The Caribbean Airlines jet that broke apart after a botched predawn landing in Guyana Saturday, without any fatalities, represents the type of accident international air-safety experts recently have been working the hardest to prevent.
The four-year-old Boeing 737 with 163 people aboard careened off the end of the Georgetown runway in rainy weather, crashed through a fence and broke into two pieces, highlighting the persistent hazards of airliners being unable to stop on slick strips.
Similar accidents and incidents may account for as much as 45% of the overall safety risks facing the global industry, according to Gunther Matschnigg, the top safety official of the International Air Transport Association, representing most of the world’s airlines.
Passengers on flight 523, which originated from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport and made a stop in Port of Spain, Trinidad, recounted screams and the smell of fuel in the cabin before they scrambled down emergency slides.
The jet’s crumpled nose came to rest short of a deep ravine, with dozens of passengers receiving medical care but, according to local officials, less than a handful requiring hospitalization. One passenger told the Associated Press rescue crews were slow to appear, and a taxi driver charged $20 to drive her to the terminal.
The Boeing 737 crash, according to safety experts, comes after an encouraging six-month period marked by a year-over-year improvement in the global rate of major accidents involving modern Western-built passenger aircraft.
Recently, regulators and safety groups have focused on preventing runway accidents in which poor pilot decision-making results in landing aircraft being unable to stop safely.
Nonetheless, the latest crash illustrates the persistent hazards of so-called runway excursions: accidents and serious incidents in which airliners careen off runways, often because pilots landed too fast, touched too far down the strip, or didn’t recognize the difficulty of stopping on wet, slushy or snow-packed surfaces.
But the Guyana accident, according to safety experts, also could involve other factors. Pictures and preliminary reports suggest that movable panels on the front and top of the Boeing 737′s wings, and perhaps also near their rear edges, may not have been extended or failed to operate properly. The devices are designed to help planes decelerate before and after touchdown.
Investigators are bound to look for possible mechanical problems or pilot mistakes that could have made it difficult to stop the plane.
John Goglia, a former member of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board, said on Sunday that “one of the first things investigators will determine is whether the plane was configured properly for landing,” or if any systems failed. The front wing panels, for example, automatically retract during certain kinds of hydraulic failures.
The Associated Press quoted a top aviation official in Guyana saying that the airport is in the process of upgrading landing aids to provide more-precise guidance for aircraft.
The weekend’s developments again shine the spotlight on air-safety challenges confronting Latin America and the Caribbean region, where annual commercial-aircraft accident rates typically have been significantly higher than in the U.S., across Europe and throughout certain parts of Asia. The major accident rate in Latin America and the Caribbean last year, for instance, was more than four times the rate in Europe and northern Asia, and three times higher than the 2010 rate recorded by countries that made up the former Soviet Union.
In August 2010, amid a thunderstorm, an Aires Airlines Boeing 737 crashed 260 feet short of the runway on the Caribbean island of San Andres, resulting in two fatalities and more than 100 injuries. Preliminary findings suggest the pilots of the Colombian carrier failed to react appropriately to strong and shifting winds during the final approach, according to safety experts.
According to statistics compiled by manufacturer Boeing Co., all types of runway accidents involving Western-built aircraft, including excursions during takeoffs and landings, accounted for more than 970 fatalities from 2001 to 2010. A report released last year by European air-traffic control officials cited runway excursions as “the most common type of accident reported annually” in the region and around the world, with landing overruns accounting for some 77% of all such accidents in that category.
The NTSB will assist Guyana in the investigation. The airline said it dispatched a team of executives and technical staff “to offer full support to the injured,” but didn’t provide details about the event. A Boeing spokesman said the company also would assist, but declined to discuss the accident.
For U.S. carriers, previous runway overruns prompted significant safety analyses and some operational changes.
These highly publicized accidents included a Southwest Airlines Co. jet that landed in windy conditions and ran off the end of a slushy Chicago strip in December 2005.
Four years later, an arriving American Airlines Boeing 737 equipped with enhanced visual-landing aids landed long and hurtled off the end of a Kingston, Jamaica, runway made slick by standing water. Nobody aboard either plane was killed.
Still, the crashes prompted re-evaluations of safety margins— particularly for pilot handling and braking performance—affecting big jets landing on contaminated runways.
Source: http://online.wsj.com
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