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| July 12, 2006 | Wednesday | Jumadi-ul-Sani 15, 1427 |
Fokker had history of technical problems
ISLAMABAD, July 11: Pakistan International Airline’s (PIA) turbo prop Fokker F-27 aircraft which crashed in Multan on Monday had a history of technical problems, sources told Dawn on Tuesday.
The aircraft had developed an electrical fault on June 27 at the Chitral airport. The shutdown circuit, a source said, was energised and engines shut down when started. The incident had caused a delay in the operation of the flight on that occasion and the flight captain had filed a detailed report.
The source said that after detection of such faults two to three weeks were extremely vital for an aircraft with every likelihood of recurrence of the same electrical problem leading to a crash.
On another occasion about two months ago, one of the engines of the aircraft had failed to operate.
Preliminary evidence, he said, showed that prior to the crash one of the engines had shut down and the aircraft was unable to sustain height.
According to one aviation expert, if one of the engines of the aircraft had failed then the question arises why was the plane not able to sustain flight when it had the designed ability to fly with one engine.
Was it the additional weight of unauthorised luggage on board which caused the accident? It is a common practice that passengers boarding flights from Multan have crates of mangoes with them, each of which weighs at least 10 kg. This extra weight amounting to hundreds of kg could well have been one of the reasons for the pilot’s failure to control the aircraft.
A source told this reporter that one of the French trainers on a recently-acquired ATR aircraft had snubbed the airline on Tuesday morning and had ordered offloading of excess luggage, saying “You haven’t learnt a lesson from yesterday’s crash, have you?”.
Moreover, the source added, the performance factor of the aircraft had not been reviewed for several years now, although it was a well-known fact that it kept deteriorating with the passage of time. “It also needs to be looked into whether the temperature and atmospheric conditions were appropriate for the weight the Fokker was carrying at the time of the flight.”
Or was the pilot not trained enough to handle such emergencies, asked an aviation expert.
Recently, he said, PIA’s training standard for pilots had been under doubt.
A pilot, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: “What quality of training could be expected when the cost on training is compromised.”
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