left onto heading of 110° and continue climbing to 3,000 ft for downwind for a new approach but the controller didn't tell them about the observed belly landing the crew read this back but as they started turning engine number one had finally had enough and now started failing this was a serious issue because remember the engine number two generator had already failed down on the ground so if engine number one now failed there would be only the Apu and the ram a turbine left to provide electrical power but at this point the almost non-existing CRM and situational awareness between these two pilots again rared its ugly head because at time 1436 and 6 seconds the first officer called out trust lever number two to idle move number two to idle now it's unclear where this suddenly came from but given that it was the number two engine who had had the or original engine fire indication it's possible that this was now what he was dealing with the problem though was of course that what he was now doing was reducing the thrust on the only engine that was still functioning 10 seconds later both the flight data recorder and the cockpit voice recorder stopped working since both the generators had now failed this caused the ram a turbine to be deployed which resumed the CVR but not the data recorder so from this point we don't really know all of the details of what happened happed more than what we could deduce from the cockpit voice recordings anyway the aircraft continued flying down wind and the highest indicated altitude was 3,140 ft since engine number one had now failed and engine number two was in idle the aircraft started descending and also losing speed several cavarly charge alerts was now heard in the cockpit together with two dual inputs and stall warning the aircraft was at 1,00 FT descending on heading 103° and with a ground speed of 222 knots when this happened and the captain now asked the first officer where the runway was the first officer just pointed this out and seconds later a c chord altitude alert could be heard as this was going on the Karachi Tower controller called up his colleague the approach controller and asked him to confirm with the crew whether their gear was down or not now this will unfortunately lead to the very last piece of this horrific puzle which we will very soon see the approach controller who was still in contact with the aircraft could now see that the aircraft was obviously descending and called them up pointing this out the first officer just asked for a clearance to maintain 2,000 ft instead which was obviously immediately approved and several more Cricket warnings could then be heard to which the captain just responded by telling the first officer to just cancel them a short discussion them followed about the status of the number two engine which was confirmed to still be running then the next altitude warning could be heard meaning that the crew was not maintaining the 2 some feet that they had recently been cleared and on the CVR the number two engine could now be heard accelerating the approach controller told the crew that he could see them descending through 1,800 ft and the first officer responded with maintaining um trying to maintain the first officer then pointed out to the captain that the minimum speed for the ram air turbine was 140 knots and to try and remain that and then he tried to reactivate the generators by cycling them off and then on again at that same time the captain asked the first officer if he had selected the number two engine to idle when the number one engine was the one who had failed and the first officer just responded Yes during the following 30 seconds noises sounding similar to engine stalls could be heard and the captain asked the first officer what those sounds were the first officer responded with reduced speed likely referring to the engine speed and the captain followed up by asking the first officer to select flaps one this was briefly followed by another Master caution Chim but the remaining number two engine was obviously also badly damaged at this point lacking engine oil so about one minute after this all noises from this engine also disappeared this means that from time 1438 and 46 seconds this aircraft was now flying without any engines and with only the ram a turbine providing power since the Apu was never started several stall warnings could now be heard in the cockpit po follow by the first officer pleading with the captain to please increase the speed the captain responded how would I increase the speed showing some real frustration here was the aircraft still kept on descending there was a brief discussion about the availability of a nearby military base before the Karachi approach controller came in and said um it appears that you're turning left the first officer responded we will be proceeding direct sir we have lost engines and in the background another dual input could now be heard and it is now that the last nail in the coffin likely came because at time 1439 and 20 seconds the Karachi approach controller asked confirm you're carrying out a belly landing the first officer responded negative sir but this was almost immediately followed by the captain asking if the gear was extended when the first officer confirmed that the gear was not extended a sound similar to the landing gear lever being moved down could almost immediately be heard the aircraft was at this moment still relatively far away from the runway and flying at a relatively low speed so to in this situation extend the gear would add an enormous amount of drag and significantly reduced the available Glide distance judging from the conversation it can be assumed that it was the captain who did this and it's impossible to speculate about what he was thinking but based on how he had been handling the rest of this flight up until this point it is likely that this was just a split second decision based on the controller's question at a decision that would ultimately prove fatal the captain now told the first officer to seat the cabin crew and whilst he was doing that the captain also started calling out mayday mayday mayday into the thin air in the cockpit the first officer proceeded by repeating this over the radio as they descended through 700 ft soon after this the synthetic stall stall warning started and could then be heard continuously until the end of the recording the aircraft was now turning left toward the runway but it must now have become evidence to the pilots that they weren't going to reach it the Karachi controller informed them that all runways were available for landing but in the cockpit the situation was now becoming more and more desperate with the stall and Cricut warnings all going off simultaneously as they descended through 400 ft they were almost aligned with the runway but still desperately far away the captain called out don't take flaps don't take flaps obviously trying to avoid any extra drag but with the gear hanging out that really didn't matter at time 1440 and 18 seconds the aircraft crashed into a densely populated residential area about 1,300 M short of Runway 25 left the aircraft immediately broke apart and an intense fire erupted which also engulfed several buildings around the crash site out of the 99 people inside of the aircraft all but two perished in the crash and one person on the ground was also fatally injured the Emergency Services were immediately dispatched towards the site but they were impeded by the narrow streets and a huge crowd of people who had now turned up to try to help the cause of the accident was obviously found to be the non-adherence to standard operating procedures and disregard for air traffic control instructions by the two pilots it was also found that the air traffic controllers should have advised the crew about the gear up Landing as soon as they saw it since this might have helped the pilots to understand the severity of the issue the fact that the pilots were fasting was another potential contributing factor which has since been forbidden for flying Personnel but the fact here remains that blatant disregard for rules procedures and CRM seems to have been a regular feature of this Captain's way of flying in my view that shines a very harsh light onto the training and checking Department in Pakistan International Airlines say there is just no way that this type of behavior could have gone unnoticed there were several recommendations coming out out of this investigation mainly aimed at the airline itself and the Pakistan Aviation authorities but in the wake of this investigation shockingly it was also found that 40% of the airline pilots working for Pakistan International Airlines were flying on fake licenses this was not the case for the two pilots that were involved in this accident but this astonishing Revelation caused the airline to be blacklisted in both the EU and the United States until they could show significant Improvement on a personal note this accident has left me feeling frankly both angry and shocked we Pilots are entrusted with the lives of our passengers and crew and there is frankly no excuse for this type of incompetence no aircraft systems redundancies or Warnings are enough if the pilots are not using them and if you are an examiner out there these are exactly the type of pilot traits that you and I are entrusted with keeping out of the cockpit
