ANALYSIS
flightglobal.com 13-19 January 2015 | Flight International | 27
the pilot commanded a go-around
but, just 1s later, the aircraft hit the
water. Although there were no fatali-
ties among the 101 passengers and
seven crew, four passengers suf-
fered serious injuries. The aircraft
(PK-LKS) was a complete loss. The
report also shows the crew handled
evacuating the passengers from the
aircraft poorly. The first officer initially
attempted to evacuate passengers
from the jet through the right cockpit
window. When this proved unviable,
he conducted the evacuation
through the right-hand service door.
Meanwhile, a flight attendant on the
left side of the twinjet was unable to
detach a life raft from the aircraft, as
her only training for this exercise con-
sisted of watching a video. The re-
port contains 13 recommendations
for five parties including Lion Air, air-
port operator PT Angkasa Pura I and
the Directorate General of Civil
Aviation. The key recommendations,
however, focus on ensuring the pilots
have effective skills in crew resource
management, hand flying and emer-
gency procedures.■ French investigators have deter-
mined that fatigue cracking in the
undercarriage of an ACT Airlines
Airbus A300B4 freighter caused the
left main landing-gear to collapseafter touchdown in Afghanistan. The
aircraft (TC-ACB) had been arriving
at Bagram air base after a cargo
service from Bahrain on 1 March- Its crew had already been
alerted to a possible problem during
the visual approach to runway 21
because cockpit indications showed
the left main gear was not locked,
and an absence of pressure in the
green hydraulic system. The A300
carried out two passes over the tow-
er for air traffic controllers to ob-
serve the state of the undercarriage.
It appeared normal. About 18s after
touchdown, during braking, the left
gear collapsed, says French investi-
gation authority BEA. The A300 de-
parted the runway and came to rest
2,000m (6,560ft) beyond the
threshold. All five crew evacuated
from the aircraft without injury. BEA
says the articulating arm at the top
of the main gear leg fractured due to
fatigue cracking – adding that this
fracture “probably” occurred as the
gear retracted after take-off. The left
gear subsequently deployed under
gravity when the undercarriage was
extended for landing, leading to a
hydraulic leak. BEA’s inquiry states
that some maintenance tasks on
the gear, during its last overhaul at
Turkish Technic, were “not complet-
ed in the prescribed manner”.
Pitting and corrosion in the landing-
gear assembly went undetected.
Turkish Technic and landing-gear
manufacturer Messier-Bugatti-Dowty
subsequently carried out a review of
procedures, with Messier and Airbus
emphasising the need to apply cor-
rosion protection promptly to parts
awaiting plating treatment. ■David Learmount offers his views on aviation
operational and safety issues via his blog at
flightglobal.com/learmountloss of Air France flight AF447, and the other
the 16 August 2005 loss of a West Caribbean
Airways McDonnell Douglas MD-82. AF447
was lost in the inter-tropical convergence zone
over the South Atlantic Ocean while the pilots
were known to be manoeuvring to avoid storm
clouds. The aircraft’s flight data and cockpit
voice recorders were eventually recovered, re-
vealing that the pilots had been confused by an
icing-related loss of airspeed information for
less than a minute, but quickly lost control of
the aircraft. The MD-82, flying from Panama
City to Martinique, went out of control while
the pilots were discussing how to deal with the
airframe and engine icing the aircraft seemed
to be suffering in the cruise. The crew were
cleared by air traffic control to descend because
they said they could not maintain altitude. The
stall warning is known to have operated during
the descent, which took 3.5min from cruise at
33,000ft to impact with the ground.
Perhaps the primary message from 2014 –
delivered by the fate of flights MH370 and
MH17 – is that security is as important as op-
erational and engineering safety for preserving
life. An ICAO commission is looking at the
risks of flying over or close to conflict zones as
MH17 did, but determining what to do about a
mystery like MH370 is more difficult. If, as
conjectured, the aircraft’s flightpath was delib-
erately planned and executed by a person on
board with some kind of revenge motive, how
can such a person be recognised? ■A flight attendant
was unable to detach
a life raft from the
crashed Lion Air
Boeing 737-800A de Havilland Canada DHC-6-300 Twin Otter operated by Nepal Airlines crashed in FebruaryPA