Airblue Flight ED-202 | Young & Husain, P.L.L.C.

	Airblue Flight ED-202 Young & Husain, P.L.L.C, has been retained by numerous families who lost loved ones in the tragic crash of Airblue flight 202 in Islamabad, Pakistan. Young & Husain, P.L.L.C, is committed to determining the cause of air incidents worldwide and holding those responsible to account. Young & Husain is investigating accidents and incidents involving Airbus aircrafts, and our team which includes Stewarts & Solicitors based in London, England are currently working on a number of Air cases. Most recently, we have been assisting over 50 families of passengers of the Air France Airbus A330 Flight AF 447 accident which occurred over the Atlantic last June, whilst flying through a thunderstorm. Air France Flight 447 was a commercial flight scheduled to carry 216 passengers and 12 crew members from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Paris, France. The aircraft, Air France Airbus A330-200, took off at 22:03 UTC on May 31, 2009. The crew on board Flight 447 made their last contact to Brazilian air traffic controllers as the aircraft approached a transition from Brazilian radar surveillance, over the Atlantic Ocean, to Sengalese-controlled airspace, off the coast of West Africa, at 01:33 UTC. BACKGROUND FACTS Most recently, on 28 July 2010, Airbus Flight ED 202, an Airbus A321-200 departed Karachi International Airport, Pakistan (KHI) at 07:50 local time and was due to arrive at Islamabad Benazir Bhutto International Airport (ISB), near Islamabad, Pakistan, at 09:45 local time. The aircraft was carrying 146 passengers and 6 crew members. According to reports, the Airbus A321, registration AP-BJB, was performing a circular approach to land on Runway 12 at Islamabad International Airport. During this procedure the aircraft is required to remain with a 5 nm circle of the airport so that it can maintain visual contact with the runway at all times. However, it was at approximately 9.5 nm from the airport when the tower advised the crew about being outside of this prescribed area and instructed the crew to turn left. It has been reported that the ground controller at the airport told the flight crew to “immediately turn left, Margalla Hills are ahead”. The pilot is said to have replied with “We can see it”. An airline official has started that the pilots did not send any emergency signals priors to the crash. Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik stated that the aircraft was at 2,600 feet (790 m) as it was approaching but went back up to 3,000 feet (910 m) before eventually crashing. There were no survivors.


	The accident aircraft
	This Airbus was a twin-engine aircraft capable of carrying up to 185 people on board. It was manufactured in 2000 and was owned by International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC), who operate out of California in the United States. ILFC first leased the aircraft to Airblue in January 2006. The aircraft was powered by two IAE V2533 engines manufactured by International Aero Engines. Prior to Flight ED 202 the aircraft had accumulated approximately 34,000 hours of flight time over 13,500 flights. The insurers for this accident are based in Lloyd’s of London. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE ACCIDENT The accident investigation and search through the wreckage has begun, although at this early stage there is very little information as to the cause of the accident. The information that is available to us is not verified and nothing can be certain until the black boxes have been fully analysed. Accident investigators from the Pakistani Civil Aviation Authority have already launched an investigation into the causes of the crash and have confirmed that they will provide full technical assistance to the authorities. Although the search team and investigators have located the black boxes it will take some time before their contents can be properly analyzed. The reports about the last moments of Flight ED 202 before the crash are varied and unverified. The efforts of the search and rescue team have been hampered by the fact that the crash site is not accessible by road, and is surrounded by a densely wooded area. POTENTIAL CAUSES Aviation accidents often happen as a result of several causes. There are many differing and unconfirmed reports in relation to the possible causes that led to this crash and for this reason, our preliminary analysis is based only upon information available at this time. It may well change once the contents of the Flight Data Recorder and Cockpit Voice Recorder are disclosed. However, using our Aviation and Airbus expertise, our initial view on potential causes are pilot error or technical fault, aggravated by poor weather conditions. 1. Weather Early reports indicate that the weather conditions at the time of the accident were less than favourable. It is also reported that prior to the crash, the airport had already diverted another aircraft from landing there due to the poor weather. The METAR weather report from the time of the accident states that there were layers of scattered clouds up the hills and around the airport. It was raining and visibility was only 3500m. Such weather conditions make the approach more challenging. The reduced visibility and increased work load can reduce the flight crew’s situational awareness, meaning that mistakes can be made. Additionally, if there is a technical problem the weather conditions may hinder the crew’s ability to deal effectively with it. 2. Pilot Error The Captain on Flight ED 202 had 35 years of experience and had logged in excess of 25,000 flying hours. This indicates that he was very experienced. Several ground witnesses at the scene have told journalists that they had noticed the aircraft flying very low - much lower than usual considering it was flying in the direction of the Margalla Hills. They believed that the flight crew must have been unable to see where they were going, given that they were heading straight for the hills. Some have reported the aircraft to have been no higher from the ground than a four-story building. The crash of this Airblue flight may be characterized as being a “Controlled Flight Into Terrain” (CFIT). This is the industry term to describe an accident in which an aircraft under pilot control is unintentionally flown into the ground, a mountain, an obstacle or water. In the case of Santa Barbara Airlines Flight 518, in which we represented clients, it was found that the pilots negligently synchronized the Attitude Heading Reference Units (AHRU) prior to take off. The aircraft was then flown off course from their intended flight path, resulting in a collision with a 4,750 meter (15600 feet) sheer rock face known as the “The Indian Face”. As already mentioned, reports indicated that the aircraft was flying the circling approach to Runway 12, which requires the crew to fly the approach at a circling approach minima of 2410’ within in a 5 nm prescribed radius. It appears that the crew departed from the prescribed radius but were still flying at the circling approach minima when they crashed at around 10 nm North of the airport. The reason the pilots did not stay within the 5 nm radius to fly the circling approach is unknown. In the absence of a technical problem with the aircraft, it could be that the weather/high workload caused them to fail to monitor their distance from the airfield as displayed on their instruments. This could have led to navigational disorientation, meaning that they were visual with the airfield but did not realise how far away they were. In these circumstances they would not have realized they were flying towards rising ground, which was probably masked by cloud. However, this disorientation could have been aggravated by a fault with the avionics system on the aircraft. The avionics system should also have warned the flight crew that they were flying towards a mountain. 3. Technical Failure If the avionics were faulty and showed an incorrect distance from the airfield, it could be that this misleading data induced the pilots to mistakenly believe that they were within 5 nm of the airport, when in fact they were at a distance of approximately 10 nm. Again, this would have caused them to fly towards the hills which were probably obscured by cloud. No matter what caused the aircraft to fly towards the hills, the Enhance Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) should have warned of the impending impact and instructed the crew to climb. The EGPWS on board the aircraft is designed to alert pilots when they are at risk of flying into the ground or an obstaclethrough a warning system called the Terrain Avoidance Warning System (TAWS). The warning alarm is designed to trigger with enough time to allow the pilots to reach a higher, safer altitude and avoid a collision. It is possible that there was a malfunction or fault with this system on the Airbus which meant that the alarm did not sound early enough and the pilots were unaware of their low altitude and high risk of collision. We were involved in the successful settlement of cases arising out of the Lockhart River crash back in 2005, the worst aviation disaster in Australia for 36 years. In this case, the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) that was installed on the aircraft failed to provide the flight crew with information on the terrain that lay ahead of the aircraft, only warnings that were based on the height of the aircraft above the ground. The failings in this component of the aircraft’s avionics system caused the aircraft to collide with a ridge known as South Pap on the aircraft’s approach to its destination airport, Lockhart River Airport. Once the FDR and CVR transcripts are released we will be able to more accurately analyse and refine our cause analysis. LIABILITY INVESTIGATION The families of passengers on board Flight ED 202 have the right to seek compensation for the loss of their loved ones from various defendants. At this stage, potential targets include the following: Airblue – The carrier and operator of the aircraft; Airbus – Designer and manufacturer of the aircraft; International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC) - the Lessor of the aircraft, based in California, USA; International Aero Engines – Designer and manufacturer of the engines; Honeywell/AlliedSignal Inc. - Manufacturers of the EGPWS on board the aircraft, based in the United States; Various manufacturers of the avionics systems installed on the aircraft; and The aviation insurers and re-insurers based in London.
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