French experts complete their crash probe

Airbus team examines crash site and runway again before their return to France today


​ Our Correspondent June 01, 2020
A worker gestures as the truck is loaded with the wreckage of the crashed Pakistan International Airlines' PK8303 plane, in Karachi, Pakistan May 28, 2020. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

KARACHI: A team of French experts, who are in the country to ascertain the reasons behind the PIA plane crash near the Karachi airport on May 22, have completed their investigation and will return to France on Monday (today).

On Sunday, the 11-member team of Airbus, the manufacturer of the aircraft, again surveyed the crash site in an aircraft, the runway at the airport and the approach tower.

They will return to France with the flight data and cockpit voice recorders with them.

A team of Pakistan’s Aircraft Accident and Investigation Board’s (AAIB) will also accompany them.

Another team of experts in France will investigate the crash after the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder are decoded.

Work on the devices will begin on June 2 at an aviation laboratory in Le Bourget, France.

The decoding of the data recorder will allow the investigators to hear the conversation between the captain and the first officer during the flight and their communication with air traffic controllers.

After the black box is decoded, they will be able to determine as to how the two captains used the plane’s equipment from take-off till the crash and assess how well the cockpit crew adhered to Airbus’ agreed procedures for operating the aircraft.

They experts will also use the pictures they took of the crash site and marks on the runway using high-resolution and drone cameras in the investigation process.

During their stay in Karachi, the French team inspected the aircraft’s engines, landing gear, wings and flight control system avionics. They also inspected the houses destroyed in the crash.

They inspected the friction marks on the runway because of the belly landing, reviewed CCTV footage of the landing and surveyed the runway and apron from different angles from the control tower and approach tower.

The French experts had also sought the complete record of the crashed aircraft from the PIA, to determine how many times had the A320 landed in a year, what defects were worked on, how many cycles did the engine complete during the flight last year, how many times did the plane go through the check process, how many times the landing gear was serviced, which engineers worked in the main technical services of the aircraft and what resources and parts were used to fix the technical issues.

They will also take samples collected from the wreckage to France.

On Sunday, heavy machinery reached the crash site to remove an engine and wing still buried under rubble. The wing was extracted and transported to the airport.

However, the engine will be extracted and transported under the supervision of Pakistan Air Force (PAF) construction experts on Monday.

 

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