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Aviation History
1990
1990 - 0546.PDF
OPERATIONS: AIR TRANSPORT No technical warnings issued on Bangalore A320 crash BY DAVID LEARMOUNT AND GILBERT SEDBON Investigators into the Ban galore Airbus A320 crash have run the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and the flight data re corder (FDR), but have issued no precautionary technical warnings to manufacturer Airbus Industrie, to other national avi ation authorities or to A320 operators. The Indian Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) grounded Indian Airlines' A320 fleet indefi nitely from 19 February, five days after the crash in which 90 people died. In addition to the accident investigation, the CAA has appointed a high-level committee "to review the opera tional preparedness and capabil ity" of the carrier to operate the Airbus aircraft. Airbus Industrie says that it is concerned that India, which has national responsibility for the in vestigation, has been withhold ing accident data from the manufacturer. Late last week the only Airbus post-accident action, following limited information from company investigators in Bangalore, had been the issuing of a bulletin to A320 operators reminding pilots not to let their speed drop too low on approach. Witnesses at Bangalore reported a "steep" approach, flown visu ally because the airport has no instrument landing system. The weather was said to be good at 13.00 local time when the first impact occurred, 500m from the runway (not 1.5km as was ini tially reported from India). The CVR has been played by the Indian CAA in Delhi, but its contents are not to be revealed until the FDR data is analysed. The Indian CAA has decided that FDR analysis should not be done by any nation with a commercial interest in the results, so the Canadian Aviation Safety Board (CASB) in Ottawa has been given the task. The intention was to have made the initial data run by 21 February. Two Canadian air- Bangalore—apparent similarity with French crash causes concern lines operate A320s, and the CASB worked closely with India in 1985 when the Air India Boeing 747 suffered sabotage. Soon after the Bangalore ac cident, the French flight tech nicians' union, which represents all engineers and about 5% of airline pilots, called for the A320s to be grounded. The union claims: "There have been numerous technical incidents involving the A3 20". The National Union of Airline Pilots and Flight Engineers' president, Pierre Gille (a 737 captain), believes the Bangalore accident was probably not caused by a technical fault. He says, however: "If the Mulhouse- Habsheim and Bangalore crashes are both attributed to pilot error, this undoubtedly derives from poor understanding between the machine and the pilot, and here the aircraft builders have to do something". In response to the technicians' A320 grounding proposal, Gille says: "We think it is a wonderful aircraft, but we all think there are manifestly quite a few technical deviations that need to be corrected". Gille is worried by the appar ent similarity between two A320 fatal accidents in a short period although only 80 of the type are flying. He criticises the "marriage between man and machine", pointing out that the pilot has to work through a computer. Gille says: "There is nothing wrong with that, except when the air craft's behaviour creates a sur prise to the crew". The technical report on the June 1988 Mulhouse-Habsheim accident was published last December. The crash of the Air France aircraft occurred as it carried out a low and slow flypast at an air show: three of the 130 passengers died when the aircraft hit trees at the airfield boundary. The report technically exon erated the aircraft and its en gines, but criticised the crew for inadequate pre-flight briefing and for making mistakes in carrying out an inadvisable exericse. The briefing had been for a 100ft (30m) AGL flypast, but the FDR recorded 32ft (10m) AGL with the engines idled. At the Mulhouse inquiry the crew complained that there had been a delayed engine response when throttles were advanced from idle to full power towards the end of the flypast. The report says that the FDR recorded less than 0.5s between throttle ad vance and engine response, and that throttle advance was started 5s before impact with trees. Normal idle to full power elapsed time is 8s. The captain was stripped of his licence. Despite the technical inquiry's unequivocal confidence, the report created controversy, with French aircrew union allegations of a "cover-up". A judicial review of the case was set up in Decem ber; the judge promised to "start again" with the evidence since "new elements" had come to light. • ANZ gets 767 ETOPS clearance Air New Zealand has been xVgiven the go-ahead to op erate Boeing 767s powered by General Electric CF6-80A en gines on a twice-weekly service between Honolulu and Los Angeles. The approval, in the form of 180min extended twin opera tions (ETOPS) has come from the Civil Aviation division of the New Zealand Ministry of Trans port and applies to both the GE CF6-80A and CF6-80C2. ETOPS approval is defined as the number of minutes flying time an aircraft is required to be able to perform should one engine become inoperative. The CF6-80A 180 ETOPS on the 767 enables airlines to sched ule twin-engined aircraft on routes that previously required three- or four-engined aircraft. The CF6-80A has logged four million flight-hours and has achieved a dispatch reliability rate of 99.94%. D BMA 737 crash report delay Considerable delay in publication is now certain for the UK Air Accident In vestigation Branch (AAIB) report on the Boeing 737-400 crash at Kegworth (January 1989). Although it had been expected that the report would be issued in March, the Department of Transport (DTp) predicts "late summer". The draft report was expected to have been circulated to af fected parties in December last year, British Midland Airways and Boeing say that they have not yet seen it. The DTp cannot say what is causing the delay. Industry opin ion, however, based on experi ence with recent investigations, is that criticised parties who are aware of the impending criticism are making it clear they will seek a review of the report. The AAIB may be trying to answer the complaints, thus pre-empting the need for a review. D 10 FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 28 Februarv-6 March 1990
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