PIA Airbus 320 Crashes near Karachi

[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.

[icefo]

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

[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.

[jaywalk]

There were also multiple landing attempts, which supports that theory as well.

[krona]

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

[soapboxrocket]

Based on the photos of the damage to the engines the aborted landings didn't go well.

https://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0

[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.

[ashtonkem]

3 aborted landings is a lot.

Isn’t it considered good policy to redirect after a few aborted landings?

(Not a Pilot).

[AdrianB1]

There is a single go-around; the plane burst in flames, there was enough fuel for that so there was enough fuel to run the engines, the minimum reserve is 30 minutes, the go-around takes a lot less.

[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...

[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.

[lmilcin]

There is no information that he is sole survivor. There is no information about how many survivors there are exactly.

Is he really lucky? Any person taking part in plane crash is unlucky in my view. Also "survived" does not yet mean he is unhurt.

[kube-system]

The subset of people who are on an airplane at any point in time generally skews heavily prominent. Especially more so when you subtract almost 100% of tourists from the equation.

[dmichulke]

That might be sampling bias - how many people do you know that fly around these days? (Corona, lockdown and all)

[cecja]

There are 40 survivors reported in local media.

[xabxxx]

Even if it was the case I wouldn't draw any "conspiracy" conclusions from it. As part of a demanding CEO role he may of be quite physically fit, or maybe he just had the whole of business class to himself.

[tpmx]

Lots more details here, as usual:

http://avherald.com/h?article=4d7a6e9a&opt=0

[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/

[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.

[khuey]

Given that Southwest Airlines has killed one passenger in its entire history I'm going to say that a methodology that ranks them among the worst in safety is likely suspect.

[tyingq]

They are dinging Southwest mostly because it has never asked for IOSA certification. There's no requirement for them to do so, because they aren't an IATA member.

[rootusrootus]

I do not trust that web site. Their methodology is suspect (see Southwest Airlines, as you mention) and their data is suspect (Alaska Airlines has no fatalities? No, they have had 9 accidents that resulted in at least one death, including several that resulted in all lives on the plane lost).

[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.

[m23khan]

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

[cft]

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

[eganist]

Not to dismiss the gravity of the situation, but engineering and process failures are interesting to this audience. This is one example, likely of the latter.

[CivBase]

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[baybal2]

:(

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

[sremani]

When Air India gets privatized for good ;)

Jokes aside, airlines around the world are pretty much nationalized one way or the other -- and we have to re-evaluate things on the other side of pandemic 2 years from now.

[Pfhreak]

Can you provide more context? Why would this help?

[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

[chrisseaton]

You think the plane flew to the wrong place?

[interestica]

This is interesting. It makes me think of the way we cluster thematically-related placenames in cities. It's well intentioned, but I think people can mentally store place names based on other categorical groupings (eg, we might remember a street had something to do with the sun- only to find all the area streets have some relation).

I'd love to read more on your thesis!