Investigations into Caribbean Airlines Limited Flight BW 523 which crashed in Guyana on July 30 have now turned to analysing simulations done of the aircraft when it crash-landed.
The simulations that were done were based on data retrieved from the flight data recorder (FDR) and the cockpit voice recorder (CVR), explained Trinidad and Tobago Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) Director General, Ramesh Lutchmedial.
TT PM Kamla Persad-Bissessar and CAL Chairman George Nicholas had visited Noel Elliott while he was at the Georgetown Public Hospital following the plane crash (File Photo)
The aircraft touched down at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport in rainy conditions, overshot the runway and split in half on stopping. No fatalities were recorded. There was one major injury. Lutchmedial was quoted in a Trinidad Newsday article as saying that at present, the investigations, he said, were moving apace in record time. “We are hoping,” he said, “that within the next three months, we would have the report ready”.
“We have merged the data from the FDR and the CVR to actually simulate what happened when the aircraft landed,” he said. He added, “We’re in the process of doing very detailed analyses of the simulations. Once the analyses are completed, we would start drawing conclusions, and then write the report.” The investigation is being led by the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority with assistance from the U.S. National Transportation and Safety Board.
Back in August, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) had reported that crash investigators believed excessive speed and other suspected lapses in landing procedures caused the plane to roll off the runway. The WSJ quoting industry and government sources reported that preliminary findings by investigators pointed to pilot error rather than mechanical or other system malfunctions. Eyewitness accounts and data retrieved from the plane’s data-recorders indicate the twin-engine Boeing aircraft, carrying 163 people, landed too fast and too far down the strip in Georgetown, Guyana on July 30, these officials said.
Senior Guyana transport official had said that the cockpit crew of Flight 523 reported no problems to air-traffic controllers on approach, adding that data analysed by investigators also didn’t highlight any major system malfunctions.
Guyana’s civil aviation head, Zulfikar Mohamed had played down theories that hydraulic or mechanical problems played a significant role in the accident. In two separate interviews, Mohamed also gave the strongest sign yet that at least some investigators believe that movable panels on the front and rear edges of wings – essential to decelerate most airliners during descents – apparently weren’t extended as required before touchdown. “It appears that way,” Mohamed said, based on early findings and informal discussions with U.S. and other investigators. Photographs taken after accident don’t show either sets of panels, called flaps and slats, extended on the plane.
Mohamed said that investigators found the handle in the cockpit, normally used to extend the flaps, in the up position, which would be consistent with the panels not being extended. The handles certainly may have been in a position they shouldn’t have been,” he had said
According to Mohamed, back then, investigators did not rule out the possibility that the wing panels could have retracted after touchdown, or rescue crew could have inadvertently moved the flap handles when they were removing the plane’s injured pilot or other perhaps other survivors.
But WSJ said safety experts and people familiar with the investigation discounted those possibilities. Completely retracting flaps fully extended for touchdown on a relatively short runway such as the one in Guyana, experts said, typically would take longer than Flight 523 remained on the runway. Furthermore, passenger-evacuation procedures usually require pilots to extend, rather than retract, flaps.
Guyana is formally in charge of the investigation, but much of the technical work relies on help from Boeing and the U.S. safety board.
