
PIA Airbus 320 Crashes near Karachi - billfruit
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-52766904
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Razarizvi
This 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.

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icefo
I wonder if it was a fuel issue. The "we lost two engines" near the
destination airport makes me think of that.

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khuey
Based 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.

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AdrianB1
Very 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.

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rwmj
This assumes experienced pilots who were paying attention and following the
checklist. If they weren't and forgot the gear on the first pass they might
have panicked and tried a go-around.

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doersino
I'm not an expert (y'know, like everyone in any given HN comments section),
but surely there must be automated systems in place that warn the pilots if
the landing gear is not deployed when within x meters of the ground?

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rwmj
Yes there will be an automated warning. On the airbus it calls out "retard"
below 20 ft. Edit: This wrong, see reply below.

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khuey
"Retard" is a normal callout during touchdown. The gear up warning is a
separate "too low gear" callout from TCAS.

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aaronmdjones
"Too low, gear" (and the other terrain alarms) are from GPWS, not TCAS.

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khuey
Thanks.

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krona
Ran out of fuel after 3 aborted landings, pilots perhaps distracted by an
engine failure?

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ertemplin
The FAA and ICAO regulation for flights above 18,000 feet is that you need to
have enough fuel to reach your destination, an appropriate alternate airport,
and cruise for an additional 45 minutes. I doubt they ran out of fuel after 3
attempts to land at the original destination airport.

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stevehawk
I'd love for a heavy pilot to comment on the math involved. Fuel burn on
takeoff is a lot more than cruise. I'd assume ~3x as much. Throw in the amount
of time to fly around a pattern and that 45 minutes doesn't give a lot of
flexibility if you start botching landings.

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asdfadsfgfdda
This may surprise you, but the fuel burn for holding is essentially constant
vs altitude. What suffers is the range, flying at low altitude is much worse
for fuel range because at high altitude, true air speed increases for a given
indicated air speed.

Page 17 shows ~5000 lb/hr at mid weight: [https://www.air-
septimanie.com/pdf/technical/A320/en/A320PER...](https://www.air-
septimanie.com/pdf/technical/A320/en/A320PERFORMANCE.pdf)

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mdani
A 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-
plan...](https://www.dawn.com/news/1558944/at-least-80-killed-as-plane-
with-99-onboard-crashes-into-residential-area-near-karachi-airport)

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rurban
How 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.

~~~
ashtonkem
Decent, 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
I'd expect a lower survival rate as it appears to have crashed into buildings,
and not into a field or similar.

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ashtonkem
Crashing 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.

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tpmx
Lots more details here, as usual:

[http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0](http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0)

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SparkyMcUnicorn
The 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/)

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jcrawfordor
This finding is an artifact of their methodology. Southwest is not EU admitted
because they only recently expanded to routes outside of the US and have not
so far expanded outside of the Americas (they may not want to as it would
introduce real complications to unified-fleet their business model). They are
not fatality-free in the last ten years, but their fatality in 2018 was the
only passenger fatality they have ever experienced. This incident also seemed
fairly fault-free on the part of Southwest as it resulted in guidance changes
requiring more frequent inspection of the engine model involved than
previously.

Perhaps they _should_ undergo IOSA audit, but it is entirely optional and is
viewed as less necessary in the US because the FAA's mandatory safety
oversight is similarly strict. It is mostly a certification obtained by
airlines to demonstrate that they are "as safe" as their peers, and as the
largest carrier in the US with an excellent safety record, Southwest is
probably just not very inclined to go to the extra expense for a certificate
to hang on the wall.

I would say this is a basic problem with evaluating airline safety based on
external accreditation rather than on their actual safety record. However, I'm
sure the latter would be much more difficult to do globally.

~~~
kube-system
This is like ranking software engineers solely on the number of Microsoft
certifications they have and the total number of open issues in their GitHub
repos.

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interestica
The 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.

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m23khan
Hope there are more survivors both from aircraft as well as on the ground --
Karachi, Pakistan is a densely populated City.

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cft
I am wondering why editing the original title was allowed in this case?

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baybal2
:(

I think I will be the first of many to say this: When they will finally get
PIA privatised for good?

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Pfhreak
Can you provide more context? Why would this help?

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AdrianB1
For 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.

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severino
But do we have evidence that privately owned airlines have a smaller record of
accidents and incidents than those not?

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AdrianB1
Hard 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.

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jll29
I 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

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chrisseaton
You think the plane flew to the wrong place?

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detaro
probably wanted to comment on
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23270232](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23270232)
instead

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chrisseaton
How can you accidentally comment on the wrong article?

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geocrasher
Well to be fair, commenting on the wrong article with a comment about going to
the wrong place kind of proves the point.

