'Cockpit error caused crash'

Making a 180-turn well below the altitude required caused the Cessna-152 in Rajshahi to fall out of the sky on Wednesday, crash investigators and experts said yesterday.

As per the instructor's directive, the pilot made the turn before the plane even reached 200 feet altitude when the minimum altitude required for the manoeuvre was 700 feet, they claimed.   

It, however, could not be known why such a turn was made at such a low flight level.

The crash also exposed how poor the fire unit's response time to the emergency was.

An engineer of Bangladesh Flying Academy reportedly drove the ambulance, which accompanies the fire engine, to the scene of the crash as there was no driver for the vehicle.

The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) standard response time for fire engines for a crash site at the ends of a runway is two minutes tops. It is three minutes for other movement areas of an airport, aviation experts said.

But it reportedly took Shah Makhdum Airport's fire unit to reach the scene 20 minutes after the crash, said witnesses and locals who scaled the airport's wall, ran 200 yards, and dragged instructor Lt Col (retd) Sayeed Kamal out of the burning plane. They could not rescue trainee pilot Tamanna Rahman Rhidi as the fire engulfed the plane.

Tamanna died on the spot while Lt Col (retd) Sayeed is now in Singapore for treatment. He had 70 percent of his body burnt.

Tamanna was buried at a family graveyard in Kanaya of Joydevpur in Gazipur yesterday evening.

Shah Makhdum Airport resumed operations around noon yesterday after the wreckage of the Cessna was removed.

Squadron Leader (retd) Capt HM Akhter Khan, chief of the four-member investigation team, said within minutes of take-off, the Cessna tried to make a U-turn before it reached 200 feet altitude and the turn was unusual, beyond any flying procedures, and not approved.

He said such an aircraft must have 700 feet altitude to make such a turn and the instructor was practicing “power failure landing [PFL]”.

Quoting recorded conversation with the air traffic control, he said the instructor told the controller that he would practice a PFL after the take-off.

“We are trying to figure out why the plane tried to take the turn from that low level,” he told The Daily Star.

There was no cockpit voice recorder as the aircraft did not require to have one by the law, said Akhter Khan.

The team has to submit its report to CAAB within three days.

Aviation insiders said instructor Lt Col (retd) Sayeed Kamal had previous records of making mistakes. Some even said he had some discipline issues and was emotionally unsettled and that was why he had not been made the chief instructor.

Bangladesh Flying Academy President Capt Mafidul Islam Khan, however, said almost all instructors make small mistakes during their long career and Lt Col (retd) Sayeed Kamal had made no major mistakes.

Aviation insiders alleged that although Civil Aviation Authority of Bangladesh (CAAB) was supposed to strictly monitor the licence renewal of pilots and fitness of aircrafts, it does not do so with due diligence.

FIRE RESPONSE

Moniruzzaman Rumi, chief engineer of BFA, said the fire engines were parked at the time of the accident and he had to drive one of the vehicles to the accident site as there was no other to drive the ambulance. An ambulance always accompanies the fire engines.

He said the crash scene was 1.5km away from the aerodrome's fire station. He said it took them over 10 minutes to drive there.

M Anisur Rahman, aerodrome fire leader, claimed that they took no more than two minutes to reach the scene after they were informed about the crash on the radio at 2:00pm.

He said had they delayed for 20 minutes, fuel in both the tanks of the plane would have burnt out. He also claimed to have rescued Lt Col (retd) Sayeed Kamal and put out the fire on his body, which was contrary to what the locals, witnesses and the first few people at the scene told The Daily Star.

He refuted Moniruzzaman's claim that he drove a fire vehicle to the scene in the absence of an on-duty driver.

Capt HM Akhter said, “We are looking into voice records, videos, and CCTV footage to see whether they were responsible for any delay.”

As the plane crashed, its nose gear broke, then the right wing dragged through the grassy ground and the plane turned left breaking its left wing causing the fuel tank to rupture.

The fire originated in the engine soon after the plane hit the ground and fed by the fuel, it caused the death of Tamanna in seconds, said the chief of the investigation team.