In George’s Point of View

We know we list “causes” of plane crashes on this site, but we report them as we hear them. Only an official report can say what the actual cause is, and that investigation will take months or years. In the Bhoja Airlines crash, they have promised a report in three to twelve months. (In the Air Blue case it will be two years on the anniversary of the crash, July 28.) We know that even if ten seconds after an accident,
Huffington Post,
Reuters, the
New York Times, and the
BBC all report to the world the cause of a crash is a broken “
flux capacitor,” some people take this as fact. It is not fact; it is some portion of probably semi-accurate data that has ricocheted around a reporter’s brain before being offered to the public in the form of a reporter or observer’s opinion. In some cases, it is a good, expert opinion. Sometimes it is a reasonable guess, but that is all it is. More frequently, it is a shot in the dark, but one that seems to align with whatever truths or half-truths have been revealed to the news-hungry public. We know the actual causes of a crash are a combination of factors, and those factors are only discovered by knowledgeable investigators following the specific trail of proof. Primary sources.
Furthermore, we’re not running a country, airport or even an airline. We’re just running a column here with the most accurate aviation news sources we can find. We have a whole lot of expert pilots to bounce our theories off of, when we have theories to postulate. But this is too early for theories. For this editorial, I’ve got some opinions to air and I can’t blame my opinions on any pilot. In my opinion, Pakistan allowed the Bhoja Airlines crash to happen by not maintaining standards and by botching the Air Blue investigation.
It is not that anyone expects perfection in performance. Planes break. Machines fail. Things happen. The whole reason nations have developed a culture of safety with systems and redundancy, standards and guidelines is to provide a safety net for when things fail. Not if they fail, but when. Because sooner or later, something breaks. Every problem caught in this “net” is one disaster that did not happen.
See, I’m outraged. Pakistan has no “safety net”—or at least, if it does, it has holes in it big enough for Air Blue Flight 202 and Bhoja Airlines B4-213 to fall through. The needless deaths of the passengers are beyond disturbing. The Bhoja Airlines crash was a predictable disaster—predictable based on poor management in the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), corruption and worse in PIA (state-owned Pakistan International Airlines), and the longstanding weakness of Pakistan’s entire aviation industry. It should not have happened. The aviation authorities in Pakistan, or those with the power to revamp the CAA need to wake up and smell the diesel, or this terrible disaster trend will continue. If Pakistan does not initiate aviation safety reform, these disasters will happen again and again.
The people of Pakistan deserve the truth. The truth about what really happened in the Air Blue crash and the truth about what really happened with Bhoja Air. Aviation safety can be served only by the truth. Not by fantasy. Not by confusion. Not by wishful thinking. Not by imaginary reports. Not by speculation from outside observers like me. Not by cover-ups.
The CCA was willing to blame the pilot of Air Blue Flight 202 in that not-so-credible report just to put the investigation to bed. After the second big Islamabad crash in two years, this Bhoja Airlines tragedy isn’t going gently into that good night. Two crashes in two years emphasize that there are questions that need to be answered, problems that need to be addressed, and soon—before more tragedies follow. Two crashes in as many years in Islamabad are a harsh condemnation of the condition of Pakistani aviation, and demonstrate a careless disregard for human life.
I’ve said long before this that Pakistani courts should have demanded big compensation, not just for the sake of the families of the victims, but as a punitive lesson to the carriers and the whole industry to get their act together. Money seems to be the ONLY thing some of these big airlines listen to. People who need to fly should not be putting their lives at risk every time they set foot on a plane. Government should back a rock-solid tangible standard of safety. It is up to governmental agencies to set standards and maintain them, and set consequences for wrongful or negligent action/inaction.
For the Bhoja Air crash, it is far too soon to do anything but ask questions, even though officials seem ready to hand out answers even before investigators have been assigned to an investigation.
It is common knowledge in aviation circles that the CCA’s investigation (and the erroneous investigative “preliminary” et cetera reports) of Air Blue can be held up as an international standard of how NOT to handle an investigation. Is the CCA not responsible as well? It is not only I who think this. The Peshawar High Court’s order of January 19 told the CCA and defense ministry to form a board of experts to examine all aircraft, CAA performance, flying pilots and crew. The court expected all planes and pilots not airworthy to be grounded. Has this happened? We believe if that order had been followed to the letter, the Bhoja Air crash might have been prevented.
Let’s look at it in a practical sense. A crash is a lesson in air safety. It is a terrible, tragic, expensive lesson, but it is the one thing that can provide answers that can increase safety–at the terrible cost of lives lost. Lessons like this are essential to the safety of Pakistanis who travel by air. The crash happened. Learn from it.
There are hundreds of questions but I’ll start with just a few.
Has the CCA cleaned house? Is it manned by impartial professionals? Is the CCA still staffed by former aviation employees with vested interest in the airlines? Since the Air Blue investigation debacle, how has the CCA tangibly demonstrated raising the bar for itself?
Where are the corrective measures that were taken country-wide after the crash of Air Blue Flight 202? Since the January 19th order, is there a record of safety checks in all the aforementioned areas of weakness across the board (commercial, non-commercial aviation and private)? Regulated plane inspections? Manditory pilot training, checks, quality standards and procedures for improvement? Were tangible changes made to correct any problems that were uncovered? After the 12 year interim in operations, was Bhoja Air forced to prove they would be observing international safety standards before they were allowed to extract payment from passengers and put them on possibly unsafe planes with potentially inept pilots to fly to a potentially inadequate airport in avoidable bad weather to their death?
The plane had a history. At 28 years old, it just may have been older than its pilot.Construction number 23167. Registered in Great Britain as G-BKYI. First flight on December 13, 1984. Delivered to British Airways, January 7, 1985. Registered in South Africa as ZS-OLB and operated by Comair Limited, June 6, 1999. Aircraft stored at Johannesburg Airport (JNB), South Africa, January 2011. Registered in Pakistan as AP-BKC for Bhoja Air, January 2012. Many pilots are “nervous” about flying a twenty-eight year old Boeing 737-200; more are nervous about flying a plane that has been stored–What was the condition of AP-BKC? Would it have been allowed to fly in the US and the EU?
Witnesses say (and we all know how reliable that can be) that the plane’s wing had caught fire after a lightning strike; then rapidly descended to the ground, bounced off the ground and became airborne with its wing on fire and struck the ground again. Another witness said the wing caught on fire after the plane bounced off the ground.
Which is true? Are there security cameras? Airport footage? When did the fire start?
Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said the aircraft was flying too low. Ten kilometers before touchdown, they should have been at 1700 feet; they were at 200 feet. Why was the plane at 200 feet? At what point did the pilots lose control of the plane? Who was flying this plane? Had control already been lost? How much experience did the pilot and copilot have in the cockpit? What was the extent of the training, and was there CMT (Cockpit management training)? CMT was certainly deficit in the Air Blue crash. How do we know if cockpit management training had been improved?
If wind shear or microbursts are a factor, as some suggest, is the airport equipped with LIDAR*, Doppler Radar,** LLWAS,*** ITWAS**** or WSP*****? Was the plane outfitted or retrofitted with Doppler? If so, what went wrong? If not, why is such equipment not mandated for commercial craft?
There is a protocol to be observed in air crashes. It is a protocol that is accepted by all of the industrialized nations because through experience, investigators have learned how best the truth can be learned. It is only by learning the true conditions of the crash that further crashes can be prevented. If the site of the crash is not cordoned off, the entire investigation is compromised before it has ever begun. IS PAKISTAN FOLLOWING THIS INVESTIGATIVE PROTOCOL?
Let us hope that the investigation will not be clouded by political ploys, backroom deals, and all the other ills governments can be prone to.
It may be that someone in the Pakistani government is waking up, since the government mandated Sunday that all airplanes operated by private airlines must undergo a new inspection. The Defense minister has said that any aircraft that fail will be grounded. Let us hope they reverse that order slightly and ground ALL PLANES immediately. Only the planes that pass a rigorous examination should be allowed to fly. Let us hope that they are only flown by pilots who are qualified to be in the cockpit.
An impartial investigation will bring Pakistan closer to International standards, serve justice, set a footing in the infrastructure of aviation safety, and take a first step toward providing the families of the crash victims some degree of closure.
*LIDAR- light detecting and Ranging equipment which has been used to detect wind shear and microbursts around airports since 2007
**Doppler Radar has been used to detect microburst danger since 2002
*** LLWAS -low level wind shear alert systems which does not detect microburst activity
**** ITWS-advanced systems in the field and being developed, which provides alerts for microbursts, wind shear, and storm activity. ITWAS displays wind information oriented to the threshold or departure end of the runway.
*****WSP provides Air Traffic with detection and alerting of hazardous weather such as wind shear, microbursts, and significant thunderstorm activity. The WSP displays terminal area 6 level weather, storm cell locations and movement
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