Philippines Airport Closed After Plane Overshoots Runway

[Jollygoodfellow]

I hate landing, to me it feels like the plane is not straight on the runway.

 

 

Manila: Philippine aviation authorities shut down one of the country's busiest airports today after a passenger jet overshot the runway when landing during a rainstorm, officials said.

 

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) said Davao International Airport in the south of the country would be closed until Monday evening while authorities removed the Cebu Pacific Airbus A320 plane.

 

The jet, with 165 people aboard, "veered off to the right of the runway" shortly after landing on Sunday night from Manila, the company said."All the passengers were safe," airline spokeswoman Candice Iyog told AFP. "We do not know exactly what caused the airplane to swerve, but we are cooperating with the accident investigators."

 

Civil Aviation spokesman Eric Apolonio said workers on the ground estimated it would take until Monday night to safely remove the plane.

 

"We do not want to cause any extensive damage to the airplane and the runway," he said.

 

"There will be no flights to and from Davao until then," he said.

 

Iyog said Cebu Pacific cancelled 20 flights for the day, while rival Philippine Airlines (PAL) had cancelled 11.

 

As a result of the closure, hundreds of passengers were stuck at the airport, forcing PAL to offer land transfers to another airport four hours away.

 

Davao International Airport is the main gateway to Mindanao, the country's main southern island.

 

It is designed to handle about two million passengers annually.

 

http://www.ndtv.com/article/world/philippines-airport-closed-after-plane-overshoots-runway-374548

[i am bob]

I hate landing, to me it feels like the plane is not straight on the runway.  

 

Often they are not - especially at airports with only one runway.

 

If the wind is strong enough from the side and it is affecting the aircraft, they cheat and put a little yaw in (turn the aircraft) so the combined off-angle approach and wind effect line the aircraft up on approach.  The pilot will remove the yaw just before touch wheels down.  And sometimes they misjudge this so you will feel the pilot correcting again once he has landed.  But nothing to worry about - this is all configured into the safe operating parameters for the aircraft.  If the crosswinds are too high, they will either wait for the winds to break or, more often, take you to another airport.

 

My first landing at Halifax International was on New Year's Eve in the middle of a East Coast Blizzard...  Snow covered runway and almost no visibility due to high winds and blowing snow.  We landed, did a hard left and then a hard right onto the runway...   The flight attendants were screaming and crying - just to give you an idea how wrong this situation was.  Now that was an oops the pilot got away with...

[Markham]

There's a little more to this than has been reported. It was a Cebu Pacific A319 (not an A320) and it was attempting to land whilst a storm cell was overhead at the airport.

Davao airport has a single runway and only one taxiway; it is a "T" configuration where the horizontal is the runway and the vertical is the taxiway between the terminal and the runway. Cebu Pacific apparently instructs its pilots to brake hard and come to an almost complete stop just before the aircraft arrives at the taxiway - which is at about the halfway point of the runway - all the other carriers (PAL, Zest etc) have a more relaxed landing protocol and will use the turning area at the end of the runway.

What happened on Sunday was that the runway lights went out just as the plane touched down, there was a short brown-out caused by the storm. Just to complicate matters a little, the plane's starboard engine caught fire during final approach. It appears that the combination of the engine fire, the storm and the sudden loss of runway lighting cause the cockpit crew to panic and hit the brakes too hard, the plane skidded off the runway and came to rest on the grass verge.

I flew Cebu Pacific back to Davao from Cebu last week on a flight that lands just ahead of that flight from Manila and although it was night time, the plane's wing-mounted landing lights were turned-off just prior to touch-down. If the crew on yesterday's flight did the same, then they would have been disoriented when the runway lights failed.

[Old55]

Maybe the pilot hit the trust reversers forgetting one engine was defective pushing the aircraft into the weeds.

[i am bob]

the runway lights went out just as the plane touched down,

 

If anybody has had the joy of landing a large heavy aircraft with the landing lights shutting off on you like this, you are actually blind in the dark for a few seconds...  Long enough for the rest of the incidentals in this case to easily put them off the runway.  Knowing this, I'm surprised the pilots were able to come out of this as good as they did.

[Markham]

I was wrong - actually ABS-CBN wrongly reported that the runway lights went out; they did not but the plane's windscreen wipers failed to operate.

Here is a fuller account with links to passenger reports that I provided to a UK based Forum earlier:

In brief, what happened was this: Cebu Pacific's 5J 971 approached from the northeast (runway 24) but, according to passengers, did not have its flaps down, on a VOR/DME approach which required that the cockpit crew had visual sight of the runway at all times. Just prior to touchdown, there was a rain burst and due to defective wipers, the crew lost sight of the runway. Standard operating procedure dictates that full power be applied, the nose raised and the aircraft aborts the landing. That didn't happen. Instead it hit the runway hard, the airbrakes and flaps auto-deployed and the wheel brakes were applied far too hard. The plane skidded to the right and ended up in a grassed ditch, snapping its nose wheel.

But what happened next is unforgivable.

One of the engines was on fire and the cabin temporarily filled with smoke - the smoke being ingested by the cabin's air-conditioning system. The cabin crew remained in their seats, probably overcome by shock and obviously not trained in emergency procedures. After a few minutes, the cabin crew told the passengers to remain seated and await instructions from the cockpit - despite the fact that passengers were panicking and demanding that the doors be opened. Meanwhile the cockpit crew had very obviously not declared an emergency to the Tower because no fire trucks or ambulances were dispatched to the scene (it is very likely that the heavy rain obscured the Controllers' view of the runway and assumed that the plane had simply come to a standstill; remember that it was now night time and all cabin lights were off as per CAAP regulations, therefore controllers would not have seen the unusual attitude of the plane.) It was only when a passenger, Lt Bo of the Philippine Naval Reserve, assumed control - 23 minutes after touchdown - was a door opened and passengers began to be evacuated. According to reports, the 6th and 7th persons to leave the plane were its Captain and Co-pilot!

Passengers were left out in the heavy rain to await transport to the terminal which was both late in arriving and wholly inadequate. When passengers eventually reached the terminal, there were no Cebu Pacific personnel to meet them, no medical staff to attend to those who were by now poorly - a security guard did call the city's 911 but the CAAP airport manager refused to allow them entry on the grounds that, as far as he was aware, no passenger needed their services! It was some three hours later that a "medic" arrived equipped with nothing more than a stethoscope and an instrument for measuring blood pressure.

If you read this passenger's account, you will note that the pilot made four trips to the toilet in the space of one hour and that he appeared to be "dazed": could this as the result of him taking amphetamines or other drugs to stay awake?

Davao City's Mayor is taking this incident very seriously and its lawyers are helping passengers file law suits against the airline for its abysmal treatment of the passengers on that flight and the City itself is filing cases against the CAAP and airport management for their failures and mistakes. A multi-million Class Action lawsuit against Cebu Pacific by passengers on that plane is also to be filed here in Davao.

Here are some links for further reading:

Cebu Pacific passengers recall frightening landing at Davao airport

Cebu Pacific apologizes for runway mishap in Davao

Davao execs vow to help passengers who may sue Cebu Pacific

I rather think that both the FAA and European regulators will be taking an interest in this and may well not lift the restrictions or, in Europe's case, the outright ban, currently affecting Philippine registered aircraft. Cebu Pacific may find that its order for A330 aircraft - for long-haul operations to Europe via the Gulf - was somewhat premature as one would hope that the regulators would require firm evidence that cockpit and cabin crews are properly trained to international standards and can deal with any emergency. Quite clearly, as this accident shows, they are totally incapable due to wholly inadequate training.

The following questions must surely be answered by the airline and the CAAP:

* Why wasn't the aircraft's defective windscreen wiper(s) fixed prior to the flight?

* Why weren't the flaps deployed on approach to slow-down the aircraft (the cynic in me suggests that this is a fuel-conservation issue as engine power must be then increased to compensate)?

* When the flight deck crew lost sight of the runway, why did they not abort the landing and go around as the rule book states?

* Why did it take 10 minutes for a member of the cockpit crew to address the passengers?

* Why was the public address system disabled?

* Having come to a complete stop, why did the pilot not order an immediate evacuation using all four doors? It took over 20 minutes before a passenger took control and even then only one door was used. This was an emergency, all four doors should have been used.

* Why did it take almost 6 minutes for a single fire truck to arrive at the scene, it didn't have to travel too far, and why did the airport authorities prevent first-responders from entering the airport?

* Why did the Captain and co-pilot leave the aircraft before all the passengers were evacuated - are their lives more important?

Despite press reports to the contrary, the airport remained closed for much of today (Wednesday) (it reopened a couple of hours ago) today and all flights were diverted to General Santos, four hours away by road. At least PAL provided free air-conditioned buses but, apparently and rather cynically, CP charged for the "land ferry" trips. But the problems for passengers wasn't just the added four hour road trip: when they arrived at General Santos airport they were met by chaos and pandemonium as none of the baggage X-Ray scanners is operational and all baggage has to be unlocked, opened and searched.

How about this assertion from [Lance] Gokongwei, Cebu Pacific's CEO (and the owner's son):

"There was no emergency situation...It was a precautionary disembarkation," he said, addressing a question on the length of time it took to deplane the passengers."

Ah, okay, so a plane lands too fast in pouring rain, skids off the runway breaking its nose wheel, both engines hit the concrete and flames are seen sprouting from one, smoke fills the darkened cabin and the crew are traumatised - and that's not an emergency?

And, please, what is "a precautionary disembarkation"? Does he not mean "delayed disembarkation" because the former would be carried-out in case a fire broke-out and would have been done somewhat more rapidly than after 23 or 24 minutes!

I suggest that the aircrew were very close to being "out of hours" when they were instructed to fly the round-trip to Davao which is one hour and fifty minutes each way - thus a duty roster of about 4 hours. Tiredness and bad weather coupled with rapid promotions and lack of training and experience all contributed to causing this accident.

Cebu Pacific is now to be boycotted by, among others, the Ateneo University (a major user) and other large institutional users including Davao City Government which, as well as boycotting the airline for all business travel, have asked their staff to look to other airlines for their private travel.

Edited June 5, 2013 by Markham

[FlyAway]

For some odd reason, none of this shocks me in anyway.

 

This affected my brother in law yesterday. I had purchased him a ticket from Davao to Manila last month. He got into a little tiff with Cebu Pacific about it. They said they would refund the ticket price but it will take 45-60 days to credit my VISA!!!

[samatm]

nice write up Mark -     I am wondering why the  emergency exit row passengers didn't do their thing.       If I had been on the plane setting next to an exit door, I would have popped it open as soon as the plane came to rest.    Not a hero thing...just the survivor instinct  would kick in... especially with any sign of smoke or fire!     Did everyone sitting on the Emergency exit row disregard instructions on how to open the emergency doors?   It looks quite easy.   

[FlyAway]

nice write up Mark -     I am wondering why the  emergency exit row passengers didn't do their thing.       If I had been on the plane setting next to an exit door, I would have popped it open as soon as the plane came to rest.    Not a hero thing...just the survivor instinct  would kick in... especially with any sign of smoke or fire!     Did everyone sitting on the Emergency exit row disregard instructions on how to open the emergency doors?   It looks quite easy.   

I always pay the extra to sit in the emergency exit row. Smoke in the cabin and the plane is at a full stop? You bet I will attempt to pop that door open!

 

Something comes to mind about opening any doors on a plane. What about the internal pressure in the cabin? If the cabin is still pressurized, you cannot open the doors. So many variables to think about in an emergency situation.

 

Anytime I hear a story of someone trying to open a cabin door in flight I kind of roll my eyes. The door is not going to fly off.

[samatm]

 

nice write up Mark -     I am wondering why the  emergency exit row passengers didn't do their thing.       If I had been on the plane setting next to an exit door, I would have popped it open as soon as the plane came to rest.    Not a hero thing...just the survivor instinct  would kick in... especially with any sign of smoke or fire!     Did everyone sitting on the Emergency exit row disregard instructions on how to open the emergency doors?   It looks quite easy.   

I always pay the extra to sit in the emergency exit row. Smoke in the cabin and the plane is at a full stop? You bet I will attempt to pop that door open!

 

Something comes to mind about opening any doors on a plane. What about the internal pressure in the cabin? If the cabin is still pressurized, you cannot open the doors. So many variables to think about in an emergency situation.

 

Anytime I hear a story of someone trying to open a cabin door in flight I kind of roll my eyes. The door is not going to fly off.

 

 

I wouldn't think that there would be any pressurization as they had landed at near sea level.   Did the Emer doors malfunction?