ISLAMABAD, May 10: The crash of a Pakistan International Airlines aircraft in Multan last year was avoidable, but the crew failed to follow standard procedures, says a report prepared by the manufacturers, Fokker.
The Fokker F-27, on a flight from Multan to Lahore, crashed on July 10, killing all the 45 passengers and the crew.
Specialists from the Fokker Services had participated in the probe carried out by the Civil Aviation Authority, whose findings are yet to be made public.
The Fokker report says a sequence of events leading to the crash and the loss of lives has been developed on the basis of available investigation results and analysed data.
It claims that no evidence had been found indicating that the aircraft or its systems had any bearing on the accident.
Discussing the chain of events leading to the crash, the report says the right-hand engine had failed early during take-off, but the aircraft should have been able to obtain a climb gradient of 3.3% had the landing gear been raised at an altitude of 35 feet and proper techniques been applied. With the landing gear down, the climb gradient is reduced to 1.7%, it says.
Moreover, the report says during the lift-off, the flight crew did not adequately correct the heading and roll deviations, resulting in additional loss of climb performance.
Referring to the data retrieved from the flight data recorder, it says the crew was able to recover the heading and roll deviations occasionally, which meant the aircraft was “controllable”.
The report, however, stays short of saying what caused the engine failure. It rather says the issue of engine failure was studied by Roll Royce, the manufacturers of the Dart engines fitted to the turbo-prop aircraft, and that it had got nothing to do with the engine design.
It is learnt that the CAA’s official probe, which has not been made public yet, also concluded that a combination of on-ground and in-air errors caused the crash.
