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PIA Airbus 320 Crashes near Karachi
- jll29 6y agoI wrote a thesis on place name ambiguity [1], so not surprised. There are tons of people flying to the wrong place with the same name all the time - they only told me when I mentioned my thesis topic. There's even a book about a guy who visited half of the places called 'Aberdeen' on earth, which took 10 years. [1] J. Leidner (2007) Toponym resolution in Text
- chrisseaton 6y agoYou think the plane flew to the wrong place?
- detaro 6y agoprobably wanted to comment on https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23270232 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23270232 instead
- chrisseaton 6y agoHow can you accidentally comment on the wrong article?
- geocrasher 6y agoWell to be fair, commenting on the wrong article with a comment about going to the wrong place kind of proves the point.
- stevehawk 6y agoopen several articles up in multiple tabs.. accidentally click the wrong tab when they go back to comment?
- interestica 6y agoThis is interesting. It makes me think of the way we cluster thematically-related placenames in cities. It's well intentioned, but I think people can mentally store place names based on other categorical groupings (eg, we might remember a street had something to do with the sun- only to find all the area streets have some relation). I'd love to read more on your thesis!
- krona 6y agoRan out of fuel after 3 aborted landings, pilots perhaps distracted by an engine failure?
- ashtonkem 6y ago3 aborted landings is a lot. Isn’t it considered good policy to redirect after a few aborted landings? (Not a Pilot).
- pirocks 6y agoI don't think there where three aborted landings. My understanding is there was only one go around. This is backed up by flightradar24's altitude graph: https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1263800350060003328/photo/1 https://twitter.com/flightradar24/status/1263800350060003328... Generally there are alternate airports chosen for if a plane can't land at its desired destination + fuel for multiple aborted landings
- redis_mlc 6y ago> Isn’t it considered good policy to redirect after a few aborted landings? If weather is below minimums. But an airliner doing more than 1 go-around in good weather is something that I've never heard of - it means the pilots don't know how to control airspeed.
- cjbprime 6y agoSeems they couldn't get their nose gear down.
- redis_mlc 6y agoIn US training, generally it's recommended to configure the airplane for landing, and if the nosewheel collapses, just ride it down. Because airplanes land on their main (back wheels) first, the nosewheel is not considered very important, and the incident is considered to be very survivable. However, in foreign countries, there can be a greater fear of career repercussions for damaging equipment or delaying flights. This was also seen in the SFO Asiana accident that a foreign crew just fell apart in an atypical scenario: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214 Once in a while in the US you hear of a pilot trying to land firmly to snap the nosewheel into position, but it would be unusual for them to take off and try it again, esp. with passengers. Some factors are: the pilot doesn't trust the gear indicators for some reason, or they decide burning off fuel before landing is safer, or the airport doesn't have adequate firefighting equipment or a nearby hospital. Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot, small airplane maintenance test pilot.
- icefo 6y agoI wonder if it was a fuel issue. The "we lost two engines" near the destination airport makes me think of that.
- khuey 6y agoBased on pictures circulating on Twitter, it looks like the plane's engines may have scraped on the runway (presumably in a landing attempt without landing gear down) before taking off again.
- AdrianB1 6y agoVery unlikely, if the landing gear has problems to the extent that you scrape the runway with the engines, then taking off is almost impossible and useless, you just stop to a halt. If your landing gear does not extend and lock properly, you abort the landing way before touching it.
- pbhjpbhj 6y agokhuey's interpretation was my assumption too having seen the Twitter pictures of the damaged nacelles, and lack of landing gear, during the first go-around. The RAT being deployed suggested to me some sort of hydraulics fault too; or maybe engines had failed at that point? So, what would you say caused that damage? https://mobile.twitter.com/PlaneSpottersPK/status/1263810587152330752 https://mobile.twitter.com/PlaneSpottersPK/status/1263810587...
- jka 6y agoTo further elaborate (since it's the first time I'd heard about this system), the RAT ('Ram air turbine') as used on the A320 is a mechanism for generating power for flight-critical systems during emergencies. A good default stance to take in situations like this (especially so soon after a tragedy) is that the pilot and crew were likely fully capable and well-aware of what they were doing. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_air_turbine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ram_air_turbine
- 6y ago
- baybal2 6y ago:( I think I will be the first of many to say this: When they will finally get PIA privatised for good?
- Pfhreak 6y agoCan you provide more context? Why would this help?
- AdrianB1 6y agoFor example in the national flag carrier I know (I used to work 5 years in that sector and I am still a licensed pilot) many people were hired and appointed in positions based on political influence, not on competence. It happens less in private companies.
- severino 6y agoBut do we have evidence that privately owned airlines have a smaller record of accidents and incidents than those not?
- AdrianB1 6y agoHard to compare, because not many countries have at the same time government owned airliners and private. In the case I know, the record is flawless for private companies (zero accidents) and 2 crashes for the flag carrier (a relative was part of the crew in one crash). I would not make a general statement based on a single country, but looking for airplane crashes in the past 20 years most involved government owned companies.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- sremani 6y agoWhen Air India gets privatized for good ;) Jokes aside, airlines around the world are pretty much nationalized one way or the other -- and we have to re-evaluate things on the other side of pandemic 2 years from now.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nana- 6y agoWhy is this on hacker news ?
- CivBase 6y ago"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- detaro 6y ago"Off-Topic: [..] If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic." (and it appears previous submissions of this indeed did get flagged. Wheareas an after-the-fact analysis of the causes IMHO would be on-topic) (But also: "Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.")
- nana- 6y agoI speak out if I want to, in this case I feel in discomfort with this news and my usage of HN which is only tech related.
- nana- 6y agoIs there an option to hide tech unrelated news ?
- robin_reala 6y agoNo.
- eganist 6y agoNot generally, but if there's a thread you just don't want to see, there's a "hide" link among the links underneath the thread title. Just search for hide on the page and it'll be the first result.
- SparkyMcUnicorn 6y agoThe mention of Pakistan's "chequered aviation safety record" got me wondering how it compares to other airlines. I came across this site [0], and found the data to be really interesting. Pakistan International Airlines ranks decently well, while Southwest Airlines ranks among the worst. [0] https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-rating-tool/ https://www.airlineratings.com/safety-rating-tool/
- khuey 6y agoGiven that Southwest Airlines has killed one passenger in its entire history I'm going to say that a methodology that ranks them among the worst in safety is likely suspect.
- ashtonkem 6y agoI was going to say, that doesn’t pass the sniff test. Excluding this current incident, PIA has killed 102 passengers and crew since 2000. The most expansive view of Southwest’s record would include 4 fatalities: one passenger, two people on the ground, and another passenger who died of a medical issue while being restrained. One of those ground deaths was because someone walked onto the runway and was hit by a landing 737, so I’m not inclined to blame Southwest for that.
- p_l 6y agoIncidents and other things that normal passengers don't hear about a large role in such statistics.
- ashtonkem 6y agoWhile I agree, one would expect incidents to scale roughly with the rate of fatalities. With PIA having 2 orders of magnitude more fatalities in this century, it would take some pretty extraordinary non-fatality incident statistics to declare that PIA is much safer than Southwest. Also worth considering is fatalities per flight hour. While I couldn’t find accurate flight hours for all the airlines, Southwest has a much larger fleet (752 vs. 31). Combined with a much lower fatality count (arguably 2 vs. 102), this implies that Southwest is much, much safer than PIA. It’s possible that non-fatal incidents can cover that gap, but at a high level analysis this seems implausible.
- rurban 6y agoHow big are the chances that the most prominent passenger is the sole survivor of a plane crash (yet, but I don't expect many more)? The Bank of Panjab president, whow! Lucky guy.
- cecja 6y agoThere are 40 survivors reported in local media.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ashtonkem 6y agoDecent, given that the current fatality count is 11 out of 91 passengers and an unspecified number of crew. Certainly the fatality count will rise, but with modern planes survival tends to be more about escaping the post crash fire. If >50% of the passengers and crew live, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
- tyingq 6y agoI'd expect a lower survival rate as it appears to have crashed into buildings, and not into a field or similar.
- ashtonkem 6y agoCrashing in a city means that you crash into buildings that are both flammable and hinder escape, as you’ve said. But it also means that you’re crashing near a means of rescue, rather than having to wait precious minutes for rescue services to locate you. Only time will tell which of these factors was more important. Good news is that crashes on landing tend to involve a lot less fuel, which should improve survival chances significantly.
- sb8244 6y agoI read this earlier today and was hopeful that fatality count would be low. Just shocked to see a final count of 2 survivors total.
- Razarizvi 6y agoThis incident occurred in my neighborhood. The plane crashed in a residential area and the overall death toll is still unknown. There are a few confirmed survivors so far: President of Bank of Punjab and a 3-year-old kid.
- warranty 6y agoCan you tell how many building were levelled due to the crash? 20? 30?
- cecja 6y agoAccording to flightradar it was the planes first flight after March 22 due covid. On the first landing attempt they had problems with the landing gear and failed a belly landing. After the go around they lost power to both engines and dropped 500m-1km in front of the landing strip. Crashsite: https://imgur.com/a/YfLiM4n https://imgur.com/a/YfLiM4n Pictures of a plane spotter after the failed belly landing look at the engines and the deployed rat but no landing gear: https://twitter.com/PlaneSpottersPK/status/1263810587152330752 https://twitter.com/PlaneSpottersPK/status/12638105871523307... Last conversation with ATC: https://imgur.com/a/QGiqm4Y https://imgur.com/a/QGiqm4Y
- m23khan 6y agoHope there are more survivors both from aircraft as well as on the ground -- Karachi, Pakistan is a densely populated City.
- tpmx 6y agoLots more details here, as usual: http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0 http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0
- interestica 6y agoThe first thing I thought of here were some of the concerns around return-to-flight after planes have been sitting around due to the pandemic.
- cft 6y agoI am wondering why editing the original title was allowed in this case?
- mdani 6y agoA transmission of the pilot’s final exchange with air traffic control, posted on the website LiveATC.net, indicated he had failed to land and was circling around to make another attempt, reported AP. “We are proceeding direct, sir — we have lost engine,” a pilot can be heard saying. “Confirm your attempt on belly,” the air traffic controller said, offering a runway. “Sir - mayday, mayday, mayday, mayday Pakistan 8303,” the pilot said before the transmission ended. source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1558944/at-least-80-killed-as-plane-with-99-onboard-crashes-into-residential-area-near-karachi-airport https://www.dawn.com/news/1558944/at-least-80-killed-as-plan...