How Ignoring Deadlines Turned Deadly | The Crash Of Azza Transport Flight 2241

this is the story of aza airways flight 2241 on the 21st of october 2009 an assa airways boeing 707 was on the ground at sharjah international airport this 707 was owned by aza airways but it was operated by sudan airways and today it was to fly to khartoum international airport in sudan this was a cargo plane and today it would be flying everything from air conditioning units car parts computers and tools at 1108 am utc the plane pushed back from the cargo area bound for runway 3-0 with a crew of six as the plane taxied the controller gave the crew everything that they needed for the takeoff codes altitudes frequencies all of it flight 2241 was asked to line up and wait on runway 3-0 there was a slight 10-knot wind blowing in from 3-2-0 degrees as they lined up on runway 3-0 with that the plane started down runway 3-0 and it lifted off shortly after liftoff the crew lost engine number four they informed the controller that they had lost engine number four the controller pushed the crash alarm and let the crew know that both runways were available for an emergency landing but no reply came from the crew the controller watched on as the plane entered a right bank at first it was a small bank but the controller watched on as the bank grew and grew the large 707 started to lose altitude the plane was soon in a 90 degree right bank as the controller looked on in horror after almost a minute of flight the 707 impacted the ground it hit the ground 0.8 nautical miles from the airport none of the six people on board made it no one on the ground was injured either but the investigation started not at the crash site but on runway 3-0 the runway from which the plane had departed they found the cowlings of engine number four battered and bent on the runway the cowling is the outside covering of the engine a shell if you will from the looks of it the cowling came off as the plane took off they decided to investigate further they looked at the history of the cowlings in question but first let's talk about the cowlings themselves the cowlings cover the engine and so they are cylindrical the cowling is made up of two halves the bottom part is held together with six latches at the top it's fixed to the wing pylon with hinges delving into the maintenance history they found that the number four engine cowlings had been written up during a maintenance check in 2009. they found that the engine cowlings were hard to open and to close and upon further inspection they found that the cowlings were bent but aspar documents repairs had been carried out another check a few months later called for the inspection of the cowlings the hooks the fasteners the hinges all of the supporting items of the cowlings all of it the documents showed that these inspections and the repairs had taken place but the repairs on the cowlings looked old they looked so old that they probably predated both maintenance checks that's not all they found bent alignment pins and double holes in the latches that held both of the cowling halves together this is indicative of force being applied to mate the two halves together they should ideally just latch in place they found more proof that the two cowling halves were not lined up properly when it was secured in place they found that a guide pin in one of the latches never went into the hole that it needed to go into instead the protruding pin created another hole right next to the hole that it was supposed to go into other parts found on the runway also showed poor quality repairs the welding wasn't done properly wrong materials were used for repairs a hinge found on the runway had fatigue markings the hinge didn't cause the cowlings to come apart but they illustrated the lack of oversight and maintenance that the plane had been through so on that day as the plane took off the force exerted by the air on the improperly sealed cowlings forced the left hand cowling apart from its right hand counterpart the unfastened cowling experienced a lot of drag and this caused more latches and hinges to fail after a point it was like a sail catching the wind this caused the right hand cowling to bend and buckle then the right hand cowling failed since the right and left halves were still attached by a few latches the right hand cowling took the left hand cowling with it now losing your cowlings isn't catastrophic even without the cowlings the plane is more than flyable but in this case as the cows fell away they struck a line in the engine severing it the line or pipe that the cal severed was the pt7 flex line the epr or engine pressure ratio is the pressure of air at the front of the engine to the pressure of the air coming out of the engine inlet and outlet pressures are sent to a box via lines or pipes inside this box the two pressures create an electric signal which is then interpreted as an epr reading by a gauge when the line got severed the line that was supposed to send the outlet pressure or the pressure the exhaust was sending the ambient pressure this caused the epr for engine number four to drop to about 1.05 this explained why the crew thought that they had lost engine number four because that's what their instrument was telling them from here on out things get a bit hazy as neither the cockpit voice recorder nor the flight data recorder survived so the investigators had to go off of simulation data to piece together what happened next from the wreckage they noted that the number four engine was spinning at a high rate of speed at impact they also noted that the thrust reverser was not in a deployed state at impact had the failed cowlings forced the thrust reverser out it would have made controlling the plane very difficult but that wasn't the case this time they also modeled the drag caused by the engine it was negligible the plane should have had more than enough power to climb out the investigators believe that the right bank that the plane went into was intentional it was probably the pilots trying to bring the plane back in for an emergency landing when you're banking you need more lift to keep your plane in the air also the pilot needs to pitch up to counter the drag being experienced by the plane all of this meant that the pilot needed to add more power while the turn was being made but apparently that's not what the pilot did quote at the beginning of the aircraft departure from the climb path and when the right turn and bank were initiated it appears that the engine thrust was not added simultaneously to compensate for the increased drag the result was that the aircraft started to lose altitude during its turn towards the airport end quote as the plane started dropping an eyewitness who was a pilot themselves heard the engine spool up it appears that the pilots applied the power that they so desperately needed too late this is backed up by the cockpit instruments recovered from the plane the number three engine showed an epr of about 2.17 the eyewitness also saw the plane pitch up right before it hit the ground had this been done earlier it probably would have saved the plane but pitching up now in this low speed state sent them into a stall crews are usually caught off guard by upsets and this case is no different in addition to that they were misled by the engine number four's epr reading this is the perfect situation for a crew to lose their situational awareness their fixation on the number four engine probably contributed to this in addition to that they were in a regime of flight where there was very little margin for error their training may have also been lacking as their simulator and flight training did not give them enough experience on recovering from a 45 degree sharp bank maintenance was also seen as something that could have been improved the maintenance deficiencies with the cowlings were never properly reported and corrective action was not taken in fact deeper inspections should have been done when they looked at the operator itself they found even more troubling things after an audit the investigator said and i quote no quality organization was seen end quote the operator did not have a lot of documents about the flight crew like training records which meant that they could not evaluate the performance of their pilots it was so bad that the operator could not have operated this plane in a safe manner making matters worse the oversight of the sudan civil aviation authority or the scaa was lacking as well their audits never found these maintenance issues just to drive home the point about the state of this plane let's take the example of the flight data recorder yeah the recorder failed but not because of impact forces but because it was very old as per icao standards this recorder should have been replaced on the 1st of january 1995. this recorder was so old that it used a roll of metal to record data and it recorded like five parameters this is why maintenance is so important things can go wrong in the wildest of ways if you neglect to maintain your plane just know it's not a question of if but a question of when thank you for watching this episode of mini air crash investigation if you like the videos that i make do consider liking and subscribing it will really help the channel grow i'll catch you guys next time stay safe

Channel: Mini Air Crash Investigation

Views: 106,453

Keywords: mini Aircrash investigations, air crash confidential, air crash investigation, Azza Transport Flight 2241, azza transport, sharjah crash, sharjah airport crash, sharjah airport, why planes crash, boeing, boeing 707, maintaining a mess, boeing 707 crash, sudan airways flight 2241, sudan airways crash, stall, takeoff stall, 707 stall, emergency landing, aviation safety, avgeek, aviation documentary, the flight channel, plane safety documentary, forgotten plane crash

Id: iLR4LK6FQMc

Length: 9min 53sec (593 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 29 2021